Part One
Spike ran his fingers through his hair and shot one final sneer toward the brunette vampire sitting inside the abandoned mansion. “Yeah you. You think I’m afraid of you?” The blond drunkenly swung the bottle of brown liquid back up to his mouth and took a long drink. “We were happy. You brainwashed her. I could just...yeah. I’ll show you who’s the cool guy. You’re going down,” he promised, pointing one long, pale finger at the oblivious Angel. Spoiling the effect of his own words, Spike tripped on one of the great stone slabs of the garden and passed out cold.
He was woken up the next morning by the sun trying to deep-fry his hand. There was nowhere in the garden that was sufficiently safe from the sun, and there was no way in hell Spike was going to barge into the mansion and spend the day with Angel. [Rather stake myself first.] Actually, the truth was that if he tried to stay inside, Angel would more than likely be happy to do the job for him. Spike knew that even though the stupid poof was supposed to be all bent out of shape about the lives he had taken (which included Spike’s, of course), Angel would never hesitate for a second in ending Spike’s unlife now. No matter how many times Spike heard about Angel killing demons in order to atone for the lives he had taken, it never failed to make him laugh. He knew the truth. Angel didn’t give a rat’s ass about atonement. He never had. The only reason that he ran around slaughtering all the baddies was his hope of impressing the Slayer. [The wanker actually thinks he’s in love with the stupid bint. Idiot. As if love is nothing but angst and pain and a lot of unrelieved sexual tension. Neither of ’em know the first thing about love. Passion, yeah, maybe. Passion’s easy. But *never* love.] Spike didn’t really blame the Slayer, though. She was too young to know about real love as opposed to television infatuation. [She saw a handsome face and a wounded soul and that got her knickers sopping wet, and she called it love. Bally-hoo to her, but it ain’t.] Neither did Angel, of course. As Angelus, he had always been a somewhat uncaring bastard, never touched by anything as weak and reeking of noble sentiments as love. And once he got his soul back, the brunette hadn’t been in much of a position to feel anything for anyone. Until he meets Slutty. She was a pure, righteous beam of sunlight into his dark, souled world. [And I’m sure the fact that every time he looks at her he gets a boner doesn’t hurt, either.]
Spike threw himself into his car, landing on a backseat littered with crushed beer cans and crumpled up wrappers. His burned hand ached as he dumped the remnants of another bottle of Jack Daniels over it, hissing at the pain. He wasn’t even sure why he had come to Sunnydale. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He knew why. He wanted to put Angelus through some of the same agonizing pain that Angelus had put Spike himself through while the younger man had been trapped in the wheelchair. And then, as if torturing the immobilized Spike every night wasn’t enough, the psychotic bastard had had to top it all off by stealing Dru. Dru, the love of Spike’s unlife. Dru, the one thing that he wanted in all the world, the one thing that he needed. The one thing that without which...Spike found himself sinking back into the bitter self-pity that had plagued him for the past two weeks, ever since Dru had left him for the chaos demon in Brazil. [Right, damnit. No more bloody self-pity. I’ll here to make the fucker pay, and I‘ll have gobs of fun doing it, too.] He had come back to Sunnyhell to seek revenge, pure and simple. Even if he’d like to, he could never hurt his dark princess for leaving him, but he sure as hell could hurt the person who had made her leave in the first place. And since from what he’d seen last night Angelus was no longer around, Spike had no qualms about punishing Angel in his place. Now all he had to do was come up with some idea of how to hurt the angsting pillock. Which, considering how addled the blue-eyed vampire’s brain was from the alcohol and the immense pain that his burned hand was causing him, might prove to be a rather hard task. He leaned his head back onto the seat with a sigh. “This is just too much.”
* * * * * * *
In the late afternoon, Spike drove to the Magic Box and parked under an awning in the back. He had decided, throughout the course of the day, that charging in like gangbusters and staking Angel wasn’t going to get him his desired result. For one thing, the poof and the Slayer would no doubt team up and kick his ass. Again. For another thing, it just wouldn’t last long enough for Spike’s tastes. No, he wanted that pillock to suffer. So, no violence. He’d have to use something a bit more subtle than that. Magic. He figured there had to be some good, gut-squashing revenge spells out there. Nobody knew he was in town, so he could spend days looking for the most painful and long suffering of the lot. If Angel thought that the Romani had cursed him by giving him his soul, the brunette had no idea what Spike had in mind for him.
A young woman saw him poking around discontentedly in the spell books and came over to help him. “Did you come in through the back?” she asked, cheerfully.
“Yeah. I need a curse.”
“A what?”
