Chapter 22 – Naked And Miserable And Humiliated



The Watcher’s Journal of Sir Arthur Gosnard-Tisklin.

London, Crepuscule Place, February 22, 1901 - I granted the Slayer the evening off as a respite from her successful exertions over the past three nights in clearing the vampire nest in Kensal Green Cemetery. She accepted gratefully, with an unseemly, but not altogether unwelcome, display of affection. In fact, she kissed my face and tweaked the end of my mustache. Cheeky girl. To my surprise, she decided to spend a quiet evening at home with her sisters.

After dinner and the requisite port and cigar with Earl M, I determined to take a turn in the garden before retiring. As I strolled past the Carrera marble fountain of angels that bubbled in the courtyard, I heard whispering voices. Who might be in the garden at this hour?

I chose a little-used gravel path and headed in the direction of the voices.

To my horror, I found my Slayer. She was not alone or in the company of one of her sisters or even her repulsive lady’s companion, Miss Prism, but was sitting on a stone bench in a shadowed part of the garden speaking to a man. The man embraced her. I approached quickly to end the assignation before Lady Vicky’s reputation should be irredeemably ruined.

“Lady Chesler, come away immediately. What would your father say?” I said.

The gentleman, if he can be considered such under the circumstances, got to his feet and confronted me. “You are interrupting our conversation, Sir.”

It was Lord Teansdale, no, worse, it was the lord’s walking corpse. His face, pale and emaciated from the rigors of death, furrowed into the face of a Fiend. The many reservations I had concerning the human Lord Teansdale were swallowed whole by the terror that now confronted me. He had become – a Vampire.

After a moment, I recollected myself and the danger confronting my Slayer. My concern for her reputation, previously my foremost consideration, was subsumed by the danger of her association with this ghastly creature.

“You forget yourself, Vampire,” I said, “Lady Chesler is the Slayer. It is her sworn duty to exterminate you and every one of your kind. Flee now while you still may.”

The brute laughed at me, shook his head to resume his human visage and, drawing Lady Vicky to her feet, kissed her boldly on the lips. “Soon, my love,” he said before vanishing into the darkness.

***


Parker stumbled after his two Sires in the dark. The vampires broke into the deserted Psi Theta fraternity house and shoved him inside.

Sunday lit a candle stump with her cigarette lighter. After Buffy drove a stake through Sunday’s heart, her remaining minions abandoned the house. Rain had driven through the busted panes of the skylight and soaked the broken down furniture and piles of clothing and junk. Mold grew on every surface and cobwebs swagged the ceiling.

“We’re staying here, Fledge,” Sunday said. “Got to keep you safe from Buffy. Wouldn’t want our Childe to get dusted so soon, even if you are the most pathetic vampire in history.” She flung an armload of stolen clothes from their raid on Stevenson Hall on the floor.

“Buffy?” Parker said. “Why do I have to keep away from Buffy?”

“Duh,” Rosamund said. “Buffy is the Vampire Slayer. The one girl in all the world, chosen to stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. When she sniffs you out, Fledge, she’s going to kick your ass up Main Street and shove a hard pointy stake in your heart. Then, Poof! No more Parker.”

Buffy was a vampire slayer? Or, rather, The Vampire Slayer? Was there only one? Why? And, she’d seemed so soft and dainty. He’d barely had time to get used to the idea of being a vampire himself, and now he had to deal with the thought of Buffy being – what was it the Moron Twins said? The one girl in all the world, chosen to stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. What a bunch of bunk.

“She won’t hurt me. Buffy likes me. I boned her a couple of weeks ago and she was all clingy and needy.”

Rosamund and Sunday roared with laughter. They stripped off their clothes and beckoned him to join them in bed. A few minutes later, his twin Sires kicked him out of bed. After awhile, they allowed him to come crawling back on his knees to give them oral sex, then tossed him out again.

He sat, naked and miserable and humiliated, on the bedroom floor and held a pocket mirror in front of his face. He practiced switching back and forth between his vamp and human faces. Not that he could see his face.

