Chapter two: Innocence

It was pretty much like every other bar, only more dark and smoky. There were a few tables, a bar-disk and worn-down chairs scattered over the floor, and that was all that could be said about the interior of the place. At the far end of the room there was a staircase, on which several less dignified ladies had parked themselves, providing their services for any man or woman who felt like having a good time midst drinking. The ones not working looked fairly bored and stared apathetically out into thin air, waiting for someone to make an offer. They were allowed inside if the landlord, the owner of the place, got a fair percentage of what they each made. It was considered a good deal. Even when the weather was lousy, they were still open for business, hidden under the more or less dry ceiling.

At the bar sat two beautiful young ladies, talking among themselves so silently that no one around them could overhear what they were saying. Here and there, they broke the conversation off by laughing, their laughter hollow and cold when it echoed throughout the room. They were each other's opposites; one fair, the other dark. They were both, however, wearing expensive clothes and looked very misplaced in this sea of filthy peasants who were the usual clientele.

Angelus spotted them instantly and sauntered through the crowded room. Where he made his way, the patrons of the bar tried to keep away as much as possible, thus creating a handy path through the crowd. It was like he gave off some sort of aura that instinctively told people to get the hell away, unless they wanted to get hurt. Spike tried to keep up, but he had not yet attained the power required to give off such an aura, which meant he had to elbow himself through.

"Ladies," smiled Angelus as he reached them. They turned to face him and grinned in a satisfied manner as he put his arms around them both. "I trust you are both very, very hungry."

"We have not yet dined, dearest," replied the blond one, smiling darkly. "We decided to wait for you."

Spike had now reached them. The darker, more graceful woman released herself from Angelus' arm and reached out her hand for him to grasp. He did, kissing it gently.

"Good evening, sweet William," she said, a vicious smile on her carefully coloured lips. "Had a good night's hunting?"

"'Course, pet," he said, drawing up a chair and implying she should sit on it. She did so.

"Did she scream?" she asked with a morbid curiosity in her voice.

"No. She rather embraced it, actually."

"Too bad. It's much more fun when they scream, and beg, and crawl at your feet for mercy, like maggots wriggling on a hook." She yawned slightly. "I am quite bored now. And the hunger is overwhelming. Shall we share one, my love?" she suggested to Spike.

He grinned deviously. "Why not, Dru. Which one would you like?" He gave a wide gesture. None of the humans in the pub seemed to have noticed their strange conversation, and if they had, they'd obviously not thought much of it.

Angelus, who had been chatting with his fair lady, now had a wide, lopsided smile on his lips. "I say we take them all."
"Then we would have to move on to another town afterwards," his lady said, frowning. "I'm not in the mood for changing the scenery; I like it here. Let's wait with the massacre this time, okay?"
"We have dwelled here for too long already, Darla," Angelus answered her. "And I'm getting weary with this 'rustic charm' thing. Venice seems appealing, and that's not very far from here."
Darla pouted, but said no more. She knew better than to question him.

"You girls go and seal off the entrances," Angelus commanded them. "And then you and I, William, will take care of gathering the sheep around us."

Again, Spike felt a wave of anger go through him. He hated Angelus' patronising attitude. He thought himself the king of everything. It might be he was the most powerful of their group, but there was no need to score low points in using Spike's old name against him. It was like he was trying to make a statement: no matter if Drusilla sired you, you are still just a petty, low-down predator compared to me. His attitude was not hostile, but condescending, and that was what made him furious. But he swallowed his anger yet again and pretended everything was fine.

"Of course," he said, bowing sardonically. But Angelus had already turned his back on him.

Darla and Dru had gone off to seal the two doorways. No human seemed to mind, just as long as they were on the inside of the pub when the doors closed. They were, after all, aiming at becoming horribly intoxicated, and this was one of the better places to achieve that specific goal.

Humans, thought Spike disdainfully. Here they all are, not a single one of them aware that they are experiencing their last moments on earth. They have no instinct to run, no sense of danger alerting them. They have no purpose other than to serve as meals for higher, more developed creatures. They deserve no pity.

"Shall we begin?" asked Angelus politely. "I'll even let you pick the first."

Spike looked out at the crowd surrounding them. Young and old mingled together and here and there he could spot an old couple, trying hard not to fall down on the floor and break something. Every being just looked the same to him.

Then, something caught his eye. It was a girl, barely five years old, clutching a doll tightly to her chest, sitting a couple of chairs from where they were standing. She looked just like an angel, her hair golden as the sun and her skin reminiscent of just that of a porcelain doll's. All alone she sat there at her table, her eventual parents nowhere to be seen. Spike smiled. There was no question as to who would be his first. "That one."

Angelus grinned. "Fine choice. Innocence tastes best."

When he had reached the girl, she looked up at him with her big, blue eyes open wide. It seemed those eyes were filled with stars, for they glinted just like a starlit sky at him. She was a beautiful child.

"That's a nice doll you've got there, little girl," he said.

"Who are you?" she asked, as he knelt down beside her chair. Children were always blunt. They did not care for niceties and etiquette.

He made every effort to make his smile warm and kind, and look less like a wolf's. "My name is William." His old name, although no longer suiting for what he had become, sounded more human and normal than his new one. You don't go parading around your habits for torturing people unless you want to scare your audience, and now, he had to appear trustworthy to her. Gain her trust. Then, as a serpent in the grass, strike when she was the most vulnerable. "What is yours?"

