First light found Spike laying on his back watching the sun slowly rise through an uncovered window. Exhausted as he was, he couldn't not have watched this sunrise over the city outside his firmly closed window. He had successfully completed his first night as one of the fully fledged white hats with flying colours. His planing skills had been put to the challenge and had proven themselves sound. He had done his level best to adjust to his new situation. To accept that things had happened and he just had to go on. And he had acquitted himself well on all counts. He deserved to stay up and see this sunrise.
The Skilosh demons had been so very easy to take down. It seemed that his new employers had done their level best to think of everything. He and Oz had gone in there with a rope made of a material niether had ever seen, turned out to be Artemis' hunting ropes, ergo demon proof. So, armed with their ropes and a pump action shotgun each, it had been so simple to surprise the parent demon and isolate him from his brood. Then kill the brood. There was nothing that could be done for the poor souls who had been infected by the adult Skilosh demon's parasitic virus. So they had had to kill them all. But how to do so was the first stumbling block. How to distract the parent demon long enough to get at his parasitic children? And much as he hated to admit it, it was Angel's fucking attack that gave them the upper hand. When daddy Skilosh saw the collar around Spike's neck he was all for assisting a fellow parent as much as he could. Which gave them the opportunity to separate him from his children to the accompaniment of his outraged and desperate screams. Oddly enough Spike could almost empathise with the parent demon, forcefully separating his family like that. But he had taken too many mortal lives in his quest to procreate. One here or there, now or again, but always having up to twenty of them with him? Even the demon in Spike's mind could see that that was well beyond overkill.
Granted, Spike had never created his own childer, he always seemed to have enough on his plate with all the young demons he somehow managed to find to adopt. They came from the hordes of minions and childer other vampires created and abandoned. Much as he had been himself. Witness Harmony for one, true he could have been nicer to her, but hind sight was always twenty-twenty wasn't it?
As he forcefully turned his mind back to the Skilosh demon he remembered the fight in that stupid woman's living room. She certainly didn't live up to her damn name. Mrs so caled Sharp had been about as sharp as a blunt butter knife, and far less useful. Her dead family all around her and she stood there too shocked to do more than offer to make them a cup of coffee. His memories were tinged with the sound of the parent Skilosh crying for his dead children. As he let them wash over him his left hand unconsciously drifted to stroke over his belly. Almost as if he were actively seeking the hiding place of the baby he knew was lurking in there, somewhere. Spike pulled his hand back, almost sick to his stomach at his foolish move. He wondered if waiting up to see his first sunrise in one hundred and twenty eight years was really all that bright an idea. Maybe he was too uptight, too wound up to think straight? Maybe it would have been better to have simply come home and gone straight to sleep? Wouldn't that have been better for little bratling in his belly? The blond vampire deliberately put his hands behind his head and told himself to not get attached to the brat in his belly. He was not keeping it, so there was little point in even thinking about it. He was a demon, a vampire, a warrior on the side of right, how could he raise a baby? Even if he wanted to! What kind of a father could he ever be to a mortal child, and there was no way he was letting a vampiric child survive. That would be too cruel for words.
He forced his mind back once again to the Skilosh demons and the mess in that stupid cow's house. Dead demon goo, dead human goo too. The inadvertent rhyme made him grin. It was looking at that mess that his second great idea of the night was born. Televise the mess and make demon existence an up front, in the face reality. Skilosh demons at the very least. Then tell the television crews that Detective Kate Lockley was the woman to speak to about the criminal activities of demons in their city. Of course he had to have Hera stay behind briefly, make the calls and sell the story to the film crew and the police. While she did that he and Oz had taken their subdued prisoner to the holding pen in their basement. Not that the Skilosh would have know he were in their basement. Once he was securely locked up they had headed over to Detective Lockley's place. Spike had hoped that she'd have been a tad more compus mentus than Mrs Gibbering Imbecile had been when they'd left the first place.
Spike rather thought the stupid mortal woman was going to be in therapy for life. It served her right, she should have paid her bill promptly and in full. Even if the money was due to fuckin' Angel Investigations, if they had paid up, there would have been an after sales service agreement to help them out if daddy demon came looking for now demised baby demon. But no, like mortals the world over, they had to renege on their contract. He had to concede that demons were not much more trust worthy, but there were rules as to fair play. One had to pay a bill in order to then go get the money back, in pounds of flesh if need be! But at least the bill was bloody well paid in the first place.
He had Oz drive him over to the cop's place, mostly because the werewolf wouldn't let him drive till Hera said it was okay. Once there he had to have the werewolf kick in the woman's door and allow him in. He knew that at that moment there was no one alive in the place. Luckily she had only just passed into death. A quick belt of CPR and they were on their way to the nearest hospital with the resuscitated woman. It was a scene worthy of Passions, carrying her out of there, duster billowing in the breeze he created as he ran. Noble vampire to the rescue! And that image did make him laugh. It had been a good job for the stupid bint that he had known how to do CPR. And he only knew that from watching daytime soaps for as many decades as he had. Who said you couldn't learn something useful from daytime drama?
He had this vague memory of Xander stating, quite loudly and emphatically, that vampire's could not do CPR. Seemingly, his sick sod of a stupid sire had told the spotty oik that vampires couldn't administer CPR. Which Spike knew was total bollocks, he was probably better at it than most humans. After all, the air that exited his lungs was as fresh as it went in. When he had breathed for the stupid bint Lockley he wasn't forcing spent air into her lungs, was he? No doubt what his sire had really meant was that if he couldn't do something himself, then it couldn't be done! It had been his credo for so long, way back when, Spike didn't imagine the numpty would see fit to change it.
