Chapter 16: On the Hunt
Spike hadn’t slept since returning from the Summers’ house; instead he spent his time pacing back and forth in the crypt and smoking nonstop, wincing every so often as his painful ribs demanded his attention. The sun had never seemed to take more time to set.
There was only one clear thought in his mind. His soul was gone. Everything else was a muddy blur, and it was driving him as insane as the soul had.
The soul was gone, and so were the voice he had dubbed as his conscience and the overwhelming guilt of his many, many kills. He was already envisioning his next hunt, his first fresh dinner in months; and he couldn’t wait for warm, human blood to slide down his throat, couldn’t wait to gorge himself on life until he didn’t feel so hungry and dead anymore. The simple thought of it was making him hard and impatient. As soon as the sun set, he would go out… and that was where it became less clear. He wanted to hunt and feed. He was, however, somewhat reluctant to do so in Sunnydale. He spent his day telling himself that it was stupid, and yet he had already half-decided not to hunt in this town. Elsewhere, yes, but not here.
The soul was gone, and he had no particular desire to hunt down the Scoobies. They hadn’t taken advantage of his weakness to stake him; not going after them was a return of the favor. Still, he knew he shouldn’t have felt as if he owed them anything. Bathtub, chains, treating him as if he was a useful tool and nothing more, all of it should have been a death sentence for all of them. If they were foolish enough to think he was harmless, he ought to teach them otherwise. The hitch was, he couldn’t convince himself to do so.
The soul was gone, and he still had fond thoughts for Joyce. He shouldn’t have. She should have been food to him. Nothing else. Nothing more. The idea of sharing a nice cuppa with her should have felt foreign to the soulless demon he was again. And yet. When he started to hunt again, he would lose that. He couldn’t help feeling sad about it. Another reason to keep his extra-curricular activities discreet.
The soul was gone, and he still loved Buffy. He still loved the Slayer. It was even more wrong than before, because now he couldn’t even blame his feelings on the soul. He still loved the fighter that she was, as well as the woman. Shouldn’t he have hated her, rather than loved, hated that she was the exact opposite of him? Shouldn’t he have used her trust in him to easily bag his third Slayer? He wanted her blood – no, he craved her blood. Yet, at the same time, the idea of killing her was strangely repulsive. If he killed her, he wouldn’t get to see her fight, or talk, or laugh anymore. The possibility of turning her crossed his mind, but he immediately rejected the idea. There was no way to know in advance how much the demon would affect her, and he didn’t want her changed any more than he wanted her dead. There, too, was a problem. If he hunted on her turf, she was bound to find out. However careful he would be, eventually, it would come out; he wasn’t deluded enough to believe it wouldn’t. The customary fight to the death would follow, and not wanting to off her didn’t mean he would let her dust him.
When dusk finally came, his initial repugnance at hunting in the town he had helped protect for the past few months, combined with the need to not let the Summers women know he was killing again, led him to his car and out of Sunnydale. He wasn’t sure as he drove away whether he was leaving once and for all, or if he would only go long enough to feed properly before returning back to the Hellmouth.
Two hours later, he entered Los Angeles. It took him four nights to admit to himself that killing again wasn’t going to be as easy as he had thought.
After that first night in LA, Spike told himself repeatedly that it was normal that he hadn’t fed yet. He needed time to relearn the skills of the hunt, that was all. It would make it all even more exciting when he finally found the perfect prey and sank his fangs deep into a tender throat. He found a safe place to park the car and caught some much-needed sleep on the back seat.
At sunset, he was ready and more excited than ever by the prospect of tasting human blood again. He found a club, full of blasting music and young blood. He settled at the bar and observed the dance floor, searching for the unlucky person who would serve as an appetizer. By midnight, the club was packed, and still Spike hadn’t found anyone to hunt. He had been approached a few times by specimens of both genders, heard one or two really lame pick up lines, been offered a couple of drinks, but still. something was off. That redhead moving seductively to the fast beat of the music reminded him of Willow. The man dancing a few bodies behind her had on one of these awful Hawaiian shirts Harris favored. Longhaired brunette alone at a table – Cordelia. He had left Sunnydale; but apparently, the Scoobies had come along for the ride.
Scowling with hunger and anger gnawing at him, he left the club and went to prowl through dark alleys. He tracked a handful of imprudent humans but for each of these potential prey, there was something that stopped him at the last moment. When he realized he wasn’t going to kill a woman because she wore the same perfume as Joyce, he cursed loud enough to startle her, causing her to run away in alarm. Sunrise was still more than two hours away, but he gave up for the night.
