The Return
Part 1 - Blood of the Lamb
(S6 took place as shown in BtVS,
S7 never happened. Spike earned his soul in Africa and spent the next three years (mostly in Europe) learning to deal with it. S3 of AtS had a slightly different ending. Connor sank Angel to the bottom of the ocean to endure endless death. Cordilia was never contacted by Skip and did not become a higher being. By the time she got to the beach to meet Angel he was already gone. Wesley recovered Angel from the ocean several months later and returned him to the Hyperion to rejoin Cordelia and to face Connor. Wesley left Los Angeles.)
******
He was on the hunt and moving through the narrow streets and alleys at a rapid pace. This was the farthest north he’d come in the past three years, but the early spring weather was mild and had enough rainy or overcast days to make it possible for him to move around the city even during the day, some of the time.
He was still a creature of the night, but being out during the day like this gave him a dangerous, almost suicidal, sense of excitement. He was constantly aware of the fact that it would only take a brief break in the cloud cover, and one golden ray of sunshine breaking through, to turn him into a walking pillar of fire and then a pile of smoldering ash, but he felt the risk was worth it. With the constant weight of his soul riding on his shoulders, he needed the danger, and the excitement, to make his life worth continuing.
Even so, he normally wouldn’t be out at this time of the day except for the tip he’d gotten just an hour ago. He’d been hanging out in a demon bar talking with a few other demons, buying drinks when needed, using intimidation when necessary, when the Xexax demon he was talking to mentioned that he’d seen a Bazolax demon early that morning going to nest in an old warehouse down near the river. Bazolax demons didn’t like sunlight any more than vampires did and would always go into hiding during the daytime and only come back out after dark. That was the real reason he was out. He needed to find that warehouse and the Bazolax demons nest before the sun set and it disappeared on him. He wanted to find it and kill it and get this contract taken care of tonight. He wasn’t sure why, but this city made him uncomfortable and he wanted to get out of it as soon as possible.
Four days ago he’d been in Paris when he’d been contacted about a contract. He’d been offered ten thousand dollars American if he would go up to Hamburg, find and kill the demon, collect it’s venom sack and bring it back to Paris in seven days. Apparently there was a witch that needed the venom for a spell, but there was a special time that the spell needed to be cast, so that was why there was a time limit and such a high payment offered. Normally he didn’t like dealing with witches, he didn’t really trust them, but ten thousand dollars was too much money to pass up. His last contract, harvesting demon parts for a group of asian wizards to make aphrodisiacs out of, had dried up recently and he needed the money.
He was hugging the wall of the alley as he moved along the back of the suspected warehouse. He could smell the recent presence of humans, but no trace of the Bazolax demon. He’d only seen one once before, in Brazil, but knew that if he ran across it’s scent he would recognize it immediately. The thought had run through his mind several times over the past few day, wondering how a demon from the rain forest had gotten itself to Germany in the first place. He was just about to give up the search at the present warehouse and move on down to the next one when he finally caught the scent he was searching for.
Following the scent it led him to a place in the wall, behind some pallets, where the tin siding had been pried up and the demon had entered. Prying up the siding himself he entered the warehouse and followed the scent. As he moved through the dark quietly he noticed that the scent wasn’t as strong as he remembered it should be. The scent of numerous humans was everywhere, but the scent of the Bazolax demon seemed weak, as if it were weeks old, not fresh like he had been led to believe by the Xexax demon. It would be just his luck that the Xexax demon, not the most reliable of demons in the first place, had misremembered when it had seen the Bazolax demon. That would mean that this whole search was a waste of time, because Bazolax demons never nested in the same place twice.
Again, he was just about to give up the search when he passed a partially open sliding door that had a very strong Bazolax demon scent coming from the other side of the doorway. Sliding the door open a little wider he entered the room. Quietly he opened the canvas bag he had looped over his shoulder and withdrew a short handled ax. The best way to kill a Bazolax demon was to cut off it’s head, before it bit you and pumped you full of venom. Changing to game face, to enhance his senses, he started moving through the dark room searching for his prey.
Suddenly, bright lights lit up all around the room and he heard the door behind him sliding fully open. He spun around and holding one hand up before his face, shielding his eyes from the glaring lights, he could just make out about a half dozen humans spread out in front of the door blocking his only way out. One of the men started moving toward him and after a few moments was out into the light where Spike could see his face.
Recognition and fear came immediately. Watchers! If the Watchers were after him it was either to kill him immediately or to capture him and kill him slowly. There was no way he was going down without a fight. In a blink of the eye he hurled the ax in his hand at one of the men in front of him and charged forward. He had barely taken two steps when he felt the impact of multiple something’s slamming into his chest, stomach and neck. He glanced down and saw several tranquilizer darts sticking out of him. Still, he kept pushing forward, he wasn’t going to just lay down without a fight. He was nearing the man he had recognized when he felt the impact of the taser darts and fifty thousand volts passed through him knocking him unconscious. He fell face first at the mans feet.
Rupert Giles looked down at Spikes unconscious body and with a grim smile on his face, said “Good evening Spike. I’ve been looking for you.”
***
As Spike started to regain consciousness the first thing he noticed was that he was sitting in a chair. The next thing he noticed was that he was handcuffed to the arms of the chair. For several minutes he sat there, not moving, not breathing, not doing anything to draw attention to the fact that he was awake. As his head cleared he remembered what had happened to him. Rupert Giles, Buffys “Watcher“, and a Counsel “Action” team had taken him prisoner. After the first couple of years Spike had assumed that neither Giles or the Counsel were looking for him. Just goes to show what happens when you assume to much and let yourself get careless. Granted the Counsel had no use for vampires, especially him, but they didn’t normally go out of their way to hunt vampires down unless they were causing problems. Which he hadn’t done for a number of years. It must be about Buffy. Rupert was just the man that would agree with the old saying “Vengeance is a meal best served cold”, and he’d told Spike once that if he ever hurt Buffy he would make Spike beg to die. “Guess this is it then, the dieing time” Spike thought to himself, “but there’s no bloody way I’ll beg for it. That’d be to easy.”
“I know your awake Spike” Giles said calmly, “you stopped breathing when you woke up.”
Realizing that there was no point in pretending anymore, Spike opened his eyes and raised his head to look around. Yes, he was in a chair, a heavy steel chair. Yes, he was handcuffed to the chair, with heavy police or military handcuffs, no way to break free of them. Directly in front of him was a large heavy wooden table, and surprisingly, his cigarettes and lighter. Also on the desk, but far beyond his reach, was the key to the handcuffs. Off to one side of the table was Spikes wallet, his money and some papers that he had been carrying in his inside coat pocket. Behind the desk in a chair similar to his own sat Rupert Giles, with a cup of tea in his hand and a look on his face that revealed nothing of what he was thinking. Behind Giles, standing against a wall next to a door, was another man. His arms were crossed in front of him, but he seemed alert and was watching Spike closely. Spike noticed that he had a taser holstered on his belt.
“Long time no see, Rupert” Spike said as a smirk of defiance spread across his lips. “Wish it could have been for a sight longer though.”
Giles raised an eyebrow and with a pleasant smile on his face, but no hint of pleasure in his eyes, said “Yes, I suppose you do at that.”
Spike sat there saying nothing, his eyes on Giles, but flicking occasionally over to the other man at the door. Giles sat there watching him, but said nothing. After about five minutes Spikes impatience got the better of him at last. “Is there a purpose to all this waiting Rupert, or are you just waiting for me to die of old age?”
Giles set his tea cup down on the table and taking his glasses off he slowly started cleaning them with the handkerchief he had taken from his coat pocket. When he finished cleaning his glasses and had put them back on, he started speaking. “Yes Spike, there is a purpose to all this, but probably not the one your thinking about. A month ago Buffy asked me to find you. She also made me promise not to harm you in anyway.”
The look of surprise and disbelief were plainly written all over Spikes face. Hesitantly he started to speak. “I … I find … that a little hard to believe .. Rupert. The ….. last time I saw the Slayer, …. if she’d had a stake in her hand, … I’m more than sure she would have used it.”
The whole time Spike had been speaking his eyes had continuously kept flashing over to the man standing at the door. Giles understood immediately that Spike was certain that “he” was aware of the circumstances of Spike and Buffys last meeting, but was hesitant to say anything about it in front of anyone else. Before Giles could say anything in response there was a tap on the door and it opened immediately. A man walked in carrying a large coffee mug and set it down on the table next to Spikes cigarettes. Spike could tell immediately that the mug was full of warm blood, human blood.
A quick flash of anger passed over Spikes face, replaced immediately by a blank look that revealed nothing. “I don’t do that anymore Watcher” his voice grew harsher as he spoke. “Haven’t for a long time.”
Giles looked a Spike with surprise in his eyes and when he spoke the puzzlement was clear in his voice. “It’s only blood Spike.”
“It’s human blood Watcher, and tainted blood at that” Spike growled back.
Spike could see the immediate anger that came to Giles face as he turned toward the man who had brought the blood in to Spike. “I specifically told you to get pigs blood, Wilson, fresh pigs blood, from the butcher.”
The man came to attention, as if her were in the military, and stammered out quickly “S Sir, I did go to the butcher, bu but he wouldn’t sell me the blood. He wanted to know what I wanted it for, and I couldn’t te tell him the truth. So I went to a clinic and bought some bl blood from an orderly. I figured the vampire would prefer human blood anyway and it wouldn’t do any ha harm. Sir.”
