Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 and all related concepts are the property of MGM, while the character of Spike belongs to Joss Whedon and James Marsters, among other people (Also, the original idea for this story came from Jedi Buttercup's 'An Unexpected Gift', so I don't own it either, although I have put my own spin on things, and have been given his full permission to use his idea)
Feedback: I'd appreciate it, of course
AN: Hope this chapter works; characterisation here was a bit of a challenge for reasons you'll probably guess at when we get to that stage...
The Ghost in the Team
Getting permission for a few days' leave to investigate the murders had actually been the easier part of the current situation. With the recent test of Merlin's device in the field having proven that the thing still needed a bit of work before they were ready to deploy it on a regular basis, and the person best qualified to work on it incapacitated due to injuries, Landry had no problem granting SG-1 a few days' 'leave' once the situation had been explained to him; he'd even discreetly granted them permission to take a zat or two out on their search, while commenting that he would officially claim to anyone who asked that they were simply taking 'personal time' to recover from the aftermath of their last mission.
With Sam on bed-rest for the next few days, Teal'c, as the only member of the current team who'd met him before, had been forced to contact her ex-fiance, Detective Pete Shanahan, in order to find out what he knew about the case, in the hope that inter-departmental contacts might get them a bit more than the papers had been able to provide so far. Even if he'd lost touch with the team after Sam called off the engagement- Mitchell was just grateful that Teal'c could give such an intimidating stare; it would be hard to find anything else that could have stopped Spike asking Sam why she'd broken it off with her fiancé given that they couldn't do anything physical to the guy-, Shanahan had understood that they wouldn't be asking about the Colorado Cross if it was a normal serial killer, and had been able to confirm that the bodies had been drained of blood through a couple of friends he had in the Colorado police department, even if he had refused their request to actually see the case files on the killer.
Still, while the information in the files would have been a useful bonus to confirm some of the specifics of what they were looking for right now, Spike had felt fairly confident in his knowledge of Penn's psychology to work out what they should do to find him on his own. Based on the location of the last couple of bodies and what he recalled about the guy's usual hunting pattern- as well as a couple of local maps and guides to compensate for his limited knowledge of Colorado-, Spike had been able to provide a couple of suggestions about where Penn might strike next, and the four of them had split up accordingly, Teal'c and Vala checking one area while Mitchell and Spike staked out the other. Given what he recalled about the guy's history, Spike was reasonably sure that Penn's next target would be his 'sister', which meant that they'd be looking for a teenage girl out on her own, and so they were concentrating their efforts on a couple of clubs around the outskirts of town, each one being a primary 'target' for older teenagers trying to get out on their own.
The only frustrating part that they had to deal with now was actually waiting for Penn to show up. With Spike's senses relatively limited in this form- coupled with the fact that he didn't have any real connection to Penn, given that he was just his 'grand-nephew' in vampire terms-, their only option had been to take up position on a roof near the most popular club on their list that still afforded a decent view of the next one. Based on what he remembered of Penn's methods, Spike was fairly sure he'd attack from above rather than try and sneak up on any victims through the sewers- from what he recalled, Penn wasn't a fan of sneaking around unless he had to; he had also enjoyed the power he perceived he possessed as one of Angelus's first 'children'-, so the current method seemed like a good place to start from, but that didn't mean it couldn't backfire on them.
Spike might be slightly appreciative of the chance to return to his 'old ways'- in the sense of what he'd done back when he was working with the 'Scoobies', anyway; he was not interested in going back to his former habit of slaughtering people for the sake of it-, but that wasn't to say that he wasn't apprehensive about the thought of going up against a vampire as old as Penn with a bunch of relatively inexperienced vampire hunters as 'back-up' (And he was nearly completely dependent on them to do anything physical to the other guy anyway)...
"So," Mitchell asked, after another hour had passed without any sign of Penn, looking curiously at Spike, "you sure we've got everything we're going to need to take this guy down?"
"You left the gun, took a couple of those 'zat' things, and you're packing stakes, amped-up tasers and a couple of crucifixes if it comes down to close quarters; you'll be fine," Spike said, nodding dismissively at his friend as he kept his gaze shifting between the various clubs in front of them; he was all for having a chat to keep the spirits up, but the damn silence was more beneficial to Spike's goal of searching for any sign of Penn's presence right now. "Trust me; given that you already know what you're after, that'll be enough."
Spike would have felt better if he was holding the stake himself, but with his current condition making that impractical at best he was leaving Mitchell with all the weaponry; he'd just stick with trying to knock Penn out if he showed up and hope that would be enough for Mitchell to get the drop on the bastard (The guy might have enough training to go up against a Jaffa warrior, but Jaffa had a sense of honour that this bastard wouldn't be interested in even if Mitchell could have brought that kind of weaponry out into the city without anyone noticing).
