Fool of the Devil: II-3 (Patreon)

II-3: The Problem With Vampires

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The heavy iron door screamed, a long, wailing thing, peeling the silence apart like skin from bone. The sound curled through the damp, stone-thick air, writhing against the walls, twisting sharp little claws through the soft places of her mind. She shivered. Not from cold—no, cold was for the living, for warm blood and quick, frightened breaths—but from the shrillness, the way it needled into her, whittling her down to nothing at all.

The man threw her to the ground like a discarded doll. She landed in a sprawl of limbs, her head striking stone with a wet, hollow crack. The pain came distant, muffled beneath a deeper sickness. The world lurched. Or maybe she did. Her hands—thin, weak things, more shadow than substance—scrabbled at the floor, fingertips slipping through dust and death and forgotten, crumbling things.

Was she dust already? Had she slipped free of herself, scattered to the winds, nothing left but the whisper of what had been?

No. Not yet.

Her nails bit deep into the stone, splintering against it, frantic, insistent. Wrong. She felt wrong. Unraveled, undone. The sickness inside her coiled tight, slithering through her veins in slow, burning spirals. Unnatural. Cruel. It burrowed deep, nestled inside the hollow places like maggots in a rotting wound. She should not be able to feel her own heart—still and silent for so, so long—but the poison curled there, too, waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

"The problem with vampires," the inquisitor said, slow and thoughtful, his voice worn smooth by time and habit, "is they leave nothing behind when they die."

His boots scuffed against the stone, circling. Watching.

The chains on the walls trembled.

No. No, they did not. They hung still in their thick iron loops, fastened deep into the stone, but they wanted to sway. They ached for movement. She could feel the rhythm thrumming beneath them, the pattern etched into the bones of the place, a song of shackles and sorrow. A waterfall. Cascading. Endless. It whispered in the drip-drip of unseen water, in the hum of the city beyond these walls, its pulse beating steady and slow beneath the night.

Her fingers twitched, reaching for it, aching to trace the shapes it carved in the dark. But her limbs refused to obey. Too thin. Too weak. Her head lolled against the floor, heavy, waterlogged with something thick and choking.

"Except dust, of course," the inquisitor mused, voice cutting through the fog like a blade through silk. "But that’s hardly useful."

Dust. Yes.

The last thing a vampire could give.

A kiss of death, lingering in the air, settled in the creases of boots, swept into corners and forgotten. She had danced in it, twirling through the ghosts of the fallen, spinning in the fading remnants of their end. She had seen them—shapes sketched in the way the dust curled, the way it clung, the way it settled in the air like a final whisper.

And she… oh.

She would not.

Her body would not become dust.

She could feel it, the weight of what they had done. The poison tethering her here, keeping her. A twisting, binding thing. There would be no release. No soft collapse into nothing. They had turned it inside out, made it sharp, wrong. The rules had been rewritten. She was being held.

Her fingers scraped against the floor, desperate for purchase. She tried to rise, but her body fought her. Tangled. Snarled. Her own bones foreign beneath her skin. No, no, not right, not enough—

She remembered a girl.

A bridge, a song, warm and bright and full of love. The pulse of her, a golden thread humming against her lips. Sweet and trembling, a melody made flesh, but she had taken too much.

Or not enough.

Her limbs hung empty. Hollow. 

A marionette with severed strings, a porcelain thing cracked and waiting to be filled. The hunger inside her whispered, more, more, but the poison had stolen even that from her, curdling it, twisting it back against her. No food, no drink, no strength. 

Just sickness. 

Just silence.

"With humans," the inquisitor continued, his tone shifting, instructive now, like a priest before his flock, "you can hang their bodies from city gates. You can cut off their heads and put them on pikes."

His voice settled into her skull, pressing heavy against the inside of it. Show them. Teach them. 

She could see them now, his words breathing life into the shadows, his father’s father’s father’s father and ten more fathers before him doing exactly that. A line of bodies, swaying high, their lips whispering prayers through swollen tongues. Heads on pikes, their dead eyes open, watching, waiting for something that would never come.

Trapped.

The inquisitor shrugged off his jacket with slow, deliberate movements, shaking out the weight of it before hanging it neatly on the far wall. She watched, vision slipping between too-sharp and blurred, edges shifting, sliding. 

She tried to speak. 

To make a sound. 