Giles looked over at the man by the door and said in a calm but clipped tone of voice, “Jennings, take care of this, and find someone who knows what their doing to go out and get some ‘pigs’ blood like I ordered.”
Jennings walked over to the table and picked up the mug of still warm blood and turning started to leave the room. Before he could get to the door, Spike spoke up. “Jennings”? When the man looked back at him, Spike continued. “Be careful how you dispose of that blood. There’s probably enough disease in that cup to kill half this city. That’s what they sell at those clinics, diseased blood. That orderly probably figured your man was buying it for a vampire and knew it wouldn’t kill one of us. But it‘s still dangerous.” Jennings stared down at the mug in his hand and then glancing back over at Spike nodded his head. He then left the room carrying the mug carefully. Wilson followed him out the door.
When Giles looked back over at Spike an apology was clearly written across his face, even though he didn’t say the words. Instead he picked up the key to the handcuffs and flipped it over the table to Spike, saying only “We need to talk, it’s important.”
Spike caught the key in the air and quickly used it to unlock the handcuffs and free himself. He then calmly placed the key back on the table and picked up his cigarettes and lighter. Just as calmly he pulled a cigarette out of the pack and lit it up. Once the cigarette was lit he sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. Then in a calm tone of voice, without any hint of threat, he asked “Tell me Rupert, what’s to prevent me from coming over this table and ripping your throat out?”
Behaving just as calmly, Giles reached inside his jacket and withdrew a stake and set it down on the table. “There’s this, plus five men on the other side of that door with dart guns and tasers. I assure you that the rest of those men are no where near as stupid as Wilson, and even he is good in a fight.”
Spike took a drag off his cigarette and drew the smoke in deeply, then let it out slowly. “Alright Watcher, you said we needed to talk, what about?”
Giles hesitated for several long moments before speaking. “Buffy asked me to find you, if you were still alive, or unalive as the case maybe, and to ask you a favor. But, before I can do that, I have to ask you some questions. I won’t tell you what Buffy wants from you unless I’m certain that you are of no danger to her or others.”
Two emotions immediately went to war with each other inside Spikes head. One emotion was almost a sense of joy, that Buffy would think of him with anything other than hatred and would be willing to ask him a favor to do anything but die. The other emotion was immediate anger at Giles for not telling him what it was that Buffy wanted from him. Fortunately, Spike had much better control over his anger now days and knew that no matter what he did, said, or threatened, Giles would never tell him anything unless he answered Giles questions first.
But before answering Giles questions he wanted a few answers of his own, for future sake, if there was going to be a future. “Did you set this all up, phony contract, lying informant, the whole setup? Or did I just get careless and you got lucky?”
Giles only paused for a few moments before answering. “Actually, it was a bit of both. One of the witches in the Coven contacted the witch in Paris and had her contact your agent regarding the contract. Just so you know for future reference, your agent wasn’t in on the deal and thought it was legitimate. There actually was a Bazolax demon here about a week ago, but it was killed by one of our Counsel teams. That’s where we got lucky, and you got careless. I was greatly afraid that when you got here that you would detect that the scent around the building was old and would get suspicious and break off your search before we could trap you. The Xexax demon that slipped you the information was working for us, and I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t kill him for leading you astray. I would also like to point out that if you hadn’t attacked us like you did I would have asked you to sit down and talk with me, without the need of tranquilizer darts or tasers.”
Spike lifted an eyebrow in an obvious look of disbelief and said “You can’t really expect me to believe that faced with both you and a bunch of Counsel killers that you thought I would just go along with you peacefully?”
A slight smile flashed across Giles lips briefly before he spoke. “Well, not really. But they were under strict orders not to cause you permanent injury.”
Spike sat for a minute smoking his cigarette before speaking. “Alright Watcher, seeing as how I don’t plan to ever return to this bloody arsed city again, I’ll give a pass to the Xexax demon. Course, if I ever do run across him somewhere else, I might change my mind.” Spike stared at Giles for a moment to make sure that he understood that as far as Spike was concerned this whole entrapment situation had been set aside, for now. When Giles nodded his head in understanding, Spike continued. “Seeing as how this whole enterprise was set up just so that we could talk, and seeing that you already knew that I was in Paris, why didn’t you just approach me there instead of going through this subterfuge?”
Without any apparent hesitation, Giles started to explain. “Knowing you were in Paris and approaching you there had certain problems attached that I didn’t want to have to deal with. First, if I had approached you in Paris, one of several things might have happened. You could have run, fought or talked. If I had approached you with my men, again, you could have run, fought or talked. In either case there were certain aspects of the situation that I wanted to avoid. If you had run from me in Paris and gone underground it might have taken me months to relocate you. If you had fought, in an uncontrolled environment, you, myself or one of my men might have been killed or injured. I didn’t want that to happen. And lastly, if we had talked in Paris, under almost any circumstances, the word of our meeting would have been all over the city within a few days. You know as well as I do that Paris is rife with intrigue, and speculation about a meeting between a Senior Council Member and a Master Vampire would have sparked a lot of interest. It was paramount to avoid such interest.”
Not waiting for Spike to comment, Giles continued. “That is why the subterfuge. I needed to get you out of Paris, preferably for reasons that wouldn’t draw undue attention. I needed you in a city with an airport, in a country where the Council has some influence, but wouldn’t draw undue attention to our activities. I also needed the city to be enough of a backwater that you wouldn’t suspect Council involvement and turn the contract down out of hand.”
Spike sat for a full minute digesting what he’d just been told. He understood immediately what Giles had meant by wanting to avoid the interests of others. He was very aware that a number of people had an interest in him and tried to keep an eye on his activities. For the most part he had been successful in avoiding them and any direct interference they might want to exert. But still, his past drew attention he would rather avoid. When he finally spoke his voice was calm, but guarded. “Alright Watcher, I understand the how and the why of it now. So lets address the reason. I’m quiet sure that you are aware of the circumstances related to my leaving Sunnydale. I will also admit that I’m very much surprised that you haven’t staked me yet, or worse, you did make that promise. But what I’m more interested in is why the Slayer would send you to find me and make you promise not to dust me. I am even more aware than you are of the level of hatred and contempt the Slayer has for me. So, other than asking that I stake myself, what possible favor would she ever ask of me?”
Giles sat there studying Spike, as he had been since before Spike had awoke from the tranquilizer darts. As he had studied every scrap of information he had been able to gather about Spikes activities over the past several years. The vampire sitting in front of him today looked almost exactly the same as the vampire he remembered from the past. Yes, there were a few subtle differences. The hair was still bleached blonde, almost white, but it was slightly longer and he had stopped using hair gel so that it was mostly a mass of loose curls. The cloths were still predominantly the same, black jeans, but new and better cared for. The button up shirt was dark gray silk with a lighter gray t-shirt under it. The boots were still the Doc Martins he had always favored, but again, well cared for. The long coat he wore was no longer leather, Giles knew where his old leather duster was, but rather what looked like a black London Fog Raincoat that was clean and well cared for. So, at a glance, Spike looked as he had always looked, but on closer inspection the differences were noticeable.
But the greatest difference between the Spike that Giles remembered and the Spike that was sitting before him was in behavior. The Spike he remembered from Sunnydale was a ball of nervous energy that could never be still for more than a few minutes at a time. Unless he was to drunk or to injured to move. The Spike sitting before him now was more calm, more in control of himself. Even the way he spoke. In the past, Spike had always come across as some kind of common thug from the back alleys of London. Now, his speech was more cultured, more educated, with only a few slips into the way he had talked before. But the biggest difference that Giles could see was in eye contact. The old Spike was always watching others, studying them, but when their eyes turned toward him he would most often glance away, unless he was angry or being defiant, then he would glare and let the anger or defiance burn in his dark blue eyes. This new Spike still watched and studied others, but when someone looked him in the eyes he didn’t turn away and his eyes were not filled with anger. Only when he spoke of the Slayer did he still break eye contact, as if speaking of her caused him pain and he didn’t want anyone to see it in his eyes.
When Buffy had asked Giles to search for Spike the first place he went after leaving Sunnydale was to go to Los Angeles to speak with Angel. As distasteful as any contact with Angel had ever been since the murder of Jenny Calendar and his own torture, Giles had controlled himself and was finally able to get Angel to reluctantly tell him that William, William the Bloody, had actually been a well educated gentleman when Drusilla turned him, and that it had only been when he had changed his name to Spike that he had started to behave and talk like a street thug. Angel claimed that Spike felt that his new persona better reflected who and what he was as a vampire. Angel had even admitted that it was only after these changes in Spike that the anger and hatred between the two of them had developed. He had claimed that before that, William had been a great disappointment as a vampire, he had been a sweet and sensitive young man, which was something that Angelus had to beat out of him to make him a proper vampire. It had nearly sickened Giles at the time to hear Angel reminisce nostalgically of the brutality of Angelus. Once Angel had realized that Giles had detected his nostalgic pleasure he had acted all ashamed and made the excuse that the behavior of Angelus was something he was now ashamed of, since he now had a soul. But excuses or not, soul or not, Giles recognized the fact that there were certain things that Angelus had done in the past that still gave a certain amount of pleasure to Angel today.