On the bright side, Spike was fairly sure from what he'd seen of Teal'c's strength that the guy should be able to handle himself against Penn if it turned out that the guy was active in the other side of town- Teal'c might not be a vampire, but he was definitely tougher than the average guy; Spike had seen him in training enough times to get that impression at least-, but Spike still hoped that it would turn out to be here that Penn was going to select his next target; his current condition might give him an edge-
The sight of rapid movement on a nearby rooftop quickly became a distinct figure as Spike focused his attention on it; it was wearing a long coat and wide-brimmed hat that concealed most of its body shape from, but it was clearly moving too fast for a normal human, and heading in the direction of the club.
"There!" Spike yelled, pointing at the figure in question before he began to run across the rooftops towards it, Mitchell just managing to keep up- the alleys in this part of town fortunately weren't wide enough for the jump to be hazardous to Mitchell's health, but it still took a bit of effort- as the vampire charged towards his destination; he vaguely heard Mitchell saying something behind him, but judging by the reference to Teal'c and Vala he assumed that the other man was talking to them on a phone and decided to ignore it. The rooftop figure was just approaching the club roof when Spike reached them, lashing out with a powerful punch that knocked the figure off its feet and to the ground, the figure slumping into a heap that remained still until Mitchell caught with the vampire.
"Next... time..." the lieutenant colonel said, glaring over at the vampire as he gasped for air, "we're... hunting... vampires... we're... staying... on... the ground..."
"You would ground yourself, my flying dearie?" a voice said from the figure on the ground that was definitely not Penn's. "After you went to so much trouble to get your feet back, you'll wear them out that quickly?"
"Oh God..." Spike whispered, his eyes wide with horror as he stared at the figure that he was only now realising was far too thin to be Penn, the voice one that he knew as well as he knew his own even after not hearing it spoken in person for over two years. "Dru?"
"Dru?" Mitchell repeated, looking at Spike in momentary confusion before his eyes widened in recollection. "Hold on; wasn't she-?"
"Yep; she's the vamp who turned me into one," Spike confirmed, nodding grimly at the colonel before he turned his attention back to Drusilla, the dark-haired vampire already getting to her feet and discarding the hat and coat to reveal a form-fighting red dress.
"Hello, my ghostly knight," Drusilla said, smiling at him in a disturbingly nonchalant manner even as Mitchell drew one of his zats, the stake clutched in his other hand. "You've changed a lot since the days on the mouth."
"Been a long time, Dru," Spike replied out of a lack of anything else to say, nodding awkwardly at her. "Things change."
"Ever since you told the Slayer you'd kill me for her, your life's been nothing but change, hasn't it?" Drusilla replied with a chuckle. "Your little soul, your death, your restoration..."
"I'm dealin'," Spike said, shrugging dismissively even as he clenched his fists, still glaring at his sire. "I'm not what I was any more-"
"Look, can we focus on the central issue here?" Mitchell said, glaring briefly at Spike before shifting his focus to Drusilla. "Since you're not who we were expecting, I have to ask; do you know where this 'Penn' guy is, or was he never even here in the first place?"
"My pure brother's been dust in an angelic warehouse for four years now, silly colonel," Drusilla said, giggling slightly as she looked over at Spike. "You need to stay up-to-date with family affairs, my Spike; Penn had an argument with Daddy and Miss Lockley when he was in Daddy's city and he came out on the wrong side."
"Oh," Spike said, eyes widening slightly in understanding.
"Uh... that means Penn's dead, right?" Mitchell asked, whispering to Spike out of the corner of his mouth as he kept his fingers hovering over his weapons.
"Apparently, yeah; sounds like Angel took him out in Los Angeles four years ago," Spike replied, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "God, why can't anybody tell me these things...?"
"You can't always get what you want, Spike," Drusilla said, smiling at him in a more seductive manner, walking over to Spike with an additional sway to her hips. "But that doesn't always have to be the case..."
"If you think I'm going anywhere with you, Dru, forget it," Spike said, glaring resolutely at his sire. "We've changed too much since then, and I can't even turn solid any more; if you think I'll really-"
Drusilla barely even seemed to move, and then Mitchell found himself struggling to breathe as her hand tightened around his throat, sharp nails grazing the back of his neck as Drusilla's face shifted into the twisted snarl that he had come to recognise as Spike's vampiric visage.
"You will come along, my dear knight," Drusilla said, a slight additional edge to her voice that Mitchell presumed was the result of her new teeth- Spike hadn't really spoken when he looked like this in the past so he'd never registered how different the guy sounded-, "or I will kill your new little friends."
"Not... happening..." Mitchell muttered in response, stretching out one hand to try and pry Drusilla's fingers away from his neck. "I don't... go down... easy..."
"You will," Drusilla said, chuckling as she looked at the colonel. "You'll go down very easily..."