Her lips parted, dry and cracked, but her voice had been left behind somewhere between waking and dying.

Her fingers twitched. A thread of effort, pulling at her limbs like unseen strings, but her own body betrayed her. She was a stranger in her own skin.

The inquisitor turned back to her, and she saw the way his eyes caught the light—small and cold, gleaming with something sharper than hunger.

"With vampires," he said, stepping forward, "you have to think laterally. You have to find more creative ways to say…"

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“...stay out of our city.”Spike came to slow, dragged up through layers of thick, clotted dark like something drowning in tar. His first breath came wet and sharp, cut through with the taste of old blood and something fouler. Gravel bit into his cheek. His ribs ached. His head swam.

Everything felt wrong.

Not just pain—he knew pain, welcomed it, had wrapped it round himself like a second skin for over a century. No, this was something else. A dull, sick weight dragging through his limbs, pooling in his chest. His thoughts lagged, syrup-thick, sluggish. Like his body was a second too slow, a second too heavy. Like he wasn’t all there.

Cold seeped into him, sharp and biting, deep enough that his body registered it, which meant it was the kind that cut through—not just a bit of a chill, but real, raw, creeping death-cold. Stone and damp earth beneath him, the air crisp with autumn night.

His senses came back slow, crawling in like wary things. Next was smell—blood, stale whiskey, wet stone. The faintest trace of burning wood. Spike twitched his fingers, flexing them against the grit under his hand. His limbs felt heavy, leaden, like the weight of his own body wasn’t quite his to move.

He knew this kind of weakness. Had felt it before, long ago, back when he’d been young and stupid enough to take a witch’s hex straight to the chest.

Magic.

Had to be.

His tongue felt thick in his mouth, still coated in the bitter metallic tang of blood. So far, so good—except as his mind fought its way toward clarity, the taste turned sharp. His blood.

Bollocks.

The memories staggered back in disjointed flashes. A bridge. Torches lighting the night like some village mob scene out of an old horror flick. Hands on him, too many bodies, the stink of sweat and fear and something cloying.

A fight, but not the right kind. Not the good kind. No rhythm, no back and forth—just dogpiling, just weight pressing in, pinning him down, no room to move, no way to—

His mouth curled in something too bitter to be a grin. Amateurs.

Instinct had him shifting, trying to push himself up, but pain flared sharp and white-hot in his chest, stopping him dead. He snarled, gritting his teeth, and forced his head down enough to see.

A stake.

Deep. Just shy of his heart, embedded high in his ribs. Buried enough that if they’d pushed a little harder and a little more to the right, he’d be dust.

Well… That explained some things.

His shirt was stiff with dried blood, but the wound still burned, sharp-edged and unnatural. This wasn’t just a bad staking. He felt—sapped. Weakness gnawed at him in a way that wasn’t right, not just blood loss but something deeper, like his body had been bled of its core.

More flashes of memory. The feel of something cold against his skin, mist sprayed into his face, burned like acid, but different. The way his limbs had turned sluggish before they’d gotten the stake in. The scent of herbs, pungent and sharp.

Some kind of potion, then. 

Designed to slow a vampire down before finishing the job. Being right fucking honest, they hadn’t needed all that. The surprise stake while he was feeding had been enough to paralyze him for a good half-minute, but what did humans know, anyway?

Still, it would’ve worked, too, if they’d known what they were doing.

His head tipped back against the stone as he let out a slow breath through his nose.

Still alive. Well—undead, at least.

Spike’s fingers ghosted over the wood, pressing down just enough to send another sharp ripple of pain through his ribs. If he yanked it now, he’d bleed out fast. Faster than usual. His body was taking too long to recover, sluggish, like the magic was still clinging.

Didn’t matter. He had to move.

He rolled onto his side, forcing his body to obey. His breath came sharp through gritted teeth as he pushed himself upright, ribs screaming, wound pulsing with every slow, dragging shift.

Something in his chest crunched.

The whole world tilted, the bridge overhead swaying, the dark silhouettes still burned into his memory.

They’d left him for dead.

Dumb fucking mistake.

His breath shuddered out between clenched teeth, ragged but steadying. The worst of the nausea passed, though the ache still sat deep in his bones, lodged between his ribs like an afterthought of pain.

He let his head tilt, eyes dragging up to the bridge looming above.