Once he reached London and was able to access the full resources of the Council, Giles had started an intense search for any and all information that might have been related to Spike over the past three years. After his sudden departure from Sunnydale there was no trace of his where abouts for about eight months. Then there were a few vague reports of a vampire in Greece, and possibly in Albania, that had displayed some rather atypical behavior for a vampire; such as attacking and killing other vampires and demons. But nothing concrete. It wasn’t until Spike showed up in Romania and then again in Hungary that a positive identification was made on him, but even so there had been limited information on his activities, except for repeated reports of him fighting with other vampires and demons. Giles had assumed that Spike fighting with other vampires and demons was the continuing result of his having the chip in his head and that his need for violence led him to fight the only things he could fight, other vampires and demons.
That was up to about two years ago. The reports then confirmed that Spike had made his home in Rome and had been traveling all over southern Europe as a contract demon hunter. Some of the contracts had been for retribution and revenge on behalf of his clients. Other contracts had apparently been for the harvest of demon parts for a consortium of asian wizards that used the parts for spells and aphrodisiacts. But a year ago a confirmed report came in that Spike had brutally killed a priest by ripping his throat out and used his blood to write a message of some kind on a wall. The message had been written in Latin and the informant who had seen the message couldn’t read it. This was the first indication that the chip in his head had been removed or was no longer working. This was the first of several things that needed to be addressed.
Giles had been studying Spike for at least five minutes, ruminating. Spike for his part had sat quietly, barely moving, except to light up another cigarette. When he started speaking his first question wasn’t a surprise. “When did you have the chip removed?”
Spike let a smirk spread across his face, he had known instinctively what would be the first question. “I didn’t. It’s still in there. It just fires off randomly now.”
“So it’s malfunctioning” Giles asked? “Do you have any idea why?”
“You could call it a malfunction I suppose” Spike replied as he glanced away from Giles, breaking eye contact. “As to why? Shortly after I left Sunnydale it tried to kill me. It fired off so many times it nearly did. Guess it burned itself out partially, or wore out the battery or whatever it is that powers the thing, don’t really know.”
“How long ago was that” Giles asked.
“Two years and some months, don’t know exact dates” was the reply.
“Was it firing because you were trying to feed?”
“No” was the only reply.
“Then why was it fireing off, trying to kill you, as you said?”
“Retribution.”
A puzzled look spread over Giles face for several moments. “I understood that the chip only fired if you were trying to hurt someone, a human.”
“It would also fire off if I had certain thoughts or memories.”
“If that was the case and you knew this, why didn’t you avoid these thoughts or memories? You were apparently able to do so when you were in Sunnydale” Giles asked pointedly.
“ Didn’t have control of my thoughts or my memories for awhile there Watcher. That’s why it was trying to kill me. Bloody chip couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was going on inside my head.” Spikes reply was in a flat tone of voice reflecting no emotions.
“How often did it fire off like this?”
“Continuously.”
When Spike glanced up at Giles face he could read both horror, and possibly pity, in his eyes. “How long did this last, the …. the continuous firing?” Giles asked, his voice slightly shaky.
“Six, seven months, don’t know exactly. Took awhile before I could think clearly enough to realize it wasn’t working anymore.”
“Your telling me that the chip in your head was firing continuously for six or seven months, and it didn’t kill you. Spike, I saw what that chip could do to you back in Sunnydale. I know the kind of pain it caused you. How could you have possibly survived that kind of pain and torment for so long without burning out your brain or going crazy?”
When Spike lifted his eyes and met Giles eyes, there was a look of pain in them that nearly took Giles breath away. “I was already crazy, or close enough to make no difference. That’s why the chip couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was just happening inside my head. Memories of a hundred and twenty years of mayhem and slaughter, the chip thought it was all happening now. Kept trying to stop me from doing what it thought I was doing. The more pain it caused the more intense the memories, the more memories the more pain. Like I said, retribution.”
Giles was stunned by this revelation, it set his mind to spinning with thoughts. The fact that the chip would fire due to certain thoughts or memories was new information that he had never been aware of before. That Spike claimed that he was crazy for a period of time and had had no control over his thoughts or memories was also of interest. But the thing that was picking at his brain was wondering why Spike had gone crazy. Granted, Spike had never been the most emotionally stabile of individuals, at least not by human standards. But Spike wasn’t human, he was a vampire, and in all the time that Giles had been a Watcher he had only heard of three instances of a vampire being what would be considered to be crazy. The first instance of course was Drusilla. The second time was when the Council had used an insane vampire to test Buffy during the Cruciamentum. But that vampire, like Drusilla, had been crazy before he’d been turned. The only other time a vampire was known to have been crazy was Angel. Apparently when Angel got his soul the guilt and remorse had driven him crazy for a period of time. He had also been crazy for a shorter period of time when he was returned from a hell dimension by the Powers That Be. But what could have happened to Spike to make him go crazy? Surely he hadn’t been sent to a hell dimention and returned. But, the idea of Spike being cursed and getting a soul was absured. The chip itself would have prevented him from doing anything that would have provoked someone to curse him. Besides, the only known curse to give a vampire a soul was the gypsy curse, and no one but Willow even knew how to perform the curse, as far as he knew. But?
When Giles mind came back into focus he realized that a period of time had elapsed, five minutes, maybe, he wasn’s sure. But as impossible as the idea seemed he had to know the answer. “When you left Sunnydale, did you go somewhere or do something that got you sent to a hell dimension? And, if you did, how did you get back?”
Spike didn’t answer out loud, he just sat there with his eyes closed and shook his head sideways to indicate “No.”
“Did someone put a curse on you” Giles asked nervously, “do you have a soul?”
Spike sat there with his eyes still closed, but said quietly “Not a curse.” Then in a voice even lower, barely hearable “I earned the bloody thing.”
“You what?” Giles snapped back, his voice louder and harsher than he intended.
Spike surged up out of his chair and leaned far over the table separating him from Giles. His eyes had turned the golden yellow of an enraged vampire, but his face stayed human. With his face less than a foot away from Giles face he yelled loudly “ I earned it, you bloody arsed wanker!”
Before Spike could say anything more or Giles could respond, Jennings burst through the door with his taser in his hand. Giles saw at once the pending danger and quickly held up one hand and snapped out “Jennings STOP, everything’s find, there’s no danger.”
Jennings stopped, but glanced over at Spike who had straightened up, but was still standing, his eyes still golden yellow. “Do you want me to stay, sir?” There was a tone of mistrust of the vampire and concern for Giles in his voice.
“No Jennings, no, everythings find. We both got a little overheated in our discussion” Giles said calmly. “You can go now, everythings fine.”
While all this was going on, Wilson and an other man had stepped into the doorway, both carrying tranquilizer dart guns. Jennings hesitated briefly, then nodded his head to Giles. He then motioned to the two men to backup from the doorway and walking out of the room he closed the door behind him.
Giles let out a breath that he hadn’t even realized he was holding. When he looked back over at Spike he could see that his eyes were flashing from yellow to blue to yellow to blue. Giles correctly interpreted this to mean that Spike was still angry, but had himself under control. Not knowing what to say at the moment, Giles reached behind him toward a briefcase sitting on the floor and reaching inside pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He opened the bottle and picking up his tea cup, which still contained about an inch of cold tea, he flipped the tea onto the concrete floor and filled his cup nearly to the brim. He then set the bottle onto the table and pushed it across to within Spikes reach.
Spike had watched Giles retrieve the bottle of whiskey and fill his tea cup. When he pushed the bottle over to Spike, Spike picked up the bottle and after sitting back down brought it to his lips and tilting his head back he drank off half of the whiskey still in the bottle at one go. When he brought the bottle back down and looked over at Giles his eyes were again a clear blue.
Giles lifted his tea cup to his lips and drank off half the cup before setting it back down on the table. He then cleared his throat before speaking. “You’ll have to pardon me for my rude response, but you have to admit what you said was a bit of a shock.”
Spike didn’t respond to his words, instead he reached for his cigarettes, still sitting on the table and after extracting one from the pack, lit it with the lighter.
Giles cocked a eyebrow at him and requested “May I?” indicating the cigarettes.
Spike slid the pack of cigarettes and the lighter across the table toward Giles. Giles took one cigarette from the pack and using the lighter, lit it. After taking a deep draw of the cigarette and letting the smoke out slowly, he focused his full attention back on Spike and said “Convince me.”
“Why would I want to do that Watcher” Spike said with a sneer on his face.
Giles response was very clear, but without any attempt to intiminate. “Because, knowing that your chip has malfunctioned and no longer works properly, there’s no way your getting out of this building alive, unless you do convince me.”
The sneer was wiped from Spikes face to be replaced by a tense look and a narrowing of his eyes. Giles could see that Spike was clenching his teeth and a muscle was twitching in his jaw. After several tense moments, Spike lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips and drank off a large swallow. He then sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh of breath.
“When I left, … it wasn’t out of fear … of Buf … of the Slayer. It was out of fear that I would hurt her again. You won’t understand this Watcher, but I’d promised her that I wouldn’t hurt her, …… and then I did. ….. I had to leave. …. I didn’t know where I was going to go, so I just headed for L.A.. On the way there an old memory, about a legend, came to mind, about a powerful demon that could grant wishes. With nothing else to loose and no where else to go, I decided to see if it was true. I sold my bike in L.A. and arranged to have a crate air freighted to Africa. When I got to Africa I broke out of the crate and started my search.” Spike paused long enough to light up another cigarette and to take another drink. “Somewhere in the Congo, God knows where, there’s a vally. In the wall of the valley there’s a cave. It took me awhile to find the place. When I got there the demon was waiting for me, like it knew I was coming. It told me that to earn the right to ask a wish I had to pass some trials. Once I passed the trials, I told it to make me what I was … so that Buffy could get what she deserves. Wasn’t thinking to clear when I made the wish, not really certain what I was asking for. But, the demon, it gave me my soul back.”
