The Gift

AUTHOR: Little Mouse (elf_night@hotmail.com)

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Joss'. Lucky man.

WARNINGS: Language (duh, it's a Spike fic!) Violence (see former 'duh') explicit M/M slashy stuff! Whee!

ARCHIVE: Please ask first.

PAIRING(S): Angel/Spike; with mentions of Angel/Buffy, Spike/Drusilla, Angelus/Drusilla

SUMMARY: Drusilla gives her Daddy a present.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There were a lot of voices talking.

Some were panicked and going fast, others were slow and soothing.

He wished the panicked ones would shut up; they were far too shrill for his heightened hearing.

One of the soothing voices came closer, and a careful hand touched his face.

“I don’t think he’s waking up...” 

Wesley’s voice.

A strange noise started after he said that; a high-pitched, shrieking wail that irritated Angel to full awareness.

“Shut off that teakettle,” he growled, opening his eyes.

“Um, Buffy, you can stop crying.  He’s awake.”

The sound abruptly stopped.

Before he could goggle at the face that the horrendous noise had actually come from a human being and not some machine, something small and warm slammed into his chest.  He started to shove the person away, then realized that it was Dawn, not Buffy.  He patted her awkwardly on the head, instead.  She was making soft little sobbing noises that were much easier to deal with than Buffy’s teakettle impression.

He took a deep breath - then sat up and sniffed the air again.

Then he went into game face.

“Where is Spike?!”  His tone made the humans clustered around him step back - except for Dawn, whose hold tightened.

“He’s gone,” she sobbed, rubbing tears against his silk shirt.

“Gone?” It took a moment for him to remember - soldiers, shadows, sparks - and now his Childe was gone.  He wrapped an arm around Dawn - who so far, seemed to be the only one who cared - and gave himself one moment to just howl.

Deep-throated, baneful howls of grief and fury that raised the hair on the humans and made every demon and animal for a mile around go into hiding.

Almost as abruptly as he had started, he stopped.

And turned on them.

“Where are the soldiers?  Where do they do their work?”

“What soldiers?”  Buffy asked.

“Did the Initiative take Spike again?” Xander asked in the same breath.

“Where is Riley Finn?” Angel demanded, getting up and stalking toward Buffy - completely oblivious to the fact that he still had Dawn cradled in one arm.

“R-Riley?” Buffy stuttered.  “What do you want with Riley?”

“He has my Childe!” Angel’s gold eyes flashed with rage.

“He doesn’t’!” she protested, her own eyes sliding away from his.  “He wouldn’t!”

“Oh, yes, he would.”

“You can’t just accuse him because he used to work with the Initiative!”

“Used to?” Xander’s whisper to Giles wasn’t exactly a whisper.

“I scented him.”  Angel didn’t try to argue the point.  “He was there; he has my Childe.  Where is he?”

“You could have made a mistake!  What if one of the soldiers was his - uh, his roommate or something?”

Angel grinned.

It was not a pleasant grin.

“Then he’ll be able to tell me who his ‘roommate’ is, won’t he?”

“Yeah,” Dawn piped up, making Angel jump and blink down at her, “Riley ought to help!  We’ve helped him enough!”

“Angel,” Willow interrupted before either he or Buffy could go on, “can you please put Dawn down?  You’re, um, making me nervous.”
Angel surprised himself with another low growl, and tightened his grip on the girl, careful not to hurt her.

Dawn stared up at him.

“She belongs to Spike; Spike belongs to me,” Angel informed them coldly, “so she’s mine.”

“She is my sister!” Buffy shrieked, “she doesn’t belong to any vampire!”

“I beg to differ,” Angel looked at Dawn, his eyes running over her.  “Where is it, youngling?”

Dawn gave a distinctly uneasy look - at Buffy, not Angel.

“It’s all right,” Angel rumbled, “she won’t do anything.”

