The Sick Rose
by Pandarus

7. Reunion

The muscles in his legs began to ache as he darted down the streets, seeking her familiar form. It seemed impossible that these witches should pose such a threat when killing one of them had been so bloody simple. He was probably worrying over nothing - Brachens were scared of their own shadows - but his limbs were heavy with a sense of dread that he could not reason away.

If she were dead - really dead, dead-and-gone dead, dust-and-ashes dead - then surely he should feel it somehow? He could not have lost the one thing in all the world that mattered in the space between one drink and the next. Could he? Had he been mid-coitus on the sheets she had left rumpled, utterly insensible of the instant when some faceless enemy crushed her into powder?

The thought terrified him.

The streets were cluttered with herds of idiot tourists in search of banal pleasures; overpriced beer, vanilla sex, middle class theatre and outmoded nightclubs. He stared at the lumpen throng of humans and hated them. Hated the cobblestones underfoot; hated the pastel castle perched upon its hill; hated the tapering spires of St Vitus that stabbed the dark velvet sky; hated the very bones of this saccharine city where his girl was something's prey.

Still no sign of her.

He wondered, as he ran, how one went about fighting a god. How hard could it be? The weren't so damn special, after all - if she even were a god, this Libushe. Oftentimes a lot of it was just cheap parlour tricks and clever spin. There were demons who were quite convinced that Christ had been a vampire, citing the whole transubstantiation thing, and the resurrection, and raising their scaly eyebrows knowingly about the way that the crucifix, alone amongst human religious symbols, had any power over vampires. Spike gave it no credence - too many inconsistencies - but the sheer effrontery of the notion tickled him. It was quite a common belief, which just went to show how bloody gullible people were, be they human or demon.

Likely this Libushe was all talk too, owing her reputation to similar half truths and gossip. And the Brachen was very probably exaggerating about the amount of damage the witches had caused while searching for them. They'd say anything when you started pulling their little spines out, after all. Still, let her be as all-bleeding-powerful as she pleased, Spike would not tolerate any threat to Drusilla. Not if Jehovah and all his heavenly host appeared in person with flaming swords in hand.

Which was all well and good, but his bravado was no sodding use if she were already taken from him and her beloved atoms scattered on the breeze.

The smell of her blood pulled him up short. Faint - so very faint! - but unquestionably Drusilla's. And freshly spilled. He caught the air current carrying her scent and followed it, trying not to think about the many ways to hurt a vampire without letting them crumble to dust. If they had harmed a single strand of her midnight hair...

The blood, when he found it, spotted the ground near a shattered beer bottle. He hunkered down and dipped a finger in the liquid. The taste was unmistakable. Spike stared at the dark glitter of the lamplit glass and concluded that she had walked straight through the glistening shards and left a trail of red droplets instead of crumbs of bread. He followed it at a run, his boot soles growing slippery as he trod in her cold footsteps.

When he glimpsed her in the distance the relief was overwhelming. She was walking along calmly enough, although he was surprised to see her in a state of dishabille. A lumpen young couple trailed along anxiously at her side, plucking at her little puff sleeves and addressing her in exaggeratedly gentle tones. She ignored them like Lady Bracknell being importuned by lepers. Spike realised that he was grinning like a maniac. She was fine. Everything was fine.

"What are you up to, sweetheart?" he asked when he reached her side. The pudgy humans looked at him askance. He turned his dazzling smile on them and told them, quite pleasantly, to fuck off. They backed away slightly, but seemed unwilling to leave Dru to his tender mercies.

"Drusilla, love?" She still had not glanced at him and showed no signs of halting; the rhythm of her footsteps had faltered not a whit. The receding tide of fear turned and swept over him anew.

"Dru?" Spike's tone was hesitant. He moved to stand directly in front of her, but her face betrayed no flicker of recognition as they stood practically nose to nose. Her gaze remained fixed serenely in the middle distance; but this did not prevent her from thrusting him out of her way with all the preternatural strength her spindly arms possessed.

He got back to his feet and stared blankly at the fragile line of her spine under the white cotton gown, watching the slight sway of her skinny hips as she wandered on her way. Didn't look back once; no danger of Drusilla turning into a pillar of salt.

"Hey mister, the lady doesn't - "

He swung on the fat tourist and roared, the planes of his face shifting of their own volition. The swiftly spreading dark patch on the man's suddenly soaking jeans afforded Spike no satisfaction; his whole attention was fixed despairingly on Drusilla as the tourists ran away. Whilst she walked the lace-edged cotton swirled up around her ankles and he caught brief flashes of the sweet arch of her insteps all sullied with scarlet.

Spike knew just enough about magic to know that he knew bugger all about magic. There was no way to be certain that intervening would not make matters worse, but he simply couldn't stand back and let this - whatever exactly 'this' was - happen. She was very clearly under some wretched spell; and based on family history to date, no good was going to come of it. He walked up behind her with his shoulders squared.

"Sorry, princess," said Spike, and knocked her unconscious with a brick.

He caught her before she could hit the cobbles, lifted her up in his arms and cradled her against his chest, kissing the pale and pulseless arch of her throat and pressing his newly-human face into the disordered silk of her hair. He clearly wasn't crying, because vampires didn't cry - especially not big bad slayers of Slayers. He just had a little dust in his eye, that was all.