SUMMARY: Spike & Dru have a romantic candlelit dinner and then try
a spot of
witch-burning in Prague. Self-contained, but follows 'Painted Eggs'.
SPOILERS: Nope. Pre-Sunnydale.
CONTENT/WARNINGS: A little sex, a little blood, a few bones, a few
flames.
RATING: NC17. Het. Slash. Violence. Spike & Dru are not nice.
DISCLAIMER: I am not now, nor have I ever been, Numfar. Not even a
little bit. The
characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui, Sandollar,
and David
Greenwalt Productions, 20th Century Fox, and whoever else may have
a hold upon them.
The situation is wholly mine, and I do not mean to infringe upon any
copyrights.
COMMENTS: Thanks as always to Herself & Spik-el-oost folks.
He had stolen the candles from a church, handful upon slender handful
like bunches of
headless white flowers. A battery-operated torch would have been simpler,
but Spike
was a romantic and he knew his girl would want things done right.
When he pulled the sliver of silk away from her eyes the expression
of pure delight on
Dru's face made all the fussing worthwhile; and he smiled as she twirled
on the spot, the
flare of her velvet skirts dappling the walls with dancing shadows
as the candle flames
flickered in her wake. She was looking especially radiant, the blood
of a fresh kill lending
her cheeks a temporary cast of damask and tinting her lips with borrowed
coral. Spike
could not conceive of any more beautiful sight. The waves of gleaming
hair that he
brushed one hundred times each morning and one hundred times each night
framed her
face to absolute perfection and sent him fumbling for similes; but
his darling rendered
words redundant, and unlike long-dead poets' loves she would outlive
mere stumbling
verse.
The chandelier caught her attention and she exclaimed at the sight
of the baroque
lacework of interwoven bone, its polished skulls gleaming softly in
the candlelight.
"Thousands of voices I heard them whispering while I waited in the
graveyard, but I
didn't know they'd be so pretty, Spike!" She swayed slightly, cobra-like,
her lips curling
into a dreamy little smile.
He had heard about Kutna Hora from an inebriated slime demon in a smoke-filled
jazz
bar near Wenceslas Square. Spike had felt sure his girl would be enchanted
with the
Bone Chapel; so late one fine April evening they had caught the train
east out of Prague
on a little excursion.
Some mad bastard of a woodcarver had made all this back in the fourteenth
century,
apparently; just up and started creating pretty patterns out of the
ossuary's skeletons one
day. Next thing you know there are altars and shields and chalices
and pyramids made
out of rearranged hip bones and rib cages and heaven knows what; swags
of skulls
hanging merrily from the ceiling, rococo patterns of interlocking femurs
covering the walls
and a whopping great coat of arms made out of actual arms. And legs,
torsos, spines,
pelvises; the remains of some 40,000 humans had gone into creating
his gruesome art
gallery. Even signed his name in bones.
Just when you thought humans couldn't surprise you, you stumbled across
something like
this. It warmed the cockles of his heart.
Long before he became Spike or William the Bloody back when he was
Just William,
Sweet William, a poor to passable poet spilling ink on his mother's
second best
tablecloth and dreaming of love he recalled reading 'Beowulf' and shivering
at the
horrors it contained. Blood and bones and monstrous beasts that ripped
men limb from
limb. Funny how things turned out. The ever-literal Anglo Saxon poet
had called the
human body 'ban hus', if memory served him right 'bone house'. He'd
thought it rather
chilling at the time. And here they were rattling around in a bone
chapel a century later,
him and his immortal darling; as gay and carefree a pair of demon lovers
as one could
ever wish to see.
This, Spike reflected, is happiness. Life simply doesn't get any better
than this.
"What have you got in the basket?" Drusilla asked, smiling her most
bewitching little
smile. He pulled back the cover like an end-of-the-pier prestidigitator
and Drusilla
clapped in sheer delight. "A picnic! A picnic!"
Two pudgy baby boys peered up saucer-eyed, waving little pink starfish
hands and
blinking in the sudden flood of candlelight.
* * *
It was a warm evening and Drusilla's red velvet gown earned some puzzled
glances from
the shorts-and-T-shirt clad backpackers milling around Kutna Hora's
little station in the
crepuscular gloom.
