Death Wish

Chapter 1
by Miss Binks

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 Previously seen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer…

“Come on now - stop.” Spike shouted as he rushed to catch up with Buffy. “You can't walk away from this.”

 ”What part of punching you in the face did you not understand?”  She shouted at him over her shoulder, not even having the decency to turn around and face him.

”So we had a fight. Not our first, love.  It doesn't have to change anything.”

Buffy turned around to face him.  She was so beautiful in her anger.  Her chest was heaving and her face was flushed.  Spike loved it when she was like this, but he needed to make her understand, and the mood that she was in now, she wasn’t going to listen to anything he had to say.  She had certainly misunderstood everything else that had happened tonight.

”This changes everything. You're out, Spike. I want you out of this town.  I want you off this planet. You don't ever come near me, my friends, and family again. Ever, understand?”

She turned her back on him again, marching up the steps to her house and opening the door.  “No. It's not that easy. We have something, Buffy. It's not pretty,
but it's real.”  She stepped through the door and turned to look at him.

“And there's nothing either one of us can do about it. Like it or not, I'm in your life. You can't just shut me out.”  As he spoke these final words, he slammed against the invisible barrier that now protected the threshold of her house.  Spike looked at Buffy in disbelief, as she glanced at him coldly and then slammed the door in his face.

 _ _ _ _ _ _

Chapter One

Spike stood for a moment and admired the fine grain of the oak door now an inch in front of his face.  He was in absolute disbelief.  Buffy and her little witch friend had de-invited him.

“Bitch,” he screamed as he punched the oak door.  The wood splintered and he felt a bone in his hand snap, but he was oblivious to the pain as he felt the rage rise inside him.  He thought of all the things that he had done for her in the last few months.  The many times that he had saved her life, or the lives of the Scoobies.  The babysitting that he had done, looking after her mum and the Niblet.  Spike turned and pounded down the stairs and out into the street, his leather duster flying out behind him as he walked angrily back to his crypt.  As he thought about the things that he had done for Buffy, the vampire that he had become, the anger that had been building inside of him soared until it was nearly blinding.

“The bitch turned me into a poofter.”  He shouted into the night air.  Spike had once been evil, something that the Scoobies could be afraid of.  Now they laughed at him, considered him weak, harmless.  Part of the blame lay with Captain Cardboard and those initiative blokes, but it was his love for Buffy that really had made him soft.  He was disgusted with himself.  He had gone out of his way to prove to her that he was one of the good guys, and she still treated him like dirt.  He had turned his back on his entire unlife, turned his back on Dru for christsake, and she still scorned him.  Now what was he, knight in vamp armor, defender of the weak and innocent?  Up until a few years ago, he would have been the one slaughtering the innocents, now he was protecting them from creatures like himself.  If things didn’t change, next he would be buying that nancy boy hair gel and acting all glum like Angel. 

“Bloody hell I will.  This is going to end tonight.  If Buffy and her pals still think I’m the big bad, then that is what they are going to get.  Gonna get this sodding chip outta my head, and repay every one of their kindnesses.” 

He was halfway to his crypt when he remembered that he was completely out of smokes.  He veered off the main road and headed to the convenience store on the corner.  He went in, bought a pack of smokes and a large bottle of Jack Daniels and as he stood in the parking lot, lighting his Zippo and touching the flame to the tip of his cigarette, he realized that he had paid the shopkeeper for the goods.  Spike was amazed again at how much he had changed living in this crappy little town.  Time was, he had never paid for a single thing.  Steal or kill, that was how he obtained every thing he needed.  Now he was paying for things like a damn human. 

He felt the fury rise inside of him again.  She had done this to him.  That bitch Buffy had made him soft, weak.  He wanted to smash her face in, pull out that shiny shampoo commercial hair strand by strand.  He wanted to feel his teeth slide into her neck, pull out her throat and catch the glistening blood that flowed from the tattered remains of her body.   Spike felt power rush through his body as the bloody images filled his mind.  It had been a long time since he had imagined her dying, and he felt exhilarated and alive for the first time in months.  He had a purpose again, something evil and dark to live for, and he was happy again.

He had to get the chip out of his head.  As he headed back to his crypt, he thought about his options.  What could he do?  The Initiative was gone; there was no one there to help him.  Dru had said something about the chip, what was it?  As he strolled down the street, smoking the cigarette, he tried to remember her words.  She said something about electricity lying, something about all the pain being in his head.  He was usually good at deciphering Dru-speak, but he was rusty.  There had to be some clue in there, some thing that will help him get rid of this chip and return to his true self.  He flicked the cigarette butt away and opened the Jack, taking a long pull as he sat on the curb just down from the Bronze.  The booze created a warm fire in the pit of his cold stomach and the pain from his broken hand started to fade.  As he sat and drank the whiskey, he considered Dru’s riddles. 

