Chapter Fourteen: Sleepers

He didn't like watching Drusilla sleep. She lay too still, looked too pale, was swamped too deeply, even in her ridiculous, delicate white dress. She took her clothes from the people she killed. This frail white garment, lacy and formless, had obviously been a nightgown, decorated - when Dru acquired it - with the smallest spot of blood at the shoulder. Drusilla wore it with shoes and jewellery, quite as though it was a proper frock. She picked things up without discrimination, and used them without reason, but she gave them an odd grace. She'd done as much to him.

He didn't like the elegiac tone of his thoughts, not with Dru lying there beside him on a stone casket, eyes closed, unmoving. Fear of death had left him – laughter and defiance taking up the empty berth – but the prospect of loss was there still, a chill black pit beneath his feet. He shuddered. He hadn't felt so lonely since the hour before he died.

He didn't like this place. They were encamped for the day in a mausoleum, in the graveyard of the ramshackle chapel beside the convent school. Formal inscriptions on the walls dated the last burial a century ago, if William's Latin was up to muster. It had been disturbed since; the rusted gate stood open several inches, and had given way to admit them with a resigned groan of its tired hinges. Inside, the air was acrid with an old, human stench, and the floor was strewn with bottles that had once contained very cheap gin. Sitting on the casket beside Drusilla, knees drawn up to his chest while the outer cold pushed, unresisted, into his limbs, William felt as though the place was waiting to be left in dismal peace.

He didn't like the thought that he alone was disturbing it. Either because she didn't want to or because she couldn't, Dru had not explained to William whether they were at her former school, whether she was from this part of London, whether she'd really had children of her own, whether she'd killed her relatives, whether she'd been a nun, or, in fact, anything else at all. He knew the things he'd known about Drusilla since she took him over; that she was beautiful, that she was mesmerising, that he felt remote from her when he couldn't see into her eyes.

And that she was Angelus's.

That wasn't such old knowledge; it came from repeated lectures on the subject by the man himself, intended to show him his place in the order of things. For her part, Dru never talked about it. He'd tried last night, thinking that, if he started with Angelus, he might be able to follow the trail back and learn who Dru had been. But he'd said Angelus's name and Dru had pressed a finger to her lips, eyes cast down, and knelt in the dirt like a supplicant. She had simply re-buried the dolls and pictures, patting down the earth like a child at the seaside destroying sandcastles, and led him to the mausoleum to hide from the day. She had said nothing else before falling into a deathly sleep.

Restless, William hopped off the stone casket and paced around it with deliberate lack of stealth. Drusilla lay quite still and silent, distressingly pale. He couldn't get used to it. He strode to the door to view her from afar, then approached again, leaning over her motionless body with a theatrically stricken expression.

"For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light," he breathed, injecting into his words all the gravity and horror he could summon.

Drusilla did not stir, her cheek resting pale against the cold slab.

William sighed, looking up around the sepulchre; a feasting presence full of light. He gave an empty gin bottle a speculative kick, making it roll across the stone floor with a round, shimmering sound, before trailing to a halt. It sounded like small bells ringing. He peered back at Dru hopefully: still nothing.

Narrowing his eyes, he bent forward to study her up close again, examining a pair of puncture wounds in the white perfection of her slender throat. New injuries overlaid on the ones that had made her.

Suddenly abashed, William mouthed the rest of the words. "Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in the dark to be his paramour?"

Drusilla never moved.

William hoisted himself back up onto the tomb alongside her, kicking his heels against its stone flanks. He'd been an understudy Romeo once, at college. Mouthing those lines, standing in the wings, had made something stir in his stomach. He'd walked back to his rooms after rehearsals with a useless, seething frustration and an ardent heart, wishing guiltily for the lead actor to contract something incapacitating. No such luck. He'd played Third Watchman in the end and had two lines after the lovers were dead. Waste of ... well, that was the trouble. He'd never know. It had just felt like a waste.