He clasped her waist and lifted her up onto the train with unnecessary
care, and then he
strode off down the corridor in a swirl of black leather to find an
appropriate compartment
while she pressed her nose against the window and blinked down at the
platform. Spike
briefly considered joining a sweet little family of Czechs, but eventually
settled upon four
British backpackers out of vaguely patriotic principles.
They were painfully middle class, two girls and two boys clearly off
travelling the world
for a year before taking up jobs in marketing or management or something
equally
original. The planet seemed to be littered with their ilk these days,
all scratchy Himalayan
shirts, Vietnamese sandals and badly-rolled joints for a few months,
before they started
contributing to pension schemes and bickering over wallpaper patterns
in deepest
suburbia. They manhandled their brightly coloured rucksacks with the
practiced
weariness of people who had been doing this for too long and had started
to pine for
Milton Keynes. One of the girls had the misfortune to remind him a
little of Cecily, and it
was this that finally made up his mind as he stood poised on the threshold.
When they saw Spike framed in the doorway the two young men bristled,
but both girls
returned his gaze appreciatively. The Cecily one was so distracted
that she forgot to
concentrate on trying to stuff her emerald green backpack up onto the
luggage rack, with
inevitable results. Spike jumped forward and caught the thing just
before it landed on her
cropped head, suddenly chest-to-chest as he boosted the bag effortlessly
into place. He
could feel the heat of her breasts seeping pleasantly through his shirt
and he took his time
stepping back, smiling down at her with the utter confidence of someone
surveying his
own rightful property.
"Room for two more in here, is there?" he asked.
"You're English!" exclaimed Cecily, and then she flushed a little as
he directed the full
force of his smile at her.
"So I am. Mind if me and my girl join you?"
* * *
It was a game they always played on trains, to while away the hours;
gradually drinking
everyone in the compartment until only one unsuspecting soul was left
surrounded by
seemingly-somnolent forms. The rattling darkness that still swept these
old fashioned
compartments whenever the train went through a tunnel was an ideal
cover; and they
would take it in turns to drain their travelling companions as silently
and swiftly as they
could. Drusilla dearly loved her games. She would sit giggling demurely
in the corner,
peering over at him through the fringe of her lashes like the naughtiest
schoolgirl in the
world. Sometimes they would simply let the last person live this was
especially
entertaining if he or she had fallen asleep, and the thought of the
hubbub of anguished
screams once they awoke at their destination always amused Spike. At
other times they
would make a little play of it and spin the final kill out for a long
time, enjoying the dawning
comprehension and growing terror as they revealed yellow eyes and fangs.
This time it was the girl who reminded him of Cecily they saved for
last. She was
thoroughly charmed by Spike and Drusilla and embarrassed that her companions
had all
fallen asleep. She could have talked for Britain, but Spike thought
it was a sign of
insecurity rather than overweening confidence. Her name was Julia,
her parents were
divorced and she had a little brother and an elderly Alsatian waiting
for her at home in
Ipswich. She had studied European History at Bristol where she fell
in love and out of love
and dabbled with smoking and drank until she was sick on several occasions;
she was
scared of heights; she liked Elastica and Pulp and wished she'd kept
up the piano
lessons; her favourite colour was green; her favourite food was prawn
madras; she
missed 'Eastenders' so much that her mum gave her soap updates every
time she rang
home; she thought Dru's dress was lovely; she cried each time she watched
'Top Gun';
and her blood, when they finally tore out her throat and stilled her
young tongue forever,
tasted very much like anyone else's blood.
She was most surprised to die.
Afterwards they made love fully clothed on the cramped floor of the
compartment, their
entwined limbs almost warm from all the freshly spilled life. Drusilla's
hair snaked across
the floor like silken pitch and laughter bubbled out of her as he tugged
up the red velvet
and parted her ivory thighs. Her fiercely clenching cunt was slippery
and cool and utterly
voracious - and his, always and only his, now that Angelus was gone.
The finest thing in Spike's world better than the buzz of demonic strength
that coursed
through his dead veins, better than the sight of wounds healing under
his gaze, better than
the thrill of taking on a roomful of drunk miners, better than the
taste of blood in his mouth
ö positively the finest thing in Spike's world was the feel of
being held tight in the clutch of
Dru's welcoming quim and knowing that she loved him above all things.
