The Sick Rose
by Pandarus

16. Through the Looking Glass

Dru dropped out of the air as the last terrified witch abandoned the chanting, her beloved voice suddenly echoing freely through the chamber in a familiar caterwaul that should never, ever, be caused by anyone but him. Spike had expected her to fall and was already springing to catch her before the amber light blinked out and gravity awoke to the fact that its laws had just been messed with. He was careful not to step on the mirror out of a formless fear that his foot might pass straight through into nothingness; so when she dropped into his arms he was straddling the frame awkwardly and he swung for a moment under the impact, his knees buckling very slightly. Drusilla was wailing like a banshee and flailing furiously in his grasp but he clung to her for a very long moment before waddling out of the way of the mirror.

"I'm here, princess. Spike's here," he crooned, rocking her like a baby. "Oh, sweetheart, what did they do?"

Drusilla was incoherent in his arms for long minutes, her raw howling gradually fading to muffled little-girl sobs as he held her and patted her back reassuringly, pressing kisses into her hair and her cheeks and her waving fists. Tears and snot were soaking through his shirtfront. God, he loved her so much it hurt. Priced beyond rubies.

"Make them pay, Spike," she finally whispered. She sounded like somebody had sandpapered the inside of her throat. "They made the air burn. Everything. Everything burning." She snuffled against his coat like a broken hearted seven year old. "They hurt me." He hugged her tighter.

"They're gone now, pet. Spike showed them. Think they can hurt my girl, do they?" For the life of him he still didn't understand quite how he had managed to 'show' them, but this didn't seem like the best time to admit it. He was quietly horrified by how frail she looked - her skin was the colour of old parchment and it stretched too tightly over her bones, giving her a disquietingly skeletal appearance. There were dark shadows under her eyes which certainly hadn't been there before. He wished with a blistering passion that the thrice damned witches would come back to life so he could kill the bitches all over again; considered chasing down the scattered remnants and devoting some serious time to their suffering, but dismissed the idea as impractical. Drusilla was his first concern.

"Hey, precious, look what I brought you," he exclaimed, suddenly remembering his gift. He rooted in his pocket for the glass ball, astonishingly still intact, and produced it with a flourish. Then did a double take. Drusilla sat up straighter, her face growing more animated.

"A witch ball," she announced, her voice a tattered skeletal scrape of its former self. "You brought me a magic bubble to drain away their nasty poisons! Horrid girls. No supper for them." Drusilla nestled into his chest and peered at the iridescent darkness trapped behind the thick glass. Spike grinned.

"Yeah," he agreed nonchalantly. "Just a little something I picked up. You don't think I'd come looking for you without any protection, do you, princess? Got to keep my darling safe." He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and cuddled her closer to him. No wonder the bloody thing had looked familiar. He really was quite the luckiest vampire ever fashioned.

"So that's how you did it."

Spike hadn't heard Gwendolyn Post, which spoke volumes about the depth of his concentration on Drusilla. He peered between the columns and scrambled to his feet, clumsy through his efforts to keep hold of Dru while he rose; he was sorry but unsurprised to find his darling barely able to stand.

"Yeah," he agreed as he hooked one arm around Drusilla's waist, scanning the room for ideas and seeing only corpses. The Watcher sounded rather less thrilled by his success than he was - which somehow didn't come as a great surprise. "They're all talk, these girls. Don't know what all the fuss was about."

Gwendolyn Post paced between the columns in a manner that set alarms ringing in his head - humans weren't supposed to move like that. They were supposed to run away, possibly screaming and begging for mercy. They most certainly were not supposed to move like predators. He found himself wishing, for purely practical reasons, that Drusilla was at full strength. Wondered what on earth could have weakened her so quickly. What she needed was fresh human blood. And as luck would have it -

"Where did you get the witch ball?" said Gwendolyn Post softly, almost to herself. "And where did you find one imbued with magics strong enough to deflect - oh. But of course. How very foolish of me."

"Cheers, love. Nice of you to leave it hanging around like that. Worried they might be able to scry you, were you? Or is it standard issue for Watch Houses?" He could tell from her expression that he'd hit the nail on the head. Probably a bit of both - the Council of Watchers had some pretty powerful sorcerers on their payroll, from what he'd heard tell; obviously they'd have some serious shielding on their premises. Somebody somewhere was looking out for him; he choked on the thought of a guardian angel. Too excruciating an irony.

Right - well, he couldn't support Drusilla and catch her some supper simultaneously. Spike gently leaned her up against a column and turned towards Mrs Post. She still looked disquietingly unafraid, considering the fact that she was facing a blood-drinking demon shielded against magic. He smiled. He was going to enjoy teaching her about fear.

"Who would have imagined that she could possibly have upset them so much?" mused Gwendolyn Post as she came closer to the vampires. "It seems incredible to me that they could show such poor judgment as to test the parameters of their geas by torturing her. Granted they weren't actually going to kill her, but to risk the sanctity of their powers for something as petty as vengeance...It's ridiculous. "

"Payback's a bitch," agreed Spike. "So I take it you weren't helping me out of the treacherousness of your heart, then, Gwenny? You been busy plundering their library? Stolen the Crown Jewels? Raided the Lost Arc?"

"Something like that," she smiled, pulling her shoulder bag closer to her body. "I was perfectly sure they would kill you both, but it seems that they really were quite appallingly incompetent. Presumably their predecessors were a force to be reckoned with." She glanced down at the bodies strewn across the floor like so many broken dolls and lifted one eyebrow disparagingly.