The ghost of the scene wouldn't leave him. He leaned in to kiss Drusilla's cheek, lingering over the unblemished skin, imagining fair Verona in place of fetid London without. Still she did not stir. He sighed, rocking back onto his shins, and dropped off the casket. The useless, borrowed poetry was bubbling up inside him as insistently as the clammy air inside the sepulchre swathed itself around him, appalled at his presence and lack of need for it. He bit lightly on the tip of his tongue and looked up around the mausoleum, needing... something. In an alcove in the wall, one of the oldest-looking tombs was decorated with an elaborate marble sculpture of a supine woman, hands clasped in prayer over her chest. Well. That was something.

He approached with affected swagger, and peered down at the marble woman's frozen face. She looked like a pragmatist. He cleared his throat and enjoined her, "The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace."

The old words sounded light and conversational. He smiled. "Well, that much is true. Romeo didn't manage it, and my luck's no better." He sniffed, regarding the carved woman with head tilted: almond-shaped eyes, stone hair caught back off her face, her long dress a dune of rippled marble. "And neither's yours, by the looks of things. Don't suppose anyone's been to pay their respects to you in a while."

He read the inscription on the plaque above the tomb, but the details were a sombre miscellany: Mary, wife of John, of this parish. A good two centuries she'd spent in this box. She could have been a contemporary of Darla's. Darla wouldn't have cared for her dress.

"Hope you don't mind my disturbing your privacy, then," he continued. "I'm a vampire, you see. Creature of the night." He sniffed. "Sacrilegious my being here, I suppose, but you can hardly mind the company after all these years. Name's William, but you can call me Spike."

The sculpture's lips were parted, as though she was just about to reply.

"You're Mary. It's alright, don't trouble to get up. Dru and I won't get in your way." He considered the sculpted woman for a moment, then tentatively leant forward and touched her stone cheek. It felt like Drusilla's. "Did you look like this when you died? Must be true that the beautiful die young." He smoothed a hand over the stone brow. "Or – what is it they say? 'Those the angels love.'" Snorting to himself, under his breath, William tracked a finger through the thick dust pooled around the sculpture on the casket lid. "Look at yourself," he deplored the stone woman. "Just gathering dust." He blew a thin coating of it from his fingertip and shook his head. "'S'what you get for staying down when you're dead. Stuck in a great stone box, out of sight and out of mind." He looked up at the low ceiling. "Not that I'm so much better off myself, just this minute. But... I can do this." He made his fangs descend, then retracted them. "As parlour tricks go, it's better than never having to blink."

The stone woman stared at him with sightless eyes.

"I see you're unimpressed," he observed. "Well, just wait. I'm making a name for myself. That's how I come to be stuck here, as it happens. Fugitive life's part and parcel of the dark warrior vocation. Dru and I, see; we're setting up for ourselves. You can tell all your friends that you met us." William thought for a moment. "Unless a great big stupid fellow with dreadful hair and too much forehead comes by. Prefer it if you didn't set him on our tracks."

"Angelus."

"That's the chap. What?" William wheeled round toward the sound of Drusilla's voice. Her eyes were still closed, but she was flinching slightly. Her pale brow creased into furrows as she tossed her head from side to side as though fighting against restraints, clenching her thin hands into fists. William frowned deeply. She was talking in her sleep. About Angelus.

Abruptly, Dru's sleeping face broke into a wide, closed-eyed smile. "Angelus," she repeated. At least, he thought so. The first syllable was mangled. Come to think of it, all he'd really heard was "jealous."

Light seared so hard into Angelus's opening eyes that his contracting pupils turned his irises yellow. His fangs descended.

"Ah, sleeping beauty awakes. I was beginning to think I'd have to kiss you."

Someone was swinging a lantern in front of his face. Beyond its aching glare, he made out unfamiliar vampire features looming over him.

"I usually insist on a little courtship first," he panted, trying to haul himself upright. He realised with a start that his hands were bound together and attached to something above his head. The weight of his whole body hung on his straining arms. A great, thick, dull ache stretched down his neck and shoulders from a throbbing pain in his head, and his right shoulder was so hot and painful he suspected it was dislocated. He found his footing and straightened himself, relieving his overstretched muscles but not the agony in the back of his skull.

