Something Gray chapter 5/26

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Chapter 5

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Spike woke to a white world of pain. The last memory he had was watching that bitch of a Slayer take down a vamp. His head felt like there was a small man with a pickaxe in the back of his skull trying to dig out. He seemed to be in a cage with one glass wall and nothing but sterile medical white for the rest. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in at least a month and just as his stomach growled in complaint, a packet of lovely red dinner dropped from the sky.

“Don’t drink it! It’s drugged,” came a voice from somewhere to Spike’s left as he faced the glass wall.

In a few shared sentences, Spike learned he was a captive being used as a lab rat and that starvation looked to be on the schedule if he didn’t want all sorts of nasties to be done to him. This just would not do at all. No Master Vampire was going to go out like a Rhesus monkey or guinea pig!

~*~

A simple thing to trick keepers when they underestimate your intelligence! Fake a drugged feeding and escape when the pillocks come to take you to Dr. Mengele’s Operating Theater for the Heartbeat Challenged. Having another vamp along to throw to the wolves when needed was a plus.

The only real problem came when Spike popped his head out into the open air only to discover it was still daylight. After a quick dash to the trees nearby and much cursing from the hungry, smoking vampire, Spike was feeling more like himself again. He headed for the caves where he and Harmony had nested before he’d thrown her out. With any luck, the bubble brain would be halfway to bloody Paris by now and he’d have a place to hide out until he could track down the Slayer and get some serious payback.

~*~

“I know, I know, I should have danced with Riley last night. A dance isn’t like dating or anything. I still had a good time. Why are you all ‘go, Riley’ all of a sudden, Will? I thought we decided that whole idea was one big ewwwwww?” Buffy and Willow were going over their memories of the party at the Lowell house the night before.

“I’m not really. He did stop by and ask about you though. You know, ‘what’s Buffy really like’, that kind of thing. I told him you like cheese,” Willow admitted.

“That’s why he had that lame pick-up line! I thought he was just stupid.” Buffy smiled. “You holdin’ up okay, Will? I wish I could say something that would help with the whole Oz thing. At least he got rid of Veruca so I didn’t have to. He’ll be back, Willow. He loves you.”

“I know he does. Just like Angel loves you. And, just like Angel, Oz left for my own good. Stupid men!” Willow looked ready to cry again, much to Buffy’s alarm.

“Chocolate! Lots and lots of chocolate for you, young lady. We’ll fill you so full of Godiva you won’t even remember why you were craving the yummy goodness that is chocolate.” Buffy tugged on Willow’s arm and headed for the door.

“Men are such stupid… um… stupids. All ‘it’s for your own good, honey. It’s all for you, baby.’ Then they leave. Like that’s gonna help anything! Put a guy on a white horse and all he does is ride off into the sunset on it!” Willow muttered to Buffy’s full agreement.

The two preoccupied girls nearly crashed into the angry, black-clad vampire as they rounded the corner of the hallway. “Spike! What the hell are you doing here?” Buffy reached into her jacket for a stake only to come up empty-handed.

“Slayer! Thought you’d seen the last of me, didn’t you?” Spike spat. “Ha! The Big Bad is back and mad as hell. What’re you goin’ on about with the secret lab? Honest stakin’ beneath you now? The whole ‘One Girl in Each Generation’ gig get to be more than you can handle?”

Buffy looked at the clearly irate vampire in confusion. “Did you finally lose all your marbles like that old girlfriend of yours, Spike? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t leave right now, I won’t even bother with a stake…I’ll just rip your head off and leave your dust for campus maintenance to vacuum up.” Buffy hoped the bluff would disguise her weaponless state from her powerful foe. “I’ll give you a one-time pass because you’re clearly not in your right mind, what with the raving and boinking Harmony and all. Now move it, before I change my mind!”

“Don’t think so, ducks. Got a headache here says you owe me a tussle.” With that, Spike lunged at Buffy, only to fall to the ground screaming while he clutched his head.

Buffy used the opportunity to grab Willow’s arm and run from the hallway back to their dorm room. Spike would need an invite to get in there and she had plenty of stakes in the kit under her bed.