Giles sat studying Spike for several minutes before speaking. “What kind of trials, and why did it give you a soul.?”
Spike looked Giles in the eyes, his own eyes were filled with remembered pain. “What kind of trials isn’t important, just understand that they were all to the death, and I survived them. I earned the wish, Watcher. Nobody gave it to me, nobody cursed me, I earned it, with blood and pain. … …Why a soul? The bloody wanker probably thought it would be funny.”
Still not satisfied, Giles asked, “Why would it be funny to give you a soul?”
“Because as soon as the great bloody beasty slapped it’s hand against my chest and burned my soul back into me, my head became flooded with memories of every bit of mayhem and murder I’d ever commited. Which set the chip to firing off, and between the memories and the pain, it drove me crazy. About six, seven months later I woke up in Eygyt. Don’t know how I got there, don’t know how I survived all that time either. Only know that my thinking was still kind of wonky and the chip wasn’t firing anymore. I stole away on a freighter and ended up in Greece. After that I just traveled place to place, until I got to Rome and settled in for awhile.”
Giles sat for several moments digesting what Spike had told him. He wasn’t quite ready to believe it all, but he wasn’t ready to discount it either, not yet anyway. He reached out across the table and took another cigarette from Spikes pack and lit it up. He then drank down the remainder of the whiskey in his tea cup.
“Say that I believe you, about this demon giving you a soul.” Giles said in a calm controlled voice. “Does that mean you can’t hurt humans, that the soul is doing what the chip use to do, controlling your vampire demon?”
Spike studied Giles for a minute before speaking. “You know, don’t you? You know I’ve killed?” Spike continued to study Giles and saw a slight twitch in his cheek muscle. “But not to feed, Watcher. I don’t feed on humans anymore. You can believe it’s because of the soul, or because it’s my choice. Either way, same difference. I’m a bit like you now Rupert” Spike used Giles first name deliberately, “you know, when you let old Ripper out on occasion, for the better good of mankind, and all that rot.”
Spike watched the twitch in Giles cheek jump again, repeatedly, as he clenched his jaw and held his temper. “Let me show you something, Watcher” Spike said, his voice calm and not showing any of the strain he was actually feeling. Reaching into his coat pocket he extracted a rosary. Gathering the long strand of beads in his hand he let the cross at the bottom hang down where it swung back and forth. Slowly he brought the one hand over to the other and laid the cross over the back of his hand. He sat there watching Giles stare at the cross. Nothing was happening. The cross wasn’t burning his flesh.
When Giles didn’t react or say anything, a flat thin smile crossed Spikes lips briefly. As he placed the rosary back in his pocket he asked “Still not convinced Watcher? Got any Holy Water in that briefcase of yours?”
Giles was a bit confused by the question. He had watched Spike lay the cross of the rosary across his hand and was stunned that it hadn’t burned him to the bone. Still keeping his eyes on Spike he reached behind him and rummaging around in his briefcase for a few moments, he then pulled out a small bottle of Holy Water and slid it across the table to Spike. He wasn’t certain what Spike wanted the Holy Water for, but he definitely wasn’t prepared for what happened.
Spike picked up the small bottle and removing the cap, held up the bottle, said “Cheers” and poured some of the water into his mouth and swallowed it. Giles jumped up from his chair, his eyes nearly bulging out, but nothing happened. With his voice shaking and sweat breaking out on his forehead, he asked “What does that mean?”
“What it means? It means I’m still a killer Watcher, but now I’m a righteous killer.” Spikes voice was tense, anger just under the surface.
Giles temper snapped. Hearing what Spike had just said and seeing what should have been impossible, fear and anger made him speak harshly. “Damn you to hell Spike, you either tell me the truth, right now, or I’m going to stake you and forget my promise to Buffy.”
A grin spread over Spikes lips, but his eyes were cold. “You want the truth Ripper?” his voice just as harsh as Giles. “I don’t think your ready for it. I know I’m not ready to tell you.” Suddenly, without warning, Spike yelled out loudly, “Jennings!”
Within seconds Jennings was coming through the door, his taser in his hand. When he saw Spike sitting back in his chair, not making any threatening gestures, and that Giles was unharmed, he paused. Spike started speaking to him before he could say anything to Giles. “Rupert here wants to hear the truth. I don’t think he’s ready for it. Send someone out and have them bring us some whiskey. Better make it three, no, four bottles, and make it quick.”
Jennings didn’t say anything to Spike, he just turned his head toward Giles for instructions. Giles looked at Jennings and letting out a sigh, said “Do as he says Jennings, four bottles of whiskey, as quickly as possible.”
Jennings nodded his head to Giles and left the room. Spike withdrew a cigarette from his pack on the table and lit it up. He then slid the pack of cigarettes and the lighter across the table to Giles. Giles had just started to light a cigarette when Jennings came back into the room. He was carrying a pint flask and two glasses. He set them down in front of Giles and left the room without a word.
Spike finished the inch of whiskey in the bottle that Giles had given him earlier, then set the empty on the table. Standing up, he reached over and picked up the flask and opened it. He filled one of the glasses nearly to the brim and pushed it in front of Giles. He then filled the second glass, set the flask down on the table in front of Giles, picked up the second glass and sat back down in his chair. He drew hard on his cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, took a large swallow off the glass of whiskey, then let the smoke out of his lungs. He sat with his eyes closed, his cigarette between his lips, nodding his head as if he were listening to music only he could hear. After about a minute he removed the cigarette from his lips and downed the remainder of whiskey in his glass, his eyes remained closed the whole time. When the cigarette burned down to the filter and went out, Spike opened his eyes and looked across the table at Giles.
Giles was sitting back in his chair, his head bent forward, his face a study of emotions that he was having little luck consealing. His eyes were distant and moving rapidly from side to side, as if he were reading something in front of him. His brow was furrowed as if he were in deep consentration. Spike knew that Giles was replaying every word that had passed between them, and probably everything else he had learned or guessed about Spike and what he had been doing the past three years.
When Spike stood up it drew Giles out of his concentration. Spike picked up the flask again and topped off the half full glass in front of Giles. Spike poured the remainder of the whiskey into his own glass and sat back down. He looked over at Giles and said quietly, “Drink up, Rupert. Your going to need it.”
Giles picked up his glass and took a sip of the whiskey, then set the glass back down. Focusing his eyes on Spikes face, he asked “What is it that your going to tell me that I need to be half drunk to listen too?”
“Not half drunk, Rupert, fully drunk” Spike said, his voice not at all slurred by the whiskey he’d already drank. “I need to be drunk to tell you, and you’ll need to be drunk to listen. Because what I’m going to tell you is the truth, and your not going to like it.”
“If your going to tell me the truth, Spike, then why don’t you get started?” Giles snapped out, his temper slipping out again.
“I’m waiting for the whiskey to arrive. Once I start this thing I don’t want any interruptions. Besides, I’m not drunk enough yet, and neither are you” Spike responded calmly.
In response to Spikes words, or maybe in defiance of them, Giles gulped down all the whiskey in his glass then slammed it down on the table in front of him. Spike tilted his head back a little and downed the remaining whiskey in his glass, then gently set it down on the table. He then sat back in silence, and waited.
In a little less than ten minutes there was a tap on the door and then it opened. Jennings walked in carring two bottles of whiskey, by their necks, in each hand. He set the four bottles down on the table, but closer to Giles than to Spike. Before leaving he also pulled two packs of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and dropped them on the table. He nodded to Giles without saying a word and started to leave. Before he could get to the door, Spike spoke up. “Jennings, if you hear any loud voices, don’t worry about it. I promise that I won’t hurt old Rupert here.”
Jennings didn’t speak, he just looked to Giles for instructions. Giles glared over at Spike for a moment before speaking. “I’ve already told Spike that he’s not getting out of this building alive, unless I say so. So I’m relatively certain that I won’t come to any harm. If we do get a little loud, ignor it. But Jennings, if Spike comes out of that door before me, take him down, and if I’m dead, make sure he dies slowly.”
Jennings, looking over at Spike and with a smile on his face, said “It’ll be a pleasure, Sir.” He then walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
“Harsh, Rupert, very harsh” Spike said, but he was smiling and by his tone of voice he wasn’t the least bit offended. He then leaned forward and read the lables on the bottles. All four bottles were German whiskey, two bottles of Bourbon and two of Scotch. Spike reached out and grabbed one of the bottles of Bourbon before speaking. “I’ll take the Bourbon. German Scotch tastes like sheep piss.”
Before he could claim the second bottle of Bourbon, Giles grabbed it. “Will both take the Bourbon. If we get through these, neither one of us will care what anything tastes like by then.”
Spike smirked at Giles, but didn’t comment. He sat down, opened his bottle, filled his glass and drank it all down. He then refilled his glass, lit a cigarette, then sat back and waited.
Giles glared at him, opened his own bottle, filled his glass and drank it down, then refilled it. He also lit a cigarette and sat back, waiting for Spike to start.
