Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Broken Origin I

Author: Dev Nine-Asher

A/N: Hey, just wanted to give my thanks to the reviewers. Sorry about the delay, but breaking up what was originally twenty-some page chapters into smaller ones is taking longer than I thought, and with the Holidays – y'know what I mean. By the way, standard disclaimer applies, as usual - I own NOTHING! Thanks for reading!

Chapter Three

"I'm warning you," said the Slayer. "I-If you don't kill me now, you'll…I swear I'll make sure you regret it."

Spike's amusement increased three-fold at her stumbling threat. "Regret it? What are you gonna' do, Slayer? Bruise my shin? Scratch my face? Pull my hair? C'mon. You fight like a girl."

"I am a girl!" she suddenly screamed at him. "I'm a girl, I'm sixteen years old! I didn't know! I didn't ask to be born into this!"

"Nobody asks to be born, love."

Spike reached out and caught her by the hair, yanking back sharply on it until she cried out at the unnatural angle he was forcing her neck into. "Anyway, it doesn't matter what you are. You think you impress me? That you bein' the Slayer means anything at all to me?" he whispered insidiously into her ear, smiling faintly as she began to pant in alarm. He gave her hair another harsh tug and leaned in to nip hard at her skin, not enough to draw blood, but to bruise the healing mark of his earlier bite.

"I kill Slayers the same as I kill everyone and everything else – you're just another meal to me, baby."

A sob escaped her throat, and instead of becoming excited by her fear, her hopeless submission, anger surged through him, tensing his muscles.

Unlike the two previous Slayer's he'd killed, there wasn't even a shade of nobility in this one. He'd at least had a smidgen of respect for them as warriors, whereas he felt nothing but disgust for this cowering, ignorant young thing. He felt cheated.

Spike suddenly wanted to hit something – hard.

So he did.

~*~

In the next second Buffy was flat on her back, her jaw, and one entire cheekbone exploding in pain. The vampire looked down on her with a dark expression, the hungry, predatory glitter in his eyes snapping at her.

In the few other vampires she'd killed, Buffy had noticed that their eyes held no expression, only a cold, vast emptiness. It had been frightening, but seeing the rage of emotions in this one's eyes was somehow scarier. It was obvious this was no 'off-the-rack' vampire.

A niggling suspicion edged its way into her consciousness past the adrenaline and the pain, but she pushed the possibility away before it could solidify into an actual thought. She could only pray that her instincts were wrong, because if they weren't…well, her eventual death definitely wasn't going to be an easy one.

Some remnant of self-preservation had her forcing herself back up onto her feet, her hands coming up in a weak version of the defensive stance Merrick had shown her that first night.

The vampire laughed at her when she lunged forward, clumsily attempting a roundhouse kick. The move was still fast and powerful, but her foot settled back onto the ground without ever even touching him. She lashed out with her fists next, repeatedly, until her muscles were aching and sore, but she still missed him completely.

Her breath was ragged in her chest when she finally gave-up. Panic got the better of her when he raised the back of one hand, and she skittered back against the wall, her pulse pounding in her ears, pain from her jaw still bringing tears to her eyes.

He seemed pacified by her fear of him, and dropped his hand, the muscles in his jaw going wire-taut. "One lesson you'd do well to learn right quick, little Slayer," he said in a menacing drawl, "don't start any fights with me unless you're ready to finish them."

Before Buffy could blink, he vanished into the shadows.

Lights flickered on from somewhere above, harsh, fluorescent lights that hurt her eyes, yet only dimly lit the room around her. It took a moment of squinting for her sight to adjust, and when she finally could see clearly, she wished it hadn't.

There were monsters all around her, vampires, all sizes, and shapes of what had to be other kinds of demons. She was at the bottom of a deep, round concrete pit of sorts, and at the top of the tall, cracked, and age stained walls, they stood, peering down on her.

Staring at her.

Buffy swallowed, and couldn't help but think that they looked….hungry.

The air was virtually silent until she began to hear odd snippets of conversation, weird languages, grunting and snuffling, and finally, whisper chants of, "Slayer", that grew into a deafening roar.

The door she'd first thought of as being a possible escape opened, and Buffy darted a glance at it. Her heart fell to her feet as she saw the same two vampires that had killed her parents walk through it, and heard the screech of the heavy steel door slam shut behind them.

~*~

Spike struggled to hold his growing fury in check as he watched the circus act below. His mood was growing frayed and raw again.

He was leaning over the circular ledge of the old storage tank, shoulders hunched, one foot up on the wall, his forearm balanced across his knee. His fist clenched as he narrowed his eyes and slowly shook his head in aggravated disbelief.