Was she bloody deaf? “A curse. Something nasty.” Spike thought for a minute. What would make his Sire suffer the most? Maybe a spell to make all his hair fall out, that would really hit him where he lived. Or...“Boils. I wanna give him boils all over his face.” But would that stop Slutty from thinking she loved him? No, it would just make her pity Angel all the more, if he were truly hideous. Okay, so leave his face intact but wreck the rest of him then. “Leprosy! A spell that makes his parts fall off. That sounds proper.”
The girl stared at him. “We don’t carry leprosy,” she said in a clipped tone, then turned away, relieved, to greet the customer that had just come in.
Spike turned to look, too, and was surprised to see a familiar redhead that he knew was one of Buffy’s friends. [Well, well, well. I didn’t know there was a witch in the group. You know, for a man in my position a witch could be useful...] He watched with interest as Willow read her list to the shop owner and they discussed the pros and cons of various aspects of a love spell. [A love spell. Now why didn’t I think of that?] A slow smile formed as an idea began to play out in his mind. He could use a love spell. But not on Dru. No, if she didn’t want to be with him of her own will then he didn’t want to force her. He cared about her too much for that. But he had no such reservations about using such a spell on Angel. [Yeah. Make the poof love me instead of Slutty. Make him willing to do anything to please *me*. Then I’ll really have some fun. I'll be able to torture the both of them.] Spike’s smile was a full-fledged grin by now.
As Willow collected her bag and left, the girl returned to where Spike was standing. “Did you find a book?” she asked.
Spike turned so that she could see his game face clearly. “Forget the book,” he said between his fangs, “I just got a better idea.”
Part Two
* * * * * *
It was well after sundown when Spike entered the dark and empty high school, keeping to the shadows as he walked the deserted corridors. He could smell her here, the witch. The blond had already lurked outside her house, the Watcher’s house, and the Bronze in an attempt to track her down. He had gone to Sunnydale High last, remembering as he entered his first visit to the school.
He had known immediately it wasn’t Angelus who had approached the younger vampire holding Xander prisoner in his arms. His Sire’s scent had been different...off somehow. And his eyes were altered, too. There wasn’t the same maniacal intelligence there that Spike knew. Instead, the brown orbs of the vampire who had come up to him in Sunnydale had been pained and veiled, as if this person with his sire’s face had secrets which he could never let even his favorite childe know. Which, of course, he had.
The shock and joy of seeing Angelus again had been quickly buried by the anger that Angel’s attempted deceit had sparked in Spike. As if Angelus had forgotten how well Spike knew him, had indeed forgotten everything about their relationship. And when Angel had called him Spike and not Will, he had decided that this imposter wasn’t his sire at all. And that made it perfectly all right to try and kill him.
Of course, when Angel had lost his soul a few months later it had only served to make everything worse. The Angelus that had returned to the fold had not been the same person who Spike had spent years fighting and fucking. The blond had hated the new, improved Buffy-obsessed Angelus. The fact that the wanker had done nothing to alleviate Spike’s wheelchair-bound situation had only served to exacerbate this sentiment, not to mention Drusilla’s obvious preference for her newly returned Daddy. And so Spike had cheerfully helped Slutty send Angelus to hell.
Spike had briefly toyed with the idea of simply using magic to remove Angel’s soul once more, then sitting back and watching as the Slayer and her little cronies had to deal with the bastard. Again. It would be a fitting revenge, but Spike knew that this time his sire would be smarter about the whole thing. This time he would just rip out the throats of all the Scoobies on the first go, before they even had time to realize what had happened. Then all 250 pounds of pissed off, insane Irish vamp would be focused solely on hunting down his Judas. He’d kill Spike, too, there was no doubt about that. Just...not right away. No, he’d want to make the blond suffer first, and Angelus had always been the master of torture. As Buffy would say, that would not be to the good. So removing Angel’s soul was really not an option.
Spike’s steps slowed as he zeroed in on the voices coming from the chemistry lab. It was her and the whelp, no doubt about that. Spike couldn’t hear anyone else in the school at all, so it looked like this was going to be even easier than he had expected. It didn’t cross his mind to question why they were in the lab and not the library where he had expected to find them until he noticed a certain pungent odor wafting out of the room. He mentally shrugged and stealthily began to open the door without attracting the attention of the room’s inhabitants. Whatever the witch was doing in there, hopefully it would distract her attention enough for him to be able to get close without too much of a struggle. Not that Spike disliked struggles, but he had the more pressing business of a spell to get through first.
The whelp’s voice came through the open door clearly. “...clean this place up before they get here and start asking questions.” He didn’t even have time to turn around before Spike grabbed him and threw him headlong into the chalkboard at the front of the room.
“Xander!” the red head cried as Spike punched the young man hard enough for him to go down.