Spike waited for a full minute before he started speaking. “Like I told you, when I left Egypt I went to Greece, headed north to get away from the cities. I didn’t have any money and the cloths I’d nipped in Egypt were more rags than anything else. I was feeding off sheep for blood, the soul didn’t like it, but wasn’t kicking up to much fuss as long as I didn’t do it too often. Got up north, right on the Albanian border, when a hearder set his dogs on me. The bloody soul wouldn’t let me kill them so I had to run from them. Ran half the night and ended up in this little vally, had a little village, couple dozen homes. I was worn out and hid out in the attic of the largest building, turned out to be the church. Figured I’d rest up for the day, maybe two, see if I could steal some food, change of cloths maybe. Anyway, hid out the rest of the night and most of the following morning. There was this big ruckus down below, down in the chapel, and I snuck down from the attic to see what it was all about. One of the families that lived outside the village, close to the border, had just brought in two bodies to the church. From what I could see it looked like an old man and an old woman, all dried up and wrinkled. But hearing the villagers they kept refering to the bodies as children. So I snuck a little closer, to get a better look, and I could see that they were children. But something had sucked all the life out of them.”
Spike filled his glass and drank off a large swallow before continuing. “That’s when it hit me the first time, the wrongness of it all. They were children, Watcher, and something had sucked all the life out of them. Not like a vampire, taking their blood, but their actual essence. They were children and something had sucked a hundred years of potential life right out of them, leaving their bodies looking like dried up old people. By the looks on their faces, it must have been horrifyingly painful.”
Spike shuddered at the memory, then downed the rest of the whiskey in his glass before refilling it again. “I’ve dealt a lot of death in my time Watcher. Men, women, children, I’ve killed them all. But it was never about the pain. Sure, fear makes the blood sweeter, but I was never into the hurting part of it, that was Angelus, Darla and Dru, they liked to play with their food.” When Spike glanced up at Giles he could see the disgust on his face. Spike downed the full glass of whiskey and then refilled it.
“Anyway, like I said, there was a wrongness about these deaths that bothered me. Maybe it was the soul, probably was, but I had this urge to do something, for the children, I don’t know, I couldn’t turn my back on them. I waited for everyone but the priest to leave, wasn’t looking for trouble, just wanted information. As soon as he was alone with the bodies I came out of hiding.” Spike took another drink before continuing. “Now see here Watcher, this is where your going to think I start lieing, but I’m not. This here priest, he was an old man, been around for a long time. He took one look at me and knew what I was right off, but he wasn’t afraid of me, not at all. He seemed surprised that I was inside his church, but he wasn’t afraid. When I asked him if he knew what had happened to the children, what had killed them, he told me everything. Told me there was a scorcerer that lived on the other side of the border, in Albania, that had figured out how to prolong his own life by draining the life out of others. Seems he liked draining children the most, cause he got more life energy out of them than adults. He told me this scorcerer had been doing this kind of thing for a long time, since the priest was a boy himself, maybe even before then. Now you got to understand, these people were sheep herders and farmer, pretty superstitious lot, scared to death of this scorcerer, afraid he would curse them all or something, too afraid to try to stop him or kill him. So this priest he tells me how to find the scorcerer, gave me some food and warm cloths, let me sleep the rest of the day. That night, when I was getting ready to leave, the priest comes to me and tells me that he had been praying for me to come save the children. Tells me that he has something that would help me. He held out something and put it in my hand. When I took a look at it, it was a small religious icon of an angel dressed all in black with black wings. Course I nearly dropped the thing, thinking it would burn right through my hands, but it didn’t burn me at all. The icon was on a chain and the priest told me to wear it around my neck, that it would protect me.”
Spike took another drink and looked Giles directly in the eyes. He could read it in Giles eyes that he was finding this whole story very hard to believe, the doubt was clearly evident by his expression. “Look Rupert, I can see what your thinking, but just go along with me for awhile longer. Like I’d told you earlier, ever since I woke up in Egypt my thinking had been a little wonky. Make that my excuse if you want to, but what this priest was telling me and him giving me the icon, it all made some kind of sense to me, and the soul was making me feel kind of happy about it all. So, anyway, shortly after dark I took off and headed over into Albania and following the priest directions I found the sorcerers lair. It wasn’t much of a place, just a big pile of stones to my way of thinking, easy enough to sneak inside of without being seen. At least that’s what I thought. Turns out the scorcerer had spells out to detect anyone coming near his place. Turns out he could also tell I was a vampire. When I entered his home without an invite, it surprised him and he decided to capture me instead of killing me outright. So, anyway, he did, capture me that is. Had some kind of spell that froze me in place, couldn’t move a muscle, made me helpless. He had a couple of demons under his control, thrall maybe, and they carried me into a room where he experimented with his spells and kept all his magical equipment and spell books. He started gloating about how easy it had been to capture me and wanted to know how I’d been able to enter his home without and invite. I lied and told him that it was some gypsy magic I’d picked up in the past that made it possible. Truth is, at the time I didn’t know how I’d gotten in without an invite. But, see, this scorcerer, he’d been wondering what it would be like to try to drain the life out of a vampire, something that could live forever, for a long time. I just happened to be the first vampire he’d ever had the chance to try his spell on. So, he goes to this big chest and brings out this long knife.”
Giles watched Spike fill his glass and drain it, then fill it again. He then lit up a cigarette and after filling his lungs with smoke and letting it out slowly, he sat for a few moments to collect himself. Giles was having difficulty believing Spikes story, and wasn’t really certain what it had to do with anything anyway. But it was evident from the way Spike was behaving that what he was saying seemed both important to him and at the same time very disturbing.
When Spike started talking again, his voice was husky and thick with emotion. “You ever been in the presence of something that’s truly evil, Watcher? Something so evil you could feel it in the air you breath? So evil that it could make the skin crawl and turn the stomach of even a vampire? Well that knife was evil, Watcher. Looking at it made my eyes itch. I think it was probably the most evil thing I’ve ever seen in my entire unlife. So, anyway, this knife is what the scorcerer used to drain the life out of others. He would stab them with it. Not a killing blow. Just hard enough and deep enough to peirce the skin and muscle a bit. Then with the spell he used he would draw a persons life essence out of their body into the knife and from the knife it would pass into him. I don’t know how many people that scorcerer drained the life out of in his time, but that knife was old Watcher, thousands of years old, and it had been used to kill thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. The death of everyone of those people was present in that knife, and every death had been painful beyond your ability to imagine.”
“So I’m standing there, unable to move, helpless, and the scorcerer starts chanting his spell and comes to stand before me. He’s going to suck the life out of my body and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop him from doing it. He’s standing there smiling at me as he stabs me in the chest. But, that icon the priest gave me, it was under my shirt and coat. When he stabbed me in the chest, he stabbed directly into the icon. Whatever power or religious piety or whatever else might have been in that icon, it broke the spell that held me in place. Before the scorcerer could move or cast a new spell, I moved fast and I ripped his throat out. So there it is Watcher, my first human kill since I’d first got that bloody chip in my head, the first act of violence I’d commited against a human since I’d got my soul. And you know what Watcher? The soul didn’t make me feel bad, it didn’t punish me, it didn’t drag the deaths of all those I’d killed in the past and march them before my eyes. You know what it did Watcher? It made me feel good, happy actually.”
Spike started to refill his glass with whiskey again, but after hesitating for a few moments he brought the bottle to his lips and tilting his head back he drank directly from the bottle until it was empty. He sat back in his chair with his eyes closed letting the whiskey work on him, the empty glass in one hand, the empty bottle in the other. After several minutes of silence Spike opened his eyes. Giles was across the table watching him intently, but had not said a word. Leaning forward in his chair slowly, Spike set the glass and the bottle down on the table, carefully. Then bracing both hands on the table he pushed himself to his feet. Leaning across the table, still bracing himself with one hand, he reached across the table and grabbed one of the bottles of scotch. Spike then straightened up and let himself fall back into his chair. Carefully he took the cap off the bottle and raised it to his lips, taking a large swallow. Looking over the table at Giles, he said “You were right Watcher, still tastes like sheep piss, but don’t really care anymore.”
Giles continued to watch. He’d seen Spike drunk before, but only once had he seen him this drunk. A month after Buffys death on the tower he’d gone to Spikes crypt in the middle of the afternoon to check on him. Willow had activated the Buffy-bot two days previously and Spike had walked into the Magic Box to meet up with the Scoobies to go out on patrol. Giles had seen Spikes face that evening when he saw the bot for the first time since Buffys death. The look on Spikes face could only have been described as the look of someone in deep emotional pain. Spike had run out the door of the Magic Box and no one had seen him for the past two days or nights. Dawn had asked Giles to check on Spike to see if he was alright. When he found Spike, propped up against a wall of his crypt with a half dozen empty bottles scattered around the floor, he was to drunk to stand, but the look of pain in his eyes was like a burning torch. That was the first time that Giles had allowed himself to believe that Spike might actually have had some kind of real feelings for Buffy before her death, beyond mere obsession.
Seeing Spike as drunk as he was, seeing the pain burning in his eyes, Giles had to give credence to what he’d just been told. Giles knew that Spike was to drunk to lie to him, because when Spike was this drunk he didn’t care enough about self-preservation to bother to lie. Quietly, but loud enough to be heard, Giles asked “What happened next?”