“Its bloody useless.  Dru's fucking off her gourd.  There is just no way in hell what I am ever going to get his chip outta my head.”  He threw the empty bottle into the street and shakily rose to his feet.  He stumbled over the broken glass and then moved towards the alley that led from the Bronze to his crypt.  Just as he reached the entrance to the alley, he heard the door to the bar open and a pack of giggling girls walk out into the street.  He stepped into the shadows and turned to look at the group.  The girls were all young, late teens, and obviously drunk.  “I love a place that ignores liquor laws,” Spike thought. 

He looked at the girls, noticing that the one on the side closest to him looked a lot like Buffy.  Same long blond hair, a shade or two lighter, and real, not dyed.  She had the same petite build as Buffy too, although she looked much weaker.  None of that damned slayer strength.  The girl was tagging along slightly behind her friends, and she looked way over served, swaying on her feet staring off at some place only she could see.  Before he could even think, she passed the place where he was hiding and she pulled her into the alley, covering her mouth with his hand as he pulled her deeper into the alley.  Her friends walked away, oblivious to their friend’s peril as he dragged her towards the cemetery.

She struggled pathetically against him and he pushed her through the door and into the crypt.  He hadn’t actually hurt her, just restrained her, so the chip hadn’t gone off yet, but she was terrified and cowered in the corner, waiting for his attack.  He looked at her trembling there in his home, and he thought again how much she looked like Buffy.  And this is the way that he always wanted to see the Slayerbitch.  He wanted to see her on her knees before him, begging for her life, crying out to him.  He felt the power flood through his body, the energy that he always got before he killed, something like an adrenaline rush.  He looked at the Buffy look alike and thought of every punch that Buffy had thrown that he was unable to return.  Every time she had kicked his ass and he had been unable to return the favor.  He hated her, the Slayer, and if he couldn’t kill her, couldn’t make her pay, he would do the next best thing.  He would kill a girl that looked just like her.

He felt the skin on his face change as the demon took over.  The girl saw the change and started screaming, begging him to let her go, to please not hurt her.  He grabbed her up off the floor and punched her lightly in the face.  Even as he felt her cheek split over his knuckles, the chip went off and sent bolts of electricity through his brain.  Somehow, he remained standing and hit the girl again.  The pain doubled, and then tripled as he continued pummeling the girl, holding on to her for strength as much as to control her.  The pain was almost unbearable, but Spike pent up rage was a force more powerful than the chip.  As he thought of all that Buffy had done to him, all the pain and humiliation that she had dished out over the time that he had known her, he found the strength to fight the chip and continue to beat the young girl.

He had been keeping his blows light.  She could not withstand his assaults like the Slayer could, but even though he was only hitting her with half his strength; the girl was about to pass out.  He pulled her closer to him, pushing her against the wall so that they were both supported, and leaned into her, admiring her broken and bloody face.  The last of the chip’s shocks were fading away and the girl was about to lose consciousness.  He bent his head down to her shoulder, smelling her body and hearing the pulsing beat of her heart through her thin chest.  He leaned down and licked the bloody skin of her neck, savoring the salty taste of her fear. 

“Slayer,” he growled and then closed his eyes as he slid his fangs into her neck.  She whimpered and the chip went off again, stronger than the earlier shocks.  Instead of pain in his head, the blue electric bolts seemed to travel down his neck, into his chest, down his legs and arms to his fingertips and his toes.  The pain was worse than anything that he had ever felt, but he held onto the girl and continued to drink the hot blood that her dying heart pumped into his mouth.  He bit down deeper, and the shocks doubled, making him scream into the girl’s throat.  The agony that had traveled to his hands and feet now traveled back to his head and he felt a giant bolt of electricity crashing through his skull.  Just as he had hit the absolute limit of pain that his body could take, the shocks suddenly quit.  I could still feel the girl’s heart slowing underneath him, not quite dead but close.  He collapsed, falling on top of the girl’s broken and battered body and gave into the pain that he had been fighting.  As the darkness overtook him, he wondered why the shocks had stopped.  The girl was still alive, barely, but the pain was fading.  He tried to ponder that last thought, but the lingering pain was too much, and he slid into unconsciousness.

Continued...