FIC: Before The Rising Of The Sun 1
Title: Before The Rising Of The Sun (1)
Spoilers: Follows the comics to ATF 14 and Buffy 20, so Warren never really died and Wesley's been a ghost and Buffy will kill Willow in the future and all that.
She was sitting at a sushi bar eating a slice of raw eel on nigiri when Spike walked in. She wore a top hat and her dress was both far to brief to be entirely polite and snug enough to emphasize the lack of space between her breasts. The dress revealed a black garter high on her right thigh. Black hair draped over her pale skin and covered one of her eyes giving her a sense of vulnerability. Her delicate half-gloved hands daintily lifted eel with hand lacquered chopsticks. The chopsticks each bore tiny paintings of a naked girl stretched out in different positions and tied down with jute straps, bleeding from the marks left on her by leather whips.
Spike sat down next to her at the bar, close enough to be touching, but didn't look at her. He waved at the chef who immediately began slicing raw tuna for the vampire. Then he looked over at the girl and his eyes dropped down to scan her décolletage and corset before slowly rising back to her face. He caught her eyes and held her gaze as long as she could stand it. She looked down and away. Spike switched focus to his recently delivered food and ordered a cup of rice wine from the waitress.
“Are you William the Bloody?” She leaned in closer and laid her hand on the arm of his black leather coat. Her accent in English made her sound like an suburban Orange County teenager meeting a movie star.
“You must be mistaking me for someone else.” He didn't make any move to look back at her. He spoke Japanese like a yakuza tough.
“I don't think so.” She slid her chest forward around his upper arm and whispered into his ear. “You killed two slayers, back when there was only one chosen one.” She nipped at his earlobe. “My name is Ishihara Kumiko, daughter of Kazuo. And I've been the cause of more than one slayer's ending this year.” Spike suppressed a shudder and she didn't notice.
Then she leaned back and reached her hand forward over his. Her black painted fingernails laced between his where he held his cup of rice wine. She took the cup into her own hand and drank from it and then she held it up to his lips to finish. Then she smiled. “I'm taking you home with me.”
“No, you're not. You're going to pay for my drink and leave me to eat my sushi in peace.” He picked up another piece of tuna in the crude wooden disposable chopsticks the sushi bar handed out and ate it.
She reached for his face and ran her index finger along his lower lip. Her fingernails were cut short. When she pulled away her finger went to her own mouth where she sucked it in, pulling hard. Her tongue followed the finger out and licked it slowly. She fixed her eyes on his once again. “I want give myself to you, William, and you will have me.”
§
She was wrapped in the leather of his jacket, his arms around her and his tongue in her mouth. She scraped her teeth lightly along the rough buds of his tongue as their elevator climbed up to the twentieth floor. They ignored the view through the elevator's glass walls of Tokyo Bay.
The elevator opened out into a two story atrium where a dozen vampires waited facing the elevator as it arrived. When it opened they continued to wait silently as Spike finished his kiss with Kumiko. She turned and stepped out among them, steady and imperious. “Yohei. Status report.”
One vampire bowed and reported, “still one week to finish rebuilding the slayer neutralizer. We've located Dracula's ship in port at Mombasa and sent a team to deal with him. And Ayaka still hasn't risen.”
She turned around and waved Spike forward to the center of the group. Instead of coming, he leaned back on the frame of the elevator door and looked at the minions. The men were clad in woolen coats and frilly white shirts. Most of the women wore silk kimonos, but a few were in brief dresses all less stylish than Kumiko's.
“Did you rob a production of Pirates Of Penzance to dress your minions?”
She inhaled with visible excitement as Spike ignored her summons. She walked over to him instead.
“It beats The Mikado.” Kumiko looked up at Spike.
He smiled and she relaxed. Turning to the other vampire she announced, “This is William The Bloody, the slayer of slayers. We've all read about him. Now he is working for our clan.”
“Not joining anybody's clan, pet.”
