Rough Trade

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part III

Outside the theater she gave Merl the promised fee, and he sullenly passed it over to Spike. “I really am sorry you had to fight,” Cordelia told the little demon. “We’ll take you back to that bar, or anywhere else you need to go —”

“Forget it,” he said flatly. “I’ll walk, I don’t want nothing more to do with you two.”

“Look, I’ll have Wesley give you a call,” she began as Merl started walking away. “He does all our research, he’s sure to have something he’ll be willing to pay you for. No violence, I promise …” He waved it off without looking back, narrow shoulders tense with anger as he stumped down the sidewalk.

“So, you’ll be having a ritual to work with that trinket,” Spike said. “You got some favorite dark altar? Need any sacrifices? ’Cause I’m here to do my duty for the purposes of good ’n’ righteousness. Virtuous, I am.”

“Just take me back to the Hyperion.” Cordelia’s voice was tired. “Whatever I need to do, I won’t need you for it.”

Spike drove, drawing on a fresh cigarette, happy and flush with the warm glow of another successful massacre. ’Course, hacking up demons, for him, was like humans eating cotton candy: diverting, but no real substance to it. Still, even if he couldn’t kill humans anymore, he was bloody fantastic at killing the things humans feared …

“You hate me,” he said to Cordelia without preamble.

“Well, duh.” Weary or no, her tone was as sharp as ever. “Is that any surprise?”

“It is, yeh. But not ’cause o’ you: ’cause of them.” He gestured with one hand. “The others, the Scoobies. No respect there, not even for what I used to be. They’re not afraid of me, an’ I’m not important enough to hate. I hate them for it, but for you I actually feel a bit grateful. … Mind, I’d drink you down in a heartbeat if I could — ’cept it’d take four or five of your heartbeats to empty you out — but I still appreciate you, ’cause you at least take me seriously.” He shrugged. “So I wonder why. Wonder what makes you different.”

Cordelia didn’t answer right away, but the silence was like pressure building. “Well, let’s see,” she said at last. “Why don’t we start at the Bronze, sophomore year? I’m dancing with this idiot who’s been pestering me for years like a brain-damaged puppy, only he’s different tonight, stronger and more confident … then he looks at me out of a face I’ve never seen before, I’ve known him since kindergarten but now I can tell I’m just a thing to him, and the only reason he doesn’t kill me right there is because I get pulled up onto the stage so somebody else can kill me.

“Or later, toward the end of the year, I’ve got a boyfriend I might actually be caring for, only I find him torn apart in the AV room along with four other students. He’d kissed me that morning, and now he’s just spoiled bloody meat, one of the little atrocities you used to do for fun or just out of boredom.”

She’d clearly been saving this up for a long time, and she went on, forceful and bitter. “How about when I get kidnapped and hung upside-down for bleeding-out to resurrect the Master? How about when I’m stuck in a closet for hours, praying I’ll live till morning, when you raid Parent Night? How about Hallowe’en, when I’m about to die in a catsuit with the school losers? How about when Drusilla and your minions kill Kendra and kidnap Giles and break Xander’s arm and put Willow in the hospital, and the only reason I’m alive is because I can apparently break the Olympic record for the hundred-yard dash when I’m scared? Or when you jerk me out of my summer vacation, heinous as that is, just so you can hand me over to some lame demon? Or when I get impaled on rebar because you dragged Xander and Willow off to the factory in some pathetic, dork-tastic play to get back your nutso-slut girlfriend?

“How about when I’m sitting in my chair at graduation, waiting for the eclipse so we can throw down against a giant snake demon, and I realize that half the people I knew in grade school aren’t there anymore? dead or crippled or just plain vanished, because of you or things like you?”