“Being a vampire gnaws the big one,” he said. How was he going to manage without being able to look at himself in a mirror? How could he practice his Babe Hook Up lines? How could he achieve the Tousled But Manly Hair Look that brought babes to their knees? He could look like a complete geek and would never even know.

This was the worst night of his life.

“Go out and steal some more champagne, Slave,” Rosamund said. “And, while you’re out bring us back a couple of girls to drink. Sunny and I are thirsty.”

“You just ate that girl from the dorm, and I’m not your slave. I’m a Vampire. I’m Evil. I don’t have to do anything you say.”

Rosamund got up from the bed where she’d been reclining while watching Sunday hold up various items of clothing they’d stolen earlier from the Slayer’s dorm building. College girls were so stupid. They’d let anybody in their rooms. Also, the bitches had no taste in clothes.

She sauntered over to where Parker was moping on the floor and smacked him on the head to remind him that he was talking to his Sires.

Sunday tossed a pink floral rayon dress on the floor. “Don’t worry, Tiny, we won’t throw you to the Slayer just because your dick is the size of a peanut. Oh, I forgot. The Slayer already knows that.”

“Fuck off,” Parker said.

“Oh, Baby. We’re not going to sulk are we? Just because of the little disappointment we had when we got turned? Hmmm?” Sunday said.

“I thought for sure you were going to get Super Sized when we turned you,” Rosamund said. “Otherwise, we would have just killed you.”

“Super Sized, like Spike,” Sunday said. She sighed.

“It’s hard to believe that Spike was hung like that when he was human. Guess he’s just a natural talent. Not like Itsy Bitsy, here.” Rosamund held up a pair of brown Birkenstocks. She made a face and dropped them on the discard heap. “Scary.”

“Spike’s a vampire?” No wonder Buffy’s husband had been so frightening. How did Spike’s being a vampire work out with Buffy being the Vampire Slayer? Weren’t they both afraid to go to sleep in the same room?

“Why couldn’t we be fucking Spike tonight?” Sunday asked. “Why’s that bitch Slayer get all the luck?” Sunday resumed rooting through the dead freshman girl’s clothing.

“Whores,” Parker said. He threw down the mirror, which shattered on the floor. What did it matter? He was stuck with these two vampire slags. How much worse could his luck get?

“Time somebody learned to speak nicely to his Sires, don’t you think, Rosie?” Sunday said. She picked through the junk and found a chartreuse faux alligator skin belt with a pointy, star-shaped silver buckle. She held it up for her sister’s approval. “How about this?”

Rosamund changed into her vamp face and hauled Parker off the floor by his ear. “How about this?”

After the two took turns walloping, punching and biting their offending Childe, they pushed him out the door, naked, to go look for booze and blood. After some negotiation and pitiful begging on Parker’s part, they tossed him the rejected floral rayon dress. When he whined that wearing a pink dress would attract unnecessary attention, they threw him the hospital gown he’d been wearing when they rescued him from the morgue. He put the open part to the back after he decided it would be the least embarrassing.

“Hurry along, Dinky,” Sunday said. “We’ll let you practice your oral sex skills some more when you get back.”

Parker slunk through the alley behind the frat house. He was in no hurry to come back. Being the sex slave of his Twin Sires was not at all satisfying. Once they’d discovered his dick hadn’t received any benefit from his transformation, they’d refused to let him have any sex with them that didn’t involve him being on his knees.

Now, they wanted him to steal some booze and capture a victim. He was not a good thief. Last night, they’d sent him into a liquor store to steal some booze and he’d gotten shot by the owner.

That was when he first understood how much he’d changed. He got shot and he didn’t die. Getting shot hurt, even if you were a vampire. It had been mildly cool watching his flesh grow back together and spit the bullet out.

As to catching a victim, impossible. As they left the liquor store, he’d spotted Katie Loomis. He’d banged Katie after he’d given Buffy a jump, so he figured Katie would still be in the All-Upset-I-Got-Dumped Stage, which all his conquests went through. She’d be vulnerable. The Twins said she’d be an easy kill. Perfect for his first time.