Uxoriousness
was his ruling sin and Drusilla's arms and cunt were his best and only
home.
She cried out his name when she finally came, her white-stockinged
legs locked tightly
round his waist and her nails scoring deep into his black leather back.
* * *
Drusilla had spent some time arranging the cooling backpackers into
a charming little
tableau; Julia and Rashid embracing while Elizabeth rested her fair
head on Alec's
shoulder in a passable approximation of sleep. Unfortunately the elaborate
poses could
only be maintained for a matter of minutes before the motion of the
train jolted a limp limb
out of place or sent a heavy head lolling on its stem. Eventually Drusilla
grew thoroughly
impatient with the corpses' intransigence and chastised them all roundly;
and when this
still had no impact she finally made Spike throw them from the train.
Now she reclined
with her head in Spike's lap, wiping bits of the late ticket inspector
from the brim of the
late ticket inspector's cap.
Over the past hour or so Spike had noticed distant flecks of firelight
speckling the
darkness like land-locked stars as the train rolled through the Bohemian
countryside;
intrigued, he leafed through Julia's battered guidebook and discovered
that April 30th
was Carodejnice, the witch-burning festival.
"Bonfire night!" Dru said with great satisfaction. "Will there be toffee
apples and a penny
for the Guy?"
He stroked her tumbled hair absently while he continued to peruse the
book.
"No, pet, I don't think so - they do things a little differently here.
No mention of bonfire
toffee. Says this is the night witches are supposed to be abroad, so
villagers paint
crosses on their doors, sprinkle their houses with holy water and make
nasty great fires
out of broomsticks. And have a party. Can't see that upsetting many
witches, to be
honest, but I don't much fancy the crosses and holy water stuff myself."
Spike suspected that the good people of Prague were unlikely to indulge
in robust folk
festivals; city folk the world over disdained the 'superstitions' of
their country cousins. But
this was just the sort of stereotypical quaintness that tourists adored,
so there were bound
to be some revels to be found in Prague people in pointy hats, that
kind of thing. Could
be fun.
"I want to burn a witch," said Drusilla, her eyes glittering.
"Now, witches can be tricky buggers, my love," Spike pointed out; but
he felt the notion
take hold of him as soon as it was uttered. "Liable to put up a bit
of a fight, they are."
Dru batted her eyelashes at him, all spritely mischief, and reached
up to perch the cap on
his head at a jaunty angle.
"You'll look after me, Spike," she said with a complacent little smile.
And of course he would. Besides, feeding in the city was ridiculously
easy the tourists
were as helpless before him as grass before a scythe and precious few
Pragers
believed in ghosties and ghoulies and long legged things and things
that bit necks in the
night. They practically hurled themselves onto his fangs.
Finding a witch to burn would be more of a challenge.
It was still dark when they stepped onto the platform back in Prague.
Drusilla stood on the
ground with her arms a little outstretched for balance and her legs
braced, bobbing gently
back and forth as though she still rode the rumbling train. Where her
heavy crimson hem
brushed the ground it left a dark stain on the moonlit concrete.
"I can feel the earth spinning, Spike," she announced with astonished
delight. He
pressed a feather-light kiss onto her pale brow and then held her at
arm's length,
enjoying the gentle resistance of the velvet shoulders under his whorled
fingertips. He
realised after a moment that he was grinning like an idiot, but couldn't
think of any reason
to stop.
"Where to now, my sweet?"
* * *
Despite the lateness of the hour the Metro was crammed with warm life.
A blushing
Czech offered Drusilla a seat after enduring several minutes of her
wide eyed stare;
Spike stood nearby, idly noting exposed throats and the tender skin
of inner elbows and
knees joints. The crowd thickened. Abruptly Spike became aware of a
tiny sliver of
movement where there should be only stillness. A stealthy little hand
was creeping into
the pocket of his black leather duster.
Spike waited expressionlessly, forgetting to feign breathing as he
felt his wallet and silver
lighter being expertly plucked away. The thief was just in his peripheral
vision slight,
dark haired, a girl of seventeen or so who hadn't been near soap in
weeks. He waited
patiently until they arrived at the next station and then in the awkward
bustle of bodies he
turned and pinioned her into the corner, one hand wrapping quickly
round her throat and
the other covering her own light-fingered little hand. There was only
a moment to glimpse
the shock in her eyes before his mouth closed over hers and he relaxed
into his demon
face, ripping her lips open and biting off her tongue even as she flailed
and suffocated in
his grip. Her heartbeat was surprisingly strong for one so small and
poorly fed, but it
didn't take him long to end it, gulping down the spouting blood until
the flow slowed at
last to a dribble and she dangled limply in his embrace like a lost
doll.
