#
Spike stumbled into the burnt-out factory, the world swimming before his eyes. It took a lot to get a vampire intoxicated, but after several weeks of near-nonstop drinking he had managed. He had also managed to acquire a certain kind of bodily odour, something that vampires, who didn't sweat, usually didn't really have to worry about. It was a combination of booze, smokes, and pure misery that clung to him and made even the rats scurry away.
"Drusilla," he yelled, slurring the name. "I'm home. Where are you?"
He swallowed a sip from his nearly empty bottle and phantom images danced before his eyes. Drusilla spinning through the room with a smile on her face, giggling as she spun Miss Edith around and around.
"Have you brought me something pretty?" the phantom image asked him, smiling radiantly. Spike grinned in return, stumbling forward to take her into his arms.
He fell right through the hallucination and ended up prone on the floor. Screaming in protest he drove his fist deep into the blackened wooden planks, not caring that his knuckles split and his hands started bleeding.
"Drusilla," he roared again.
Spike had no clear memory of how he had managed to get back to his feet. He only knew that some undetermined amount of time later he found himself standing in front of a dusty old mansion. He stumbled forward and smashed open the patio doors, his boots scrunching the splintered glass beneath them.
The place was empty. Nothing there at all except some old bloodstains and a huge scorch mark on the ground. The faintest traces of scents, but he was much too far gone to make heads or tails of them.
"Where are you?" he challenged some unseen foe. "Come here so I can pound you into bloody paste!"
"Maybe I'll take you with me next time," a phantom of Angelus whispered to him with a cruel grin on its face. "Would be great when I need a really good parking space."
"You stupid wanker," Spike bellowed. "You just had to try and destroy the world, right? You just had to come back from being a bloody do-gooder and take Dru from me, right?"
He collapsed into a heap on the floor, digging his black fingernails into the stone.
"You think I'm afraid of you?" he growled under his breath, shortly before passing out right then and there.
#
Faith was doing a solo patrol to wrap up the night. Earlier she had gone with Buffy and Angel, the three of them kicking demon ass together, but every now and then she still liked to go out on her own. The reason for that was actually terribly simple.
Fighting alongside the couple was a rush, but one with a bittersweet tinge. The saying 'three's a crowd' had never been more accurate. Buffy and Angel had fought their way through all nine circles of Hell and a few run-of-the-mill vampires didn't even slow them down anymore. Not only that, but the way they communicated without words, how their shared looks spoke entire libraries, it made Faith feel superfluous.
Looking back over the months she had spent in Sunnydale so far, the bottom line was that it had been a good thing for her to come here. Sure, she had almost been killed on a number of occasions, but the good far outweighed the bad. She had friends now, true friends. She had something very close to a family, what with Giles now being her legal guardian and Mrs. S treating her almost as if she was her own daughter. She had people to fight beside, even if they sometime made her feel redundant.
What she didn't have, and what she couldn't help but long for, was someone who looked at her like Angel looked at Buffy. She knew that she had absolutely no right to complain. In her few short months in this town she had gained more than she ever thought she would have, but still ... people always wanted what they didn't have, right? Why should she be different?
Back in Boston she had averaged about one guy per week, sometimes more. Get some, get gone, that had been her motto. Always be the one to leave first, because then you wouldn't be the one who got left behind. It was the one lesson her bitch of a mother had taught her that she had fully taken to heart. Guys always left. Usually when things got tough and you really needed them.
She still believed that to be true, at least when it came to about 99 percent of the male population. It was the belief that there might be one percent where it was not true that was new for her. She wasn't exactly sure where that came from. Hearing of Angel and Buffy sticking together for their entire trip? Seeing that idiot Xander try and work past a truly giant mountain of mistakes and stupidity to get his friends back? Maybe it was this entire group of people she suddenly found herself a part of.
