We Come In Peace: The Take Me To Your Leader Remix (pt 1)
a/n: The first part of this story is based on Cody Nelson's wonderful Take Me To Your Leader, which I read long, long ago, when my only fandom was the X-Files. It lingered. For years. And then when I started reading Buffy fic, it came roaring back, with this attatched to it.
ed. 15 May 2009: This story has been nominated for Best Crossover in the No Rest For The Wicked Awards!
Alex moves cautiously down the alleyway, no longer bothering with the charade of keeping his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. There's no one here he needs to look harmless for, and if he's lucky, the shapeshifter ten feet in front of him won't even know he's there until it's dying. The shifters are unbelievably strong, with speed to match, but they're not too bright, and not very observant.
Neither is Alex, obviously, because something steps out of the shadows less than two feet in front of the shifter, and neither Alex nor his prey had known it was there.
Whatever it is looks human enough, except for his face, which is monstrous: ridged forehead, yellow eyes, and a mouth full of fangs, and he seems almost to materialise out of nowhere, despite the shine of his slicked-back platinum-bleached hair in the dim light. He stops, blocking the shifter's way. There is a gleaming, predatory expression on his face, and the smile curling at one corner of his mouth would be enough to make Alex take a half-step back, even without the fangs.
The alien stops, pulled aside from whatever the fuck it was doing by the obvious danger in front of it.
" 'Scuse me," the thing says, in a lower-class British accent that's as incongruous as he is: "I'll just be eating you now." The words match his smile - and his teeth - and Alex pulls his gun from its holster. The alien doesn't move.
"Dumb as a post, I see," he continues. "Well, no matter." He reaches one arm out, lightning-quick, and grabs the shifter by the back of the head even as he lunges for its throat, fangs sinking into the alien's neck.
The next second, he pushes the shifter away, hard enough that the thing actually staggers, swearing and spitting green toxic ichor.
"Ow! Bloody hell!" He wipes at his mouth, spitting again, then raises his head to stare at the alien. But he isn't dying, isn't clawing at his eyes, and he's gotten a whole mouthful of the alien's blood, has even swallowed some of it, from what Alex could see. "What the-"
The alien cuts him off, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him up against the brick wall of the alley. Instead of fear, the yellow eyes narrow with fury, and he lashes out with his fists, growling curses through the stranglehold on his neck.
Alex takes advantages of the alien's distraction and moves, plunging the ice pick into the kill spot at the base of the thing's neck. It freezes and falls, dissolving even as it hits the ground. The thing it was holding falls too, but he lands neatly on his feet, staring at the dissolving alien with a combination of disgust and fascination.
"What the bloody hell was that?" he demands, his expression a combination of curiosity and disappointed disgust.
"Alien," Alex tells him, tightening his grip on both the ice pick and the gun in his other hand. "What the hell are you?"
"Vampire," he says matter-of-factly.
"Vampire, huh," Alex says, not really believing him, despite the eyes and fangs. Mutants and government projects are one thing - vampires are definitely another. "Mulder'd love it."
"Who's Mulder? Who are you? And what the bleeding hell is an alien doing in my alley?" He's obviously frustrated, his voice rising to a near-shout as he finishes the last sentence.
"Trying to take over the world," Alex tells him, answering the most important question first. If this guy's got an immunity to the aliens' blood, Alex can use him, and that sentence is always a good hook. "I'm Krycek. And Mulder's...a long story."
The...whatever he is looks briefly down at the mess on the pavement, then back up at Alex, inhuman eyes considering, weighing, and Alex starts to bring the gun up at the expression on his face. Then it passes, slides from threat and hunger into a different sort of consideration.
"So, what would that mean, aliens taking over the world?" He says it casually, like a man asking what rain would do to someone's weekend plans, but Alex can see the interest in his face.
"It would mean everybody like that," Alex tells him seriously, gesturing at the rapidly disappearing green puddle with one foot. "The few humans left would be rounded up and enslaved."