She took a step away from him, less assured than a moment ago. “Now he is an advisor to our clan. This will ensure our success against the slayer army.”
The one who made the status report earlier stepped forward with a suspicious look at Spike. “Spike, this is Yohei, my lieutenant.” Kumiko held out her hand to point at him.
Spike kicked one leg back at the wall to swing his slouching body to stand up straight. Yohei bowed slightly, less than he knew he should. Spike didn't bow at all but simply tilted his head slightly and squinted dismissively as he stepped up face to face.
Yohei growled quietly and flashed yellow in his eyes. Spike gave a contemptuous chuckle and looked back still with blue eyes. Yohei took a half step back.
“Now, Yohei.” Kumiko started for the far wall of the atrium where wooden doors and glass walls enclosed a row offices but turned before she reached them. “We're going to show Spike our prize and won't he be pleased?”
“Yes, mistress.” They headed into a corridor with locked laboratories along one side and entered a room with a dead girl on a cot. She looked to be barely thirteen or fourteen years old. There were two wounds close together on the left side of her neck. As Spike looked at her he stiffened slightly and turned his head to look at Kumiko, Yohei, and each of the other vampires in the room in turn, as if marking each one in his mind.
“This is how we will find the slayer headquarters. When Ayaka rises, she will lead us directly to her old friends and help us kill them one by one,” Yohei announced the plan proudly. “We bribed her friends to slip her a drug one night when she was visiting home. Then when she was weak, we killed her. It will take a day or two longer than usual for her to turn because she was weakened.”
Spike stifled his disgust and turned to Kumiko to watch her reaction.
“A regretful necessity,” she explained. “But we are only in this situation because of a setback inflicted by one of our own. Dracula has dishonored his line and made himself a minion of the slayers.”
“Figures, poncy git as always.”
“Shameful. He fell in love with a human and was induced to betray us.”
“Drac in love with a slayer?” Spike asked with slight hesitation. “Pathetic.”
“That's the business, Spike, but if you don't mind,” Kumiko reached her hand around the inside of Spike's coat and ran her fingers up his chest along the black tee shirt he wore. “Now I'd like to show you something more pleasurable.”
§
Kumiko's head crashed again into the carved oak panel. She was beginning to bleed from the force of it. Spike's blow cracked on her skin as she moaned. The sound carried through the rice paper walls on the upper level of the vampire's lair.
She threw her head back and the hair flew out of her eyes. Spike drove her into the headboard again as he penetrated her. This time he grabbed hold of her hair to hold her head up from behind with his left hand and hit her ass pointed up in the air with his open right hand. She cried out in climax and reached out helplessly as he rode her through her pleasure.
He rolled her over on the silk sheets and looked out on the city through the picture windows for a just moment before peering back down at her. He watched her expression of bliss spread across her body. “Well, pet, ready for the fifth round?”
§
“They poisoned her because they couldn't stand to pick off a slayer in a fair fight.” Spike swung his fist in the air as he growled into the cellular phone.
“You still can't just stake her in her sleep.”
“The hell I can't.” Spike dropped the phone on the bed and yanked off a piece of the oak headboard where it had been cracked. He plunged it into Kumiko's sleeping form sprawled lewdly above the twisted silk. His aim was true, straight at her heart.
But the wood splintered and bounced off her.
“Do you really think they would let her sleep without mystical protection? This is the most powerful vampire clan in the Far East.” Wesley's voice was still continuing to come from the phone.
Spike picked it up. “So what do we do? There's not much time.”
“Well, I wasn't expecting this call today. I still don't understand how you penetrated their inner circle so fast. It should have taken weeks to build up trust.”
“Yeah. You said it could be the end of the world so I did it faster.”
“I'll have to do some research on the basis of their technology with these photos you sent.” Wesley shifted and Spike could hear bedsprings.
“Are you still in bed? It's midday in Los Angeles, isn't it?”
