Chapter Seven: The Stranded Boat
The sound of singing woke Spike up – well, not exactly singing but more like humming. The humming was familiar and lilting, automatically rousing feelings of nostalgia and passion that were long past. The melody slid up and down and around his senses, and he felt drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
He tried to open his eyes – tried to clear his head, but his lids felt heavy like dreams were tugging on the blanket of his consciousness, trying to pull him back under.
Something niggled in the corner of his mind – something important that he couldn’t grab onto.
There was a shift, and he remembered that the flame was icy, the song discordant to what was in his heart and. . . his soul.
And why was he having trouble forming a coherent thought?
There was a needle! In his neck. He’d been drugged by a huge hulking vampire sired by. . .
His eyes flew open, adrenaline forcing the lingering effects of the sedative through his veins and out of his brain.
Clothed in black, Drusilla was swaying and dipping – dancing to her own song the way she always had. There used to be something hypnotic about her movements that resonated in his bones. It always gathered him in close to her and left him eager to touch her luminous skin as if he could join with her in the world of thoughts and feelings that made not a lick of sense but also did.
And for a very long time, he did join her. She’d saved him from a mundane life and death and made his unlife fulfilled in ways he’d never dreamed possible.
But in the end, it had left him cold and bereft and alone.
He could only join her in the insanity for so long before he yearned for something warmer, something hot like the sun – someone like Buffy. Only Buffy.
His frontal lobe asserted itself, and he blinked, seeing that his son was cradled in his sire’s arms. Her focus was solely on him.
The crooning melody trailed off as he watched, and she ran one blood red fingernail lightly over Asher’s cheek as she angled her face close to his smaller one.
If he could have, Spike would have launched himself at his ex, but unlike some idiot demons he’d recently become acquainted with, Dru knew that vampires had to be chained to stay put. Heavy metal shackles held him in place against the wall. His restraints were attached to some sort of display. Where the bloody hell were they? It definitely wasn’t the courtyard. The humidity was nil, the soft hiss of air conditioning lingered in the background, and the echo of cleaning fluid stung his nostrils. His mind absorbed the photos on the wall. There was a collage of images of the flooding and destruction subsequent to Hurricane Katrina.
Dru was holed up in the Hurricane Katrina exhibit in the Presbytere! There was no way she’d been here long. It was too obvious and too well traveled; she must have been forced out of whatever cover she’d borrowed for her stay.
Minions were all around them, dressed in black and blending into the shadows as their master held court. The big one who’d drugged him was corralling the kittens, dangling a bit of string for them to play with. In the dark corner just barely in Spike’s sight, he heard two heartbeats. Humans. The scent told him that they were familiar humans: Liz and Katie. They still didn’t register as Slayers. The poodle was nowhere to be seen. He guessed they’d become bait after all. Neither was moving, and there was a strong tang of blood but no visible wounds. From the looks of it, they were unconscious. Clem was in the opposite corner, sitting up in his shackles, and telegraphing his terror without making a sound. Clem had never met Dru. It probably wouldn’t have gone well.
“Now that your Daddy’s awake, it’s time for a story,” Dru singsong-ed, and because he’d only ever heard her call Angelus “Daddy,” it took Spike a second to realize that she was addressing Asher.
She swooped across the room to a white wooden rocking chair that was stationed in the corner. Settling down, she cradled the baby in her arms and began slowly rocking. Her next words sounded flat and not much like her usual manner of telling a story. When Dru became cool, calm, and lucid on the outside, she was usually livid on the inside. “Once upon a time, there was a young man whose heart was broken. Hearing his cry of despair, a dark fairy princess appeared. She saw what no one else in the world saw. She saw his heart and spirit and,” she glanced up at Spike, and he swore that her eyes were filled with sadness, “imagination.”
“Dru,” Spike started, his voice low. He had experience dealing with a brassed off Dru. He usually started with tenderness, but he was too anxious. “You need to unchain me, pet.”
“Shhh!” The vampire brought her long finger to her mouth. “I’m telling the baby a story. It’s past his bedtime.”
Spike gritted his teeth but knew better than to say anything yet. With great reluctance, he waited.