The Slayer had shown herself to be at least a somewhat worthy adversary, earlier, even if most of her moves had been made purely on instinct. He'd thought to get a bit of entertainment out of her before he killed her, thought to make an example of her in front of the scaly masses, and rid himself of the annoyance of Killoran and Tobias as well, but she clearly wasn't facing up to the challenge as he'd hoped.

Instead of attacking the two vampires, she was playing defense, clumsily dodging attacks only when she was forced to instead of attempting to take them down.

He was mightily disappointed, but he wasn't completely shocked. The girl was young, even for a Slayer. He reckoned her age to be between about fourteen and sixteen, and there was nothing about her to show that she'd ever been anything but pampered and spoiled. There wasn't a hint of independence in her, but then she seemed to have enough stubborn determination hidden deep down somewhere to more than make up for it.

Spike bit the inside of his cheek as he saw the girl barely manage to dodge a killing blow, and then heard her bloodcurdling shriek as she attempted to claw her way up the walls.

He sighed noisily. Even given the fact that she didn't have a weapon, Slayers had always been known for their cleverness in a fight. The girl obviously didn't know it, but she had enough strength in her little finger to twist a bloody vampires head from straight off it's neck, and here she was, running in circles in an unimpressive display of frantic terror.

Despite his mood, Spike couldn't help the grudging, humorless smile that lifted a corner of his lips.

It actually would have been funny if it weren't just so utterly pathetic.

~*~

Buffy didn't know how long the cat and mouse chase went on before she heard the roar of the crowd died down, and she turned to see the two vampires that were taunting her go still, their expressions one of disbelief before she warily turned her eyes upward to see what they were gawking so anxiously at.

The vampire she'd 'met' earlier lightly jumped to the pit floor from a perch on the high wall above, so resilient to the shock of gravity that he was stalking toward her the moment his boots touched down.

Her first clear sight of what she now knew had to be the master around here had her staring dumbly. She honestly didn't know what to think of him, except that he wasn't like anyone she'd ever known before.

The vampire wasn't overly tall, but she was pretty short, so it still seemed as if he towered head and shoulders over her, especially now when she was feeling like a small, cornered animal.

Silence settled over the pit as he drew even with her. He was a few yards from her, the startling pacific blue of his eyes under straight black brows – the left one of which was noticeably scarred - pinning her in their annoyed glare as she looked back at him for a long, breathless moment.

His nose was long and straight if not the tiniest bit hawkish, and his lips were at this moment grim, set in a firm, straight line. The harsh contour of his square jaw led into a set of truly devastating razor-edge cheekbones. The deep, sharp hollows underneath made him look hungry, almost as if he was starving, but there was absolutely nothing unattractive about it. It just made him look like the kind of guy who ate women – no pun intended.

The brilliant white-blonde shade of his hair was very pale, but still managed to stand out in contrast to his skin, which was the cold white that all vampires ended up with. To a regular person, he'd probably just look like he didn't venture outdoors much, but to Buffy, who knew what to look for, it was easy to tell he wasn't human. The tone of his skin was too even, too unblemished and smooth to be natural.

Moving her eyes over his clothes, which consisted mostly of varying shades of black, she couldn't help thinking that despite the very real fact that he was totally evil, and most certainly dead, he was brutally hot, though the personal shopper side of her itched to play dress-up with him like one of her old Malibu Ken dolls…

They stood looking at each other for what seemed like minutes but could only have been a few seconds. Then the vampire arched a brow at her and everything within her recoiled for an instant before she mentally slapped herself. He smiled, an evil, lazy smile that lit up his eyes from within and lifted the corners of his lips.

Buffy swallowed hastily. Yeah, the guy was evil, and he was probably at that very moment contemplating stringing her up by her throat from her own entrails, and sure, she was the Slayer, but she was still teenager enough to recognize – and appreciate - a hottie when she saw one.

Even perched on the edge of sanity as she was, she had to admit that this particular vampire wore death well.

He moved slightly, and Buffy's errant attention was drawn abruptly to his black polish-tipped, lean-fingered hands. He held a two foot long spike of wood that ended in a jagged, lethal point.

Bleeding and hurting, Buffy tensed as he approached her. There was no end to her surprise when the vampire tossed the weapon to her. Her Slayer reflexes were the only thing that kept her from fumbling and dropping it, she knew.

Buffy looked up at the master vampire in surprise, but he was already walking away from her, long leather duster billowing as he ducked through the door in the circular wall. She watched the two vampires that were her natural prey fling themselves at it as it closed, and then saw their eyes turn slowly back to her and the wooden stake now in her hands when they discovered, much as she had at the beginning of the fight, that there was no escape. They were afraid of her now.

Buffy twirled the stake in her hand with a bit of newfound confidence.