Faintly Spike heard the voice of Winifred Burkle, “ready for another nooner Wesley?”
“Have you two even gotten out of bed since Charlie's big reset button?”
“Um, well,” Wesley looked over at the pile of Thai delivery cartons and empty pizza boxes by the side of his bed. “Not evidently.”
“Well, you better get to researching. With Angel and Gunn out in the Cotswolds you're the only backup I've got.”
“Harmony told me vampires can do it four or five times a day, no problem.” She whispered into his opposite ear, but Spike could still hear an ocean away. “You don't want to be outdone by a vampire, do you? Just one more time, Wes.”
“Tell her that's just a myth and get to work.”
“Uh, just, um,” Wesley stammered.
“Her power is rooted in the pointless invocations of Saga Vasuki. Spike should crush her like a cricket.” That was not Fred's voice. Wesley looked over at her, stunned.
“Uh, is everything all right there, Wes?” Spike could hear the change, also.
“Don't worry, guys. I can still remember being him. But I'm not, really.” Wesley still didn't move. “Really.” She rose up on her knees and kissed him softly on his forehead, pressing his nose into her naked collarbone. “Really.”
“We'll get right on it, Spike.” Wesley hung up the phone.
Spike heard a shout and a crash.
§
Satsu pointed Chihiro forward past her to the far end of the hallway. There was another weakness in the concrete floor of the level above where the air ducts came in and Chihiro was ready to pop up. The rest of Satsu's crew, three more slayers, scaled the last floor of the elevator shaft with her and cracked open the door.
Four slayers rolled into the room one after the other but the night guard was watching for them. Satsu was on him, driving him to the floor and staking quickly but vampires were pouring out of the offices and down the stairs of the huge two story atrium. They would have to hold off the horde and hope Chihiro could come through.
“Fall back, slayers. Defensive positions.” They set up a formation to defend each other and hold ground. The vampires came at them and succeeded in bruising the younger slayers but didn't make any killing blows. Neither were the vampire numbers falling.
One vampire on the upper level came up to the balcony with a shotgun.
“Evasive positions, slayers, there's a gun up there.” Satsu began to worry. There was to way to stay out of the line of fire from this defensive position. The vampire was right above them.
Then the vampire fell down like it was thrown over the railing, landing right on Satsu. She rolled it over and grabbed the weapon. Then Satsu ripped the wooden stock off the gun and staked the vampire with it. She looked up and her slayers were holding positions around her. She felt a little pride swell inside her.
Chihiro made it up behind the vampire horde and started back toward the offices on the far side of the atrium. Satsu smiled until she saw Ayaka coming up behind her with a dagger. Satsu shouted but Chihiro couldn't hear over the fighting. Ayaka plunged the dagger into Chihiro's back and she fell. Ayaka transformed and let down her fangs. She could smell the blood of her former comrade.
Satsu couldn't get over in time. There were simply too many vampires there. She moved ahead in a fury but Ayaka's fangs were penetrating Chihiro's neck.
Then a flash of black leather and white hair came down from above and enveloped Ayaka and Chihiro with a cloud of dust. When Satsu arrived at Chihiro's position, it was another vampire leaning over her slayer and Ayaka was gone.
He was looking over her back and neck, his fingers covered in her blood. Satsu leaped forward to knock him away before he could do any more damage. Instead of plowing into him, she felt her arm twist and nothing but air and then painful impact.
She ended up on her back on the floor. Satsu didn't even understand how the vampire accomplished that but he was still standing over Chihiro.
Chihiro sat up between Spike and Satsu.
“Chihiro, can you get out of here?” Satsu advanced on the vampire to keep him away.
Chihiro nodded. She was covered in blood, but she was starting to stand up slowly.
“Mission accomplished, ladies. Get down that shaft and on home.” Satsu shouted over the radio wrapped around her ear. “You get down to the lower level and get the troops back safe,” she ordered Chihiro. “I'm taking care of this one.”