They’d had him on his back, pinned, buried under hands, torchlight burning bright in his vision. He’d fought like hell, sent bodies flying, but there’d been too many. More than a dozen.

He’d caught a glimpse of their faces in the firelight. Locals. Superstitious lot, probably. He’d heard whispers, talk in the alleyways, hunters crawling out of the woodwork like rats.

Still. They shouldn’t have been able to take him.

That meant they had something else. Someone else.

He swayed to his feet, boots scraping against stone, breath slow and even. The gaping wound in his chest pulsed through the wood still lodged there, but he could work with that.

Couple of stiff drinks, a few belts off the ol’ jugular, and he’d be right as rain.

So then. Prague. Drunk. Beaten. Staked. Nearly vanquished. Thrown off a bridge. Left for dead.

The sort of night that might make an ordinary man pause. Maybe re-evaluate his life.

Spike curled his fingers around the stake, braced himself, and yanked.

The wood tore free with a slick, wet noise. He let out a sharp hiss through his teeth, even as his expression barely changed. Blood welled hot against his fingers, dripping slow down his chest.

Amateurs.

He let the stake drop, breath coming slower now, more even.

Except—

Something was wrong. Not just his body, not just the magic dragging at his limbs.

His head snapped up, eyes scanning the night.

Prague still surrounded him, old and looming, but something was missing.

His gut twisted.

“Dru?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The iron chair groaned beneath her, a slow, grinding lament, thick with rust and the memory of things that had bled before. Metal pressed sharp into her wrists, biting deep into dead flesh that should not feel—should not hurt—but did. It held her close, as Papa had done, hands like iron, gripping, squeezing, pressing until the world shrank to nothing but pain.

Drusilla shivered. Not from cold—no, cold was for the living, for warm-blooded things that shivered and gasped and clutched their coats tighter against the wind. This was something else, something deep, twisting through her insides like creeping ivy. The sickness, the poison. It dragged at her limbs, made her small and weak, a marionette with her strings tangled.

The inquisitor circled her, slow and deliberate, his boots scuffing against uneven stone. A great beast of a man, heavy with righteousness, breath steady as the ticking of a clock. His face was carved from old, unyielding things, the years worn into the lines of his mouth, his brow, his cold, pitiless eyes.

He carried the weight of a church long since crumbled, thick as incense in a dying chapel.

"Do you know why you’re here, creature?"

Drusilla tilted her head, dark hair slipping over her eyes. They were wide, unfocused, black pools drinking in the wavering candlelight. She was listening—not to him, no, never to him—but to the whispers in the cracks, the echoes in the stone. The walls had been fed well, had swallowed screams, moans, sobbing prayers.

Her lips parted, the smallest exhale, a child's sigh in the dark.

"It hurts."

Her fingers twitched against the cuffs, weak, fluttering, the legs of a dying fly.

The inquisitor’s expression did not change. He glanced toward the table beside them, where his fingers traced the careful arrangement of steel and iron, edges honed to carve, to peel, to break. A priest of violence, hands reverent over his sacred tools.

“Nonsense,” he murmured, sharpening. “Your kind thrives on the pain of others, don’t you? Fathers and mothers and sons, all the same.”

Drusilla made a sound, soft and strange, somewhere between a whimper and a song.

The inquisitor was unmoved.

"Let's see if you remember this pain."

He turned to the mechanism at her back, hands settling over ancient gears with a methodical precision. The chair moaned, a tired thing roused from slumber. Gears turned, iron plates shifted. The embrace tightened.

A deep, slow press.

The first bite of teeth against her skin.

Drusilla’s breath caught in her throat, head lolling back, eyes fluttering. She felt the chair’s hunger curling into her, between ribs and spine, a patient predator sinking into its meal.

Her lips parted. But she did not scream.

Not yet.

Instead, her mind slipped sideways, drifting, floating—

“Little girls lost at the fair…” The words trailed from her lips, dreamlike, delicate. “Little boys who wander too far from home…”

A carousel, spinning beneath gaslight, horses frozen mid-gallop. The smell of sugar and roasted nuts thick in the air. Laughter echoing in ribbons of sound. A boy’s small, sticky fingers clutching a candy stick, pink-stained tongue, eyes wide with delight.

Then—his hand going limp in hers.

The sugar melting, forgotten on his tongue.

His warmth draining away.