She was breathing hard now, energized and animated by this new passion. “Buffy fell in love with Angel, mostly I’ll bet because she didn’t know when she met him that he was a vampire. Me, I’ll work with him and even like him, because he’s a good guy and he has a soul and he makes world-class omelets … but I never forget he’s a vampire. You? that’s all you are, except for being a hell of a lot worse than most. Buffy can take you for granted; she’s the Slayer, the thing that kills things like you, she’s the star of the show. Xander and Willow, well, they’re the supporting cast, they probably figure they’re safe if they stay close enough to her. Me, though … I know that, no matter how special I am in my own world, here I’m an extra, I’m a red-shirt, I’m somebody who can die at any moment from bad luck or to up the dramatic tension or even for no reason at all. And if I do, odds are that it’ll be something like you that kills me.

“Buffy’s strong enough, she can afford to treat you like some bad-tempered junkyard dog. Me, I see a monster in a muzzle. I’ll let you close, if I trust the muzzle, but I’ll never stop seeing the monster.” She looked at him with hard eyes. “And if that comes across to you as respect, well, I absolutely respect you enough to kill you.”

Spike laughed, and said, “You haven’t, though.”

She turned back in her seat to look straight ahead, muttering, “The day may come.”

He grinned, feeling a rush of the old hot excitement. All that fire, all that gumption, what might she be like if he could find a way to turn her? And a seer on top of the rest … ’Course, that almost never lasted through the transition to vampire, and he couldn’t turn her, and even if he did she’d be a full vampire while he still couldn’t bite humans, and that would never work out … He snarled softly to himself. Bloody annoying, it was, when reality wouldn’t let a good fantasy even get its feet under it solid.

He pulled up in front of the Hyperion and stopped, gave her a sardonic smile. “Here you are, luv. Sure you don’t want to ask me in for a nightcap?”

He’d been having her on, of course, but she turned to regard him with a level gaze. “No nightcap. But yes, come on in, I need to send a message back to Sunnydale.”

They were halfway up the walk to the front door when she stopped and said, “Oh. Wait here, I’ll be right back.” She strode back to the DeSoto and leaned into the open window, bending over while she reached across. Spike held his position, appreciating the view it gave him of her backside. Fine arse on that one, and firm, must be that cheerleader conditioning showing again. She straightened up, now holding both swords, and walked back to where he waited. “No, you don’t get to keep these,” she told him. “Nice try.”

Inside the hotel, she wrote out a brief message and sealed it in a blank envelope before passing it to Spike. “There you are, then. Plenty of time to make the drive before sunrise.”

Spike favored her with a final parting smirk. “Any last bit you want to throw out, ’fore I toodle on back to my own private purgatory?”

“Yes,” Cordelia said. “Tell them this kind of business is exactly why I don’t miss Sunnydale.”

Then he was gone, and she could collapse onto the lobby couch, feeling all the strength drain out of her.

*               *               *

She found a bottle of wine in the big refrigerator in the hotel’s defunct kitchen. She had better in her apartment — and she’d rather be there with Dennis fussing over her, but she hadn’t been about to let Spike know where she lived! — but this was good enough for now. She hurt all over. The ache of overstressed muscles, now, that actually felt good, a reminder of her performance tonight. The visions, though, the visions …

Those were getting worse, she was sure of it. She was far from reaching her limit, but she had no way to know just how bad it could get, even if recent developments might have offered some unreassuring hints.

Too bad the retrieved amulet wouldn’t help on that front. All the same, it was even more vital than she’d admitted to Spike.

Most visions showed an avertable threat in the near future. Some carried images from the past, to help in understanding some current problem. The whopper she’d got this morning, though …

That was from years in the future, it had to be; Wesley was visibly older, and Gunn — the young leader of the vamp-fighting street gang — also looked more mature. They were there, with Angel, planning for some big showdown that they might not survive, them and others. A horned, green-skinned demon in a natty suit. A freaky blue-haired insectile woman garbed in form-fitting red leather. (She’d even caught a glimpse of Harmony; good to know the girl had survived Graduation after all, but what was she doing around Angel?)

And Spike. There for the planning. There with Angel in some alley, facing off against a mass of demon warriors, and at least one giant, and a dragon —!

No Cordelia, though. Spike was on the scene, but not Cordelia.