"Steady on," cautioned the voice, at the precise moment when, through the general pain, Angelus realised that something wooden was in contact with his chest. He blinked. His interlocutor had a lantern hoist in one hand, and with the other was holding a rough-hewn stake to Angelus's heart. The vampire was scrawny and slight, several inches taller than Angelus drawn up to his full height, and dressed in a suit so absurdly tailored it had to be the very latest style. The hair neatly slicked to one side with pomade stood at odds with the rough-and-ready accent he was affecting. "You want to watch yourself," warned the strange vampire. He puffed out his chest. "Name's Lance."

Angelus held his head up with difficulty, forcing his human face back with a slight, formal smile. "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Lance. I'm the Prince Regent."

The stake pressed a little harder into Angelus's chest. "You're hardly in a position to be trying your luck," spat the self-proclaimed Lance. "I'll gag you if I have to."

"Ah, but then you'll not be able to hear me begging for my life," said Angelus, with exaggerated concern.

The other vampire twisted his lip, executing an unconcerned shrug. "That sounds well even through a gag."

Angelus grinned. "I'll hand it to you; that was actually quite threatening."

Lance spun the stake between his fingers without removing the point from Angelus's chest. The deep scowl he wore on such a narrow, aristocratic brow simply made him look absurdly put out. "I was thinking of making a deal with you," he muttered. "But I could just stake you now. Earn myself a reputation." He looked up around the cellar, the blood smeared on the walls and floor already looking black in the lamplight. Angelus narrowed his eyes, making out a pair of mangled, female bodies slumped some way behind Lance. His captor saw him looking, and adopted an unpleasant smile. "My sisters. This was my house, once. I'd been meaning to catch up with them for the longest time." When Angelus failed to look moved, he frowned deeper. "There would be poetry in having the dust of my greatest opponent, the Napoleon of the underworld, mix with the blood of my former dear ones..."

Angelus gave him a brilliant smile. "You know me, then? You don't just do this for every fellow who passes by?" A muscle twitched in Lance's jaw, and Angelus's smirk widened. "Truly, it's a pleasure to meet a fan. And you're making great strides with the threatening. But the poetry? You young 'uns, you're all the same. All mouth and no trousers. No decent ones, anyway."

Lance drew back his stake arm, ready to strike. "Alright!" protested Angelus. "Don't lose your head now. Tell me about this deal you have in mind."

The foppish vampire sniffed, obviously trying to regain composure. The arm in which he held the lantern was shaking perceptibly, making the light around them shimmer like a disturbed pool. "The deal, Angelus, is that you do exactly as I wish, and I don't dust you here and now."

"And what exactly is it that you wish? If you've heard about my talent for singing and want a private performance, I should tell you I charge by the tune..."

The other vampire growled low in his throat, then spent a moment perceptibly composing himself. "You've the nicest patch in north London. Everyone knows no one can hunt there without you or those harlots of yours coming after them, and no one's found a way to beat you yet. You hog that railway to yourself, eat up all the travellers. Easy pickings. Isn't right." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, obviously lowering his somewhat thin voice for effect. "I want in on St Pancras. You leave me in peace, keep concerned citizens off my tracks, and keep those lunatic women of yours under better control."

Angelus pretended to think about it, keeping his stare locked with the other vampire's. "Well," he said, at length. "Interesting proposition you have there, Mr. Lance."

The other vampire sneered.

"Unfortunately, we're not looking to subcontract just at the moment." In point of fact, they were moving out of town, and anyone with an eye for it could move into their old hunting grounds in a week. Even a ridiculous little fop like this should be able to pin down a corner for himself. He had enterprise, at least. But Angelus hadn't given anyone anything except psychiatric conditions for more than a hundred years, and wasn't in a magnanimous mood. "I have a proposal of my own, as it happens," he continued. "How would you feel about my ripping your skull from your shoulders?"