"Everybody like them? They don't taste very good."
Alex is fairly sure that that's an understatement.
"No sense of humor, either," he says, and receives a terrifying, fanged grin in response. It switches to a frown as the man stares down at the remains of the alien. "Any chance of stopping them?" he asks medatatively.
Alex smiles. "I'm working on it."
Another smile, and then the man's face shifts, fangs disappearing as the ridges in his forehead slide into pale, flawless skin, a human mask drawn smoothly over the monster beneath, the disguise impenetrable. His new face is younger than Alex's own, angularly handsome, with a sensual mouth and cheekbones as sharp as the knives Alex always carries. Only his eyes give him away: they may be blue now, but there is something cold and dark and razor-edged beneath the surface warmth that shivers Alex's skin with his recognition of it. He steps across the remnants of the alien, and puts a hand on Alex's arm.
"Why don't you buy me a drink and tell me all about it," he says smoothly, then, after a minute. "Got another one of those ice pick things?"
Alex can't keep the smile off his own face. "I can get you one."
"Good." The satisfaction in the man's voice is palpable. "I'm Spike, by the way."
"Alex."
"Nice to meet you." He sounds completely sincere.
*****
Spike pulls Alex into the first bar they come to, pushes his way through the crowd, and claims a corner table. He starts to put his back to the wall, then stops, looks narrow-eyed at Alex and takes the other seat, sliding into it with arrogant grace. Alex sits down across from him, looks him over. He's younger than he seemed back in the alley, younger than Alex, certainly. The only flaw on his pale, angular face is the scar slicing through his left eyebrow, and it changes him from a punk into something much more dangerous, even if Alex didn't know what that face hides.
Spike signals the waitress, and watches her walk off with their order, eyes intent, before turning his attention back to Alex.
"Sorry, mate. 'M starting to get a bit peckish." He rubs one black-nailed hand over his stomach, frowning slightly. "Those aliens of yours don't go down so well."
"Were you really trying to eat him?" Alex asks, and receives a look in return.
"To borrow a local phrase, duh." He tilts his head to the side. "Well, to drink his blood, at any rate. Thought he was human."
"You're really a vampire," Alex says. He can hear the skepticism in his voice, and so can Spike, apparently. He chuckles.
"I really am." He slides his hand across the table, palm up, blue eyes cool and amused. "Check my pulse."
Alex does, puts two fingers over the vein in Spike's wrist and waits for a heartbeat. And waits. He shifts his fingers, realising as he does that Spike's skin is cool to the touch, even in the California heat, and that he's not breathing, either.
The vampire - the vampire - smirks. "We can do the whole mirror bit later."
"What about sunlight?" Alex asks, and he's nearly as full of questions as Mulder would be. "And crosses?"
Spike grimaces. "Those I prefer to avoid."
"You can't move around in the day at all?" Hauling a corpse around all day will prove a serious liability.
"Didn't say that, pet. I just have to stay out of direct sunlight, is all, unless you want to see me go up in flames and turn into a big pile of dust." He smirks again. "I've even got a car. Painted the windows black, and she drives as well as you please. Though there is the occasional fatality."
Alex is fairly sure that the last sentence is an understatement. He's also pretty sure that most of the fatalities Spike is involved with have nothing to do with his car.
"What else?" he asks.
"Holy water, decapitation, an' wooden stakes," he shrugs. "We're none too fond of fire, either. An' once, there was this organ - but don't get me started on that one."
"How old are you?" Alex asks. He's betting Spike is somewhere in the neighborhood of forty or fifty, the retro punk look a carryover from mortal life, so the answer is surprising.
"A hundred and twenty," the vampire says with a shrug, "or thereabouts."
Alex does a few calculations in his head. "You were born in 1878?"
"1854. Turned in 1880." He doesn't elaborate, and after a second, tilts his head to the side and fixes Alex with a piercing stare. "What about you, Krycek? What's the story on these aliens of yours?"
"It's a long one," Alex warns him, and Spike smirks.