She attempted to hit Spike on the head but Spike, having none of that, quickly deflected her blow and shoved her against the wall, capturing her hands before she could do anything else stupid.
“Let’s make this easy, pet. I won’t drain you dry and you just sit tight. I’ve got a favor I need to ask, and then you and me and him can all go on our merry ways, hopefully to never see each other again. How does that sound?”
Willow looked at him wordlessly, eyes wild, and Spike wondered how much of what he was saying she was actually hearing. Just then he heard a noise behind him and spun both Willow and himself around just in time to have the bag of textbooks Xander swung at Spike hit the back of the girl’s skull, knocking her out cold. As she crumpled in Spike’s arms, he dropped her onto the floor and connected his fist soundly with Xander’s face, knocking him out as well.
[That wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be] he thought as he surveyed the two unconscious teenagers. Looking around the room, he caught sight of a roll of duct tape peeking out from an opened cabinet and quickly bound their wrists and ankles, then gathered together the spell book and ingredients that Willow had been using just a moment before.
An hour later, Spike had deposited them into separate parts of the basement of the factory and, after making sure they were both securely locked in, went off to get another bottle of alcohol. He knew that his mind should be sharp for the inevitable coercion he was going to have to lay on to get Willow to do the spell, but the pain off his loss of Dru was still too raw and fresh for him to be completely sober.
When he returned, he could hear both of them moving around in their little cells. He had separated them mainly because he knew that Willow would be much more likely to agree to help him without Xander being privy to the conversation. He did want to keep the boy close, though, in case Willow should prove to be rather tough to convince. The threat of harm to one of her friends might prove to be more persuasive than a threat to herself.
He slowly opened the door to an old boiler room where he had left the bound girl. She had curled up into a corner in as small a ball as possible, and sat regarding him with a mixture of fear and horror. He shut the door behind him and sat down heavily on an old blackened piece of equipment, then began his explanation without preamble.
“A spell. For me. You’re gonna do a spell for me.”
Willow looked confused. This was pretty much one of the last things she had expected Spike to say. “What kind of spell?”
The vampire’s temper flared, as much from the alcohol as Willow’s obtuseness. “A LOVE spell! Are you brain dead?” Then, more quietly, “I’m gonna get what’s mine.” He took another swig from the bottle he had been holding and looked up to find Willow’s wide eyes glued to him. “What are you staring at?! You can do it, right? Make Angel fall in love with me. Make him crawl.”
At the mention of Angel’s name, Willow’s eyes just about fell out of her skull. She knew about the sexual habits of vampires, but had never made that connection between Angel and Spike. They really just seemed to hate each other, which was not, in her experience, particularly conductive to a loving relationship.
Bewildered, she answered, “I can try.”
Spike grabbed her arm hard and yanked her unsteadily to her to feet. “What are you talking about, ‘try’? You’ll do it! That pillock has gotta learn.”
Sighing, he let her go, and she promptly overbalanced on her constrained ankles and ended up on the floor. He looked down at her. “She wouldn’t even kill me. She just left! Because of him. Because of what he did to her when he got all Angelussy last year. I wasn’t good enough for her after that. So we got to Brazil and she was...she was just different. I gave her everything - beautiful jewels, beautiful dresses with beautiful girls in them - but nothing made her happy. And she would flirt...I caught her on a park bench making out with a chaos demon. Have you ever *seen* a chaos demon? They’re all slime and antlers.” He slid down the wall to sit beside her.
“So I said ‘I’m not putting up with this.’ And she said fine. And I said ‘yeah, I’ve got an unlife you know?’ And she said we could still be friends.” With that, he began to cry, his stormy blue eyes pleading with Willow to understand. “I’m so unhappy.”
Willow blinked and tried to process the convoluted story she had just been told.
Spike took another mouthful of the russet liquor and spoke again. “I’m gonna get him back, you know. Gonna repay him for making her leave me like that. Make him love me, then I can show him what it’s like to get hurt by the most important...” he almost dissolved into tears again, but instead raised his head to look at Willow sharply.
“That’s where you come in. I need you to do a love spell on Angel that’ll make him mine.” He smiled toothily at her. “Then I can really enjoy myself.”
Willow nervously swallowed. “I’m not a real witch, you know. I don’t know if this is going to work right away. And anyway, a spell like this isn’t... I can’t do a spell like this on Angel without his consent. It would be against what Wiccans are supposed to use magic for. ”
The blond shrugged. “I think you’ll do the spell, code or no code. Because I could easily kill you and Xander and then go find someone else who will.”
The redhead looked around the shadowy room in sudden fear. “Xander? Where is he?”
“Don’t worry, pet. He’s just down the hall. I thought we might have this chat in private, that’s all. I haven’t touched him.”