Drusilla’s lips trembled. Her body shuddered, fighting against itself, against the slow creep of the metal burrowing deeper. She tried to shift, to slip aside, but there was no way.

No relief.

Only the patient, creeping spread of iron teeth.

The inquisitor watched, his patience thinning, mouth drawing into a hard, thin line. He did not look at her when he spoke, hands easing from the mechanism, rolling his shoulders with the quiet discipline of a man accustomed to long, careful work.

"Do you know what this is, creature?"

Drusilla blinked, slow as drowning. Her gaze lifted, black wells of ink and shadow meeting his, serene and distant.

Her voice came soft, wrapped in reverence.

"A throne for kings?" she whispered. "Or a cradle where the stars come to sing?"

His jaw tightened.

"The chair you are sitting in was built in 1478," he said, tone precise, clipped. A teacher before a slow child. "Its design is quite ingenious, considering the tools they had at their disposal."

He turned the crank again.

Another notch.

The spikes pressed deeper.

Drusilla’s body twitched. A sharp, involuntary little gasp escaped before she could catch it. Her vision blurred, dark spots blooming like ink on parchment, spreading at the edges.

"As I tighten these screws," the inquisitor continued, voice steady, "the spikes at every point in which you touch the chair—your wrists, your legs, your back—are slowly driven into your body."

She shivered, breath quickening.

The edges of her world softened, curling into silk and smoke, unspooling from the pain.

Her lips curled, dreamy.

“Spike in the moonlight…” Her voice was almost fond, distant. “His laughter, his voice…”

A flicker of something passed over the inquisitor’s face. Disdain, perhaps. A private amusement, buried in the creases of his mouth.

"And just to be safe—"

His fingers dipped into his coat, brushing against something small, something delicate.

Drusilla watched, slow and hazy, her lashes low, heavy with the weight of pain. There were echoes in the stone, whispers where the walls met the floor, little sighs curling in the candlelight. They hushed all at once when he lifted it into view.

A box. Plain wood, unremarkable. He handled it with care, reverence, cradled it like something holy.

Then he opened it.

Something inside her recoiled, hard and sharp, yanked back from the edges of dreaming.

Her breath stilled. Her body locked.

Stillness, utter and absolute. Not the softness of sleep, but the terrible, unnatural kind—the kind before a storm breaks, before an animal bolts, before the world splits open under something too awful to name.

The inquisitor saw. And he smiled.

"Ah," he murmured, tilting his head. "You recognize it."

The velvet-lined interior cradled a vial, thick with something dark and pulsing, red as a severed artery. It sat sealed behind glass, but her skin prickled as though it had already touched her, sunk into her, begun its slow, wicked work.

He turned the vial, watching the way the liquid moved inside.

"It took quite some time to perfect," he mused, almost speaking to himself. "Had to learn by trial and error. Our family recipe was lost, you see. Just tales from my ancestors and a great many of your kind contributing to the cause." He exhaled, thoughtful. "A decade’s work, at least."

Her lips parted, but nothing came.

Then, soft as a moth’s wing, breath trembling against her tongue—

"N-nooo…"

The word stumbled over itself, fractured and frail, repeating in a whispering loop.

The inquisitor chuckled, rolling the vial between his fingers.

"It goes by many names. Redbane. Bloodblight. Exsanguis mortis, among the papists."

She wasn’t listening. Not to the words. Not to him.

Her lips still shaped the denial, over and over, but the sound was lost to the void yawning open inside her.

"I prefer the old name, however." A pause. Stretched, deliberate.

He savored it.

"The Rot of Cain."

Drusilla whimpered. A soft, brittle sound, cracking at the edges.

The inquisitor exhaled through his nose. Disappointed.

"See, I need your help."

He drew a syringe from his coat, long and glinting in the dim light.

"Pay attention now."

The vial’s cork came loose with a dull pop. The needle dipped into the thick, writhing liquid, drawing it up in slow, unhurried increments.

The substance clung to the glass, slow-moving, too thick, too dark. Blood of the undead, condensed and corrupted through rituals most foul, even to her kind.

"You're going to hurt."

Her breath hitched, shallow, too fast. Her body tried to shrink away, but there was nowhere to go, no place untouched by metal, by pain, by the press of iron teeth against her skin.

The inquisitor leaned in, his presence blotting out the dim glow of the torches.