Dru pressed her lips together and then refocused on Asher, who was watching her with a mesmerized expression. “The dark fairy promised the young man that others would learn to value his strength and see the worth of his innermost worlds. But first, he had to accept her gift of blood and of immortality. She spoke to him, sang to his heart, and for the first time, he was seen.” Dru paused again. “The vampire was pretty. Fierce. Like a dangerous creature lit from within by the poetry of his humanity. His name was no longer William. His name was Spike.”
When Spike opened his mouth, she whispered, “And for many many years, they traveled together. Loved together. Created delicious, decadent chaos together. The world was theirs. Until one day the dark princess was injured, and they journeyed to the city of the sun. Who knows why Spike thought he could heal his princess with sunlight? But he did.” That wasn’t exactly what happened, but Spike wasn’t going to correct her. “In doing so, he became entranced by the keeper of the sun. She killed our kind, breaking their hearts into tiny bits, but he loved her all the same. The dark princess left with great sorrow, traveling the world alone and confused. And then, one day, Spike sacrificed himself for the keeper of the sun and her world. Though his light was snuffed out, he came back. A genie loosed from the bottle. And he reunited with the keeper of the sun to create a new little ball of sunlight. You.” Dru punctuated the word by tapping a finger on his chest. “The pixies sang to the dark princess of his birth, but she had to see for herself. . . to make sure that he was real and warm. To taste. . .”
Dru brought Asher up, rubbing her face against his so that he squirmed. A mix of a hum and purr erupted from the back of her throat, and Spike knew that this meant she was going to – The thought was unfathomable.
Spike strained against the chains, the metal rattling loudly, and in case that noise wasn’t distracting enough, he shouted, “Dru!”
Her head snapped up, and she growled at him.
“You can’t eat my son. He’s not yours for the taking.” His outward calm totally belied the fear and panic zipping through every fiber of his being.
Dru pushed up from the rocking chair so sharply that the wood clattered sideways to the floor. In a second, she was thrust into his personal space and holding his eyes with her own blue ones. Asher made a soft noise but not of distress. “You do not tell me what I can and cannot do. Not anymore, Spike. I am not yours. You are not mine. We are not beholden to one another.”
Spike’s irritation tinged his words. “You chose that. You sabotaged us.” Even as the words left his mouth, they rang untrue. Dru had only ever been who she was. Though she’d stayed with Spike for decades, she followed her sexual whims.
Dru threw her head back and laughed. “Silly William. Still fretting over Daddy. Even now.”
“I was talking about the fungus demon and the chaos demon and. . . Shall I go on?” Was he? Was he still worried about Angel coming in and swooping into is life to destroy it? He knew what Buffy said. She didn’t want anyone but Spike even if Angel was bloody human and living on a Florida beach somewhere with Blue.
Dru clucked her tongue, backing away and clutching his son. “You know that’s not what matters. You care about connection and intimacy and love. Not slime demons and one-off affairs.”
Spike sighed. “Why are you really here?”
“Where else would I be? Your little sunbeam was calling to me.” Dru snuggled the baby closer and studied his curious expression. She looked up at Spike. “I wanted to see if he was real. If he was really yours.” Her gaze fell back on the baby, and she cocked her head. “He is, and he isn’t.”
“He’s my son, Dru.”
When she raised her head again, her eyes were full of tears. “He is.”
Spike saw her persistent vulnerability and nudged her along. “Are you alone and confused, pet?”
Tears traced their way down her cheeks. “Everyone has changed so much in such a short time. Used to be the everything around us changed but everyone remained the same. I don’t like it. It’s unsettling.” Her expression told him that she might close in on herself, her mind spinning off into unreachable places.
Spike kept her grounded; he always did. “You know you could’ve got my attention without biting the humans and getting the Slayers all stirred up.”
“I was sending you a signal, but the world is full of Slayers. Little girls eating up airtime.” Dru turned toward Katie and Liz; Katie was still out, but Liz’s eyes were bright and alert. “And these were hidden behind a spell.” She clicked her tongue – the sound a bit lighter than before. She was amused.
“You’re not fooled by magic, pet. I know.” His ex’s ability to sense alterations in the world around her went beyond anything he could ever do even being from the Master’s line.
