gen_storyteller

The next two chapters exist in embryo - rather a messy one, but still. So I'm going ahead in posting Chapter 2

Title: Darkness Visible
Pairing/Character: Spike, Drusilla and one other - you'll see...

Rating: G
Summary: Post NFA, Spike is hungry and he's far from being the only one.
Spoilers: Everything up to and including NFA
Disclaimer: I wish they were mine, especially Spike, but they are Joss’s. He said we could play though, honest!

Many thanks to

spikes_heart for the original beta of Darkness and all her encouragement, and to

bogwitch for being strict with me.

The space outside the church was quiet now. Corpses littered the ground, faces distorted in their final agony. No sign of the vamps, then. Sod it – too much time wasted on bleeding philosophy. Never call it brooding.

Chapter 2

The space outside the church was quiet now. Corpses littered the ground, faces distorted in their final agony. No sign of the vamps, then. Sod it – too much time wasted on bleeding philosophy. Never call it brooding.

He moved over to kick through what was left of the fire. No books left, though he hadn’t really expected any. A few glowing embers, ash flaking away from the ghosts of pages and binding, that was all. It was probably stupid to think it mattered in this place; if a thing could burn it could give heat. And heat was life.

A low noise distracted him and he turned away from the pyre. On the outer edge of the ring one of the corpses stirred, just a little. A jaw moving up and down, not much more, but Spike was there. Not quite gone, this one, but not much time left. It was obvious from the colour of the lips that there wasn’t a lot of blood remaining. Sloppy vamp just couldn’t be bothered to finish the job. It would be a mercy to complete the task really, save the poor bugger a few minutes of agony. Yeah, he could send him to join the myriads of others Spike had seen off back in the day. For that reason if no other, he wasn’t going to do it.

He bent down. “Where’d they go, mate?”

A hand inched feebly above ground level. A finger wavered towards the intersection. Not much use really. There was a lot of LA over there. Still, at least he had a direction to look in.

“Ta for that. Anything I can do to help?” The victim’s eyes caught his for a moment, then started to glaze. Too late. Spike stood, head bowed for a moment, then returned to the dying fire. It took a moment to find what he was looking for, then he returned to the fresh corpse. A telltale smear around the mouth confirmed his suspicions. With the ease born of far too much bloody practice in recent days he found a place between two ribs and slid the smouldering sliver of wood home. Nothing would happen yet, but when this one started to rise, he’d become instant vamp powder.

He shook his head, feeling his face settle into the familiar ridged shape, the wave of enhanced sensations assaulting his nerves. He set his focus to the south, and caught the faintest of traces of a scent. Crenshaw it was, then.

The area, when he got there, looked bleaker than ever. The stumps of the palm trees ripped out of the ground with the sort of superhuman force only desperation can give and the charred remnants of low-rise houses, offered little in the way of shelter – just as well there wasn’t much chance of a sunrise any time soon. He paused near the little that was left of a picket fence and wrenched off two long slivers to tuck into his belt. Nothing like being prepared. This was the sort of area even vamps went in pairs.

Cracked road surface, worn lines on the road:nobody had cared much about this area for a long while. Nobody with money or power at least.

His senses drew him off to the left and slightly uphill, past wild graffiti and more shattered windows. Looters had left a trail of stuff on the sidewalk – only so many hair extensions anyone could need or carry, he supposed.

The trail led between high, crumbling walls, past overturned dumpsters, their contents long-since scavenged or devoured. Fitful lightning showed the debris of a locality that had never been much, not even before the catastrophe. Finally, behind the railing of a battered gas station, he found a near-derelict concrete warehouse. He could feel rather than hear a rhythmic chanting and animalistic screams.

There she was, gaunt, almost impossible to recognise, but identifiably his dark princess, now he looked beneath the superficial marks. She danced and twirled, eyes glittering in excitement, as three of her surviving minions wrested some strips of rebar from the crumbling walls to form an improvised battering ram. They aimed at the warehouse door. As Dru swayed and hummed, the remaining two vampires rushed to help. Not one of them looked at Spike.

In the depths of any apocalypse a bloke has to take his pleasure where he can. Spike howled in glee and barged in, gripping and twisting a head before its owner was even aware he was there, ripping it off with an enjoyable crack and watching in feral delight as its owner faded into a dusty heap. One spring and he was astride the railing; a sharp tug and a piece of the rusty metal was in his hands.

There was something deeply satisfying about twirling a length of piping in his hands again. He bounded back, brought up his weapon beneath a chin, rammed forward and spun on his feet. The weapon, thrust up into the skull, impaling the next creature. Spike gripped and drove on, forcing his prey into three others; all went down with a crash. Out came the stakes: four downward stabs; four more heaps of dust. The remaining vamp backed away.

Drusilla scowled and pounced. “I don’t like this game. It’s not fun any more.”

Did she recognise him now? Only one way to find out. “Hello, pet. Can’t let you do that now. Sorry and all that.”

A strange, glinting smile. “This boy thinks he can stop me? Oh that’s funny. But so very silly. Run away little boy, before you get hurt. Or I get hungry.”

“Dru, I’m not going to say this twice. Go away now. Quickly. Or I’ll have to make you go away very permanently.”

“But I haven’t finished playing here. The children inside the toy house are singing for me.”