"And I need you to remember."

The needle drove into her chest.

Pain.

Not fire, not heat.

Worse.

Rotten. Crawling. Burrowing.

Not a blade’s clean cut, not the bright burst of suffering that burned and faded. No—this was something else. Something slow. Encroaching.

It wound its way through her like ivy strangling a house, creeping into the walls, the foundation, digging deep.

Her veins blackened, her blood turned sour. She felt it, felt it, twisting inside her, a slow, patient ruin.

Her mouth opened.

No sound.

Only his voice, thick with certainty, heavy with finality.

"Because I need you to tell others like you what this feels like."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Prague’s streets twisted under the night sky, a maze of shadowed alleys and damp stone, slick with the grime of centuries. The city breathed around him—shallow, fearful, stinking of sweat, filth, and blood. Spike stalked through the dark like a storm rolling in, his boots heavy on the cobblestones, his duster billowing behind him like a specter.

Where was she?

His mind was white-hot with fury, the need for blood and violence clawing at his insides, threatening to rip free. Something cold and vicious had taken root in his chest the moment he woke up alone, and it hadn’t loosened its grip since.

They took her.

They took Drusilla.

His lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.

He was going to tear this city apart.

The first man barely saw him coming. Spike found him in an alley, hunched over, fumbling with a cigarette. He smelled like cheap booze and old sweat, some gutter rat trying to warm himself against the cold. Spike grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the wall, hard enough that his head cracked against the brick.

You’ve never been much for subtlety, Spike hears in his head as his face half-shifts, fangs bared in something too sharp to be a smile as his eyes glow. “Vampire hunters. Where?”

The man’s eyes went wide with horror. "P-please," he stammered, breath coming in short, ragged bursts. "I don’t—I don’t know anything—"

Spike tightened his grip, hauling him up until his feet barely scraped the ground.

"Somebody help—"

Spike drove a fist into his gut, cutting off the cry with a strangled gag. "No, see, we’re past the point of begging. We’re at the bit where you talk before I take apart whatever’s left of you."

The man made a wet, gasping noise. Spike tilted his head, considering him.

Then, impatient, he twisted sharply, snapping the man’s neck like a twig.

Useless.

He let the body drop, already moving.

He found the second one stumbling out of a tavern, piss-drunk and reeking of ale.

This one had seen something. Spike could tell from the way the man froze when their eyes met, his entire body going rigid, mouth opening like he was about to shout.

Spike was on him in a blink, grabbing the back of his head and slamming him into the nearest wall.

"You seem to always say exactly what’s on your mind," Spike heard again in his thoughts from a familiar voice, as he dragged the second one up by his collar. “I heard there’s a group of hunters in town. What do they call themselves these days? Zealots?” He growled. “Forgive me, mate, it’s been a while since I graced the city.”

The man’s mouth worked soundlessly.

"O-oh God," he finally choked out.

"Yeah, yeah, we covered that already," Spike growled. He pressed in closer, voice dropping to something low and lethal. "Zealots. Got a thing for vampires, do they?"

The man made a strangled sound, his heartbeat hammering in his chest. "M-my son! He’s all I have left," he gasped.

Spike rolled his eyes and let him drop, watching as he crumpled onto the street.

"Where?"

The man clutched his ribs, shaking. "I-I’ll do whatever you want," he stammered, voice barely above a whisper. "Just—please—"

Spike bared his teeth.

"Where?"

His patience was wearing thin.

"You don’t want to know what they did to her," the man whispered.

Spike’s vision went red.

He kicked the man in the ribs hard enough to send him sprawling, then drove his boot down onto his throat. The crunch was satisfying in a way that didn’t even register—just another body on the way to what really mattered.

Drusilla.

She was out there. Suffering. Waiting for him.

His pace quickened.

The third one was a girl—too young to be mixed up in any of this, but she was at her door when he passed, and something in her expression when she saw him made him stop.

Recognition.

Fear.

She knew something.

Spike turned, stepping into the pool of yellow lamplight spilling from her doorway. She backed up instantly, hands coming up as if she could ward him off.

"I’m looking for a girl," Spike said, tilting his head.

The girl swallowed hard. "You don’t want to know," she whispered.

Spike took another step forward, and she pressed herself against the doorframe, shaking.

"There’ll be nothing left of her," she breathed.