“Except scream at me,” Dawn said nervously, but she unsnapped the wide, sparkly bracelet she was wearing and held out her arm, her hand palm up.

On the inside of her wrist was a small, neatly and carefully made, barely-visible bite mark.

Dawn was right.

Buffy screamed a lot.




*




Spike stared down at the mangled, bloody mess that was all that was left of the large demon he’d been fighting.  He wasn’t really sure what kind of demon it had been - it had a lot of teeth, but never got the chance to use them.  Tried to use those six-inch claws, but it wasn’t any match for a fighting-trained vampire.

And he was.  His memory might not be what it once was, but his body knew what it was about.  He’d torn that demon almost to shreds.

He’d also enjoyed it.

It had been ridiculously easy, even with the handicap of impaired vision that the metal thing on his head gave him.  He wondered if the humans here were just testing his strength, teasing him, or if they had actually thought that killing this thing would be hard?
Riley, he remembered, had certainly seemed wary of it.  He’d caught the scent of fear as he’d been pushed into the room.

Bloody hell - if they didn’t have his Sire, he’d show that panty-waisted soldier boy exactly what he ought to be afraid of!

The door slammed open behind him - adrenaline and the instinctive expectation of another battle made Spike turn, growling, and slide into game face.

Then he cried out and switched right back, as pain lanced through his face, the shifting bone crunching against the blinder on his face, muscle and skin slicing open against the metal edges as it tried to form into his vampiric features.

Spike ignored the soldiers who had come in, who were gaping at him now.  His hands flew to his face, blood running between his fingers as he tried to soothe the pain away.

He hadn’t gone into game face while fighting the demon - he hadn’t needed to.   Trying to change to it now had been for threat value; then, he’d known he was going to have to fight, and fight fast, and that threats would be useless.  He hadn’t needed his fangs against that sorry excuse for a demon, though. 

Now he wished he hadn’t felt the need to threaten the unknown - just more soldiers, anyway - the pain was even more blinding than having the ‘slats’ closed.  He couldn’t see for the blood in his eyes, couldn’t hear the babble of soldiers, could only think one thought.

He wanted his Sire.

Riley was here - he could smell him.  Hell, he was approaching, taking hold of his hands and pulling them away from his face, roughly tilting his head back and forth as he studied the blinder.

“Well, shit,” the soldier finally said angrily, giving Spike a little shove of disgust, “who designed this thing?” He tapped the blinder, sending agony shooting through Spike’s injured head.

“Whoever it was, they’re in trouble,” Spike recognized the cold-eyed woman’s voice.  “How are we supposed to test him completely if he can’t shift to use his fangs?”

Riley was tugging slightly at the blinder, and Spike had to bite back whimpers.  He was already starting to heal, since he’d eaten nothing but his Sire’s powerful blood for days, but those little tugs hurt all the way down to his skull.  How the bloody hell had they attached the thing, anyway?!

He was distracted from the question when another person came in.

“What’s going on with the blinder?” a bored voice asked, “someone came running into my office and said there was some ‘major issue’?”
‘Huh,’ Spike thought to himself, ‘it really is called a blinder...’

“Why did you make something for a Hostile with face-morphing abilities that keeps him from actually morphing?”  That cold bitch was talking again.  “How are we supposed to test him if...”

“It doesn’t prevent him,” the bored voice interrupted the woman’s icy rant, and Spike tried to peer around Riley’s hands - still tugging, damn him - to see who it was.

A thin, weedy looking young man stood there, in a white lab coat open over a t-shirt and faded jeans.  He wore heavy glasses and looked like some stereotypical science nerd that they’d show on telly.

“It’s designed to prevent instinctive changes but...” he trailed off, staring back at Spike.  “Agent Finn, what exactly are you doing?”

“I’m trying to see how this thing...”

“All you’re doing is causing him discomfort,” the scientist snapped, striding over and shoving Riley’s hands away.  Nimble fingers slid over the metal - pausing for a split second when they encountered blood - and then there was another click, and the blinder felt looser.

