Title: The Assistant, part 44
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: R
Summary: More about the Initiative
Spoilers: season 4
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
Adam surveyed his followers. He had been actively recruiting a demon army from the scores of captives held by the Initiative. Many of the monsters had joined up voluntarily at the thought of some revenge on the humans who had treated them like guinea pigs. Others just followed the strongest leader and there was no doubt that Adam was strong. He had broken the arm of a Fyarl demon that had questioned him. It made a convincing argument since everyone knew how strong Fyarls actually were.
From his vantage point in the control center of the Initiative, he could watch the entire town on the carefully hidden cameras that had been placed on nearly every block. He ran the scenarios through his computer, analyzing patterns and looking always for Riley. At last, he found him.
The young soldier had emerged from a surveillance area that was surprisingly dark, as if the cameras there had stopped working for some reason. He made a mental note to see to the problem after he had finalized his plans on conquest and destruction.
He gave a passing thought to the young woman who had managed to evade him in battle. She had been strong, though not as strong as he himself was. Searching the archived databases left by Dr. Walsh, he matched her visually with a school photo of one Buffy Summers. Her file was interesting. She was a born troublemaker and had an extensive history of violence, trouble at school, and even occasional forays with the human law enforcement. Very intriguing. She would make an interesting demon-meld when she was finally captured and altered. He was not one to waste a valuable resource.
Spike wandered the desolate streets of Sunnydale hoping for a quick meal. After being fed the tainted blood packets provided by the Initiative for such a long time, he was starving for some real sustenance. He had tried attacking a couple necking on a park bench but had backed off at the last minute. He didn’t want to go to the trouble of killing two people right now. He strolled unhappily down the street and thought about his situation. He blamed the Slayer for his incarceration. After all, if he hadn’t been busy trying to kill her, he wouldn’t have been in Sunnydale. The Initiative wouldn’t have captured him. He felt like he owed the tiny blonde some payback. Taking a page out of his grandsire’s book, he decided that the best way to hurt Buffy was to kill one of her friends.
The redhead, he decided with a smirk. He’d always had a weakness for redheads, Dru notwithstanding. He knew they attended the University and thought that Willow roomed on Campus. There must be a student directory somewhere. He’d find her, drain her and get a nice meal out of it in the bargain. He debated about turning the young witch. Vampires who had special powers before being turned often retained them after death. She was a powerful witch and, he didn’t doubt, would make a kick-ass vampire. He wouldn’t mind the company since he was currently lacking a female companion.
Willow slowly walked out of Oz’s dormitory. He was leaving her, leaving Sunnydale to find his inner-wolf and control it. She knew how difficult it was for him to control the beast, but thought that it was something they would work on together. She had read everything there was in Giles’ library on lycanthropy and werewolves and believed that they could deal with it.
Oz had told her that it was becoming harder to control himself. He‘d had an experience with another student that left him within an inch of changing and it wasn’t even close to the full moon. He was becoming more and more possessive of Willow and it wasn’t in a good way. He even resented the time she spent with the Scoobies. Oz wanted to kill Xander every time he looked at the beautiful redhead. He hated these feelings. They were frightening and so not like his normal persona that he knew it was the wolf vying for dominance. He had to get away from here before he did something that he couldn’t live with.
She had taken it hard. He was her first love and her first lover and he was leaving her for what didn’t seem to her to be very solid reasons. She thought about calling Buffy, but her best friend was deeply in love with her husband and wouldn’t understand the heartbreak Willow was experiencing. She finally arrived at her dorm room and went inside. For a while she wandered around the room picking things up and putting them down again. She felt disconnected and unhappy. Later, she knew, the grief of losing Oz would hit full strength, but for now, she was more or less dazed. When the knock came at her door, she didn’t even wonder who would be visiting her after midnight.
“Come in?” she said softly.
The door swung open and the blond vampire known to her as Spike sauntered into the room looking like he owned it.
“Hallo, Pet.”