Spike stepped toward the woman. “Time to move on, love. Your dollies are waiting for you.”

Something like awareness flashed across the pale face for a moment. “You don’t know my dollies. They all died when my boy went away. He was covered in her, he was. I had to pull their heads off. They saw him look at her and heard him thinking. I need my Daddy now. Where is he?”

Nuts. Of course she was. He’d known that for well over a century.

A splinter from one of the stakes dug into his palm and he shifted, slightly. Gotta do this. Now. Somehow, though, it was still hard to do what he knew he ought to do. She wasn’t just soulless, she was evil, and enormously dangerous. He sighed.

He tilted his weight onto the balls of his feet, ready to lunge. At last it had come to this.

Then his head exploded. Stupid bloody trick; stupid bloody wanker to be taken in by it – the remaining minion, apparently cowed, had worked his way behind Spike and slammed a brick into the rear of his skull. Not enough to do permanent damage. Enough to distract him, though, giving both the assailant and his mistress time to run. Sod it all to bleeding buggery.

“Mister, are you OK?” A call from the door roused him from some creative cursing. He’d had an audience, it seemed. Perfect.

He turned, smiling ruefully. “Yes, I’m fine. Nasty bruise for a day or so, but there you go. How about you? Those gangs get worse all the time, don’t they?”

“Gangs? Don’t be a fool. I know exactly what they were as well as you. Gangs don’t vanish in a puff of dust.” The girl tapped her foot and glared at him. Then her eyes widened. “Oh my God. You’re one too. Now I remember.”

“Remember?” Spike smoothed a hand across his face. Nope – the ridges had vanished before his attack had started. Skin was smoothing out at last, though. How in hell did this bint know about him?

“It’s you, isn’t it? And that was her. You were together. Long ago now, and in another town. Might as well have been another world.”

“Sorry, love. No idea what you’re on about.” Of all the bleeding luck. Someone who recognised him from his days with Dru. Who in hell could that be? He narrowed his eyes and inspected the girl. Slight build, elfin face, waif-like expression. Clearly tougher than she looked, though – there was no sign of panic in her face and she had all the appearance of being in charge of the teenage kids cowering behind her.

“You don’t remember, do you? ‘Sunnydale’ mean anything to you? You were one of the Lonely Ones?”

“Lonely what?”

Was that a blush? Weird. “Yes. That’s what we called you. It’s a long time ago now.” The girl made a move to close the door.

“Wait!” Something stirred sluggishly in his memory. Sunnyhell – his first visit, with Dru. So long ago. There had been a bunch of wankers, vampire groupies, playing dressing up games. Their leader’d bargained to get him and Dru to sire him. Sweet.

No, wrong. Totally wrong. Soul now, remember?

“Why should I wait?. I was so naïve, then – I really believed all that shit – “They who walk with the night are not interested in harming anyone. They are creatures above us. Exalted!” Not any more.

“She’s your woman, isn’t she? I remember you were all over her. You’re still in league with her – all that fighting was just to distract me, right?”

Oh bugger. “No, you’ve got that wrong. Well, not the bit about my being with her back in the day. Or that your ideas were bollocks. But the rest…”

“I suppose you’ve reformed? Traded in the fangs for spoons and cotton candy? Don’t make me laugh.” She made to shut the door in his face.

“Funny you should say that. Lotta water under the proverbial, y’know. Since those days, I mean.” He looked more closely. Bloody hell, yes, he saw it now. “You were the girl in the cellar, right? Wossisname’s sidekick? Some stupid name to do with mushrooms?”

Even more blushing. “I just liked the name. Didn’t know what it meant till later when Buf – someone told me.”

“Buffy? You met Buffy?”

“What’s it to you? If you think I’d tell you anything about her you’re crazy Go after your ho, why don’t you?”

“She’s not my anything. Not for a very long time. Told ya, I’ve changed.”

“Prove it. Oh, right, you can’t. LA’s a wasteland, all records burned, everyone you know is dead, right?”

“You trying to tell me there’s anyone that doesn’t apply to? At least anyone without an evil law firm to back them up.”

She looked at him oddly. “What was that you said? Evil law firm?”

“Yes. So what? With any luck it doesn’t exist any more anyway. Not the LA branch at least. We managed to achieve that much.”

“We? Are you suggesting Buffy was involved? I heard what happened to Sunnydale last year. Earthquake – or so they said. I did wonder.”

“No, I am not suggesting anything about Buffy. If you must know it was a bunch of us. There was a bloke from around here involved – name of Gunn. You might know him?”

“Charles Gunn? I saw him the day before,” she gestured vaguely around her, “all this started. Was he involved? He said something at the time that made me think he might have been.”

“Yeah. Poor bugger. He was involved.”

She didn’t ask what he meant. It had to be obvious to her what he meant. “I suppose you’d better come in. You do need an invitation still, right?”

Spike sauntered across the threshold. “Didn’t want to worry you, pet, but no. This is some sort of shelter, right? Public place. You did right to barricade it against that bunch of vamps – if they’d got through, nothing else would have stopped them. Looks like you have a few right tasty morsels here too.”

She blanched and stepped back. So, in unison, did her pack of brats. Not one over sixteen by the look of them. He shrugged.

“Don’t worry. I really have changed. Looks like you could do with some help here.”