“Prove it,” Willow said with a lot more courage and defiance than she actually felt. She assumed that Spike would just kill her after she did the spell anyway, so there wasn’t much point in making Spike show her anything. Still, she would bargain while she could.
Spike looked over at the girl in wonder. Since when was she the one in control here? His mouth twitched up in what wanted to be admiration. [A cheeky one, eh? This might be more fun than I thought.] Then he frowned as another thought pressed its way into his alcohol-soaked mind.
“I might, in a minute. But let me ask you something first. Do you hate him?”
Willow’s brow crinkled in surprise and incomprehension. “Hate...Xander?” she asked finally.
Spike exploded. “NO, you silly bint. Hate HIM. Angel. For what he did. Bumping off the teacher lady and stringing up your fish. And trying to kill you, and your friends, for four months. Do you hate him for that?”
Willow shook her head. “That wasn’t Angel. When he lost his soul -”
“Oh, spare me!” Spike interrupted. “*Please* don’t tell me that your little Scooby gang actually believes that his soul makes any difference. With everything he’s been up to in his life, the Watcher at least must know better than that.” He looked at Willow narrowly, then burst out laughing. “You do! This is just too much.”
“Let me explain something to you here and now, little girl. Angel’s soul isn’t an entirely new personality. It’s just a conscience. It stops him from actually doing evil things, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to do them. It doesn’t change the demon he is inside. You and your goody-goody friends like to think he’s all safe and cuddly, but really he wants to rip your intestines out just as much now as he did without his soul. He just doesn’t because he doesn’t want to feel guilty about it later. Oh, and he knows it’s wrong.” Spike grinned again in the way that made Willow apprehensive.
“So you’re saying that Angelus is just Angel without a...a leash?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Now don’t tell me you didn’t suspect that. Or has tall, brooding and boring actually got all of you believing in him like Slutty does?”
Willow paused, considering. “I think...wait. How do I know you’re not just telling me this so that I’ll do the spell for you?” she asked.
“Because you’re already going to do the spell for me. And because it doesn’t make sense any other way. Think about it. You’ve got a soul, right? But it doesn’t stop you from wanting to do bad things, now does it?” He looked at her for a moment. “Well, you might not be a very good example. Most people, though -”
“Hey! I’ll have you know that I have plenty of bad thoughts.”
Spike grinned at her. “Oh really, pet? Well, maybe you do. But I’ll bet they don’t usually involve torturing your friends.”
Willow paused and then shook her head. “Well, no. But there have been times that I’ve had day dreams about hurting Xander. Mostly when he’s being mean and sarcastic to someone.”
Spike’s eyes lit up. “Why didn’t you say so sooner, luv? We’ve got him tied up right in the other room. Or I could just kill him. Save you the trouble.”
“No! That’s not what I meant. It’s just that sometimes he gets so obnoxious and...anyway, that’s not the point. I guess if Angel is really just as evil as Angelus underneath then maybe he should be blamed for doing those things. I mean, maybe not fully blamed, but at least a little.”
“Like maybe he should get a taste of his own medicine?”
“Well, yeah. But what exactly are you planning to do to him if I do the spell?”
“Nothing too cataclysmic, I swear. Just a little pain and humiliation. Let the fucker know how it feels. Okay, maybe more than a little. But I don’t plan on staking him, because I’d rather have him remember what I’m going to do for a long time afterwards.”
“And you’re not going to do anything that might endanger his soul?”
“Hell no! What do you think I am, daft? Who do you think Angelus would be gunning for the most if his soul takes another vacation?”
“But if he’s in love with you -”
“It won’t make any bloody difference,” Spike told her firmly.
Willow paused and turned all of this over in her mind for a few moments as Spike returned to drinking. “Okay, then,” she said at last, “I’ll do it. But, you have to do a few things for me first. You have to untape me and Xander, and bring him in here. And let us go after I do the spell.”
Spike shrugged. “Fine. I’ll bring him in after you do the spell. But I want you to promise you won’t reverse the spell on me once the Slayer sees me and Angel together and figures out something is going on. And you’re going to stay here until I know it actually worked, then I’ll let you go. If you’re as amateur as you say you are, you’ll be needing more than one go at it.”
Willow nodded, then held out her wrists for Spike to cut the tape. Once he had, she reached for her backpack and began rooting through the ingredients in it. “Most of the same ingredients for the spell I was doing earlier are the same as for a love spell. Usually you’d use canary feathers instead of the raven ones I have, but I think I can substitute the raven feathers without too much trouble. Did you get the book?”
Spike held it out to her, then stood watching her for a moment. She smiled at him absently before returning to her preparations. He eventually on the floor on the other side of the small room, giving Willow enough room to work. Then the vampire himself began to smile as she leaned forward to cast the circle.