Satsu was sure this particular vampire was too dangerous to survive.
§
She grabbed onto his ankle. That didn't make it any easier to leap up to the balcony level. And it certainly didn't make it any easier for Spike to slip away in the confusion. The slayers were escaping down the elevator shaft, their fallen comrade slain and their secrets safe.
Except that this one was still right on Spike's tail. She was a tough chit, too. He tried scaring her off with a few street fighting moves but she came right in under them. He was going to have to hurt her to get her to stop.
That wouldn't be too tough; they had yet to make a slayer Spike couldn't beat. Well, they'd made one but she was special. And Spike didn't like to think about her, either.
The problem was that any damage done to a slayer right here would lead to her being killed and turned just like poor Ayaka. There was only one way out and that was getting away from this building.
Spike was tired of all the minions already anyway.
He crashed open the emergency stairway exit and started climbing up and up to roof terrace. Two more floors of machinery and equipment and he he was in the open air with no one else behind him but the slayer. He hated to leave her here alone but she was a strong one. She'd be able to fight her way back down through the vampires.
Spike backed up to the edge of the roof and watched her advance on him. She was so determined and smooth. A few of her moves reminded him of a slayer he was not going to be reminded about.
Spike stepped right back to the edge of the building, both heels hanging just over the precipice.
“End of the line for you, vampire.”
Spike smiled and took one step back.
He landed softly on the sidewalk, twenty three stories below. An old lady walking past shouted out in surprise and turned around to run away.
Spike was surprised, too. He looked up and saw Satsu following after. She was balancing her fall the way Angelus had taught Spike over a century ago. But she wasn't doing it quite right.
She came down on her head twenty feet past where Spike landed. He rushed over and lifted her into the air by the back of her Kevlar vest to inspect the damage. The teddy bear head sewn on her outfit was attached by only a thread, blood covered her forehead and eyes but it wasn't gushing. Her head lolled over on his wrist and one arm hung loose, dislocated.
He slapped her lightly and tried to ignore the splashing slayer blood filling his nostrils. “Slayer, you still there?”
Her eyes fixed on him but she was too weak to make more than a token effort to get away. Spike started to wipe blood out of her eyes with his free hand. Then he realized he had only ever seen one human, one slayer, use that jumping technique. Anyone without it, even with slayer healing, would be a dead puddle of broken bones now.
The only human who knew it was the one he'd taught late one night on patrol after they'd cleared an abandoned five story apartment building of vampire nests.
Spike looked into Satsu's cleared eyes. He grabbed her dislocated arm and forced it back into the socket where it belonged. That hurt enough to grab her attention.
He told her, “She really should have taught you how to land.”
Spoilers: Follows the comics to ATF 14 and Buffy 20, so Warren never really died and Wesley's been a ghost and Buffy will kill Willow in the future and all that.
She was sitting at a sushi bar eating a slice of raw eel on nigiri when Spike walked in. She wore a top hat and her dress was both far to brief to be entirely polite and snug enough to emphasize the lack of space between her breasts. The dress revealed a black garter high on her right thigh. Black hair draped over her pale skin and covered one of her eyes giving her a sense of vulnerability. Her delicate half-gloved hands daintily lifted eel with hand lacquered chopsticks. The chopsticks each bore tiny paintings of a naked girl stretched out in different positions and tied down with jute straps, bleeding from the marks left on her by leather whips.
Spike sat down next to her at the bar, close enough to be touching, but didn't look at her. He waved at the chef who immediately began slicing raw tuna for the vampire. Then he looked over at the girl and his eyes dropped down to scan her décolletage and corset before slowly rising back to her face. He caught her eyes and held her gaze as long as she could stand it. She looked down and away. Spike switched focus to his recently delivered food and ordered a cup of rice wine from the waitress.
“Are you William the Bloody?” She leaned in closer and laid her hand on the arm of his black leather coat. Her accent in English made her sound like an suburban Orange County teenager meeting a movie star.