Spike went still.

"Please," she whispered, eyes wide and wet with terror. "I’m all my father ha—"

Spike’s lip curled.

Wrong answer.

He stepped forward, grabbed her by the throat, and twisted.

He was gone before her body hit the ground.

His fury was a live thing now, burning through his veins like a second pulse.

The fourth one was waiting for him.

Not intentionally, of course. Just another unlucky bastard caught in the storm.

This one tried to run. Spike let him get three steps before he was on him, dragging him to the ground and pinning him against the wet cobblestones. "Tell me and I won’t piss in your fuckin’ eyes when I’m done with you!"

He’s never been much for subtlety, really. Not even when he was still a stupid young poet. No, William the Bloody was always one to say exactly what was on his mind.

It always drove her crazy.

"Tact, love," Drusilla’s voice whispered in his head.

His grip tightened.

"Forget her," a man gasped beneath him, blood bubbling between his lips.

Spike’s eyes burned.

"Heavily guarded," another man coughed before his throat was exposed to open air.

Spike’s fingers curled into fists.

"You don’t want to know what they did to her," yet another whispered, through the hand in his gut.

Rage, sharp and absolute, ripped through Spike like a knife.

He didn’t remember the next few seconds.

When he came back to himself, another room was filled with gore. Blood was on Spike’s hands, his chest a ruin of torn flesh and arterial spray.

Spike staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth.

He barely tasted the blood.

He barely felt the cold.

His vision tunneled as he remembered something one of them had screamed in his fear, in between something about not being able to feel his legs.

New town.

A church.

His feet were moving before his mind caught up.

Tact, love, she says.

But then, she can be a bit obtuse. Never one to use one word…

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

…when twenty will do.

It feels like Daniel himself is slitting open her flesh, tearing out her viscera, and feeding it to God’s loins.

It does not rip. Does not tear.

It rots.

A slow thing, creeping, curling. No fire, no blade, no clean severing—only the soft, wet surrender of flesh giving way to something older, something patient. It seeps into her, winding into the places where her bones cradle the dark, where her hunger once lived.

Her mouth is open. Breathless. Silent.

Fingers twitch, dragging uselessly against iron. Nails scrape at rust, at old blood, at nothing.

The inquisitor watches, slow and methodical, wiping the remnants of her from his hands.

"I understand you."

His voice does not waver.

Drusilla sags, limbs going slack, head tipping forward, hair falling loose over her face. The chair breathes with her, iron easing—not in mercy, no, never mercy—but in preparation. A pause before the next descent.

She knows this.

Knows him.

He smells of earth. Damp roots and wool, cologne worn too long on skin that has sweated through it. Not the crisp, perfumed scent of men who kissed rings and whispered their prayers behind cathedral walls. No. This one was built—by labor, by toil, by hands that had learned how to shape pain, how to mold it like iron under the weight of a hammer.

Those same hands press beneath her chin.

Tilting her face up.

"You have no conscience."

He studies her, peels her apart with his eyes, looking for something deep, something buried, something that does not exist.

Drusilla’s gaze is distant. Unfocused.

Gone.

Far away, a child is burning.

Smoke curls soft through a nursery, winding through the bars of a cradle, whispering between wooden toys. It does not rush. Does not roar. Does not bellow. It licks the edges of painted walls, sighs against the wooden floor, curls beneath the door in thin, winding fingers.

His parents sleep unaware.

"You have no morality," the inquisitor continues, voice a blade, carving. "No true feeling, beyond an instinct for violence. No soul."

His breath touches her skin, warm in the cold.

Her lips twitch.

Somewhere, in Madrid, a woman presses shaking hands to her husband’s chest.

Her fingers are wet. Warm. Red. Metal twists around them, sharp edges glinting in moonlight, ribs caved inward like a broken birdcage.

His breath is thin. His eyes are closing.

The inquisitor watches Drusilla’s face, watches her drift, watches her slip, and his fingers tighten.

Not enough to harm.

Not yet.

"A creature like you has nothing," he says, voice smooth, unshaken. "Nothing but pain."

Drusilla hums, soft, tired.

Pain. Yes. She has always had that.

"It is your nature," the inquisitor says, turning away, settling his hands over the mechanism.

The gears groan, shifting under the weight of centuries. The chair answers. The spikes move.

Deep.