She was dead before they reached the next station and he briskly re-pocketed
his
possessions, along with a gift-wrapped amber bracelet, a shiny little
polaroid camera
from Japan and a handful of notes.
* * *
The magic shop was exactly where the Chaos demon had told them; turned
out it was a
street that Spike knew quite well, but a low level glamour hid it from
the casual observer
and he'd been under the impression that there was nothing there but
a wall covered in
crumbling pink stucco. Now that he knew where to look Spike could plainly
see the
dapper little shopfront with a Guild of Magic-Users sign displayed
above the door. Real
old school stuff, this even had a moth-eaten crocodile suspended in
the dusty window,
likely been there since before the Prague Golem's day. They slipped
into a window seat
in the cafˇ on the corner of the street and waited for a witch to wander
by.
Modern gadgetry just kept getting smaller and smaller. He peered through
the view finder
at Drusilla's smile and tried various little buttons until the flash
lit her up and the camera
made a satisfying click. The picture slid out into his hand a moment
later and Dru
watched, fascinated, as her image slowly formed out of the ether.
"Again!" she exclaimed, thoroughly enchanted. Spike obliged with a
grin. Didn't seem
so long since the Box Brownies; back in the good old days of stern
sepia faces folks
never would have believed you could take photographs so casually.
The ice cubes made the glass cold in Spike's hand, but the bourbon
provided a lingering
illusion of warmth as he swallowed it down. Across the table Drusilla
sipped cherry
brandy and peered at four photographs fanned out before her, fingering
her new bracelet
with the expression of a child with a longed-for ice cream. Each flutter
of her sooty lashes
reduced their enamoured waiter to a quivering wreck; she seduced men
without even
trying, his girl. Not like bloody Darla - all cheap, calculated artifice
and faux disingenuity.
Drusilla, in spite of everything or perhaps rather because of everything
- was as
innocent as a babe in arms; real innocence had never been the saccharine
stuff of
Disney movies. Perfect innocence, Spike had come to understand, was
cruel without
care or comprehension of the consequences.
She was the first to spot their target, suddenly rising to her feet
and pointing, the dark
eyes all a-sparkle in her sweet bone-china face. Spike, following her
gaze, saw a stocky
woman balancing several cumbersome packages and stepping out of the
magic shop.
Bingo.
"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with·pain," she
said. "A sweet little witch
with power flowing through her veins like wine and rainbow dreams wreathing
her heart.
She'll make a fine treat to quench a girl's thirst before we roast
her."
He knocked back the rest of the bourbon and rose, pocketing the pictures
as he tossed a
few stolen bills onto the table.
The witch had her back to them and was evidently in a hurry. Wordlessly
they separated,
each taking one side of the street and moving with the uncanny speed
and silence
reserved for hunting. Spike felt a rush of pure exhilaration and then
reminded himself that
it was Drusilla's kill; he was only there to protect her if needs be.
In all likelihood she
could handle herself just fine - still the possibility of danger was
a welcome thrill in this
unthreatening city.
They followed her through a cat's cradle of interlacing stradas, quiet
as her shadow and
just as inescapable. It was her town, to be sure, but Spike and Dru
had been hunting in
cities for decades and had predators' instincts for the nuances of
topography. Eventually
the rhythm of her footsteps faltered slightly, betraying the moment
when she realised she
was prey. Spike smiled and moved in closer, hearing her heartbeat quicken
and knowing
she would be weighing up escape routes even as she readied her magic.
Time to move, before one of them was turned into a frog. (Although
he suspected, were
that to happen, that Drusilla would take his transformation in her
stride. Most likely she
would spend the next century kissing his slimy green lips and perching
toy crowns on his
dank little head, confidently expecting her prince to return - not
a fate he fancied over
much.)
He was right behind the witch in full vamp face when she turned. She
hurled the packages
into his face - which he should really have been expecting and her
eyes were pools of
pitch as her mouth started shaping the beginnings of a spell directed
straight at him.
