THE CHILDREN OF MY SOUL


AUTHOR: Little Mouse  (elf_night@hotmail.com)

ARCHIVE:    If you’d like to post this story on your own/another site, please ask first.  My website: http://trak.to/elfnight

PAIRINGS: Various

DISCLAIMER: They belong to someone who isn’t me.  Name’s Joss.

WARNINGS: Violence, language, explicit m/m vampire stuff, physical/emotional abuse.  Character bashing (as in Buffy)

SUMMARY: AU!  After gaining his soul, Spike leaves the hatred and abuse of Sunnydale behind, looking for a place to ‘belong’.  He finds himself a magnet for abandoned vampire Childer - with souls.  Rumors of a powerful new vampire Clan has the Fang Gang and the Scoobies investigating - never expecting what they’re about to find.



PART ONE:   Emily


CHAPTER ONE:   My Shadow and Me

He tried.

He really did.

Patrolled and fought and did everything he was told - all the while struggling to deal with the voices and ghosts and guilt that were still haunting his every moment.

It wasn’t good enough.

If he’d thought they’d been hostile and he’d been cannon fodder before - well, it was paradise compared to now.  They made sure he was first in the line of fire for every demon and nasty that came through, and looked disappointed every time he managed to keep from turning to dust.

The last straw came when he was standing on the Summers’ front porch, bloody and bruised after a particularly nasty patrol, but actually having a half-normal conversation with the Slayer.

Then Buffy had gone inside, and Dawn had come out.

Dawn - his Nibblet, his Lil’ Bit, his baby sister...

He’d paused to smoke a cigarette before going to bed.  He’d quirked an eyebrow at her, questioning - Bit hadn’t spoken to him much lately.  “Need somethin’, Nibblet?”

“Yes,” she’d said coldly, glaring daggers at him, “I need you to stay away from my sister.”

He’d just blinked at her.  “Live in the basement, Bit.”

“Don’t call me that!” was the sharp reply.  “My name is Dawn! and you know what I mean!  Standing out here chatting with her like you’re a normal human being and not a - a monster!  You don’t have a chance with her; she’s over you and she’s not stupid enough to get involved again with some dead thing!  Just leave her alone!”

She’d run back inside and slammed the door.

And locked it.

Leaving him stranded outside, with sunrise a half-hour away.

For a long - horribly long - moment, Spike had just stood there and stared at the closed door.

Then he had turned and walked away.

*

He’d just kept walking.

There was no use going to Giles’ or Xander’s - both of them hated him.

Willow did, too.

So he’d walked.

His old crypt had become home to some really foul-smelling demon.

He walked on.

He ended up spending a very uncomfortable day in an old garden shed at the edge of town, huddled under a moldy tarp.

When night fell, he folded up the tarp, tucked it inside his duster, and kept on walking.

Into the desert.

By the time light started streaking the morning sky, he’d found a convenient cluster of rocks and had curled up among them, duster and tarp guarding him from the sun as he fell into an oblivious sleep.

At dusk, he started walking again.

He didn’t think.

He couldn’t let himself do that.

After a few nights of aimless wandering, he found himself outside of a little town.

There was a bus station.

He’d found enough money in the many pockets of his duster for a ticket.

To San Francisco.

He’d hesitated for a split second over a ticket to LA - then an image of the face Angel would make if he saw him made Spike choose the other destination.

If he had to face one more rejection, he’d walk into the sun.

A night’s ride saw him in the city, where he holed up in an abandoned subway tunnel and just - existed.

He’d always been a social creature, wanting - no, needing - to have other people around, even if they disliked him.

No more.

He’d turned into a hermit, going out only for blood, spending his days and nights just staring blankly at the rough stone wall of his hideout.

He’d been determined not to get close to anyone - ever again.

*

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in San Fran when he first noticed his shadow.

Days and nights got mixed up or passed away unnoticed as he lay unmoving in the tunnel.  He only left when the hunger pangs became too strong to ignore.

On one of his trips to find a butcher shop, he’d noticed that there was a small, pale figure, huddled in a too-big coat and wearing a dark knit cap, following him.  His senses, dulled by depression and malnutrition, had finally informed him that it was a vampire.

Not a minion, either.

But also, not very strong - so he’d shrugged and ignored them, not even flashing his fangs in the usual warning.  He really didn’t care if he was attacked - maybe a good fight would help to knock him out of his blue funk.

Whoever they were, they didn’t attack.

They just followed him, to the butcher’s, then back to the entrance to his lair - such as it was.  He paused outside and glared, and they finally backed away, disappearing down a side street.  He went back to his darkness and depression.

*

If the little vampire was there the next two times he went for blood, he was too wrapped up in his own black thoughts to notice.