Before Mitchell had a chance to full register the implications of that statement, Drusilla had lunged forward and bitten down into his neck, her teeth puncturing the skin as she began to apparently suck from his body, putting Mitchell in mind of the report he'd read about then-Major Sheppard's encounter with an Iratus bug during the early days of the Atlantis expedition-
"NO!" he yelled, shoving desperately at Drusilla, strength honed by his training with the Sudan helping him force the distracted vampire away from him, Mitchell falling to the ground as Spike stepped forward to grab his sire by the hair and yank her back, increasing the distance between her and Mitchell. Reaching up to his neck, Mitchell winced at the warm, slightly sticky feeling of what could only be blood staining his neck and shoulder- it was a good thing this shirt wasn't a particular favourite-, but as far as he could tell none of the major veins had been severed; if he could just get a doctor to look at it for a bit, all should be fine...
Of course, with Drusilla standing over him and Spike's concentration levels likely to be somewhat erratic- he was consistently good against Adria, but if this really was Drusilla Mitchell had a feeling Spike's focus might be a bit 'off' even if he wasn't quite the person he'd been when they'd been together-, there wasn't much chance of him getting that time...
The familiar sound of a zat allowed Mitchell to relax even before he saw the blast strike Drusilla, although she defied the usual expectations regarding past zat use by turning around to charge in the direction of the firer, Mitchell sitting up in time to see Teal'c charging towards Drusilla as Vala hung slightly back, arm outstretched with the zat in her hand.
As Mitchell watched, the Jaffa collided with Drusilla, Teal'c's sheer bulk sending their new opponent to the ground before he sat slightly up and punched her in the face, only for Drusilla to catch the second punch and throw Teal'c off to the side with shocking strength. To the big guy's credit, he was back on his feet and continuing the attack before she could do much more than get back on his feet, but it didn't seem to do much good; Teal'c's attack was as forceful as ever, but Drusilla was moving with a speed that Spike had never demonstrated- although, in Spike's defence, he didn't exactly need speed when nothing could hurt him anyway-, neatly side-stepping most of Teal'c's blows while the Jaffa's training seemed to be the only thing helping him avoid the worst of hers.
After a few seconds, Teal'c managed to land a lucky blow on Drusilla's face that seemed to break her nose- Mitchell saw a trickle of blood coming from it-, but the only other effect of the blow appeared to be making Drusilla even madder than she'd been before, the vampire lashing out with an open-handed blow that struck the side of Teal'c's face, leaving four thin scars from her fingernails and dazing the Jaffa long enough for Drusilla to land another punch directly in the centre of his face, sending him falling down in one of the most ungracious moves Mitchell had ever seen from his Jaffa teammate.
With the possibility of hitting Teal'c now removed from the equation, Vala tried to fire her zat at Drusilla again, but Drusilla dodged the first shot and charged at Vala, reaching the ex-thief and kicking her in the chest with such force that Vala was sent falling to the ground, clutching her stomach and gasping for air as the zat flew out of her hand, staring weakly up at Drusilla as she tried to get her breath back.
"No Slayers here, are there, my little Spike?" Drusilla said, smiling over at Spike as he glared at her, fists clenched. "They're just Gs and Es who don't know what to do with Vs-"
"I'm not going with you, Dru," Spike said, glaring at the woman he'd once been prepared to give everything for. "I don't know how you found me or what made you think I'd go with you now, but I'm not like that any more; I've got a life here-"
"And how long can that last, my sweet?" Drusilla asked, smiling slightly at him. "They've seen what you've let them see so far, but what happens when they see the real you?"
"This is the real me now-!" Spike began, glaring angrily at Drusilla.
"The you who drove spikes into heads to see how they responded to the intrusion?" Drusilla asked, giggling slightly as she looked at him. "Your past will always be there, Spike; you can't escape it-"
A sudden series of rapid energy bursts seemed to cover Drusilla's body for a few moments before she exploded into dust, leaving Spike blinking in shock at the sight before he shifted his gaze to the source of shots; Mitchell, holding both his zat and a zat he recognised as Vala's, each one aimed at the place where Drusilla had been standing earlier.
"Took a bit more than usual," Mitchell said, shrugging slightly as he indicated the weapons in his hands and the pile of ash that was all that remained of Spike's sire, "but I think we can all agree that it was worth the effort..."
With that said, he dropped the two zats and reached up to clasp his neck, which had started bleeding again during the moments when he had taken both hands away to fire the zats at Drusilla.
"Oh, bugger..." Spike groaned, crouching down to pull Teal'c's mobile phone out of his pocket- the Jaffa's presently unconscious state made him the easier candidate to search given Spike's physical limitations- and quickly dial the number for the SGC.