Spike had been staring at the wall behind Giles, not really seeing anything, memories passing through his mind. When he heard Giles speak, he repeated the question, then answered. “What happened next? Put the knife back in the iron box the sorcerer kept it in, couldn’t touch it, used fire tongs to move it. Gathered up his spell books and some other things. Put em all in a chest with iron strapping, found some chains and locks, wrapped em around the chest. Carried the whole thing back to the priest, barely got there fore the sun came up. Priest had me stay for a few days, fed me blood, gave me cloths, gave me some money too. Held a Mass before I left, told all the people in the village that the sorcerer was dead. Told them that God had sent them an angel to avenge the children. Showed them that bloody icon too. When the sun set he asked me to put the chest in the back of a truck, didn’t want his people to touch it. He was going to take the chest to the head of his Order, in Athens I think. We left the same time, he went south, I went north. Traveled the border till I got to Bulgaria, went north to Romania, then Hungary to Austria, on to Italy, then down to Rome.”
Spike seemed to wind down then and sat silently for several minutes. Giles prodded Spike by saying “And then in Rome you killed a priest.”
When Giles words penetrated Spikes consciousness a sharp bark of laughter escaped his lips. Looking over at Giles he took a drink from the bottle in his hand and with a sneer on his lips and enough sarcasms in his voice to remind Giles of Spike at his worst back in Sunnydale, Spike said “Don’t you go crying over that bloody bastard Watcher. He’ll be burning in hell for eternity and deserves every moment of it.”
“And why would that be” Giles asked? Again prodding Spike to continue talking.
“Cause he was a bloody pedophile and a murder, Watcher, that’s why” Spike responded with anger in his voice. “Only regret I have over his death is that I couldn’t make it last longer.”
“Unfortunately Spike, the world is full of pedophiles and murderers” Giles said in an even, reasonable tone of voice. “What made it your business to seek out and kill this one?”
“Another priest, Watcher” Spike snapped out at Giles. “Another old priest, with a rosary in one hand and a bible in the other. Knocking on my door, asking me to save a child.”
Spike tilted his head back and drank a couple of long swallows of scotch from the bottle in his hand. Then looking over at Giles with anger, but not really an anger directed at Giles, more like an anger directed at the world in general. “When I moved to Rome I found me a nice little neighborhood to live in. Cleaned out all the vamps and demons in the area, ran off the bad element of humans too, drug dealers, muggers, thieves, pimps and whores. Made things peaceful, quiet like. Whenever I wasn’t out of town on business, I kept it that way.”
“Ya know Watcher, Rome’s an old city, people go missing all the time. Men, women, children, just disappear, no one seems to notice, or care. But that old priest, he cared. A little girl disappeared on her way to his school. Just two, three, blocks from her home to the school, and she just vanished. Priest comes knocking on my door, asking me to try to find her. Knows what I am, says he trusts me, says he knows what I been doing, keeping the bad element away.” Spike took another drink. When he started speaking again there was a tone of abused irony in his voice. “It’s bloody hilarious Watcher, I use to ‘be’ the bad element, now I’m the bleeding neighborhood watch, protecting puppies and children, and little old ladies. Tried to tell that priest that it wasn’t any of my business, but I knew the child, least ways I’d seen her before, playing in the streets with her mates. So I agreed to help, try anyway, no guarantees mind you. Went with him to the girls home, got some of her cloths, needed a scent to follow. Traced her route from her home to school, didn’t have any trouble locating where she got grabbed up. Left the priest behind to follow the scent, chased after it for hours, all night in fact.”
Spike raised the bottle of scotch to his lips and took another drink. Checking the bottle and finding only a little left in it, he raised it to his lips again and drained it empty. Slowly pulling himself forward in his chair he set the empty bottle down on the table. Twice he tried to rise to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Looking across the table at Giles, Spike frowned at him. Giles took the hint and picking up the last full bottle of scotch, taking the cap off, he slid the bottle across the table to where Spike could reach it. Once Spike had the bottle in his hand he let himself slump back into his chair. After taking a small sip from the bottle, he started talking again.
“The soul, became all obsessed with finding the girl. Wouldn’t leave off, kept pushing me to keep searching. Sun was almost up, kept pushing and pushing. Was like it kept telling me I had to keep searching, that there wasn’t much time left. Found the place, just minutes before the sun came up, wasn’t time to call for help, the priest, the police, anyone? I could smell the girl, smell her fear. Then I smelled her blood. The soul went all bonkers like, with ‘righteous anger’ and ‘wrath of god’ kinds of feelings. I vamped out, went into a blood rage, charged the door of the house. Didn’t know how I was going to get into the house, not being invited an all. But the soul didn’t care and the door didn’t even slow me down. That was the second time, Watcher, that I’d entered a humans home without an invite. Seems I don’t need one anymore. Least ways not when the bloody soul is running things.”
Spike turned the bottle of scotch up and took a long drink before he continued speaking. “When I went crashing through that door didn’t know what I was expecting, sure as bloody hell wasn’t what I found. I knew the girl was in there, could smell her fear, her blood. The soul was screaming inside my head ‘Save the Child! Save the Child!’, over and over and over. Came crashing through that door, found a priest, all done up in priestly robes. The girl was tied all spread eagled on an alter, black candles burning all round the room. The girl was all dressed up, little white stockings with little black shoes, pretty white dress with a garland of flowers in her hair, and a gag in her mouth so she couldn’t scream. He’d prayed over her all night, Watcher, washed her with holy water, dressed her, blessed her innocents, then raped her. I come crashing into the room, he had his hands around her throat, was strangling her slowly while he raped her. Didn’t have time to think about it, just ripped his throat out. Wished later I’d had the time to kill him slowly.” Spike fell silent again, he didn’t move for several minutes. When he did move, it was only to bring the bottle of scotch to his lips and to swallow.
Giles sat in silence himself, the shock and horror of Spikes story had left him speechless. But not for a moment did he doubt the truth of what Spike had told him, the obvious pain of remembering and telling the story assured the truth of it. With shaking hands Giles picked up his own bottle of whiskey and filled his glass. Using both hands, his hands were trembling so much he knew he would spill the drink otherwise, Giles raised the glass to his mouth and gulped the whiskey down. The whiskey had a steadying effect on his nerves as he set the glass back down on the table. As his nerves steadied, Giles realized that the story wasn’t finished yet. He prodded Spike to continue, more gently than before. “Our informant said you left a message, written in blood on a wall. Would you tell me what it said?”
When Spike lifted his eyes to Giles he wanted to sneer at him for wanting to hear more, but memory and pain were to fresh to allow such a minor show of emotions. Instead, he reached out to the table and picked up his cigarettes. Taking one from the pack, he used his lighter to light it. Drawing the smoke in deeply he filled his lungs, then slowly he let the smoke out. “I told you, the soul had me feeling all ‘wrath of god’ like? After I’d killed the priest, I needed to take care of the girl. He’d hurt her Rupert” Spike said softly. “He was a big man, and she was just a little bitty thing, seven or eight maybe. Tore her when he raped her, was bleeding pretty badly. Had to cut her free, then put a soft pad on her, like a big soft diaper. Wrapped her all up in a blanket to keep her warm, make her feel safe. She just lay there, letting me take care of her, she wasn’t afraid of me, even though I was in vamp face the whole time. Guess cause I’d saved her, her life anyway. Priest had a car in a garage, found some paint and covered the windows, like I’d done with the old DeSoto. Was about to carry her out to the car when the soul got all ‘wrath’ like, wanted to leave a message behind. I used the priest own blood, plenty of it laying about. Don’t know where the words came from, I just started writing. Message was, ‘They who shed the Blood of the Lamb, shall face the Wrath of God, and suffer the Hand of the Angel of Death’. After that I took the girl home, or at least back to the old priests church. I told him what I’d found, what had happened to the girl, what I’d done. Neither one of us knew how this was all going to play out, what with me killing a Vatican priest, even if he was a monster. So the old priest gave me a couple thousand Euros he had available, I went to my place and packed real quick, took the dead priests car and headed north. Drove up to Florence, caught a train to Paris, started over again.”
When Spike finished speaking he seemed to slump even deeper into his chair. His head bent forward until his chin came to rest against his upper chest. He sat like that for a full minute or more, not moving. Giles, fearing that Spike was falling to sleep, raised his voice and spoke sharply. “Spike. What happened next?”
Spikes head snapped up. He looked over at Giles as if he was trying to remember where he was and what he was doing. An uncontrollable yawn stretched his mouth open wide and his eyes squeezed shut. Shacking his head with a quick vigorous snap he tried to wake himself up. Mumbling to himself, but loud enough that Giles could hear him, “Bloody hell, sun must be coming up, need some sleep.”
Prodding Spike to wake him up, Giles said in a condescending voice “Poor Spike, can’t hold his liquor anymore. Had a four hour nap earlier and still can’t make it through the night. Must be getting feeble in his old age.”
Spike shook his head again and straightened himself up in his chair. He glared across the table at Giles as he spoke. “Bloody pillock, drink you under the table any day or night of the week. And getting knocked out with tranqs and tasers isn’t exactly taking a nap, you wanker.”
“Be that as it may, you’ve still had more sleep than I’ve had in the past forty-eight hours. As for drinking me under the table, you’re the one falling to sleep.” To emphasize his point, Giles poured a double shot of whiskey into his glass and drank it down in one go.
Spike continued to glare at Giles as he straightened himself up in his chair and forced himself to wake up. He reached out for the bottle of scotch sitting on the table, he couldn’t remember putting it there, and half filled his glass. Setting the bottle down he picked up the glass and downed the scotch. He then picked up his cigarettes and lit one. He refilled his glass and sitting back in his chair with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other he glared across the table at Giles again.