“Who is this, Spike?” Liz asked, her tone quiet, not commanding. Spike could tell she was feeling out the situation. Smart.
“She’s my sire. A bit batty through no fault of her own. You were bait?” Spike wanted to ask where the hell Buffy and Red were and how the hell Dru had managed to capture two Slayers, but he was afraid to give Dru any information that might get them hurt. He was just going to have to trust his instincts to get them all out of this mess, and he knew the very best way was to ease his way around Dru’s predictably irregular sensibilities.
“Definitely bait. Looks like we should have been using you instead.”
“Looks like.” He noticed that Dru was swaying and starting to hum again while gathering his son closer. “Dru, pet. Why now after a decade?”
Dru kept her eyes on Asher. “You know very well time is like a river. I wandered away from my boat and got lost. So lost. Will you help me, my Spike? I can’t tell the clouds from the roots. The sun from the comets.” She held the baby up. “Is he sunlight? He feels like a ray of sun, but he could belong to the moon if I bite him. Shall I bite him? Will you come with me if I do?”
Spike kept his voice even and low. “No, no, Dru. I won’t come with you if you bite him. Deep down, you know that. If you bite him, I’ll end your journey for you. Won’t matter our bond. You understand that, sweets? I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. You bring harm to my family, I will end you.” Too late, he realized that maybe this was what she wanted. She wasn’t angry; she was depressed, which he knew was sometimes a different form of anger. Was she so far gone that she was suicidal? She never had been before, but then again, even when it was just the two of them, she always had hope for their family to be brought back together again. She valued connection as much as he did. Maybe she was completely adrift – all hope gone. He found himself softening. “Listen here. I know you’re hurting, pet. I know you think all is lost.”
Dru’s eyes were again glistening with tears. Something else clicked in Spike’s mind. She expressed pain physically – felt her emotions in her whole body, but she rarely cried. “All is lost, my Spike. Everything is in pieces. Human to demon to human to dust. Angelus has a beating heart. Mummy is detritus in the breeze, and my Spike is minding a human nipper.”
Spike’s temper flared; he was sick of being regulated to a stereotype. “Parenting is not the same as bloody babysitting. I’m his father, not a childminder!”
She glared at Spike. “But you are. Minding him.” She studied the baby’s face. “Where’s your mummy? A child needs his mummy. Sunshine to warm his tummy.”
“And sometimes a daughter needs her Daddy,” Spike said with easy firmness. “You need to let us go. Pay a visit to Angel.” Angel was going to kill him. Not that Spike cared. Dru needed something different than he could give anymore, and Angel seemed to gather lost souls these days. Illyria being one of them.
She studied his face with uncertainty.
“Look Dru. I don’t want to hurt you. You and I? We aren’t the same as we used to be, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still care about you. I can promise you this. When Buffy gets here, and she will, she won’t think twice about dusting you.” Spike wasn’t sure Buffy would slay Dru on a usual day, but if Buffy saw his ex holding Asher, Dru would be the resident of the dustbin without a second thought. Spike didn’t really blame Buffy for that. Truth be told, he didn’t want Dru for himself, but he didn’t want to have to kill her either.
Dru closed her eyes for several seconds, and Spike knew she was listening to something he didn’t really know or understand – not anymore.
When she returned to reality, he saw that her sadness had lifted a little. That was something. He smiled at her, and she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled.
The large vampire immediately abandoned the kittens and was by her side.
She regarded him sternly. “Unbind them.”
The vampire didn’t question Dru and began unlocking Spike’s chains. He felt the vampire’s power; Dru had sired herself a new playmate, but he seemed rather mundane. He was her lesser.
Once Spike was loose, the large vamp moved on to Clem, but Spike had eyes only for his son. Dru eased Asher into his arms. His tiny body was heavy and warm; he’d fallen asleep again. He was probably exhausted.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.
Dru stroked the baby’s head with her open hand. “You’re welcome, my Spike.”
Without warning, the air was filled with the sound of shattering glass. This time, Spike felt the magic rolling toward them like giant ocean waves. It was more than just Red. There was some other thread there – a familiar signature. Was it the witch he’d seen with Oz?