"'S not like I'm gonna die of old age, is it?"
*****
"Sir?"
The hand holding the cigarette came down; one finger tapped the ashes free of the ember at its tip.
"Yes," on a curl of smoke, the eyes fixing on the man at his door.
"You asked us to keep an eye out for Alex Krycek - to tell you if he showed up anywhere. Two days ago, he was caught by a surveillance camera in a bar in Dallas."
******
"Krycek is here, in the back corner. As you can see, he is not alone." One nicotine stained finger tapped the screen, where a platinum-haired man in a leather duster could be seen sitting opposite Alex Krycek. The blond was talking animatedly, gesturing with both hands as he spoke, the cigarette in his left scattering ash across the table. "We have yet to identify his companion. None of our domestic law enforcement or intelligence agencies have any real information on him; neither does Interpol. There are...sightings, however." He placed a file on the desk, opened it with the careful precision that always attended his movements.
"In 1997, Czech authorities had to disperse a mob that formed in Prague and attacked two foreigners, one a man fitting our new friend's description, the other a woman with long dark hair. The reports stated that the two were suspected of more than 50 murders between them, all In 1995, a man fitting his description was listed as a suspect in twenty two homicides in New Orleans. In 1992, his description was circulated in connection with eighteen unsolved homicides along the I-95 corridor, from Miami to Richmond. In 1986, he and a dark-haired woman were being sought for questioning by the authorities in Vienna regarding a massacre in a hotel that left thirty-three people dead, and two severely wounded. In 1983 --"
"Just how far back does this man's apparent crime spree go?" one of the other old men at the table interrupted.
"1978. Fourteen dead bodies in Whitechapel, and ten more in the Hyde Park area." A pause, as the speaker took a deep drag from his ever-present cigarette. "Nearly sixty percent of all of the victims suffered massive neck trauma and exsanguinated, without nearly enough blood being found at the scene."
The other man snorted. "Are you suggesting that that man," a gesture towards the screen, where Krycek's companion had just lit a cigarette, and was apparently using it to emphasize a particular point, "is some kind of vampire? This sounds like something Agent Mulder would be interested in. It's nonsense."
The smoking man started to respond, then closed his mouth around the unspoken retort. Pointing the increasingly-obstructive Agent Mulder at Alex Krycek was the equivalent of personally delivering an ICBM, and adding a vampire into the mix would only increase Agent Mulder's eagerness to track Krycek down. A vampire - especially one as obviously dangerous as Alex's new friend was - was far too dangerous an ally for an enemy to have.
The other alternative was to contact Maggie Walsh, but the Initiative was still in its initial phases, and might not yet be equipped to handle a situation of this magnitiude. Also, that course of action would necessitate revealing the Initiative to his colleagues, and he preferred to keep his secrets close. No, best to set Mulder onto the boy like a bloodhound onto the scent - and to keep this, too, close to the vest.
*****
Alex has just enough time to hear the snarled 'Krycek!' before he's slammed into the wall, and Mulder's fist is flying towards his face at what he knows from experience will feel like a hundred miles an hour.
The blow doesn't land. A pale, black-nailed hand wraps itself around Mulder's fist, and even though Alex can't see the pressure those slender fingers exert, Mulder squeaks, and his fist unclenches. The next moment, Mulder's other hand is pried free of Alex's collar, and Mulder himself is jerked backwards and away.
When Alex looks, Spike is holding Mulder in the air with one hand twisted into his collar as Mulder's feet dangle about an inch or so off the ground. It is obvious that Spike is not really exerting himself, despite the difference in their heights. Mulder is gurgling; Spike is smiling.
Alex rubs at his throat.
"Can I kill this one?" Spike asks, voice dark with bloodlust and annoyance.
"No," Alex rasps, still massaging his throat. "Put him down, Spike."