"Then again, it could just be that they were shit-hot witches and they finally met their match," he suggested, cocking his head to one side and flicking an assessing glance up and down. His delicate nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent; a little fear, but not enough yet. Still that intolerable self satisfaction. "I've killed two Slayers, Gwenny. Think about that a little. Supernatural champions of Truth, Justice and the Watcher Way - and cute with it. And deadly. And I killed them." Her eyes were fixed on his now. He could smell the giveaway wisp of sex in the air and smiled wolfishly at her.

"You got lucky, Master William," she replied, her voice as crisp as a winter morning in the Cotswolds. "They compromised their vows and left themselves vulnerable - which serves them right for making such ridiculous vows in the first place. Had they not, you would be powder on the flagstones by now. Fortunately I can rectify that little oversight."

It had not escaped Spike's notice that her shoulder bag was bulging in places where formerly it had been smooth. When her fingers dipped towards the zipper he was already in motion and had the bag in his hands before she understood his intent. Silly bint. He wasn't a moron, for God's sake - he wasn't about to let her produce a broomstick and try to curse him into the middle of next week, magical shield or no.

"What's in the bag, Gwenny?" he called over his shoulder as he darted out of reach with the leather clasped in his hands. "Nothing good for my continued health, I'll bet." He was highly gratified by the way her unflappable demeanour finally fell by the wayside.

"Give that back!" Gwendolyn Post's howl would have put the shrillest of fishwives to shame. She flung herself after him, her features bunched up in a mask of pure, killing rage. Spike laughed out loud as he wove away between the columns.

"What's it worth, pet? Safe passage for me and Dru, perhaps?" She replied with a snarl in a language that was neither Czech nor English; and it took Spike a moment to identify the words. Hebrew.

Bugger.

He swung around just in time to see the golem surging towards him impossibly fast; and Spike was under no illusions about his ability to best the wretched thing in terms of speed, but he ran for it anyway. The golem flowed silently behind him across the cold stone floors; and it was only a matter of seconds before the damned thing would be on him; and if he had guessed wrong then he was going to be looking pretty goddamned silly in the few seconds left before it pulled his head off his handsome shoulders; but what the hell. Carpe Diem, and all that bollocks. He pounded towards the centre of the room and sprang over the mirror; and as he jumped he dropped the bag and watched it pass straight through the surface. Just as he'd thought; the looking glass was also a rabbit hole; Libushe's window to her other world. Gwendolyn Post's anguished howl echoed through the room as she realised what he had done; and when a split second later the golem's obedient pursuit sent it tumbling through the portal her lament grew louder still.

If Spike had possessed a pulse it would certainly have been racing. There was nothing like winning to give a bloke a buzz; and defenestration was a grand old Czech tradition, after all. He smiled beatifically at the Watcher.

"Oops." Incredulity and rage crossed her smooth features as Gwendolyn Post took in the waste of a whole year's careful planning and research. It cracked Spike up. "Not feeling quite so tough now, are you, Mary Poppins?"

If looks could kill he'd have been dead twice over, but Spike was so busy revelling in his heady victory that it didn't occur to him that immobilising Gwenny was really the first order of the day. He wasn't expecting the sudden burst of speed that took her over to Dru; and even as he broke into a belated run he saw the stake slam straight into his darling's chest and roared in helpless fury.

The impulse to tear Gwendolyn Post limb from limb was overwhelmed by the horrified need to reach Drusilla before she dissolved; to hold her in the limnal space between cause and effect, between flesh and dust, between love and isolation. Time stretched out like salt water taffy. Spike was aware of every beloved joint and sinew, every fingernail and lock of hair. He didn't dare blink, lest he miss the moment when she ceased to be; and although he heard Gwendolyn Post's receding footsteps, finding her and killing her would have to wait a moment.

Drusilla curled up around the stake in a pitiful ball of skinny limbs, shaking and mewling. And she was still not dust. As the seconds mounted up and Drusilla writhed like a tangle of snakes, Spike tumbled to the glorious realisation that his girl had not, in fact, been staked. Impaled, most certainly; but staked, no. He lay gentle hands on her and pushed the tangled hair from her eyes; and Spike was startled into immobility by the sight of her face. He had considered her skeletal before, but that was nothing compared to the way that her flesh had fallen clean away in the space of seconds, leaving her gaunt and grey. She looked like she hadn't fed in years. Spasms still wracked her limbs and her bulging eyes were dull and unseeing, the pupils dilated so far it hurt him to look at them.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Dru," he exclaimed, and closed trembling fingers around the shaft of the not-stake immediately. It came out cleanly and he dropped it to the floor, where it rolled a few feet and then lay still in a smear of his girl's precious blood. Drusilla's convulsions slowed as soon as the thing left her flesh, but she lay where she was with a thread of saliva trickling from her mouth and nothing remotely like awareness animating her features. It terrified him. Spike scooped her up into his arms and was appalled by how tiny and breakable she felt. Far worse than before. He stroked her dull hair blindly and was horrified when a clump came away in his hand.

Spike's legs gave beneath him. He slid down to the floor with his back braced against the cold stone column and pulled Drusilla close. The cause of all this agony lay quietly a few feet away; and after a moment or two he made sense of the shape; it was a dagger made from some kind of bone or horn, with a handle of polished stone. He blinked at it stupidly, trying to make sense of what had happened. Unicorn horn was dangerous; but Gwendolyn Post was no virgin, so that couldn't be it. A demon's horn of some kind.

"Ssssh, baby," he said - quite needlessly, since Drusilla was limp and unresisting as any rag doll. A Tak horn could do this, perhaps; that would drain the life out of a human in a matter of seconds. God knows what it would do to the undead. Perhaps this. He leaned back against the column and rocked her wordlessly in his arms.