This night may not have gone entirely according to plan, but at least nobody was dead and a killer was off the streets of Colorado; hopefully Landry and other concerned parties wouldn't mind too much about the other details...
"So," Landry said, looking grimly at the four SG-1 members standing in front of him, exchanging awkward glances with each other that were only further emphasised by the dressing on Mitchell's neck and the plaster over Teal'c's nose, "you're saying that you went out to hunt a serial killer because you believed that it was a vampire, only to discover that it wasn't the vampire you thought it was?"
"But it was still a vampire; I'd like to stress that part-!" Vala began urgently.
"A fact that is one of the obvious reasons I'm not retroactively court-martialling all of you for engaging in vigilante tactics on inaccurate information," Landry said, looking pointedly at Vala for a moment before he turned to look at Spike. "Care to clarify why this 'mistake' happened?"
"Well... turns out the actual killer was my sire- the vamp who made me a vamp- trying to lure me in by setting up murders to look like someone else I knew so that I'd get involved; she doesn't really have a distinctive M.O. of her own so I wouldn't have known it was her if she'd tried to just be herself about it..." Spike explained, shrugging slightly awkwardly at Landry's stare (God, what was it with this guy; he couldn't even actually do anything to Spike right now, and he already felt awkward about the way the guy was staring disapprovingly at him).
"I see," Landry said, glancing over at the rest of SG-1. "And you concur with Spike's description of events?"
"The vampire said herself that she had been killing to lure Spike out, sir," Mitchell confirmed. "Not going out might have been safer for us, but if what she did when fighting us is any indication, I don't think conventional investigators would have had any more luck against her than we did, and probably even worse."
"When considering the fact that she staged these murders for the sole purpose of attracting the attention of Spike, it is also clear to me that she would have continued to commit further murders if we had not intervened at this time until she had succeeded in her objective," Teal'c added, his healing nose having little effect on his speech. "Our actions may have been inadvisable, but we believed that our reason for becoming involved was valid and were proven correct; the fact that it was more dangerous than we had anticipated is not something that we can be accurately punished for.
"Point," Landry said, nodding in acknowledge of Teal'c's statement before looking over at Spike. "Any chance that you'll have any more past lovers dropping in?"
"Not unless I called anyone," Spike replied. "Dru must have figured out where I was thanks to her visions- she had this whole ability to see the future when she was human; main reason Angelus turned her in the first place-, and she's the only person I know with that kind of talent; anyone else who might want to go after me is either dead or has no way of knowing where I am."
"Uh... hate to play devil's advocate, but any chance she told anyone else where you were?" Mitchell asked, looking over at Spike while restraining the wince as he slightly strained his neck; the wounds left by Drusilla weren't as deep as they could have been, but they were still painful.
"She wouldn't," Spike said, shaking his head briefly at his friend. "Dru wasn't really capable of holding down any kind of prolonged contact with anyone; she stayed with her sire before she made me, and after that the closest thing she had to friends were whoever I was working with at the time, and I'm fairly sure she broke things off with her last boyfriend already if she was trying to get me back."
"So... in a nutshell, it's over and we don't have to worry about anything like that again," Vala said, smiling hopefully at the general and her 'boyfriend'.
"Yep," Spike confirmed in response to the stares he received from the others.
"Good," Landry said, looking grimly at Spike for a moment before he sat back in his chair again, a slight smile on his face. "Well, SG-1, I suppose I should congratulate you for stopping the 'Colorado Cross'; you might not get official credit for it, but I'm sure the city will be grateful."
"Too bad we can't tell anybody 'bout it," Mitchell muttered, staring slightly dejectedly at the floor. "We save the city, and they're still going to think that CC's out there..."
"The price of secrecy, Colonel Mitchell; at least they'll be a bit more cautious in the city, and that's always a useful thing," Landry said, before he smiled slightly at the four of them. "Well, you've still got a few days of 'leave' while Colonel Carter recovers; use them as you wish."
Spike just wished he felt more enthusiastic about that offer as he walked out of the office, trying to ignore the slightly apprehensive stares he was receiving from his new teammates.
It wasn't like he'd ever concealed the truth about what he'd been from them, but knowing that he was a vampire wasn't the same as experiencing what he was capable of in such a 'hands-on' manner as that; Dru had nearly drained Mitchell, taken Teal'c on in a fight and walked away virtually unscratched, and attacked Vala simply because she was there despite the fact that Vala couldn't have done anything to her once the zat was taken out of the equation.
Damnit... he'd just been settling in, and now they had Drusilla showing them everything that he might be capable of doing once he got his body back?
Guess I can kiss getting to actually work on making me solid again goodbye... he mused in frustration.
AN 2: Short, I know, but I wanted something direct and to the point; coming up next, we move on to another episode rewrite- if you know canon, you know what's coming up-, where I hope to explore some VERY interesting twists...