Many thanks to Always_jbj for being my beta while slaymesoftly is out of town.





Chapter Forty





California
Autumn, 1997




In killing Xin Rong, he lost something…something that had always made him special, something separate from his life as a vampire. The soft spot in his heart—kept deeply and carefully preserved for so long—became as hard and brittle as the rest of him. The slayer killer. There was no room in him for tenderness, now. The part of him where he had once cradled her was a raw place that slowly healed, and as it did, it became so imbedded in its protective callus that even he ceased to find it.

When he drove into the small California town of Sunnydale, ninety-seven years after leaving China, there was very little resemblance between his current undead identity, and the mortal man he had once been. The injury Xin Rong had given him with her sword had taken years to fully heal, and it had left a permanent and very vivid scar across his left eyebrow. His cheeks had hollowed even more since then, bringing his cheekbones into high relief and giving his face a predatory, almost hungry look. A bottle of peroxide and Drusilla’s hampering assistance had achieved what might have been considered the most radical—if reversible—physical change, and for the past twenty years, his hair had been kept bleached to near-whiteness. Gone, too, were the messy curls. Dru kept his hair trimmed short—most especially so in the back—and he painstakingly slicked it with styling gel. Unable to consult a mirror, he could only guess what the results of all this effort were by the reactions he received from others. And the reactions—especially women’s reactions—were overwhelmingly positive.

Beyond all the physical differences, however, there was also the change to his attitude. As the years passed, he had become cocky almost to the point of recklessness, and far more cunning in spite of it. Experience had made him cynical; disappointment had made him suspicious. The blue eyes that had once been so open, so willing to bleed out his every emotion for Elizabeth to see, were closed. Hard. Full of wry amusement.

Evil.

He had the deaths of two slayers to his credit now, and the Watchers’ Council kept a dossier on him that was three inches thick. Yet in not one of those hundreds of single-spaced, neatly typed pages was there an accurate summary of his human life, or of the journey that had taken him from there to here. They only knew him as William the Bloody, the vampire who tortured London’s elite in the early 1880s. As Spike, one of the scourges of Europe, a slayer of slayers, a creature feared even in demonic circles. As a lone wolf of his kind, who shunned the company of any other vampire but Drusilla. There was nothing in that record to suggest the real William the Bloody—the first one—besides a single photograph, printed on wrinkled newspaper, which resembled him in only the most superficial way. He was glad of that. He liked having no past.

Now, peering over the steering wheel of his black De Soto, his eyes narrowed as a wooden sign loomed up in front of him. It read:



WELCOME TO SUNNYDALE
Pop. 38,500
Have a nice stay!



“You have got to be bloody kidding me,” he muttered, and jammed the sole of his Doc Martin onto the accelerator. Roaring like an enormous steel lion, the car hurtled forward into the sign, splintering the posts and flattening the boards as easily as he could have crushed a cigarette beneath his heel.

And speaking of cigarettes…

Spike slammed on the brakes, intentionally allowing the front wheel to bounce up on the curb as he pulled the car off the road. The driver’s side door could stick sometimes, and he opened it by first slamming it with his shoulder and then wriggling the handle—a technique perfected over the years until it had become almost graceful. Dru was asleep in the backseat, oblivious to him when he stepped out onto the pavement, his booted feet spread wide apart as he looked around, surveying the area.

All along the quiet street were squares of neat, short-clipped grass, boxy houses with fresh paint and picket fences; shiny, late-model SUVs were parked in every driveway. Everything was in muted colors; everything was understated; everything matched. The place screamed Ozzie and Harriet: the best of white bread America. A refuge for the Caucasian cuffs-and-collars crowd.

In other words, disgusting.

Spike wrinkled his nose at the sight. Thirty-eight thousand people. Were they kidding? He could go through that number in just a few years’ time. Just a couple of days would work, actually, if he were feeling particularly ambitious. The marriage of kerosene and a match would make for some rapid changes, and it looked like with this town, it could only be an improvement.

Nevertheless, he fought down the temptation to wreak utter havoc. Right now, there were more important matters to consider. Not the least of which being the reason for his arrival here in the first place.

The Slayer.

He was eager to meet this new one. He had first learned about her while he was in Prague. The buzz on the streets was that the girl had been called at the tender age of fifteen and that she was, by far, the most talented slayer anyone had ever seen. He had been impatient to meet her and would have left for America immediately, had Drusilla not been tortured by that goddamn child-loving Czech mob, leaving her too weak to travel.

When word came that the Slayer had killed the Master on the Hellmouth, however, he could wait no longer, not even for Dru. He made her as comfortable as he could for the journey and hoped for the best; and she had faired tolerably well. At any rate, he was fairly certain that being in this sleepy little haven would allow her the time she needed to heal. If not…

Well, he had heard of other ways.

For now, all of that was at the very back of his mind. It was the all-consuming desire for the Slayer that held him in thrall. He knew virtually nothing about her, save for the other vampires’ horror stories of her strength and skill. But she had killed the Master and that was enough. Talent like that didn’t come along every day, and if he conquered her…well, the mere thought of it gave him a little shiver of delight. He looked out upon the town now, a slight smirk on his demon’s face as he lit a cigarette.

“Home sweet home,” he murmured, and laughed to himself.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




He’d heard tales that the Anointed One was hanging around the Hellmouth, as well as the Slayer, and his interests had been aroused. Generally, he avoided the company of other vampires; but like the Master, the Anointed One was one of those mystical creatures of prophecy and awe. He was feared and even worshiped by his kind. He was famous.