Instead, Katie popped him in the nose with her hand, shoved her elbow in his gut and slammed her high-heeled shoe on his instep. She’d kicked him in the nuts. While he was reeling in pain, his Sires, who were supposed to be teaching him the ropes, fell on the ground laughing and let Katie escape.

He was a complete failure as a vampire. He’d never failed at anything important before and it was unnerving.

Parker trudged to the Kwik LiQ All You Can Drink, which was the nearest liquor store, next nearest actually, after Hank’s Campus Liquor Emporium where he’d made a fool of himself earlier. He went inside, waited for another customer to leave, then pulled his vamp face and snarled at the clerk. He was pretty good at snarling, not that good snarling was much consolation. He glanced at the clerk’s name tag.

“Jathon, giveth me thampagne. Th gooth thuff.” His fangs cut into his lower lip and the bulge in his forehead made his eyes cross, too. He hoped Jason wouldn’t screw with him. Parker had no idea what was good champagne. He never drank the shit.

Jason had seen his share of vampires, so he wasn’t surprised when Parker’s face changed. It was the first time he’d seen a vampire wearing a hospital gown with his butt hanging out the back. There was a loaded shotgun under the counter, but his boss wasn’t paying him nearly enough to fight off monsters, so Jason put a bottle of champagne in a paper bag and shoved in a pink advertising flyer that the boss said to hand out to all the customers.

After his success at the liquor store, Parker felt better, so he swung by Frostles’ Pub to see if he could catch a victim to bring back to the Twins. When he arrived, a completely plastered girl staggered out of the front door alone and Parker approached her in human face with his best, most sincere smile. She was so drunk, she didn’t even notice that he was wearing a hospital gown.

“Hi. I’m Parker. It's not real safe here, so if you want to walk back to your dorm, I could make sure you get where you’re going.”

The girl agreed, mostly to have something upright to lean against, and allowed Parker to put his arm around her.

Parker sneaked his fingers up onto the girl’s breast and pinched her nipple. Maybe this vampire thing wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

***

The golden moon was creeping up the eastern horizon when three men parked their van down the street from the mansion and silently dropped out the back door. They’d shot out the nearby street lights earlier in the day and now slunk into the deep shadows of the bushes surrounding the house.

Martin Collins, Special Agent, Watcher’s Council, crawled under a thick cover of vines and peeked into the mansion’s bedroom window. The windows were curtained, but a thin break in the fabric panels allowed him to see in. He didn’t much like what he saw.

“Take a look, Weatherby. Is that her?”

The second man strained to look through the gap in the curtains. He saw a trim – and naked - girl with wet, blonde hair was walking back and forth in the room, rubbing herself with a dark, red towel. He dropped back to the ground. “Yeah, I think it’s her. She was a brunette the last time I saw her. Crazy as a loon, too. Kept saying she was the other Slayer or the other Slayer was her or their bodies got mixed up or some crap like that. These Slayers all have a bolt loose. Council should have taken them both out and started over.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Agent Payne, the third man.

“We wait.”

“For what?”

Collins adjusted his crossbow and fitted a quarrel into its notch. Payne could be a bloody nuisance. Git thought he was sodding Rambo. “For the word from Travers. If they leave, we follow.”

“Screw waiting,” Payne said. “I hate stake outs. Let’s go in and take them out now.”

“Go ahead. You know who the boyfriend is? William the Bloody.”

“Holy shit. Guess we wait.”


***

Spike tapped out his favorite Ramones’ song on the mattress and watched Buffy prancing around the room. His attempt to trick her into accepting the claim had bombed and after midnight she was going to leave him. She hadn’t even thanked him for that bleeding towel he’d nicked for her at the Wal-Mart. He’d have to fall back on his best power of persuasion. He tried sending her a love wave over the claim, but she blocked him.

“Still got a few hours, kitten. Come back to bed.”

Buffy hung her towel up and put on a silky, red top, some black leather pants and matching black leather jacket with a cute band collar and ignored Spike. She pulled her weapons bag from under Spike’s bed where she’d stored it since she moved in. She checked through the contents and held up a mini power crossbow that Giles bought her for her last birthday. “Ever use one of these? Giles got it for me. I haven’t tested it in the field.”

She aimed the crossbow at Spike.