So, okay. Not around, which probably meant dead. She didn’t like that thought, and she’d do everything she could to shape for her own survival, but so far she was working in the dark on that one. But Angel … Angel had to stay alive, and somehow Spike had to be around for that to happen, so that meant Spike, too, had to remain undusted. Not just now — her last-minute vision in the theater had been barely enough warning there — but through some cataclysm months or years in the future.

Thus, the amulet.

Cordelia finished the wine, refilled her glass, and studied the amulet again. It looked like the kind of gaudy, cheap junk some cholo gang-banger would wear, but under her fingertips she could feel the low thrum of the power worked into the metal. At the right moment, this would save Spike so he could go on to save Angel. It had to be the right moment, though, which meant “not now”, which meant she’d have to figure out what the right moment was, and then how to get it to him at that time. (Would he recognize it then? Didn’t really matter, but she wondered.) She knew, somehow, that she would have time enough to work it out, and some vague nudges in the back of her mind had her wondering if she might set it up through some remote commission with Wolfram & Hart. They were evil, soulless scum, so she’d have to totally mask her own involvement and the ultimate purpose, but she suspected they would be quite reliable if paid enough. Hmm, she might need to beg a favor from David Nabbit on that one …

Spike. She was going through all this to save Spike. It was enough to make her gag.

Well, at least she’d got her licks in. She hadn’t actually forgot the swords, that had just allowed her to get back to the DeSoto and arrange a little going-away present for him. And the note she’d written for him to take back to Sunnydale just said Thanks for sending Spike. He’s still a jerk, but he actually was useful tonight. That was an excuse to keep him in the Hyperion long enough for her ‘present’ to set properly.

Cordelia settled back on the couch, tilted back the wine glass for another long swallow, and smiled. It was a shame she couldn’t be there to see the result, but you took your pleasures where you could …

*               *               *

This time of night, traffic was light enough that Spike had made it onto the highway out with little trouble, and now he zoomed toward Sunnydale at a steady eighty miles an hour. His mood was buoyant; this had been a good night. Spot of righteous violence, touch of extra nicker in his pockets, even the satisfaction of Corpuscle hating him but not able to do anything about it. Why, he’d even got to torment Merl a bit; short of the Slayer helpless and pleading under his fangs, it didn’t get much better.

Not that it couldn’t be made better. Another few trips to L.A. to ‘help out’ the prom princess, and he could start needling Droopy Boy with sly entendres about what he’d got going on the side with the boy’s former squeeze. Not to mention the fun to be found in continuing to nark her off, and even a toothless Spike still had all his old skill at being annoying. He’d have to avoid Peaches and his crew, o’ course, but that was only a small obstacle, you had to take your pleasures where you could —

His happy reverie faded as something demanded his attention. Something new, familiar, insistent but not at all desirable … Abruptly he yanked his backside up off the seat as the sensation rocketed up from irritating to full-on inferno, his arse was on fire! The DeSoto surged forward at the extra weight on the accelerator, and he fought for control while still holding himself clear of the seat and struggling to understand. God, it burned, it burned like —

The bitch had poured holy water onto the car seat! The leatherette upholstery was decades old, cracked and split enough to let the consecrated fluid soak into the underlying padding and settle downward, only to gradually seep back up under the pressure of his buttocks. God, the seat would take hours to dry, he couldn’t spare that time and still beat the sunrise … Bloody hell, the stuff had soaked into his jeans and HIS BOLLOCKS WERE FRYING!

“You treacherous skank!” he shrieked, still laboring to hold his sizzling hindquarters away from the torture below. “You bloody vindictive slag! I’ll set your bed on fire with you in it, you filthy cow, I’ll contract wi’ those Taraka tossers again just for you! Count your days, bitch, doom is comin’, death is comin’, oh sweet bleedin’ Jesus Christ —!”

The DeSoto roared down the highway, howling imprecations blistering the air. Then the vehicle was lost in the distance, the wind of its passage fading, and the night was still once again.

 
– end –
 

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