Deeper.

Her body locks, back arching against the intrusion.

Something snaps.

Not in the chair. Not in the metal.

Inside.

A string, stretched too thin, fraying—breaking. Pain winds up her spine, digs into her ribs, presses into the places no hands were ever meant to touch.

She tries to slip.

To drift.

A hand, curled in hers. Fingers, warm in her hair. A night breeze, cool against her cheek, slipping through an open window, making the curtains dance.

Too far.

Too distant.

The inquisitor watches.

His voice is measured. Steady.

"And so to communicate with you, I must speak in the language you understand."

The gears turn again and the chair tightens its grip.

"I must speak in terms of pain."

A sound clawed its way from her throat.

Not a scream.

Something older.

A wail, thin and reedy, stretching long and low, a sound with no end, a sound that had been waiting to be born.

The inquisitor listened, yet his face did not change.

"Pain is all you have," he said. "It is the only thing you feel."

Drusilla shuddered.

The sickness had soaked into her, thick and cloying, curling deep, wrapping tight around her bones. Her body did not belong to her anymore. It had been rewritten. It hurt wrong.

Not fire. Not knives. Not teeth.

Something worse.

Her body sagged, her limbs too light, too thin, like paper dolls left out in the rain. The chair shifted, the spikes easing, just a whisper, just enough to breathe.

Not mercy.

Never mercy.

Just a pause. Just a moment’s silence before the next note in the song.

Her hair clung damp to her face, sweat and blood sticky against her skin. Her breath was thin, wrong, the sound of a thing trying to keep living when it shouldn’t.

"Nothing helps," she rasped.

Her voice cracked, edges curling, brittle and old.

She tried to move.

The restraints held.

Her body did not answer her.

Her fingers curled, twitched.

Her fangs ached.

Hunger twisted in her belly, an empty thing, a hollow thing, curling in on itself, shriveling, rotting.

Warmth.

She could smell them.

The men beyond the candlelight. The steady thrum of their pulses, the heat curling off them in waves. The scent made her stomach clench, made her mouth water—

But the poison had ruined her.

Broken her.

Stolen the strength from her bones, the fire from her veins, turned her hunger against her.

Trapped.

Her lips curled, dry and thin.

A laugh slipped out, soft and ruined.

"Nothing…"

It echoed.

The air was thick with whispers, voices coiling just beyond the edge of hearing, curling at the edges of the candlelight, slipping between stone and shadow.

Prayers.

Low, rhythmic, constant.

A droning buzz, crawling under her skin, worming into her ears, writhing against the inside of her skull.

She hated them.

Wanted to silence them.

Wanted to pull their voices from their throats, leave them raw, gasping, gurgling, never able to speak their ugly words again—

But they had changed something.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Her body should be healing.

Should be pulling itself back together, reknitting flesh, swallowing the pain like she always did.

But it wasn’t.

It only hurt.

Her breath stuttered, thin and weak.

The dark folded in at the edges.

A sob curled up in her throat, sticky and small.

She swallowed it down.

Forced herself to breathe, to remember as she closed her eyes.

And the dark was kind with a memory.

Long grass bending in the wind, silver in the moonlight.

A tree, branches curling high, swaying slow.

A boy, sprawled at her feet, eyes bright, teeth sharp, grinning up at her like the world had never hurt him.

"My boy…" Her lips curled.

Not enough to smile.

Just enough to remember.

Spike. Her William.

She could still taste him, the ghost of his blood on her tongue, thick and sweet, warm with love, with devotion, with forever.

He would come. He would tear the city apart, leave it red and broken, set the streets singing with their screams. He would find her.

Her boy.

Her love.

Her lord of night.

Drusilla let her head tip to the side, lips parting, breath shivering out between them.

Soft.

Small.

A whisper, curling into the dark.

"Forever…"

– O – O – O – O – O – O – O –

He hit the church steps at a run.

Two men. Black suits. Clerical robes.

One already had a stake drawn.

Didn’t matter.

Spike was moving before they could react, before the word "vampire" had even formed on their tongues.

He crashed into them, shoulder first, sending the first one sprawling.

The second had the presence of mind to lunge, arm thrusting forward, wood aimed straight for his chest.

Spike let him. The blond waited until the last possible moment, then caught his wrist mid-strike and squeezed.