"Larissa," she answered him. "Where did you get that scar?" She was referring to a new scar he'd got in a fight with another, less powerful vampire the night before, which was placed on his right cheek. She spoke softly, and all the while she was stroking her doll's hair.

"A bad man gave it to me," he answered.

"A bad man?"

"Yes. Where are your parents, Larissa? Surely, you are not here alone?"

She looked away, still stroking the doll's hair as if her life depended on it. "They went to sleep, and then they never woke up again."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Spike noted that Drusilla was approaching from the staircase, her lips curled in a desirous smile. He stood up, and offered the girl his hand. "Come on, up you go. This is no place for a child to be."

She took his hand hesitantly, and arose from her chair. She was just tall enough to reach his waist. Drusilla had reached them now and knelt down before the child, taking a hold with her hands around her its head. "What a beautiful child!" she cried, caressing Larissa tenderly. "I suppose she's an orphan, isn't she?" she then asked Spike, meeting his gaze approvingly. She liked her prey to be fragile and tender of age.

"She is."

"Would you like a kiss, little girl?" Drusilla said, cooing. The girl was silent, seemingly entranced, but nodded slowly. Right then, a scream was heard from the other end of the room. Darla and Angelus had taken their first victim. The girl shuddered, but dared not move. Drusilla leaned in closer to the child, smirking, and embraced her, the child's neck just by her mouth. "You should be happy, darling. You're going to meet your parents again." And she sunk her teeth into the girl's tender, pallid skin.

Larissa's cry was that of a baby lark, shot down from high heaven in its fateful first flight. People all around turned to see what the fuzz was about, but instead of trying to prevent what was happening, they backed off, fear written in their faces. Human cowardice, thought Spike, is infallible. Then, the cry died out, her flickering ray of light dimming and dissolving.

The room had gone absolutely quiet. Everyone was staring at the couple, as Drusilla dropped the child's limp, lifeless body to the floor. As she turned and revealed what she was, a few of the patrons screamed, but all remained in their positions, frozen.

"Please do not try to run," Drusilla said in her childish voice. "That will only mean more work for us, and you cannot escape, so your attempts would be to no point at all." As Spike put his arms around her waist, she tilted her head back against his shoulder. "Next one's yours, love," she promised, and kissed him on the cheek.

When they arrived at the small, quite dirty inn where they were currently staying, Dru immediately ran into the dark, windowless bedroom. Spike threw off his coat on the only, very ragged armed chair that stood in what you could've called the place's 'entrance', had it not been so infinitely small, and sat down in it, staring at the wall. Inside it, cockroaches resided, and their rattling noise accompanied the sounds of the carriages, which passed right outside the room. He closed his eyes, trying to relax, full and content as he was.

Right when he'd managed to unwind, Dru emerged from the bedroom, a small, lifeless body in her hands.

"It's dead," she said sulkily.

Spike opened his eyes again, thoroughly annoyed, and stared at her. "What is?"

"My bird," retorted the insane woman, petting it fondly. "My bird is dead."

Spike grunted. "Not this again. Dru, I keep telling you, you have to feed the birdies, otherwise they'll drop dead, same as us."

"I thought I had fed you," she whispered to the dead animal. "Why didn't you tell me I hadn't?"

"Birds don't talk, Dru," Spike said tiredly. "We'll just get you another one in Venice, all right? Though I doubt you'll be able to keep that alive more efficiently than this one. Or the last one, for that matter. Or the one before that…"

Drusilla was singing now, rocking the wretched corpse in her hands. It was an old song, so old Spike didn't even recognise it.

"I'll take you with me," Drusilla smiled to the bird, "I'll take you to Venice, and I'll throw you in some canal. I imagine you'd like a water-filled grave, wouldn't you? But no prayers will I read to save your soul. God's occupied elsewhere, he's listening to his angels, but he's forgot about the animals and the trees and the people he created."
"Dru…"
"… you will be one with the water, then, the waves will bury you. No maggots to feed on you in the water, bird."
"Dru!"

She lifted her gaze from the bird and looked foggily at him. "Yes, William?"

"The bird… it's dead. It can't hear you."

"You're dead, and you can hear me perfectly, isn't that weird? Wouldn't you say that's a miracle, William?"

"I am not William anymore," Spike retorted sternly. "You made sure of that, pet."

She was the only one who was allowed to call him by his old, pre-vampiric name. And yet now, it bugged him. He felt he needed to make a statement. He wasn't William. He was Spike. He was no longer the soft, vulnerable and flesh-bound creature he'd been before. He was something completely different, and he felt great about it.

Drusilla suddenly dropped the bird right down on the worn floor, and glided to the chair in which he was sitting. She placed her hands on his shoulders and sat on his lap elegantly. He shuddered. She grazed him tenderly, playing with the locks of his hair between her thin, cold fingers.

"You'll always be William to me," she hissed. "My sweet William. My dark prince."

He did not argue with her anymore. What was the point? She had seen his human form. She knew he was a different man, a better man than before. She had seen his change.

If she wanted to call him that, it was okay. Just as long as she knew that it wasn't him anymore.

"So… Venice," he said, changing the subject efficiently. "Isn't that marvellous?"

She shrugged. "I've been there before."

"With Angelus and Darla?"

She closed her eyes, reminiscing for a moment. "No."

He decided not to question her further.