Almost idly, Spike wondered at his use of so mild an insult towards Xander as well as Angel - Angelus, whatever the deluded vampire chose to call himself. As far as Spike was concerned Liam was a perfectly good name. Granted the bleached blond vampire did somehow get the feeling that these days it was the sort of name that would grace an asthmatic, bespectacled snivelling little kid. Not a big roughty toughty dickhead like his ignoble sire. He put his mild expletives down to the chance to see his first sunrise in one hundred and twenty eight years, without the inherent spontaneous combustion problem. It was obviously mellowing him, a little. That idea made him giggle, almost carefree and childlike. And had nothing to do with himself no longer going by the name William, no, non what so ever.
He glanced at the bright rosy glow flooding his room and smiled at the absolute lack of discomfort he felt. He was seeing a new day, first hand. Not wanting to tempt fate too much he struggled out of his comfortable bed, crossed to the window and smiled out at his first new day. Then he closed the curtains, tight shut, and headed back to his bed, with every intention of sleeping.
Sleep, however, didn't want to be welcomed just yet. His mind was still replaying the previous nights activities at him. The memory of getting the drunk and drugged woman into the hospital with a pocketful of pill bottles, the contents of which she had apparently swallowed, not even his last task of the night. No, that little marvel was reserved for his first contact with the pyramid sales morons. They had to have been the funniest and best part of the entire night. Hera had rejoined them by then which had given Spike his biggest and best idea of the night.
They had all walked in, even with the wards against mortals entering, the looks on the guard Vampire's faces as he walked in with two apparently all too human human's in tow had been a picture. When he introduced himself, the look of awe had fed his much starved ego. Seemed that the name William the Bloody still carried some weight with the local vamps.
Staking that Daniel, Desmond, Derek, whatever his damn name was, the pillock anyway, staking him had been fun. Especially as he had allowed the pillock to try and stake him first. He trusted in Hera's fancy chain vest. He did suspect that it had been made by Hephaestus, one time Greek God of the Forge. If it was, he'd make sure to give thanks next time he was in the temple. If it hadn't been, right then, mere days after he had tried to stake himself, he could hardly cry foul if that pillock had in fact managed to stake him. Not that piles of ash howled much of anything anyway. It was the priciple of the thing.
It was too much, he laughed loud and long at that memory. And once he had fianlly calmed down, his brain steadfastly carried on reviewing his nights activities.
Hera had arrived at the prearranged rendezvous point and they had all gone in, as he had previously recalled. But, after the you stake me - then I stake you session when the idiot died his final death, everything had changed. He would forever remember with fondness the look on Hera's face as he claimed he survived only by Hera's grace. He hadn't lied after all, Hera had had the grace to give him the stake proof vest, hadn't she?
The power he had felt, standing up there, on that stage, preaching to his fellow vampires, was incredible. Selling them a non existing, at that point anyway, religion. If that was how tele-evangelists felt, even before the money rolled in, it was little wonder they loved the feeling. He talked bullshit at length at them. All about how Hera could make them valued members of society again. How she and the Olympians were the only Gods that cared for them. How they were all 'The Lost children of Echidna' and for those who hadn't had a good old fashioned education she was known as the mother of all demons. That made her their mother. The mother of all demons native to their world. Of how their Gods were now strong enough to fight to get them back. Of how the one true God brigade had kept them a sub, sub class for far too long. He also reminded them all that eating, and the subsequent killing of humans, was entirely optional. There were always alternatives. Animal blood, donated blood, just don't kill the humans one fed from. Let them recover and feed again and again. After all, if they took too many humans the mortal population would wait till high noon and wipe them off the face of the planet. They might have so many advantages over humans, but they had too many vulnerabilities to them too. They were all like children sitting on a sew-saw, a teeter-totter, humans on one end, vampires on the other. Each dependent on the other to play the game. Only, humans had the option of getting off the toy and walking away from the game all together. That idea had surprised him too, he'd never thought of it like that, not for a very long time. Not since his mother had died and he had left Gronmann's care.
And they had bought it. All if it. The vampires in that old cinema had swallowed his waffled rubbish, hook, line and sinker. They had looked at Hera and worshipped her. They had asked her blessing, in their dark, miserable hearts they had given forth belief and asked only a vague blessing in return.
Hera had had fully fledged worshipers for the first time in so very long. The Goddess had almost cried.
The vampires had someone in whom to believe. Some of them did cry.
That was the point at which he had left Hera and Oz to deal with things themselves. He'd caught a cab and headed back for their base, exhausted. He wasn't that surprised at how tired he had felt, after all he had suicided himself only a couple of days before.
Maybe that Lockley bint wasn't as daft as he had first thought she was. After all his less than sane sire had forced him to the self same point, although by a different route, as he had reduced her to. His solution hadn't been any different to hers, had it? He had to admit, in his own heart at the very least, that it had not.
He had stayed awake, waiting for his... his what? Friends? Colleges? Team mates? Whatever they were, he had waited up to make sure they were safe. Whatever it was that they would eventually become, it had felt wonderful to have people to worry about again. Seeing their happy, tired faces had been enough. He greeted them rather grumpily, and after watching Hera transfer their captive demon back to the Demon Court - he had headed for his recently found bedroom and his wait for sunrise. Spike moaned about having to wait up, about having to see the demon off their premises, about their tardy hour when he had to get his sleep. He didn't want them to know that he needed to be needed by someone. That that was probably why he had fancied himself in love with the Slayer. She needed a vampire to fight at her side, and he needed to be the vampire fighting at her side. To prove his own worth to himself if no one else. And as payment she had sicced his sire on him to do all that...
As he thought those thoughts the sun had duly risen and he had seen it, and survived.
Rolling over, he snuggled into his comfortable bed, pulled up the warm, new blankets and finally fell asleep.
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