Bone snapped like so much dry kindling as the man howled like a wolf caught in a trap. He barely got the sound out before Spike sank his teeth into his throat, tearing past skin, past muscle, past the frantic pulse of life.

Hot. Thick.

Not enough.

Not nearly enough to slake the fire in his gut, to cool the inferno burning in his chest.

He let the body drop, still twitching, still leaking, and turned back to the first one.

The man gasped for air like a beached fish, clutching his ribs as he tried his damndest to crawl backward, fingers scrabbling weakly against stone.

Spike stalked forward, head tilting.

"Go on, then," he said, fangs bared in something that wasn’t a smile. "Pray. See if it helps."

The man whimpered, lips moving, whispering some half-formed plea to a god who wasn’t listening.

Spike stomped down, and weak human skull cracked under his boot.

He shoved open the doors, stomping inside with little care and a magnitude more haste.

The air hit him like a wall. Thick with incense, burning wax, relics steeped in old magic. It curled in his lungs, clung to his skin.

But beneath it—beneath all of it—

Her.

Faint.

Fading.

But still there.

His girl.

His Dru.

The scent of blood was heavier down here. Stale, cloying, and hreaded through with damp stone and sanctified air. It burned in his nose, in his throat, but he ignored it.

His boots hit the flagstone, slow, steady, each step measured, controlled.

He could hear her.

Ragged breath.

A whisper, lost somewhere between pain and madness.

Drusilla. His stomach clenched. Rage curled deep, low and coiled, twisting in his gut, snarling in his ribs.

The door loomed at the end of the corridor.

Solid. Heavy. Old.

A rusted intercom was bolted to the stone beside it.

From within, a voice.

"Peter, I’m going to need some holy water. And possibly a stake." A sigh, thick with exhaustion. "I may have gone too far with this one."

Spike growled.

They thought their little house of God would keep him out.

Stupid.

He leapt up and kicked the door in, wood exploding beneath his foot.

The redheaded bastard inside barely had time to turn before Spike was on him, slamming him back against the stone.

The inquisitor grunted, reached for something.

Spike caught his wrist, twisted, drove him back harder. "Too far, have you?" he said, voice low, fangs bared. "Let’s see how far you can scream, yeah?"

The inquisitor clawed at his grip.

Spike squeezed tighter.

His stomach twisted.

Her voice. Thin. Weak. Barely more than a breath.

"My boy…"

He turned.

And felt something go cold inside him.

Drusilla sagged against thick leather straps, wrists bound, ankles pinned, head lolling to the side. Spikes piercing through her entire body. Skin pale, nearly translucent.

Not just hurt.

Wrong.

His nostrils flared. Beneath the blood, beneath the damp and rot—

Taint.

They’d done something to her.

His fingers flexed, grip tightening around the inquisitor’s throat. "What did you do to her?"

A choked laugh. The bastard’s lips curled, his voice rasping past crushed cartilage.

"Cursed her unholy blood," he wheezed. "With the rot of the first killer."

Red.

Everything went red.

Spike’s fangs sank deep.

The inquisitor bucked, thrashed—then went limp, body going slack as blood flooded Spike’s mouth, hot and thick. He tore through muscle, through sinew, through the last desperate breath of a man who had dared lay hands on her. When he let go, the body hit the floor like rubbish.

Spike wiped his mouth, already turning, already moving.

Her breath hitched, soft, shivering.

His hands shook as he reached for her.

Too cold.

Too still.

"My love…"

Her voice barely above a whisper.

"I’m here, sweetheart," he murmured, kneeling in front of her.

His fingers brushed her cheek.

The wrongness crawled up his spine, curled in his gut.

Dru was never warm. None of them were. But this—this was different.

This was too close to death.

He tore at the straps.

Leather snapped. Metal groaned.

Her body slumped forward, boneless.

Spike caught her, arms slipping beneath her knees, lifting her easily, cradling her close.

Her blood had soaked through the fabric of her dress, dark against the red.

His jaw clenched.

The rage was still there, still burning, still begging to be loosed, to turn this whole bloody city into a funeral pyre—

But first.

She nuzzled against his chest, fingers weakly curling into his coat.

His throat tightened.

"My girl," he whispered.

Nothing else mattered.

He had her.

And together—

Well. He allowed himself a smile.

Been a while since I’ve killed a Slayer. Might do us both some good.