Which was as it should be, since he was drawing her fire for Drusilla,
but she'd better
bloody well hurry up before he found himself reduced to playing Kermit
to her Miss Piggy
for the rest of their sunless eternity·
·and then Drusilla peeled out of the shadows and felled her
with one sharp blow from
hands folded, prayer-like, into a makeshift hammer of flesh. The angle
of the impact
broke her new bracelet, scattering chunks of amber across the cobbles
like brittle little
lumps of bonfire toffee; and Dru let out a mewl of regret as she shoved
the human to the
ground. The witch's eyes resumed their human appearance for a dazed
moment and
then Drusilla was straddling the disoriented woman and pressing her
nose close to the
helpless human face.
"Be in my eyes," she crooned, stroking the nut-brown hair. "Be in me.
Be in my eyes."
Simple as that.
Spike kept watch for any inconvenient pedestrians as his girl slowly
unbuttoned the
witch's blouse. The human was unremarkable not pretty, but attractive
enough in her
own unfashionable fashion. A touch too heavyset for modern ideals of
beauty, but neither
Spike nor Dru was hidebound by conventions of taste. In any sense.
Drusilla stroked the soft stretch of skin from the raised chin down
to the waist. "Purr for
me, sweetheart," she said, and to Spike's amusement the little witch
did just that, staring
blindly at the stars. Her pale breasts jiggled with the reverberations
of her chest and
Drusilla pressed her ear down against the exposed skin, listening raptly
with her hair
spilling across the woman's torso. "Good girl," she said, pressing
a kiss onto each dark
nipple.
Spike sloughed away the cellophane around a pack of Lucky Strike that
he had liberated
earlier in the evening and lit another fag, smiling indulgently as
Drusilla crouched over the
entranced human.
Lost in dreams of Dru's weaving, she moaned softly when the vampire's
face came
down between her legs to inhale soap and fear and the lingering trace
of some man who
smoked cheap tobacco and ate too much red meat. Drusilla seized the
cotton in her
fanged mouth and shook her head like a small dog worrying a shoe, shredding
the
knickers with a satisfying rip. She buried her face in the tangled
curls, her wet tongue
seeking the outer lips of the girl's cunt and probing its secrets;
testing and tasting and
teasing the nerve-heavy flesh until the clitoris grew swollen under
her attention and the
blood thrummed just below the surface of the skin. Spike could smell
the girl's arousal
mingling with the other evening odours and watched as Dru sent the
girl shuddering and
bucking under her. Drusilla withdrew her face from the splayed thighs
long enough to
meet her lover's yellow eyes and smile.
"She tastes like crabapple jelly and clotted cream," she told him.
Spike found this assertion highly unlikely, but was perfectly prepared
to believe that his
girl thought it was so. God, but she was beautiful with her teeth unsheathed
and her gaze
all golden in the moonlight.
As the witch climaxed, her limbs spasming stupidly against the cobbles
and blood
flooding the pelvic muscles, Drusilla bit down hard. She laughed as
blood arced out in
time to the heartbeat, catching splashes in her pale hands and licking
them clean before
pressing her mouth down to suckle at the wound.
She was not quite dead when they set her alight. Drusilla released
her hold on the
woman's mind and allowed her to understand as flames licked the edges
of her
tasteless tassled skirt and her drained heart stuttered to a halt.
She was beyond stirring,
but Spike felt unexpectedly disquieted by the dying gleam in her eye;
her lips never
moved, but he swore that he could almost hear a vengeful voice tickling
the edge of his
consciousness less than a whisper, the merest flicker of something
on the peripheries
of his hearing. Just to be on the safe side he brought a Doc Martin
down on her
bloodless throat and silenced the thin thread of sound with a decisive
crunch of vertebrae
underfoot.
And then his arms were full of Drusilla, high as a kite and twice as
flighty, and her tongue
in his mouth tasted of blood and sex and magic. He bent his girl right
back until her
cascading hair brushed the cobbles like a swooning screen siren from
the golden age of
film, and he kissed her until long after the fire had burned itself
out. By the time they left
the alleyway they could smell dawn in the air and Spike had quite forgotten
to worry about
witchcraft.
He didn't realise one of the polaroids was missing until long after
they had reached their
apartment