For a long, terrible moment, he thinks that Spike might not listen, that he will snap Mulder's neck with the same casual twist of his free hand that Alex has seen so often in the past three weeks. Then Spike puts Mulder down, or rather, lets him go. Mulder falls to the ground, trying to untwist his collar and get a breath of air. Somehow, Alex is having trouble feeling too sorry for him.
"Oh," Spike says, "I almost forgot." He bends over Mulder, then straightens with a gun in each hand. He offers them to Alex, handling them with surprising confidence for a man who's been dead for more than a century.
"You might want these," he says, pushing Mulder back down casually with one booted foot as the F.B.I. agent tries to keep Alex from getting the guns.
"Thanks," Alex says, taking them one at a time and tucking Mulder's main weapon in his belt. Aiming the agent's own backup weapon at him, he motions Spike out of the way with a jerk of his head. The vampire complies, but with a look of displeasure.
"Are you going to calm down now, Mulder?" Alex asks him.
"You killed my father," Mulder spits. "Why should I calm down?"
"This is Mulder?" Spike asks, then interrupts whatever he was going to say with: "You killed his father?"
"He was involved up to his eyebrows," Alex snaps at Spike, who shrugs, looking supremely unconcerned.
"It don't matter to me either way, mate," he says lazily. "I did for my father myself, so there's no stones coming from this direction."
"Thank you, Spike," Alex says drily, and receives a shrug in return.
Mulder's reaction to True Vampire Confessions is fairly predictable: he tries to get up again, swearing in fury. It's enough to irritate Spike into direct action: he leans down and grabs Mulder by the scruff of the neck, hauling him to his feet with one hand and an audible growl.
"Will you hold still?" he snarls, giving Mulder a tooth-rattling shake. "You're outnumbered and outgunned, not to mention the fact that Alex here can only keep me in check for so long. You're irritating me, and I'm hungry."
There's a world of intent in the last word, and Mulder may not realise exactly what has him by the collar, but he's far from stupid. He goes limp in Spike's grasp. His mouth, however, keeps moving.
"Who's your new friend, Krycek? Another serial killer? A cannibal?"
Spike raises an eyebrow at Alex. "You're a serial killer? I thought you were an assassin-slash-alien hunter, pet." Adding, with a shake to Mulder's collar that threatens to remove his head from his neck:
"An' I'm not a sodding cannibal. For one thing, cannibals are human." He growls the last word, slipping into gameface as he speaks.
"What are you?" Mulder chokes. "An alien? How did you do that?" Spike lets go of Mulder with an exasperated snort.
"Isn't anyone afraid of me any more? I'm a vampire, you idiot, not somewhat to pester with a fuckload of annoying questions while it's got you by the throat. Gerrit?"
Mulder opens his mouth - probably to ask another question - and Spike is behind him, one hand tangled in his hair, the other pinning his arms to his sides and his fangs pressing against the arch of Mulder's exposed throat. A stunned second later, and Spike releases him, half-way back to Alex before Mulder realises that he's gone, shifted back to human face in an instant.
"Alex here has a safe pass from me, but there's not many of us who want anything from any of you - with the exception of dinner. You're alive because Alex wants it that way, but keep pressing me, an' I'll have your guts for garlands." He turns to Alex with a grin, the deadly intensity sliding down a few notches. "Me an' Dru did that for Christmas one year. I think it was 1952. Somewhere in Nebraska."
Alex knows he should cut him off, because Spike's stories are dubious at best, horrific at worst, and the gleam in the vampire's eye says that this one will probably be the latter.
"Got invited in by this fat, happy farm family on Christmas Eve, an' Dru got it into her head that if we saved the kiddies for him, Santa Claus might put in an appearance. Anyway, we tied the little bleeders up - or rather, I did, as Dru was busy scolding the Christmas tree - an' bunged them into the cellar. When I got back, Dru'd disembowelled mum an' dad, an' was busy replacing the tinsel with loops of guts. Said the tinsel was lookin' at her," he finishes with a chuckle.
"What about the kids?" Mulder asks, an expression of unwilling, horrified fasination on his face.