The gentrified vampire laughed. It wasn't quite the effect Angelus had been seeking. He'd thought he'd put rather a lot of menace into the question. "My apologies, Angelus," he smarmed. "I see you aren't playing with a full deck of cards."

"Your accent's slipping," Angelus pointed out helpfully. "Try dropping your 't's and 'g's. That's much more menacing."

Lance snarled. "See, you're a wanted man."

"Really, I'm flattered by the attention, but you aren't my type. Perhaps if we'd met under different circumstances –"

Lance's fist connected with Angelus's nose so hard that his head snapped back and his fangs descended.

"Hear about any interesting deaths in St Pancras lately?" Lance asked. "The kind that might make tongues wag?"

Angelus scowled, burying under anger the twinge of discomfort Lance's words set off. Bloody William. His indiscretion was catching up to them sooner than he'd expected. "Henry Inglis," hissed Angelus. His own blood was forging a thin path down his face, into the corner of his mouth.

"Henry Inglis? What? The railway magnate?" Lance looked at Angelus with interest. "He's dead, is he? One of yours?"

Angelus stared, uncomprehending.

"Oh, well, that'll make a lot of people mightily relieved, no doubt. Nasty piece of work, Inglis. A lot of people owed him a lot of money, way I hear it. No, I'm talking about a gentlewoman." The inflection he gave the word seethed with sarcasm. "Sophie Dooley. Or you might know her better as Serafina? You with the fancy made-up names like to stick together, is that it? Taking names like that –" He sucked his teeth and squinted at Angelus, derisively. "It's mocking God, you know."

Angelus stared levelly.

"Serafina," Lance intoned. "Now, she was a... what would the polite term be? Courtesan. A courtesan with some very influential paramours. Quite the beauty, apparently – long red hair, porcelain skin, nice line in white frocks." He gave Angelus an appraising gaze. "Any of this ringing a bell? Lost your tongue? You see, her body was pulled out of the Thames at Blackfriars two nights ago. The police don't know what to make of the wounds on her throat." He slid the point of the stake up Angelus's chest, to the spot on his throat where he had been made. "Others do."

Angelus shut his eyes and swallowed.

"Proper treat, she must have been. Not so sweet and pure as your usual type, but I bet she knew a few tricks to make up for it." The vampire's voice in his ear was sour. And God, he was right on the money. The whore had been treacle. Thick, spoilt blood made from something cheap. It was at the opera that he'd seen her first, a month or more ago. Just when Darla was shaping up for one of her spectacular explosions, before she'd stormed off to her precious Master, before Dru'd come back with her new creature. And oh, he'd been fed up. Made Dru keep him entertained for a while, tracking down that ambassador and his wife whose lodgings in the Royal Hotel they'd sequestered in the end. But Dru had been waning fast, as she did from time to time, laid low by some vision he'd been unable to make head or tail of. Something about fire and revenge and trapdoors; she was always so oblique. So he'd struck out alone, in search of a new project, and found her fast: a pretty redhead on the arm of some obnoxious stuffed-suit, blushing and hardly talking and blanching away from the cool stares of the other women in her party.

"I think I know the story," said Lance. "Are you sitting comfortably?" He looked up at the manacles where they were cutting into Angelus's wrists, at the thickening blood streaking the side of his head. "Then I'll begin. Your fellow countrywoman, I understand?"

She'd set all Angelus's senses ringing like bells, left him chewing on an amused grin; he could spot someone passing for what they weren't at ten paces. Gratified, he'd set the old routine in motion. Insinuated himself into the edges of her group, got close enough so, in the instant her companion was preoccupied, he could lean in to her ear and whisper: "I know your secret."

She'd whirled to face him, round-eyed, horrified. Big green eyes, she'd had. An offensively pure colour.

"You're Irish," he had whispered, simply, with a wicked smile.

In her confusion she had let relief get the better of her, let herself catch the smile and return it. He hadn't said the other truth about her, the other ill-concealed reality of what she was, and she had taken it as an act of kindness. In the moment she'd said nothing, regarding him with those great naive green pools of hers.