Looking across the table at Giles, Spike could see how tired the Watcher seemed to be. He tried to figure how old Giles was, had to be at least mid forties, maybe even early fifties. Right now Spike thought that Giles looked like a worn out sixty something, but still he was pushing himself to go on, to stay awake, to pump more information out of Spike. Spike would never admit it, least of all to the Watcher, but he had always admired that about him, pushing himself on and on, beyond his natural limits, to get the job done.
Giles sat at the table trying to present himself to Spike as if he were fully in charge of all his faculties. Inside he knew that he was on the edge of passing out from both lack of sleep and to much alcohol. That last bit of bravado, taking a double shot of whiskey just to prove to Spike that he was still capable of continuing on for the rest of the night and all day long if necessary, might do him in yet. Looking across at Spike he could see how wasted he was from all that had happened this night. Granted he had no idea how long it had been since Spike had last slept, but he had drunk the better part of five quarts of whiskey. But it was the emotional toll of the night, telling his story to Giles and reliving the apparent pain it had caused him that seemed to be weighing heaviest on him. But still Spike continued to push himself on and on. Giles would never admit it, least of all to Spike, but he had always admired that about him, his ability to push himself on and on as if he had no limits.
Spike shook his head one more time to help wake up, took a drag off his cigarette and a sip of scotch. To tired to continue being angry, he asked “Alright Rupert, what do you want to know now?”
“I want to know what happened next? I can’t believe that you killed that priest, ran off to Paris, and now it’s a year later and nothing has happened.” Giles asked, his voice reflecting his own tiredness.
Spike took a sip of scotch, then a drag off his cigarette. Letting out a sigh, he started talking. “Tried to keep a lower profile in Paris, just in case, but it didn’t work out.” Letting out another long sigh, Spike took another drag off his cigarette. “There was this young girl, sort of reminded me of the Niblet. Long brown hair, gawky kind of walk, like she hadn’t grown into her body yet. Had a mouth on her too. Would hear her running off at her older sister and her friends. Would watch her from my window sometimes. Like I said, she reminded me of Dawn.”
“Anyway, there was this pimp, young, early twenties, sort of greasy, like one of those blokes in a boy-band that Dawn would have liked. The girl caught his fancy for some reason, kept trying to hit on her. Probably thought he could get her to fall in love with him and then turn tricks for him. Whatever his reasons, the girl wasn’t having any of it. Whenever he’d try to talk to her on the street she’d ignore him. Didn’t set well with the wanker, kept pushing at the girl.”
“One night I’d left my place a little later than usual, was coming up an alley and walked up on him. The girl was there too, don’t know what the bloody hell she was doing out that late, but he had her by the arm and was slapping her around. She was bleeding at the nose and mouth where he’d hit her and she was crying. I just couldn’t walk away from it, Rupert, like I said she reminded me of Dawn. I was just going to rough him up a bit, run him out of the neighborhood, threaten him into not coming back. But the pillock had a razor, and he was fast with it, slashed me across the stomach quick like. If I’d been human I’d have dumped my guts out in that alley. Before he could cut me again I’d reached out and snapped his neck, with the girl standing right there seeing it all.”
“So, I’m standing there, bleeding all over the place, the dead pimp at my feet, and the girl is looking at me with eyes the size of saucers with tears running down her face. And just you guess what happens next! Another bloody arsed priest walks around a corner and sees us standing there. The girl sees the priest an rushes into his arms, babbling the whole story out. The priest calms the girl down and takes her home. Her parents have a bloody screaming fit, half pissed as hell that she’d been out at night by herself, the other half carrying on over the girl seeing to it that she was alright. And me, I’m sitting up in my apartment, stitching up my stomach and pissed as hell that the wanker ruined a new shirt and got blood all over my pants.”
“Watcher, let me tell you that vampire or not, having your stomach cut open hurts, and having to give yourself thirty stitches to close yourself up doesn’t make it feel any better. So, between the pain and being piss off about the shirt and the blood, plus thinking about the girl and hoping she was alright, I wasn’t really thinking about the consequences, cause the soul wasn‘t giving me any trouble about what I‘d done. Next morning, just a couple of hours after I’d finally gone to sleep, there’s a banging on my door. My head was fogged up from no sleep. I pulled the door open to see who was bothering me, thinking to chew someone’s arse out for waking me up, and it’s the priest and the gendarme. So, I’m standing there with no shirt on and thirty stitch’s across my stomach and a wound that already looks half healed.”
“Do you know those French words, Rupert, élan, savoir-faire? You know, being quick witted, always knowing what to do and what to say, but with style? Well I didn’t have a clue what to do or say when I was standing there with that copper standing at my door. But that priest, he had élan and savoir-faire and a right proper line of bullshit too, more than anyone I’ve ever met before. He sees me standing there and the next thing I know he’s carrying on to that gendarme about how inconsiderate they both were for not even thinking about how I’d been injured the night before, making me get out of my sick bed to come to the door when I should be resting. Started going on how I was a hero, saving a young girls life, risking my own to do it. How unfair it would be if I should have problems with the police, when in fact I’d been doing their very duty, protecting a young innocent from the predations of a vicious criminal. Before I knew it he’s got the gendarme agreeing with him, nodding his head in sympathy, and assuring me that he will make sure that there aren’t any problems over the death of the pimp. In fact, my name won’t even have to go down on the report, because it’s not as if anyone really cares about the death of a pimp who attacked a young girl. By the time that priest got finished, Rupert, if it were possible, I’m sure I’d of been blushing like a virgin on her wedding night.”
Spike paused long enough to light up another cigarette and to take a large sip of scotch from his glass before he continued. “I should have known that wasn’t going to be the end of it. People on the street started smiling at me, saying ‘bon jour’. The priest, Father Boulard, he starts popping up, catching me on the street, wanting to walk with me, and talk. Let’s me know right away that he knows what I am, starts asking questions about my soul, how I got it, where and when? I told him what I thought was safe, didn’t go into any detail, just told him enough to convince him that I wasn’t going to be feeding on the neighbors. Not that he seemed concerned about it. Pulled something out of his pocket one night and hands it to me. Didn’t realize what it was at first, he’d handed me a silver cross. Dropped the bloody thing of course, then realized it hadn’t burned me. The priest, he picks the cross up and offers it back to me, apologizes for shocking me, starts going on about what a mirical it was, that I must be blessed by God himself.” Spike leaned forward in his chair, just enough to draw Giles full attention, then reaching up to his neck he pulled on a thin silver chain that had been hidden by his t-shirt and pulled out into the open where Giles could see it a small silver cross. “I wear this all the time now, Watcher” Spike said with a smirk on his lips. “Bloody things been blessed six ways to Sunday, doesn’t hurt a bit.”
If Spike had been expecting any kind of reaction from Giles, he was sadly disappointed. Giles barely glanced at the cross, as if a vampire wearing a cross around his neck was so common it was beneath notice. Instead his attention seemed focused on picking up a pack of cigarettes, extracting one from the pack, and lighting it. If Spike had known Giles better, he’d have known that Giles was a consummate liar when it came to showing what he was thinking or feeling on his face. Twenty-seven years as a Watcher had schooled him well in hiding his thoughts and feelings, when necessary. It was only the fact that Spike was to drunk, and to tired, to notice that Giles heartbeat had increased for several moments when he saw the cross.
Feeling slightly disappointed at the lack of reaction from Giles, Spike downed the last of the scotch in his glass and then refilled it. He lit another cigarette, then settled back in his chair again. “It was about two weeks later, after giving me the cross, there was a knock on my door. I’d been out of town for about ten days on a job and I’d got in real late, just before sunup. I’d slept the whole day and it was almost sundown when the banging on the door woke me up. When I opened the door the priest, Boulard, was standing there, with three other priests. But they weren’t just any old priest‘s, Watcher, they were from Rome, the Vatican. They come marching in, without an invite, mind you, and made themselves at home.”
Spike made a snorting sound, like someone showing disgust with the whole situation. “I tried to get rid of them of course. Told them I had business to take care of, that I needed to see my agent, let him know I was back and to get paid for the job I’d just finished, that I needed to go out to feed, that I had important things to do, people to see. Didn’t do any good of course. One of the priest from Rome opens up his briefcase and pulls out five stacks of Euros, a thousand Euros in each stack, and lays them on the table. He then pulls out two bags of blood, one human, the other was pigs blood. I picked up the pigs blood and took it into the kitchen to warm it up and drink, I hadn’t fed since the day before, so I was hungry. When I came back into the living room, the money was still there, but the human blood was missing. I didn’t know it at the time, but that blood choice I’d made was a test, the first of several.”
Spike drank off the last of the scotch in his glass and started to refill it, only to find out that there was barely half a glass of scotch left. Lighting up another cigarette, he sat back in his chair again. “Now, Watcher, this is where your going to pull out a stack of bibles and swear on them that I’m lieing to you. These priest from the Vatican, they tell me they are willing to pay me a thousand Euros a day, just to talk to me. When they start talking, seems they know more about me and my soul than I do. They know about me showing up in Egypt, about going to Greece and about the sorcerer. They know I killed him, and about the knife. They told me that the knife was hidden now, where no one, human or demon would ever be able to find it or touch it again. They know about my travel through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, all the way to Rome. They know more about what I did and where I went than even I can remember. One of them even went to Greece and talked to the priest in that village. He told them about the icon and what happened to it, how it broke the sorcerers spell, saved my unlife, how it changed, everything. They know about my hunting vampires and demons, for pay. Running off the bad elements, human and demon, in the neighborhood where I was living in Rome. And they knew about the priest I’d killed.”