"Hm? Oh, the kids. Right. St. Nick never did show, so we left 'em down there till sunset, then ate 'em before we left." He grins. "Good times."
( part two)
ed. 15 May 2009: This story has been nominated for Best Crossover in the No Rest For The Wicked Awards!
Alex moves cautiously down the alleyway, no longer bothering with the charade of keeping his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. There's no one here he needs to look harmless for, and if he's lucky, the shapeshifter ten feet in front of him won't even know he's there until it's dying. The shifters are unbelievably strong, with speed to match, but they're not too bright, and not very observant.
Neither is Alex, obviously, because something steps out of the shadows less than two feet in front of the shifter, and neither Alex nor his prey had known it was there.
Whatever it is looks human enough, except for his face, which is monstrous: ridged forehead, yellow eyes, and a mouth full of fangs, and he seems almost to materialise out of nowhere, despite the shine of his slicked-back platinum-bleached hair in the dim light. He stops, blocking the shifter's way. There is a gleaming, predatory expression on his face, and the smile curling at one corner of his mouth would be enough to make Alex take a half-step back, even without the fangs.
The alien stops, pulled aside from whatever the fuck it was doing by the obvious danger in front of it.
" 'Scuse me," the thing says, in a lower-class British accent that's as incongruous as he is: "I'll just be eating you now." The words match his smile - and his teeth - and Alex pulls his gun from its holster. The alien doesn't move.
"Dumb as a post, I see," he continues. "Well, no matter." He reaches one arm out, lightning-quick, and grabs the shifter by the back of the head even as he lunges for its throat, fangs sinking into the alien's neck.
The next second, he pushes the shifter away, hard enough that the thing actually staggers, swearing and spitting green toxic ichor.
"Ow! Bloody hell!" He wipes at his mouth, spitting again, then raises his head to stare at the alien. But he isn't dying, isn't clawing at his eyes, and he's gotten a whole mouthful of the alien's blood, has even swallowed some of it, from what Alex could see. "What the-"
The alien cuts him off, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him up against the brick wall of the alley. Instead of fear, the yellow eyes narrow with fury, and he lashes out with his fists, growling curses through the stranglehold on his neck.
Alex takes advantages of the alien's distraction and moves, plunging the ice pick into the kill spot at the base of the thing's neck. It freezes and falls, dissolving even as it hits the ground. The thing it was holding falls too, but he lands neatly on his feet, staring at the dissolving alien with a combination of disgust and fascination.
"What the bloody hell was that?" he demands, his expression a combination of curiosity and disappointed disgust.
"Alien," Alex tells him, tightening his grip on both the ice pick and the gun in his other hand. "What the hell are you?"
"Vampire," he says matter-of-factly.
"Vampire, huh," Alex says, not really believing him, despite the eyes and fangs. Mutants and government projects are one thing - vampires are definitely another. "Mulder'd love it."
"Who's Mulder? Who are you? And what the bleeding hell is an alien doing in my alley?" He's obviously frustrated, his voice rising to a near-shout as he finishes the last sentence.
"Trying to take over the world," Alex tells him, answering the most important question first. If this guy's got an immunity to the aliens' blood, Alex can use him, and that sentence is always a good hook. "I'm Krycek. And Mulder's...a long story."
The...whatever he is looks briefly down at the mess on the pavement, then back up at Alex, inhuman eyes considering, weighing, and Alex starts to bring the gun up at the expression on his face. Then it passes, slides from threat and hunger into a different sort of consideration.
"So, what would that mean, aliens taking over the world?" He says it casually, like a man asking what rain would do to someone's weekend plans, but Alex can see the interest in his face.
"It would mean everybody like that," Alex tells him seriously, gesturing at the rapidly disappearing green puddle with one foot. "The few humans left would be rounded up and enslaved."
"Everybody like them? They don't taste very good."
Alex is fairly sure that that's an understatement.