Back in his car, he spent the day recalling his greatest fights and most delicious meals, remembering with as much detail as possible the feel of thick blood rolling on his tongue, coating his mouth, warm from life, spiced by fear. Kills experienced for the second time brought forth no guilt – he killed because he was a vampire and needed the blood to survive, just like humans killed cows or whatever for the very same reason. The reminiscing, on the other hand, brought an edge to his hunger and the deep-seated decision that he would taste blood no later than an hour past sunset.
And he did. Refusing to even stop for a second and give himself the chance to think of a reason why the woman he was stalking was an inappropriate choice, he closed in on her and attacked, acting primarily on instinct. The bint struggled at first, even pulled a gun out of her coat’s pocket, but Spike still sank his fangs in and took long, deep and delightful mouthfuls of blood sweetened by panic. There was a shout for help in the alley, and Spike dropped the woman before he had drained her. Unwilling to take any risk while he was weak with hunger, he disappeared into the shadows, already in search of his next victim. The night was only beginning, and it would be one of feasting!
He chose his next meals a little more carefully, a process that took time but the hunt itself was a delicious part of the game. He was whistling when, an hour or so before dawn, he checked into a motel using his latest victim’s money. Only while gleefully reliving his night later did he realize something, and this new awareness struck him like lightning.
The first woman had smelled of gunpowder and, faintly, blood. Even before she had pulled out her gun, before Spike had torn into her neck, both scents were on her. It didn’t take a genius to add it up. She had used the gun recently and shot someone. The second victim had smelled of blood and sex, and had been acting very nervously, as if his conscience wasn’t quite clear. The third one, Spike had found in a club and taken him after observing him slip something in a girl’s drink and disappear with her in the restrooms. The last one, the one Spike had left on the ground, pockets emptied, gasping for breath with a hand pressed to his neck and a plea for mercy on his lips, had been selling small white packages in the recess of an alley.
All of his prey had been predators. He hadn’t made the conscious decision of hunting predators and hadn’t realized he was doing it until now.
The second realization was even more staggering. Four times, he had taken blood that night; four times, he had walked away from a still beating heart. He had not finished a kill. He couldn’t tell for sure if the four would live through the night, but if found in time, they might.
He tried to dismiss the whole thing as a fluke, nothing more, and went to sleep convinced that his next kills would be innocent bystanders.
When the next night he stumbled on a mugging and tracked the attacker three blocks rather than pick up the easy meal at his feet, he seriously began doubting that his soulful adventure had left him with all his wit intact. Disgusted, he entered the first bar he walked by, threw a fifty dollar bill on the waitress’ tray and asked for bourbon. She brought a bottle and a glass, and didn’t need to be asked to bring a second bottle when the first had reached the end of its short life.
He tried to blame it on the soul, but after a while, it didn’t work anymore, because he knew quite well that the soul was gone. If it hadn’t affected Angelus after he had lost it, it shouldn’t have affected him either. So it wasn’t the soul. What was wrong with him?
A thick accent ordering whiskey caught his ear, drawing his eyes to the next table, and he was almost surprised to discover a slender guy there rather than the bulky vampire he had expected. His gaze lingered on the man a little too long, and the stranger glanced at him, blue eyes appraising him.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” he said coolly, “I’m warning you, I have a stake and know how to use it.”
Spike laughed at that, because coming from a not particularly very strong looking human, it was. His laugh subsided when he caught the man’s smell. It was off, somehow, not human, but not completely demon either.
“What are you?” he asked, curious.
The guy raised his glass toward Spike. “Thirsty,” he answered and took a drink.
Shrugging the whole thing off, Spike returned to his thoughts. Maybe because of his drinking friend’s Irish accent, his mind slid toward Angel, and he grimaced as he remembered the past. In China, when Angel had returned to them for a while, he had fed on murderers, and it had infuriated Darla. Why in hell was Spike doing the same thing, and of all things, why was he doing it now that he didn’t even have a soul anymore?
“Fucking soul,” he muttered before taking a long drink directly from the bottle. When he put it back on the table, Irish not human guy was the one observing him.
“Soul?” he repeated. “Vampire with a soul? That’s not a common thing.”
Spike scowled at him before pointedly ignoring him. He didn’t have a soul anymore, so why was he playing the game and acting as if he did?