“Try to shift now,” the man said, almost gently, actually looking into Spike’s wide blue eyes.

No one here ever looked him in the eyes unless they were trying to stare him down - that much he remembered from before.

“It won’t hurt now,” the man continued softly, apparently mistaking his frozen surprise for trepidation.

“Just order it, Tucker,” Finn said sharply, “it’s not human - don’t be nice to it.”

The scientist gave him a level, considering look, then looked back to Spike - at his eyes.  Again.

“Just try it,” he said again.

“Or you know what will happen,” Finn snarled, unhappy at the scientist’s cavalier treatment of his advice.

‘Sire,’ Spike thought, whimpered slightly, then shifted.

Oh, good - it didn’t hurt.  Felt a little tight around his brow ridges, but there was no blood and no pain.  For once, someone in this place had told him the truth.

Amazing.

“Fascinating,” Tucker murmured, ducking down - he was taller than Spike - to get a better view of the now-golden eyes.  “Does your sight change when you do that?”

“Our tests have shown...” the woman started, and looked furious when she was cut off - again.

“I’m asking him, if you don’t mind.  He’s capable of speech, isn’t he?  Or have you had someone else make a device to control that, as well?”

“Dr Tucker, I would advise you to watch the way you speak to me!”

“And I’d advise you to remember that although I’m here on temporary assignment, I outrank you,” Tucker said, sounding bored again.  “I’ve never seen one of these subjects so calm - how did you convince him to cooperate?  And please, don’t tell me it was through that torture that you call ‘conditioning’.”

That last was directed at Riley.

“They have Sire,” Spike was the one who replied, his voice little more than a whisper.  If this man was the boss, then he was going to do what he wanted.  He could probably hurt Sire more than anyone.

“Who?”

“We have it’s Sire,” Finn growled, emphasizing the ‘it’.  “It’ll do whatever we want it to do.”

“What’s a Sire?”

“The Hostile who turned it,” Finn snapped.  “Apparently, there’s a special way of doing it that they rarely use, that creates some sort of bond between them.  Hostiles made this way seem to be smarter and stronger.”  He eyed Spike.  “Well, stronger, anyway.  Maybe not smarter...”

Spike bit down on a sarcastic reply about Finn’s own brain power - he could remember more and more about this place and these people - except Tucker - the longer he was here.  He could also feel more of his old personality coming back, but he knew his abrasive tongue got on Riley Finn’s nerves.

He couldn’t’ allow himself to get on Riley Finn’s nerves.

“And that’s all the information you have?  That it makes them better than the average vam... er, Hostile?” The conversation was still going on.

“Well, and that they’re obedient to their Sire.”

“So, let me get this straight - you’ve captured a rare vampire - pardon me again, Hostile - and instead of studying this bond, which you know nothing about, you just abuse it to see how fast you can make him jump through hoops?”

“We are trying to solve the problems we’ve been having, Doctor,” the woman was reduced to angry hissing.  “We finally have an obedient subject, so...”

“So you put him through obedience tests instead of finding out why he’s obedient,” Tucker sighed.  “I think I may have to pull rank on you, Walsh, and take over this project.  You’re certainly not handling it very competently.”

“You can’t do that!”  She sputtered.

“Oh, can’t I?”

Spike sighed softly.  As much as he liked listening to humans argue - especially if he could cause the fight - he really wanted to be back with Sire.  He sidled a little closer to Riley, and whispered, “Is the fighting done?  Can I go to Sire, now?”

“You can be still and shut up,” Riley shot back, keeping his voice low.  “Or you won’t see your precious ‘Sire’ for a week!”

The humans kept arguing, having phones brought in and calling in favors from the ‘higher-ups’, pulling out half-forgotten ordinances and the results of old cases where someone tried to do a take over.  Spike just stood there. 

He didn’t move, speak or even breathe.

For the next three hours.