"No sense of humor, either," he says, and receives a terrifying, fanged grin in response. It switches to a frown as the man stares down at the remains of the alien. "Any chance of stopping them?" he asks medatatively.
Alex smiles. "I'm working on it."
Another smile, and then the man's face shifts, fangs disappearing as the ridges in his forehead slide into pale, flawless skin, a human mask drawn smoothly over the monster beneath, the disguise impenetrable. His new face is younger than Alex's own, angularly handsome, with a sensual mouth and cheekbones as sharp as the knives Alex always carries. Only his eyes give him away: they may be blue now, but there is something cold and dark and razor-edged beneath the surface warmth that shivers Alex's skin with his recognition of it. He steps across the remnants of the alien, and puts a hand on Alex's arm.
"Why don't you buy me a drink and tell me all about it," he says smoothly, then, after a minute. "Got another one of those ice pick things?"
Alex can't keep the smile off his own face. "I can get you one."
"Good." The satisfaction in the man's voice is palpable. "I'm Spike, by the way."
"Alex."
"Nice to meet you." He sounds completely sincere.
*****
Spike pulls Alex into the first bar they come to, pushes his way through the crowd, and claims a corner table. He starts to put his back to the wall, then stops, looks narrow-eyed at Alex and takes the other seat, sliding into it with arrogant grace. Alex sits down across from him, looks him over. He's younger than he seemed back in the alley, younger than Alex, certainly. The only flaw on his pale, angular face is the scar slicing through his left eyebrow, and it changes him from a punk into something much more dangerous, even if Alex didn't know what that face hides.
Spike signals the waitress, and watches her walk off with their order, eyes intent, before turning his attention back to Alex.
"Sorry, mate. 'M starting to get a bit peckish." He rubs one black-nailed hand over his stomach, frowning slightly. "Those aliens of yours don't go down so well."
"Were you really trying to eat him?" Alex asks, and receives a look in return.
"To borrow a local phrase, duh." He tilts his head to the side. "Well, to drink his blood, at any rate. Thought he was human."
"You're really a vampire," Alex says. He can hear the skepticism in his voice, and so can Spike, apparently. He chuckles.
"I really am." He slides his hand across the table, palm up, blue eyes cool and amused. "Check my pulse."
Alex does, puts two fingers over the vein in Spike's wrist and waits for a heartbeat. And waits. He shifts his fingers, realising as he does that Spike's skin is cool to the touch, even in the California heat, and that he's not breathing, either.
The vampire - the vampire - smirks. "We can do the whole mirror bit later."
"What about sunlight?" Alex asks, and he's nearly as full of questions as Mulder would be. "And crosses?"
Spike grimaces. "Those I prefer to avoid."
"You can't move around in the day at all?" Hauling a corpse around all day will prove a serious liability.
"Didn't say that, pet. I just have to stay out of direct sunlight, is all, unless you want to see me go up in flames and turn into a big pile of dust." He smirks again. "I've even got a car. Painted the windows black, and she drives as well as you please. Though there is the occasional fatality."
Alex is fairly sure that the last sentence is an understatement. He's also pretty sure that most of the fatalities Spike is involved with have nothing to do with his car.
"What else?" he asks.
"Holy water, decapitation, an' wooden stakes," he shrugs. "We're none too fond of fire, either. An' once, there was this organ - but don't get me started on that one."
"How old are you?" Alex asks. He's betting Spike is somewhere in the neighborhood of forty or fifty, the retro punk look a carryover from mortal life, so the answer is surprising.
"A hundred and twenty," the vampire says with a shrug, "or thereabouts."
Alex does a few calculations in his head. "You were born in 1878?"
"1854. Turned in 1880." He doesn't elaborate, and after a second, tilts his head to the side and fixes Alex with a piercing stare. "What about you, Krycek? What's the story on these aliens of yours?"
"It's a long one," Alex warns him, and Spike smirks.
"'S not like I'm gonna die of old age, is it?"
*****
"Sir?"
The hand holding the cigarette came down; one finger tapped the ashes free of the ember at its tip.