She chuckled at the absurdity of it all. A Slayer and a souled vampire. A witch and a werewolf. A prom queen and an A-class loser. A stuffy Brit and a mom that could have hailed right from a 50s sitcom. All thrown together and protecting the world, though some of them made larger contributions then others.
Where did that leave her? The second Slayer? She laughed. Maybe there was another non-evil vampire somewhere out there. Well, if he really did exist, odds were he would come here. This place was so weird that anything was possible.
#
The light of the rising sun slowly crept across the floor of the mansion, edging towards the slumbering vampire lying in the middle of it. At one time in the past Spike had complained about the many windows this place had, a state of affairs not favourable to creatures as averse to sunlight as vampires were. Unfortunately for him he had not thought about the windows before passing out, nor had the thought of the eventual rise of the sun ever entered his shrouded mind.
As a result he was quite unprepared for his hand suddenly bursting into flame when the sunlight touched it.
"BLOODY HELL," he yelled, jumping to his feet and looking for the nearest body of water. Finding none, he ran into the nearby bedroom and proceeded to smother the flames with one of the sheets. This stratagem, while successful in itself, caused the curtains, entangled with the sheets as they were, to slide open.
"AAAAH," he yelled again, quickly jumping back from the glaring light of the morning sun. Even a vampire, normally one of the most graceful creatures on the face of the Earth, did have certain coordination troubles when suffering from extended alcohol abuse. Therefore Spike lost his balance, cracked his head on the doorframe, and quite effectively knocked himself unconscious.
Fortunately for him his body came to rest in a spot where the sunlight wouldn't reach until much later in the afternoon.
#
Faith woke with a yawn, the light of the rising sun shining through the half-parted curtains. She was not a morning person, not even close, but today was one of the three days a week she had to get up early for those blasted study sessions Giles had forced upon her. That harpy of a tutor would give her that glare again if she was late and it was an exercise in self-control to keep from telling her how very much not intimidating that glare was. Getting up early was easier.
Despite Giles now being her legal guardian she still lived with Buffy's mom, a state of affairs that was not going to change anytime soon. Giles' apartment, while roomy, was not really intended for housing a teenager. Too many easily broken pieces of stuffy furniture, the complete absence of a TV, and the most modern piece of entertainment equipment Giles possessed being his old record player.
Seeing as Buffy didn't live here anymore Mrs. S had room to spare and didn't mind Faith using it. Faith actually believed that she was enjoying having a teenager to fuss over again. And Faith herself? Well, she would never admit it to a living soul, but being fussed over by someone who actually deserved the name 'mom'? She enjoyed it immensely.
A shower later she skipped down into the kitchen, said skipping being more a result of pent-up energy from last night's lack of vampires than anything even remotely resembling peppiness. Mrs. S was already there and the smell of pancakes filled the room.
"Good morning, Faith. Did you sleep well?"
"Like a rock, Mrs. S. I didn't wake you coming in again, did I?"
Faith knew very well that Joyce had developed the habit of sleeping with one eye open until she came home. She secretly loved it, but it made no sense for the woman to tire herself out that way, so she tried to cure her of that habit. Without success so far.
They ate breakfast and chatted amiably for a while, talking about nothing in particular. The weather, vampires, the art gallery, the demonic tutor, just your average stuff. Faith couldn't suppress a small smirk. By now Mrs. S was no doubt hoping that, this morning at least, she would not be subjected to Faith's daily ritual.
She started to rise, preparing to put the dishes in the machine, when Faith went in for the kill.
"Any new adventures with the G-man of late?"
Mrs. S furious blush told her, not for the first time, that her suspicions about what had happened between Mrs. S and the G-man during the infamous cursed candy night were absolutely correct.
Life was good.
#
Spike regained consciousness again and groaned, his head pounding from a combination of hangover and the big bruise he had gotten from colliding with the doorframe.
"Life stinks," he mumbled, slowly rising to his feet.
He really needed to kill something and soon.
TO BE CONTINUED