Spike downed the last of the scotch in his glass, then sat there looking at the empty glass. Giles pushed the bottle of bourbon sitting in front of him across the table toward Spike. There wasn’t much left in the bottle, but hopefully there would be enough to satisfy him until he finished his story. Spike leaned over the table, grabbed up the bottle and poured the bourbon into his glass, about two thirds full. Lighting up another cigarette, Spike sat back in his chair again and started talking once more.
“Being a Watcher and part of the Council, I’m not real surprised that you heard about that priest I killed. But, did you ever wonder why a story like that never made it into the newspapers. You know the Italian newspapers, they love scandals and gory stories. Can’t get much more scandalous or gory than a priest with his throat ripped out and messages written in blood on the walls. It seems the Vatican put the squash on it. Covered it up, real tight, even erased all the reports from the police files too. That priest, he was a bad one, real bad. I didn’t know it, but in an upstairs room there were six little coffins. Five of them had the dried out bodies of little girls that he’d already killed in them. The sixth one was for the girl I rescued. Apparently he’d been killing little girls for years an had never been caught. But the Church couldn’t let it get out that a priest had been doing the kidnapping and murders of little girls, so the covered the whole thing up and made the story and police reports just disappear, like they’d never happened.”
“You know, Rupert, I never really understood why they told me all that, they didn’t really have to tell me everything, I’d of never known the difference. Only thing I could ever think of was that they wanted me to trust them. They did say that for the public to know the truth of what happened, the priest killing those little girls, not me killing him, that the truth would have hurt more people than it was worth. I’m not sure I understand that way of thinking, but I didn’t argue with them about it.”
Spike took a small sip of the whiskey before continuing. “To make a long story shorter, the priests from the Vatican talked to me for five days. They had all kinds of things to say to me. Told me that my getting my soul was some kind of miracle that had been foretold in some bloody prophecy a couple thousand or more years old. That I was some kind of ‘avenging angel’ sent to bring justice against the wicked. That I was the ‘protector of the innocent’, children specifically. That what I’d written on that wall in Rome about the ‘Blood of the Lamb’ and the ‘Hand of the Angel of Death’, was confirmation of it. Bloody hell, Watcher, what I wrote on that wall was the souls doing, not mine. None of that shit they were spouting made a lot of sense to me. I was born and raised an Anglican, hadn’t been to a service in over a hundred and twenty years, since before I was turned. To the best of my knowledge, soul or no soul, I’m still bound for hell when I meet my end. Redemption and salvation isn‘t something I ever expect to find.”
Spike lit up another cigarette, then drank off half of the whiskey in his glass. Setting the glass down, he used that hand to rub his face. When he looked up at Giles his eyes were red and his face showed how tired he really felt. “But the thing of it is, Watcher, the soul was eating up what they were saying like it was candy or something. What is it that wanker Harris use to say …? Oh, yeah. My soul was ‘doing a happy dance’ inside my head, making me feel all warm and righteous like.”
Drinking half of the whiskey left in his glass, Spike started talking again, his voice low and clearly showing how tired he was feeling. Reaching into his coat pocket, Spike pulled out the rosary that he’d shown Giles earlier. He tossed it up on the table where Giles could easily reach it. “That’s when they gave me this. As far as I know the rosary is just a rosary, but look at the four medals on it. One is the Seal of the Archbishop of Athens, the one under it is the Seal of the Patriarch of Constantinople. On the other side, the top one is the Seal of the Bishop of Rome, that’s the Pope, in case you didn’t know. They had to tell me what it was. The last one is one of the special Seals of the Office of the Holy Inquisition. A specific office that was suppose to have been discontinued nearly two hundred years ago. Apparently the only thing discontinued about it is the public knowledge that it still exists. All four of those medals and the rosary have been blessed repeatedly. If you took that thing and held it against a normal vampire, he’d probably burst into flames immediately. But me, nothing happens.”
Spike brought the glass of whiskey to his lips and emptied the glass, then set it down on the table. He picked up his pack of cigarettes and took the last one out, then lit it. With his eyes closed, he started talking. “So they spend five days telling me all this shit, give me the rosary, pack up and leave town. I should have known that wasn’t the end of it. Three times since then, one of those priest has come to me, telling me about some ‘sin against the lambs’ and how they need ‘retribution’. The priest never tells me what to do, or that I have to do anything at all. But after he’s gone, the soul starts in on me, won’t leave me be until I go do something about it.”
“Three time they’ve come to me in the past eight months. Once I went to Spain and killed a warlock that was using young children to make blood sacrifices to gain dark powers. Nearly got myself killed doing that one. Took me over a week to heal up. Went up to Switzerland and killed a banker, he was offering his infant son for sale to a demon to pay off his debts. Saved the boy, killed the demon too. Thought it was a good idea, in case it got the idea to buy a kid from someone else. Last time I went out, went down to Cannes. Some half Arab shit was grabbing up young girls in the ports along the Riviera , eleven and twelve year olds. Taking them to Cannes where another shit was making child porn films with them, then taking them back across the Mediterranean and selling them to brothels in Sudan. Had them out on a freighter in the harbor. I boarded the ship after dark and killed everyone on board, eight of them, seven men and one woman. Loaded the five girls that were aboard onto a launch, set the boat on fire and left it to sink. Took the girls back to land and made sure that they all got back to their homes. Found a lot of cash on that boat and split it up amongst the girls for them and their families, least I could do for them. And just so you know, Watcher, the bloody soul was happy to have me kill everyone of those bloody fucks.”
“Do you get that, Watcher. The same soul that tormented me for killing to many sheep in Greece to feed off when I was starving, didn’t raise a qualm about the ten humans I’ve killed in the past eight months, or the three before them either. That priest in Paris, Father Boulard, tells me I’m fulfilling ‘God’s wishes’ and blesses me for doing it. Those priest from Rome come to me and tell me about the ‘innocent lambs’, but don’t do anything about the lambs themselves. And the soul makes me feel happy every time I kill one of those bloody fucks, but torments me if I even think about killing some worthless get who’s selling drugs or robbing shopkeepers. Oh, it let’s me knock them about, run them off and such, but it won’t let me kill them. Explain that to me, Watcher. Why is it alright to kill some bloody bastard that’s harming children, but it’s not alright to kill someone that’s selling drugs to their parents or robbing them?”
The anger, and frustration, that Spike was feeling was very apparent. As he sat there finishing his cigarette, the hand holding the cigarette was shaking slightly, while the other hand was fisted up tightly. It was only due to his level of intoxication and how tired he was that Spike was letting his emotions show so openly to Giles.
“So, that’s it, Watcher, that’s the story. I got a soul so I wouldn’t be a soulless monster anymore. Now I’m a monster with a soul. A soul that ‘wants’ me to kill, as long as the humans I kill are harming children. I’ve got half of the Christian faith, the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, telling me I’m the ‘wrath of god’, the ‘avenging hand of the angel of death’, that I’m some kind of ‘avenging angel’ sent to exact ‘retribution’ from the sinners. So tell me, Rupert, what am I? Angel of God, or a monster with a soul, looking for a loophole just so I can kill? Am I a ‘righteous killer’ or still just a monster?”
Giles sat in his chair looking across the table at Spike for a full minute or more before speaking. As he studied Spikes face and body posture he was certain that he was reading true remorse and anguish. As much as Giles disliked Angel, loathe would be a mild expression of his feelings, he had admitted long ago that Angel was truly capable of anguish, guilt and remorse over his past soulless actions. Seeing Spike across the table from him, Giles felt almost compelled to tender the same acceptance of feelings in him. But, Spike seeking out a soul voluntarily, fulfilling a prophecy, acting as an agent of God? To much information to digest all at once. He needed time to think.
When Giles did speak, although his own exhaustion was evident in his voice, there was also a note of compassion. “At this very moment Spike, I can’t tell you what I truly feel. I need time to think about it. I need to check some facts, call the Council Archives to see if they can find out anything about this prophecy, make arrangements for our flight to London tonight, a dozen other things, plus getting some sleep. If I decide your lying to me, I’ll have you killed. If I decide your telling me the truth, but would still be a danger to Buffy at some time, I’ll have you killed. But, if I decide that your telling me the truth and that you could be of help to Buffy, I’ll let you continue to live.”
Spike looked Giles in the eyes and could see that he’d meant exactly what he’d said. That Spikes future existence depended totally on whatever decision he made during the hours to come. But at this time, this very moment, Spike was to tired to care. With a tired smirk on his lips, Spike said “That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you, Rupert, you’re a pragmatist. If I can be useful to you, you’ll let me live. If I can’t, you’ll dust me. Must be part of that Ripper personality that comes out every once in awhile. Convenient that, being a cold blooded murderer when necessary. Pretending your not the rest of the time.”
When Giles responded, there wasn’t a trace of acrimony in his voice. “Yes, quite convenient, when necessary.”
Spike pushed himself up onto his own feet and started collecting his personal belongings from the far side of the table where they had been sitting all evening, stuffing them in his pockets. “When are you going to tell me what the favor was that Buffy wanted from me” Spike asked at last.
Giles, using both hands on the table pushed himself up and onto his feet before answering. “I’ll tell you tonight, after I’ve made my decision. But right now, I’m going to have Jennings bring you some blood, and set up a bed for you. If I decide not to kill you, and you decide to help Buffy, were both going to need some rest.”
****
(10/05)
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