"Yes," on a curl of smoke, the eyes fixing on the man at his door.
"You asked us to keep an eye out for Alex Krycek - to tell you if he showed up anywhere. Two days ago, he was caught by a surveillance camera in a bar in Dallas."
******
"Krycek is here, in the back corner. As you can see, he is not alone." One nicotine stained finger tapped the screen, where a platinum-haired man in a leather duster could be seen sitting opposite Alex Krycek. The blond was talking animatedly, gesturing with both hands as he spoke, the cigarette in his left scattering ash across the table. "We have yet to identify his companion. None of our domestic law enforcement or intelligence agencies have any real information on him; neither does Interpol. There are...sightings, however." He placed a file on the desk, opened it with the careful precision that always attended his movements.
"In 1997, Czech authorities had to disperse a mob that formed in Prague and attacked two foreigners, one a man fitting our new friend's description, the other a woman with long dark hair. The reports stated that the two were suspected of more than 50 murders between them, all In 1995, a man fitting his description was listed as a suspect in twenty two homicides in New Orleans. In 1992, his description was circulated in connection with eighteen unsolved homicides along the I-95 corridor, from Miami to Richmond. In 1986, he and a dark-haired woman were being sought for questioning by the authorities in Vienna regarding a massacre in a hotel that left thirty-three people dead, and two severely wounded. In 1983 --"
"Just how far back does this man's apparent crime spree go?" one of the other old men at the table interrupted.
"1978. Fourteen dead bodies in Whitechapel, and ten more in the Hyde Park area." A pause, as the speaker took a deep drag from his ever-present cigarette. "Nearly sixty percent of all of the victims suffered massive neck trauma and exsanguinated, without nearly enough blood being found at the scene."
The other man snorted. "Are you suggesting that that man," a gesture towards the screen, where Krycek's companion had just lit a cigarette, and was apparently using it to emphasize a particular point, "is some kind of vampire? This sounds like something Agent Mulder would be interested in. It's nonsense."
The smoking man started to respond, then closed his mouth around the unspoken retort. Pointing the increasingly-obstructive Agent Mulder at Alex Krycek was the equivalent of personally delivering an ICBM, and adding a vampire into the mix would only increase Agent Mulder's eagerness to track Krycek down. A vampire - especially one as obviously dangerous as Alex's new friend was - was far too dangerous an ally for an enemy to have.
The other alternative was to contact Maggie Walsh, but the Initiative was still in its initial phases, and might not yet be equipped to handle a situation of this magnitiude. Also, that course of action would necessitate revealing the Initiative to his colleagues, and he preferred to keep his secrets close. No, best to set Mulder onto the boy like a bloodhound onto the scent - and to keep this, too, close to the vest.
*****
Alex has just enough time to hear the snarled 'Krycek!' before he's slammed into the wall, and Mulder's fist is flying towards his face at what he knows from experience will feel like a hundred miles an hour.
The blow doesn't land. A pale, black-nailed hand wraps itself around Mulder's fist, and even though Alex can't see the pressure those slender fingers exert, Mulder squeaks, and his fist unclenches. The next moment, Mulder's other hand is pried free of Alex's collar, and Mulder himself is jerked backwards and away.
When Alex looks, Spike is holding Mulder in the air with one hand twisted into his collar as Mulder's feet dangle about an inch or so off the ground. It is obvious that Spike is not really exerting himself, despite the difference in their heights. Mulder is gurgling; Spike is smiling.
Alex rubs at his throat.
"Can I kill this one?" Spike asks, voice dark with bloodlust and annoyance.
"No," Alex rasps, still massaging his throat. "Put him down, Spike."
For a long, terrible moment, he thinks that Spike might not listen, that he will snap Mulder's neck with the same casual twist of his free hand that Alex has seen so often in the past three weeks. Then Spike puts Mulder down, or rather, lets him go. Mulder falls to the ground, trying to untwist his collar and get a breath of air. Somehow, Alex is having trouble feeling too sorry for him.