Well, he was worshiped by most of his kind, that is. It took a lot more than a prepubescent boy in a black turtleneck to command Spike’s attention or his respect. Still, he was curious. And it was his curiosity and the need for a home that prompted him to seek out the boy. The abandoned factory hideout must have been the worst kept secret in all of Sunnydale, and the only wonder was that the Slayer hadn’t raided it long ago, and staked all the idiots within. But it was comfortable, for the most part, and aside from having to feign some sort of religious reverence for the child (which, given his natural state of faithlessness and evil, felt very odd), it was not a wholly unpleasant place to call home.

He could tell that the other vampires despised him from the moment he came striding in the door that first night. The cocky braggart clad in the coat of a dead slayer. They wanted to get rid of him, but he was well known and almost as intimidating to them as the Anointed One, although few of the boy’s lackeys would admit to that. Yet when their leader looked favorably upon the newcomer, and told him to kill the Slayer, they were duly impressed, and held their peace in spite of an immediate and intense sense of dislike for him.

Spike disliked the group, as well, and he was far from happy when the sharp-toothed little Messiah insisted that he take one of the henchmen along for his hunt. Spike preferred to travel alone, unencumbered by the idiocy that seemed prevalent among the rest of his kind. And the Slayer was something special, her death something intimate, not to be shared with the likes of these witless drones. However, he wasn’t looking for a fight with the group, not just yet, so he allowed the order to pass without dispute. And just after sunset the following night, he and a particularly obtuse vampire named Conrad hit the streets in search of her.

If Spike had one especially keen talent, it was his ability to delve into the minds of others. The Slayer (he learned from the lackeys that her name was Buffy Summers, which he interpreted to be a massive kick in the nuts by Fate) was only sixteen years old, and when he asked himself what a girl of sixteen would be doing, midweek, in a town that had very limited entertainment options, the answer came quite easily. There was only a single, pathetic club within a fifty-mile radius of the place, and he figured that unless she was ugly or socially inept, then that was where he would find her.

Before he could approach her, however, he would have to get rid of Conrad.

It wasn’t as hard as he had feared it might be. A simple suggestion that the other vampire grab a bite of dinner sufficed, and Spike heaved a small sigh of satisfaction as he continued into the club on his own.

Even without a decent physical description to go by, he knew the Slayer immediately. It was in the way she moved: supple and easy. She danced with so much grace that she made the rest of the clubbers look like lumbering cattle by comparison. He saw her, at first, from the back. Her arms raised above her head and her body swaying gently to the beat of the music. She was short and slender, but her limbs were slightly rounded, as if she had only just recently shed her baby fat. Her hair was straight and didn’t quite touch her shoulders, and he sneered a little when he saw that it was blond, streaked with a not-particularly-attractive shade of platinum.

Nevertheless, he had to admit it…she had a damn fine little arse. Pert, like.

With the easy refinement of a practiced stalker, he slid around the room in a wide half-circle, instinctively dodging the other dancers without even looking at them. His eyes were trained on her—her body, her movements…the face that was just becoming visible as he angled around to the front of her. Her face was—

Jesus God.

Her face.

Stunned and disoriented by what he saw, Spike almost crashed into a pockmarked teenager with bad teeth, who was moving past him carrying some drinks. The kid veered to the side, attempting to move past him and succeeding only in blocking his view. The vampire roughly shoved him aside and then stood completely motionless, his eyes outwardly blank but his dead heart burning as he watched her…Buffy Summers. The Slayer.

Elizabeth…

The stab of longing that followed was a forgotten sensation. It had been so long since he had thought of her in his waking hours. That had been achieved through much hard work and determination. But now, staring at the ghost of her features on this young girl, he felt a frisson of shock, of intense déjà vu. He felt, for a moment, as if he were staring directly into the face of his dead love. His only love.

Quickly, he shook off the feeling. Idiotic was what he was, even to consider the notion. Certainly, this girl bore a resemblance to Elizabeth. Mostly in her coloring and the shape of her face. But her hair was straight and her cheekbones not so prominent; her body was considerably more curved. Her eyes were what had thrown him. Light green—even in the sickly red strobe lights of the club—they were big and soft, the corners slightly turned down, giving her face a vulnerable, wistful expression. It was the eyes that accounted for his surprise, he told himself. Nothing more. For Elizabeth had been far more beautiful than this creature could ever hope to be.

But his mind stubbornly refused to accept the coincidence. And Elizabeth had lived in California, before she traveled to London to become his. She had never mentioned siblings; but of course, there would be cousins and other relatives. The surname was right. Who was to say? Perhaps this girl was some distant descendent.

His jaw tightened at the thought. Relatives who had outlived her…women who had borne children to their spouses and raised those children to bear yet more. All while his sweetheart lay rotting in some unknown pit. The old feelings of rage rose up in him, and he felt a renewed and even more intense determination to kill her. The Slayer had no right to look like her, and he resolved that she should be punished for it.

Rudely, he pushed his way through the crowd to the bar. By now, Buffy Summers had stopped dancing and was standing between two empty stools, waiting impatiently to order a drink. Spike wedged himself in beside her and called to the harried barkeeper in an urgent tone.

“Where’s the phone? I need to call the police. There’s some big guy out there trying to bite somebody! ”

The Slayer was gone in a flash, and with a dismissive shrug, Spike brushed away the telephone offered to him by the bartender. He ambled after the girl, taking his time. There was a pain in his stomach, and he told himself that it was just anticipation. But when he listened to her quip with Conrad a few minutes later, something in it seemed achingly familiar. And for the first time in over a hundred years, his heart felt almost wholly vulnerable. If she had turned at just that moment, and noticed him standing there, then it was possible that the pattern of the next three years would have been irrevocably altered.

Then, his eyes narrowed with the sudden realization of what he was doing, and he steeled himself for the confrontation.

Because, clearly, the bitch had to die.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~






To be continued in Part III