“Not playin’, Slayer. I’m done with tapdancin’ around you. Next time we meet up, I’m plannin’ a Buffy buffet of all I can drink. You’d best watch over your shoulder, pet.” Spike got to his feet, hit the dorm room door with his fist, then swirled around, a blur of black, and headed out of the dorm.

“What was that all about?” Willow was terrified and confused at the same time. “I mean, why was Spike all ‘aghhhhhhhh’ and writhing on the floor? Why’s he so mad at you, for that matter? I know you guys are all mortal enemies and all that, but usually he’s not actually mad.”

“I have no clue. He was really weird, huh? Yeah, we’re always talking about killing each other and then usually just fight to a draw. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this mad at me though. Maybe he really has gone crazy. We’d better warn Giles.” Buffy loaded up on stakes, just in case, and they headed out once more after making sure Spike was really gone.

~*~

“Bloody slayer, actin’ all innocent! Bitch had to be behind this. Can’t even kill a soddin’ wimp like that…,” Spike grumbled as he watched his intended dinner run screaming down the alley to safety. Spike looked down at the bag of comic books the pimple-faced boy had been clutching and sneered in distaste. As he kicked at the sack he noticed one and picked it up, tucking it into his duster’s inner pocket. “Least his taste wasn’t all bad. That Wolverine’s bloody brilliant.”

Something was terribly wrong. Every time Spike tried to feed, he was brought to his knees or worse with what felt like enough current to light a small city ratcheting about his skull. He wasn’t completely sure how long he’d been held captive underground, but the last meal he remembered was that streetwalker in L.A. he’d drained on his way out of town. He consoled himself with the legend that vampires could not really starve to death, even though he remembered watching Angelus exsanguinate one minion back in the day. “He bloody dusted, now didn’t he?” Spike muttered in horror at the thought. “Gotta find some bloke to eat before I become the second vamp known to go that way.”

To a hungry vamp, this particular night was as endless as it was frustrating. In all his years as a vamp, he’d never had any problem feeding himself. Even in the sodding wheelchair he’d had to do most of it himself, Dru being all preoccupied and all. Something was radically wrong now and it was looking more and more like a permanent situation.

~*~

“Giles, it was weird. Spike was really pissed off about something. He was ranting about some secret lab I supposedly had.” Buffy brought her Watcher up to speed on the hallway meeting with Spike from earlier.

“Indeed, while Spike has tried to kill you often enough, the extreme anger is unusual. I wonder if this secret lab he was going on about has anything to do with the camouflaged soldiers that have been plaguing you here of late? Pity we can’t have a civil conversation with him on that.” Giles looked pensive.

“Spike and civil are just not mixy in the best of times. Just when you think you can have a nice sympathetic conversation with him, he holds a broken bottle up to your face!” Willow reminded the pair of her past encounter with the drunken vampire.

“Quite. I must say that it makes me more than a bit nervous knowing that Spike got as close to your dorm room as he did. With him knowing your room, he could wait to ambush you in the hallway at any time. Perhaps we can find a way to put up wards on the building itself to prevent his access.” Giles knew that Buffy was not always on alert and that Spike could easily take one of her friend’s hostage to lure her to his clutches.

“Well, I’m on to him now, Giles. No more surprises in the hallway from him! What about that fit he threw though? He was grabbing his head and screaming like a banshee. What kind of crazy causes that?” Buffy asked.

“What you’ve described doesn’t fit any behavior I can easily call to mind. I agree he appears to be highly unstable. Perhaps you should avoid him for now until we know a bit more. He has always proved to be difficult to kill, much more so now with the unpredictable behavior you’ve described.” Giles headed for the bookshelf to begin researching mental disorders in the undead.

Buffy looked at the calendar on Giles’ desk and zeroed in on the red-lettered holiday coming soon. “So…Mom’s out of town for the holiday and I’m thinking we all can use one of those warm Hallmark moments in our Thanksgiving memory book this year. How are you with roasting pans, Giles?” Buffy asked her bewildered Watcher.

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/196564.html