The Gift
The fight had ended. Glory had bled Dawn and the walls had begun to crumble. And they had stopped it. Just as the key had unlocked the gates so had it locked them.
He had gone after Dawn.
He knew it was too late. Dawn
could not survive the blood loss but he tried anyway. The slayer had tried to stop him, it was too dangerous but
she had not been able to out run him. He
got there just as Dawn had taken her last breath. The slayer was right behind him.
As Dawn died the essence of the key escaped her body and
attempted to jump into the closest vessel.
He would have been the donor had he been pure but he had no soul and
therefore was unable to contain the magnificent power.
Had the key entered his body it would have killed him and the slayer knew
it. She pushed him out of the way
and she absorbed the energy.
Now there was only one option; bleed the slayer to close
the gates. He mustered up every bit
of strength he had and prepared himself to slit her throat although he really
didn’t believe he could do it. He
didn’t get the chance. A gust of
wind caused by the opening of the gates picked both he and the slayer up and
threw them a couple hundred yards.
He had been the only one close enough to see what had
happened to the key, so the rest of the gang was still too busy with Dawn to
care about them.
“Bleed me!” The
weakened voice of the slayer commanded him.
“Take my life. You have
to”
He did as he was told and he slit her throat, let the blood
drain from her body. She had
sacrificed her own life and she had saved his.
This woman whom he’d never even met before, yet who seemed so oddly
familiar, had saved the unlife of a vampire, the very creature she was created
to destroy. He had heard
about this slayer, Faith, and he knew she was a kindred spirit. She was evil like he was.
Nobody believed she could be anything but. They were wrong about her, just as they had been wrong about
him.
Things slowly began to calm down until all the world was
still and as whole as it had been before any of this had happened.
He looked around and saw that nobody was near, then he looked down into
Faith’s eyes. He sucked in all
the breath his lungs could hold even though he didn’t need to breathe.
Faith had given him unlife. He
couldn’t stop Faith from dying but he could return the favor she had bestowed
upon him. He released the air he
had been holding in his lungs and as he did his face changed from the smooth
beautiful complexion it had been into the face of the monster within him.
His head lowered to her neck and he indulged in what was
left of the blood of the third slayer he had the pleasure of “knowing”.
He raised his head, Faith’s head still resting in his hands.
His face warped back and Faith thought he looked almost human.
Spike slit his own wrist and forced it into her mouth.
Faith resisted at first.
She tried to spit out the vampire’s blood but then she looked back into
his face, into his eyes. He was
silently pleading to her.
“Please!” his eyes said.
“Please drink. You have
given me so much here today and this is all I can give you in return.”
At that the tension escaped from the slayer's muscles and she swallowed
this gift.
The end