The third trip, he immediately noticed that he was being followed - but not because it was the little shadow.

Because it was a pack of minions, who were apparently too stupid to realize that he wasn’t the easy-prey human he appeared to be.  There were six of them, but he calmly pulled out two stakes and had at it.

It wasn’t much of a fight; six blows and six puffs of dust - in about six seconds.

Spike snorted derisively, twirled his stakes and dropped them back into his pocket.

“Stupid fledges,” he muttered, and turned back toward the demon-run butcher shop he’d finally found.

His shadow slipped out of an alleyway and fell into step about a block behind him.

His blood was pumping - figuratively speaking, of course - after the fight, short though it had been, and therefore his brain started working for the first time in weeks.

At first, he wondered if the younger vampire had sired those minions to test him, but a quick sniff of the tiny breeze told him that wasn’t so.  The scents weren’t right.

So they had just been watching.

Why?

It was a puzzle, and a pleasant distraction from thinking about his sins and mistakes.  

By the time he reached the butcher shop, he’d come up with a dozen possible reasons why the other vampire might be following him around.

In his pre-soul days - or his pre-depression days - he would have just stalked them, pounced, and demanded some answers before yanking out the stake - but that struck him, now, as being just a little too Scooby-n-Slayer like for his peace of mind.

He decided to just wait and see - at least it would keep his mind off his troubles.

*

Two more trips - both with his little shadow doggedly following along- and then he was on his way ‘home’ one night after securing a blood supply when more minions attacked him.

Several dozen, this time.

He still didn’t hesitate.

He dropped the shopping bag of cow’s blood, glad the jars were plastic and not glass, and yanked his stakes out.

“Bring it on,” he grinned, then swore when he realized how often he’d heard those California teenagers say that exact phrase.  He’d been in this country too damn long.

The minions, even though there were more than before, still weren’t much of a match for a Master vampire - but there were so many of them!  For every one he dusted, two more seemed to pop out of an alley or drop down from the roofs.

Someone sure seemed determined to take him out.

After a moment, he realized that the minions behind him, instead of attacking his vulnerable back, were drifting by in puffs of dust.  They were meeting their final deaths - but not at the end of his stake.

A quick glance over his shoulder told him his little shadow had joined in the fray.

Another glance told him that the face under the knit cap was very young, very thin, and very frightened.

The young vampire - very, very young, his nose told him, and a Childe, but no scent of a Sire - had obviously never been trained to fight.

But they were doing their absolute best to help him.

.Why?

*

He finally staked the last minion that he could see - and no more popped out of the cracks.

“‘Bout bloody time,” he grumbled, then turned to deal with his little helper.

Just in time to see the very last minion drive a stake through the small vampire’s stomach.

The high-pitched, gurgling scream seemed to tear something loose in Spike’s chest - he howled with fury and leapt forward, slamming his stake into the wide-eyed minion, then catching his little shadow before they hit the ground.

He pushed the heavy, navy-blue coat aside to find a serious wound, blood leaking out of the torn flesh to soak the faded, worn t-shirt.

“Oh,” a very feminine young voice said.

He glanced up from the wound to find that he was cradling what had once been a very young girl, fifteen at the absolute oldest.  Huge green eyes were gazing at him from a deathly white face, a few red-gold curls peeked from under the hat.

“Oh,” she whispered again, “you do have a soul... it’s so beautiful...”  A thin, blood-stained white hand lifted, fingers barely brushing his cheek.
Something tugged again at Spike’s unbeating heart - tugged hard.

“Can tell I got that, huh, pet?” he asked softly, cradling her gently as he bit into his wrist and dribbled his powerful blood over her wound.  He wasn’t sure why he did it - maybe because she was so very young - barely a teenager, and couldn’t have been turned more than a year.

“It speaks to my own,” she whispered, a faint trace of an accent in her voice, staring in amazement as the wound began to close.

“You got a soul, pet?” he asked, equally astonished.  This infant hadn’t fought through the demon trials, and he couldn’t see anyone wanting to curse her, either.

She nodded.  “My father - my human father - he spelled it back to me... but it... it cost him his life...”

“Oh,” Spike had no real reply to that.

“I’m Emily,” she whispered.

“Spike.”

“I have watched... watched you... you’re - you’re very strong.”  Her eyes went back to her healing wound.

“Master vamp, sweetheart.”

“I... would you... could you...” she hesitated, then rushed on.  “I don’t have a Sire.”

Spike closed his eyes briefly - but there was no way he could push her aside.  Already certain that she’d eventually join the ranks of the many beings who hated and rejected him, he bent down to her neck.

“You do now, poppet,” he whispered, shifting into game face, “you do now.”

Then he slid his fangs into her throat and gently claimed the first Childe he’d ever had.