The Sick Rose
by Pandarus


6. Metamorphosis

He didn't know where to look for her, so he headed for The Metamorphosis, one of the more modern demon bars off Wenceslas Square, and the one in which the two of them had idled away many an evening. Henry, the Jamaican werewolf who ran the place, prided himself on the freshness of the blood and the authenticity of the bourbon - too many bars tried to palm you off with cheap shite shipped over from Turkey in a Jack Daniels bottle, or else they watered down the A Neg with pigs' blood. Drusilla was especially fond of the music in The Metamorphosis - they played a lot of Bjork and Iva Bittova, and she had managed to persuade the Kankanath behind the bar to lend her his Rasputina album. For seven foot of spiny blue war demon, the Kankanath was surprisingly modern in his musical tastes. It was only a short walk from The Europa, and as good a place as any to start looking for his girl.

He was most surprised to find it closed. Spike stood outside the silent bar, gazing at the stylised stag beetle on the neon sign and weighed up the merits of heading over to the Jewish Cemetery, which he knew she rather liked; but she really could be anywhere at all. It was thoroughly frustrating.

He heard the demon walking up behind him, of course, but he still really wasn't anticipating the blow. It was a bloody Brachen demon, for Christ's sake - hardly the most warlike of species.

"What the fuck?" he spluttered as he got to his feet, rounding on the little demon with teeth unleashed and eyes yellow with irritation under his crinkled brow.

"You burnt the witch, didn't you?" said the demon. Spike stared at him.

"Yes. And?"

The demon was shaking with barely contained fury.

"You stupid bastard. Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Spike felt the beginnings of fear.

"Had a nice little barbecue, as I recall," he replied in his best flippant tone.

The little hedgehog fella gawped at him for a moment and then launched another blow at his head, but Spike was ready for it this time and dodged effortlessly, yanking the demon's prickly arms up behind its back until something broke with a satisfying little crunch. He wasn't much of a fighter, this one. The demon quivered against him, though whether from pain or emotion he couldn't readily tell.

"The witch your girlfriend, was she?"

"You stupid bastard," the demon said. He sounded close to tears. "You stupid, stupid bastard. You've broken the truce and now we all pay."

The nameless dread was getting more difficult to ignore by the minute and the need to find Drusilla was almost a physical ache. He could feel the demon's pulse clattering against him and twisted the arms harder, taking momentary comfort in the agonised moan that this provoked.

"What truce would that be, then?"

"With the witches, of course. They've got a demi-goddess looking out for them, bound to the soil - you never heard of Libushe? Or her sisters? You do not mess with the Czech witches. We don't touch them or theirs and the witches leave us be. Now you've broken the damned truce and they've been scouring the city for two idiot leeches who think they're Bonnie and Clyde. They don't care who they kill to get to you and your girl. Especially the girl."

Fear blossomed in his veins. He was used to travelling light - gathering possessions for a while but discarding them whenever the time came to flee, or when they had simply grown bored. Threats to his property meant nothing. Threats to himself he rarely heeded. But threats to Dru filled him with blind terror and murderous rage in equal measure.

"Where are they, these witches?" he asked, when he was able to master his voice. The demon made a movement that would have been a shrug, cut off with a whimper of pain. It said nothing. Spike sighed with exaggerated patience and bit off its left ear. As the Bracken screamed he jerked its cactus-spiked head to one side and pressed a vicious little kiss onto the remaining ear before speaking into it.

"We'll try again, shall we? Where. Are. These. Witches?"

* * *


Drusilla couldn't feel her feet bleeding, but the wounds were staining her lace hem with smudges of cinnabar as she paced down the quiet street. Her head was sharply angled, listening to the insistent whisper on the wind and straining to distinguish the words.

Kazi, healer of deep wounds and fatal fevers Work our will.

She couldn't quite make out what the voices were calling but she knew with absolute certainty that it was something wonderful. Dru's world was full of marvels and horrors, and she rarely knew which was which. The patterns that she saw about her so plainly often eluded other people - even Angelus, even her Spike - and in turn their reasoning made little sense to her. They seemed oblivious to the most obvious things: the music of the spheres and the burning baby fishes dancing in the ether. She regarded their pitiful incapacity with perfect, if puzzled, equanimity.

Teta, finder of things lost and long forgotten Work our will.

When the voices called her from her bed she had not paused to pull on shoes or lace herself into a frock - and really this should have struck her as strange, but everything had the imperfect logic of a dream. It seemed entirely reasonable to step out of the suite clad in nothing but a nightgown, her pale unstockinged feet shod in nothing but her skin.

Libushe, the knowing one, founder of the city Libushe, the wise one, bringer of justice Libushe, the great one, queen among witches. Find our blood. Bind our foe.

When she trod through the discarded shards of glass and her sluggish blood seeped onto the cobbles, Drusilla's slumbering nerves carried no message of pain down the long-dead synapses to her bewitched brain. She still couldn't quite make out the words, but if she went just a little further she knew that they would be clear.

Dru walked on unhurriedly, tugged by distant voices like an obedient marionette; and each unflinching footstep ground the glass still deeper into her unprotected soles.