“Spike!” Terror snapped Willow out of her funk.
“You know, you really shouldn’t be issuing invitations like that without knowing whose come knocking, luv. Still, it won’t really matter to you after tonight.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you here?”
“I’m going to pay back the Slayer for being locked up in that Hell hole.”
“Buffy didn’t have anything to do with that! She worked for weeks to get you out of there, to get all of you out.”
“It was her fault I was there to begin with!”
“What! She didn’t have anything to do with that. If you weren’t always hanging around, stalking her and stuff you wouldn’t have been caught.”
“Exactly my point. I was hunting her and she wasn’t getting caught so it’s her fault. Now, sorry to cut this short and all but I’m hungry.”
He reached out and tried to grab her but she evaded him. He chased her around the room, making sure he stayed between her and the door. Finally, she was driven back into a corner. He picked her up and threw her on her bed. “Come on, luv. I’ll make you like me and then we can have lots of fun together.”
She reached out with a flailing arm and found the bedside lamp that she used to smash him over the head. He rocked back lightly dazed. She tried to scramble away from him, but he had been a predator for more than a century and caught her immediately. Without further ado, he morphed into his game face and bent his fangs to her tender young neck. Before he could even so much as break the skin, a stabbing pain like white fire seared through his brain. It was so unexpected and so excruciating that the dropped Willow to grab his head.
She scrabbled clear and tried one more time for the door. He was furious now and lunged at her, intending to hurt her for whatever was happening in his head. The second he thought about injuring her, the pain came back and flash fried his brain. He dropped her arm and rocked back clutching his skull with both hands.
Willow watched him in amazement. There was clearly something wrong with the vampire. Even though he had just tried to kill her, it went against her gentle nature to see something suffering this much. She looked around the room surreptitiously and spotted her stake on the dresser. Easing carefully across the room, she nearly had it in her hands when he leaped on her, intent of burying his fangs in her neck come Hell or high water.
This time the pain was so great he couldn’t fight it. He swore his brain was on fire, trying to burst out of its confining shell of bone. He placed his hands over his eyes, expecting to see blood. Willow grabbed the stake and before the vampire could react, she had pushed it firmly into his chest.
Unfortunately for Willow, she was no Slayer and missed his heart by a good inch. He screamed at the pain of the wood and pushed her away from him, throwing her against the wall. Her head contacted rather sharply with the wallboard and she slipped down momentarily dazed, but still conscious enough to watch him convulse at the pain once again erupting in his head and the twin fire burning in his ribs. He yanked the stake out and threw it hard against the wall where it imbedded itself beyond hope of retrieval.
She watched groggily as the hole in his chest began to close. He stumbled to the bed and lay down upon it. When he could finally think through the pain, he looked at her reproachfully.
“Why did you go and do that for?”
“Well, because you were trying to kill me.”
“I’m a vampire. It’s what I do.” He still sounded sulky.
“Um, what’s with the head pain thing?”
“I don’t know. Every time I try to eat you, I get this hideous, screaming pain in my skull. Takes the fun right out of it, let me tell you.”
“Do, uh, do you think that the Initiative did something to you? Buffy said they were doing experiments on the captives.”
“Bugger! I don’t know then, do I? I wouldn’t be surprised at anything they were doing, bloody bastards! What right do they have to take my bite away?”
“You seem madder about that than the fact that I just pushed a stake into your chest,” she commented curiously.
“Well, that’s just business, you see. I bite you, you stake me. It’s the way the world works. It’s not you kidnap me and do experiments on my head—that’s not right.”
Willow found herself nodding agreement before she was aware of her actions. “I guess you’re right. It’s one thing to kill you, it’s different to do what they were doing. I guess we’d better call Buffy.”
Spike looked alarmed. “She’ll kill me.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Willow promised, then wondered why she was bothering. He was an evil vampire who had hurt them more than once and now she was supposed to get Buffy’s help? Life on the Hellmouth was just too weird.