~*~

Spike settled back onto the wall with a faint smile after he returned from below, ignoring the looks of disfavor he was receiving from a few of the other more intelligent demons around him.

He watched the Slayer stalk the two creatures in the pit below, saw her take the long stake in both hands like a baseball bat and advance on the vampires in a sudden flurry of unpracticed but potentially lethal moves. He tucked his hands under his arms and listened in smug satisfaction to the roar of the crowd of demons surrounding him.

Now this was more like it…

~*~

Buffy had yet to gain the capacity for violence – she hadn't been the Slayer for very long at all.

"You won't use that," the red-haired vampire sneered when she hesitated.

She looked up at him, recalling the sight of her parents blood smeared across his lips, and hefted the spike between her hands the same way she had her bat at softball practice when she was nine. Her eyes narrowed. "Wrong."

The first swing split open the side of his face, sending dark, corrupt blood spraying across the floor of the pit. She caught him off guard on the second strike, and hit him full in the mouth, as hard as she possibly could. She actually thought she saw a fang tear free of it's socket on impact and go sailing through the air, but she had the other one to worry about as he let out a howl and rushed at her.

Buffy took a quick deep breath and dodged aside, sticking out her Nike-shod foot as the vampire passed. He tripped and plowed face-first into the dirty concrete, but she didn't have time to revel in her satisfaction. The bleeding redhead had been moving fast on the heels of his friend, and now flung himself at her throat, red coals burning in his gold eyes, his open mouth a roiling, wet mass of dark scarlet gore.

The sight terrified her, but somehow she found herself suddenly distanced from her fear. She almost felt as if she were watching herself through someone else's eyes as she merely tightened the grip on her weapon and braced herself, waiting for the impact of flying death with cold indifference.

Buffy just stood there, her features set with grim determination, inwardly gaping in disbelief that she wasn't turning and running. As the vampire approached, she thrust the long stake forward, feeling the pointed wood break sickeningly through flesh and sternum before breaking off with the force carrying the vampire forward and splintering in it's dead, dry, twisted lump of a heart.

She was moving again before she could take pleasure in the shocked look on the creature's face. She turned around to face the dark one even as she heard the other disintegrate behind her.

The remainder of the stake was unexpectedly knocked from her hands, and she made the mistake of looking after the weapon as it clattered to the floor and rolled to some distance away. A fist swung with crushing power into her gut, stealing her breath.

Buffy flattened herself against the wall to avoid another blow. The vampire that had killed her father slashed at her, his nails ripping open her sleeve and tearing into soft flesh.

The pain partially brought her fear back to the surface.

What was she doing?! Even if she did manage to kill this vampire, she was still surrounded, still in the middle of nowhere for all she knew. She was going to die anyway!

"I can smell your fear, Slayer," the vampire hissed.

His voice was smug, his scratched and scored expression arrogant. It pissed her off.

Buffy killed the fear, somehow stemming the panic rising in her chest again.

Suddenly she didn't mind the violence at all. Suddenly…she reveled in it.

Buffy kicked him in the stomach, feeling the sting of power rush through her leg muscles as they bunched and extended, felt it explode against the vampire as her foot connected with solid flesh, and it hit the floor, sliding at least ten feet on it's back.

The move brought on a renewed roar from the crowd, and Buffy shook her head at the fickleness of the demons as they began cheering 'her' on.

As she walked over to retrieve her stake, she saw the dark haired vamp struggle up onto his feet once again. As shaky as he seemed, she wasn't anticipating how fast he could still move, and she found herself backed up against a wall with the vampire's forearm pressing into her throat.

"I'll kill you slow," the injured vampire promised with a growl. "I always wanted to taste the blood of a Slayer."

In an instant Buffy had their positions reversed, her forearm crushing his neck as she stared coldly into his startled gold eyes. The broken stake was ready in her other hand, the point poised at his heart.

"Not on the best day you've ever had could you kill me," she bit out, her lips curled back in a snarl. The stake plunged down, and with an unholy screech, the vampire crumbled into nothingness before her eyes.

With the two vampires that had killed her parents and Merrick dusted at her feet, and the fickle cheers from the crowds of others watching from above deafening her where she stood below in the pit, Buffy marveled at the irony.

Here she was, surrounded by nothing but darkness and death…and yet she'd never felt more alive.

~*~

To be Continued in Chapter Four

~*~

Next: "Okay, first things first. If you run, try to escape, believe me when I say you won't be able to find anywhere safe enough to hide from me. I'm not making light with you. Believe me when I tell you, I'm not a nice bloke."

Buffy made a show of sighing. "If you aren't going to kill me, just how long do you expect to keep me here, anyway?"

His eyebrows flew up and he leaned forward into her face, a glint of challenge in his eyes. "As long as I bloody feel like it."

~*~