"Oh," Spike says, "I almost forgot." He bends over Mulder, then straightens with a gun in each hand. He offers them to Alex, handling them with surprising confidence for a man who's been dead for more than a century.
"You might want these," he says, pushing Mulder back down casually with one booted foot as the F.B.I. agent tries to keep Alex from getting the guns.
"Thanks," Alex says, taking them one at a time and tucking Mulder's main weapon in his belt. Aiming the agent's own backup weapon at him, he motions Spike out of the way with a jerk of his head. The vampire complies, but with a look of displeasure.
"Are you going to calm down now, Mulder?" Alex asks him.
"You killed my father," Mulder spits. "Why should I calm down?"
"This is Mulder?" Spike asks, then interrupts whatever he was going to say with: "You killed his father?"
"He was involved up to his eyebrows," Alex snaps at Spike, who shrugs, looking supremely unconcerned.
"It don't matter to me either way, mate," he says lazily. "I did for my father myself, so there's no stones coming from this direction."
"Thank you, Spike," Alex says drily, and receives a shrug in return.
Mulder's reaction to True Vampire Confessions is fairly predictable: he tries to get up again, swearing in fury. It's enough to irritate Spike into direct action: he leans down and grabs Mulder by the scruff of the neck, hauling him to his feet with one hand and an audible growl.
"Will you hold still?" he snarls, giving Mulder a tooth-rattling shake. "You're outnumbered and outgunned, not to mention the fact that Alex here can only keep me in check for so long. You're irritating me, and I'm hungry."
There's a world of intent in the last word, and Mulder may not realise exactly what has him by the collar, but he's far from stupid. He goes limp in Spike's grasp. His mouth, however, keeps moving.
"Who's your new friend, Krycek? Another serial killer? A cannibal?"
Spike raises an eyebrow at Alex. "You're a serial killer? I thought you were an assassin-slash-alien hunter, pet." Adding, with a shake to Mulder's collar that threatens to remove his head from his neck:
"An' I'm not a sodding cannibal. For one thing, cannibals are human." He growls the last word, slipping into gameface as he speaks.
"What are you?" Mulder chokes. "An alien? How did you do that?" Spike lets go of Mulder with an exasperated snort.
"Isn't anyone afraid of me any more? I'm a vampire, you idiot, not somewhat to pester with a fuckload of annoying questions while it's got you by the throat. Gerrit?"
Mulder opens his mouth - probably to ask another question - and Spike is behind him, one hand tangled in his hair, the other pinning his arms to his sides and his fangs pressing against the arch of Mulder's exposed throat. A stunned second later, and Spike releases him, half-way back to Alex before Mulder realises that he's gone, shifted back to human face in an instant.
"Alex here has a safe pass from me, but there's not many of us who want anything from any of you - with the exception of dinner. You're alive because Alex wants it that way, but keep pressing me, an' I'll have your guts for garlands." He turns to Alex with a grin, the deadly intensity sliding down a few notches. "Me an' Dru did that for Christmas one year. I think it was 1952. Somewhere in Nebraska."
Alex knows he should cut him off, because Spike's stories are dubious at best, horrific at worst, and the gleam in the vampire's eye says that this one will probably be the latter.
"Got invited in by this fat, happy farm family on Christmas Eve, an' Dru got it into her head that if we saved the kiddies for him, Santa Claus might put in an appearance. Anyway, we tied the little bleeders up - or rather, I did, as Dru was busy scolding the Christmas tree - an' bunged them into the cellar. When I got back, Dru'd disembowelled mum an' dad, an' was busy replacing the tinsel with loops of guts. Said the tinsel was lookin' at her," he finishes with a chuckle.
"What about the kids?" Mulder asks, an expression of unwilling, horrified fasination on his face.
"Hm? Oh, the kids. Right. St. Nick never did show, so we left 'em down there till sunset, then ate 'em before we left." He grins. "Good times."
( part two)