The answer came when a bit of light lit the waitress’ hair, giving her blond highlights for just a second. Spike had tried very hard not to think of the Slayer since leaving Sunnydale, but he realized now that she had been there all along, just like the others. The Slayer, who trusted him, who had told him she believed in him, believed that he could do good things. The Slayer who, as far as he believed, was heading straight into problems with Angel, and who would soon enough be free for anyone to seduce. The Slayer who would never blink twice before staking him if it came out that he had been killing.
He finished his bottle, glared at the Irish when he realized the brunet was still watching him thoughtfully, and finally returned to his car. If he wasn’t going to kill anyone, he might as well go back to Sunnydale.
Buffy was pissed off when I found her the next night; for a while, I thought she knew where I had been and why. But in between rants about how every man whom she dared trust had apparently decided to make her birthday awful, I understood what had been going on while I was away on my little road trip. Turned out she could have used some help, seeing that her Watcher had played a nasty trick on her, Joyce had almost been a snack to a vamp apparently loonier than even Dru and Dawn had been scared half to death. She said if I had been there, I could have prevented her mum from being mixed up in that mess. I didn’t see how I would have done that, but she wasn’t exactly listening to me when I tried to point it out. I did manage to get something across to her – and that shut her right up. Why didn’t she ask for Angel’s help? She didn’t have an answer.
I paid a visit to Giles, that night, after our patrol. I was upset that he had endangered the Slayer, and I might have had thoughts about expressing my anger physically. I’m sure you’re thinking it’s a good thing I didn’t have an invite. Except, once he opened the door, it struck me that he seemed as miserable and guilty as I had been only a few days before, and all thoughts of making him pay flew out the window. To my shock, he invited me in with barely a hesitation. I understood why when he led the way in and added a new glass to the one on the coffee table, half full next to a bottle of scotch. It’s no fun getting drunk alone.
He sank into an armchair with his glass and left me to my own devices. I’ve never been one to decline a drink so graciously offered. I helped myself and sat across from him, observing him until he became annoyed with my silent staring and snapped.
“Just say it, would you? Whatever it is.”
I shrugged. “Was just wondering what’s the point of having a soul if it lets you betray the ones you love.”
It was clear from his pinched lips and briefly shut eyes that I had pressed on an already open wound. This was, after all, what I had been aiming for.
“I’ve been asking myself the very same thing,” he replied tiredly after taking a sip from his glass. “I can’t say I’m proud of what I did. Just glad I woke up in time to realize I was wrong.”
That was too easy. Way too easy. And I told him so.
“Wrong? Is that all there is to it? It is wrong to do this and right to do that? Wouldn’t your council of wankers say that you were wrong of stepping in and they were right to put her through that hell? They have souls too, though, don’t they? How can the same simple thing be both right and wrong?”
He made a noise, half chuckle half sigh. “I think I’ve had a drink too many to discuss philosophy with you tonight.”
I snorted. “Then why did you let me in?”
“Because I have a small understanding of what you are going through,” he said coolly. “Not that I’d pretend to compare the extent of my guilt to yours. But I thought you might use a drink too.”
I almost told him, then, that the guilt was gone. Except. it wasn’t really true. I did feel guilty about not having been around to help the Slayer and Joyce. All due to Buffy’s little rant, no doubt, but it was still there. Also, there was that inability of mine to completely go through a kill in Los Angeles. I wasn’t souled anymore, but I sure acted as if I were. And yes, the drink was very much needed.
I had been drunk, when deciding to come back to Sunnydale and keep acting as if nothing had changed. On the way back, I questioned my decision more than once. But that night sealed it. Giles’ actions reminded me it was possible for a souled human to consciously decide to do something he knew was wrong, something I had seen before but never reflected on. If that was possible, what prevented me, a soulless demon, to consciously decide to do what was right? By right, I mean acceptable by human standards, because from the demon point of view I was on my way to doing everything wrong. Matters of perspective. If I hadn’t had ties to humans when I lost my soul, substitute family and friends, I probably would have reverted to values appropriate for a demon. But since I couldn’t see humans as simply food anymore, the only way to adapt – or at least the only one I could see – was to play by their rules.
Of course, all of it had to remain my little secret. I had no doubt that none of the Scoobies would hesitate to stake me if they ever learned I was soulless again. As it turned out. Well, you’ll see soon enough.