"So am I," he told her, and disappeared into the milling crowds.

"Filth sticks together," continued Lance. "So I suppose you talked about the old country, counted rosaries together, am I right?"

He'd stalked her for a month, dressing it up as benign coincidence, and watching her swallow it whole. She was easy to track. Her patron, a brash man named Barnes, lived the way Angelus and Darla had in their first years together; loud, ostentatious, decadent. The vampires had learnt something about appearances that he hadn't, though - he didn't know when to step out of sight. He was seen everywhere, too widely to be quite fashionable, and always at his side he toted the pretty, mute redhead. A foreign heiress with little English, the story went. A lucky tart from County Cork, Angelus had quickly discovered. She could talk alright, with a gentle southern Irish accent that no one else let slip they recognised. This Barnes had picked her out of penury and paraded her on his arm, a trophy. According to the whispering gossips, he had an unmentioned, consumptive wife interned in a sanatorium somewhere. Serafina – her real name was Sophie, she'd told him - was an ill-kept secret, but nothing was said publicly. People disapproved or applauded the aging man's bravado as they saw fit, and certainly no one spoke to her, could they avoid it.

Except Angelus. He'd wait in the shadows at the theatre, at dances, and catch her eye. Make her come to him. She was lonely, or homesick, or hated the man – one of those, maybe all of them. She'd poured out her heart, but listening to her had never been the point. He'd engineered stolen moments and given them to her as gifts, letting her use them to cry, to tell him how her patron beat her, stuttering to name the things he made her do. She was very young. And Lance was right - in return, Angelus had told her a few well-placed lies; he wouldn't ask anything of her, she'd be safe with him, just to talk about the old country and be herself.

"But there's only so long even your people can babble for," said Lance. "In the end, you wouldn't let a piece of flesh that handsome go to waste on someone else's arm."

He'd prised her open like a shell. He had a failsafe way of making himself appear unthreatening, brotherly, sexless; a eunuch. There was a particular, gentle burn he let into his eyes, a certain innocent set of his wide mouth. It hadn't failed. The girl had melted. And when the time was right, he had offered to take her away from the man. Angelus told her that if she'd meet him, wait for him on the bridge, he'd find somewhere safe for her to stay. She'd agonised. It was a risk she so badly wanted to take. She must have lain awake at night turning it over in her mind, scraping up the courage, forcing herself to trust him.

When the appointed hour had arrived and she came to him, he was preoccupied, and killed her quickly. He'd meant to be more creative for the final act, the crowning glory, but the business with William and the railway spikes and the newspaper had thrown him, and he just needed a quick fuck and murder. Then Darla had arrived, and he'd thrown the redheaded tart's drained body over the palisade, into the river.

"So you took her for yourself. Quite a miscalculation," finished Lance.

Angelus opened his eyes again. "What do you want from me?"

"I know your Mr. Barnes. And, if you don't do as I say, I'll hand you over to him."

Angelus let his jaw fall slack. His pupils shrank, his limbs stiffened, and he seemed to slump in the chains that held him to the cellar ceiling. Observing the display of fear, Lance twisted up his mouth into a cruel smile. "He's looking for you and your trollops now. Not everyone in this city is as oblivious as the police. He knows what you are and how to kill you, and he'll make it painful and slow. Dust the bitches before your eyes."

Angelus quivered, dropping his head to his chest, and Lance leant in to whisper in his ear: "He's got an army out looking for you. They'll weasel you out soon enough. And you know the worst of it?" Angelus blinked up at him fearfully, hunching his shoulders, making the vampire lean closer to spit the words into his ear. "The worst of it is – "

Angelus braced himself against the chains, swung back up off the floor, and kicked his captor in the chest with both feet. Lance toppled over backwards with a shout of dismay, giving Angelus the instant he needed to wrench the inadequate chains so the loop in the ceiling tugged free. He grasped Lance's abandoned stake in his manacled fists and rammed it through the vampire's heart.

Dust exploded up onto his clothes and over the floor. Angelus curled his lip. "I'll work it out for myself," he muttered.