“You must be mistaking me for someone else.” He didn't make any move to look back at her. He spoke Japanese like a yakuza tough.
“I don't think so.” She slid her chest forward around his upper arm and whispered into his ear. “You killed two slayers, back when there was only one chosen one.” She nipped at his earlobe. “My name is Ishihara Kumiko, daughter of Kazuo. And I've been the cause of more than one slayer's ending this year.” Spike suppressed a shudder and she didn't notice.
Then she leaned back and reached her hand forward over his. Her black painted fingernails laced between his where he held his cup of rice wine. She took the cup into her own hand and drank from it and then she held it up to his lips to finish. Then she smiled. “I'm taking you home with me.”
“No, you're not. You're going to pay for my drink and leave me to eat my sushi in peace.” He picked up another piece of tuna in the crude wooden disposable chopsticks the sushi bar handed out and ate it.
She reached for his face and ran her index finger along his lower lip. Her fingernails were cut short. When she pulled away her finger went to her own mouth where she sucked it in, pulling hard. Her tongue followed the finger out and licked it slowly. She fixed her eyes on his once again. “I want give myself to you, William, and you will have me.”
§
She was wrapped in the leather of his jacket, his arms around her and his tongue in her mouth. She scraped her teeth lightly along the rough buds of his tongue as their elevator climbed up to the twentieth floor. They ignored the view through the elevator's glass walls of Tokyo Bay.
The elevator opened out into a two story atrium where a dozen vampires waited facing the elevator as it arrived. When it opened they continued to wait silently as Spike finished his kiss with Kumiko. She turned and stepped out among them, steady and imperious. “Yohei. Status report.”
One vampire bowed and reported, “still one week to finish rebuilding the slayer neutralizer. We've located Dracula's ship in port at Mombasa and sent a team to deal with him. And Ayaka still hasn't risen.”
She turned around and waved Spike forward to the center of the group. Instead of coming, he leaned back on the frame of the elevator door and looked at the minions. The men were clad in woolen coats and frilly white shirts. Most of the women wore silk kimonos, but a few were in brief dresses all less stylish than Kumiko's.
“Did you rob a production of Pirates Of Penzance to dress your minions?”
She inhaled with visible excitement as Spike ignored her summons. She walked over to him instead.
“It beats The Mikado.” Kumiko looked up at Spike.
He smiled and she relaxed. Turning to the other vampire she announced, “This is William The Bloody, the slayer of slayers. We've all read about him. Now he is working for our clan.”
“Not joining anybody's clan, pet.”
She took a step away from him, less assured than a moment ago. “Now he is an advisor to our clan. This will ensure our success against the slayer army.”
The one who made the status report earlier stepped forward with a suspicious look at Spike. “Spike, this is Yohei, my lieutenant.” Kumiko held out her hand to point at him.
Spike kicked one leg back at the wall to swing his slouching body to stand up straight. Yohei bowed slightly, less than he knew he should. Spike didn't bow at all but simply tilted his head slightly and squinted dismissively as he stepped up face to face.
Yohei growled quietly and flashed yellow in his eyes. Spike gave a contemptuous chuckle and looked back still with blue eyes. Yohei took a half step back.
“Now, Yohei.” Kumiko started for the far wall of the atrium where wooden doors and glass walls enclosed a row offices but turned before she reached them. “We're going to show Spike our prize and won't he be pleased?”
“Yes, mistress.” They headed into a corridor with locked laboratories along one side and entered a room with a dead girl on a cot. She looked to be barely thirteen or fourteen years old. There were two wounds close together on the left side of her neck. As Spike looked at her he stiffened slightly and turned his head to look at Kumiko, Yohei, and each of the other vampires in the room in turn, as if marking each one in his mind.
“This is how we will find the slayer headquarters. When Ayaka rises, she will lead us directly to her old friends and help us kill them one by one,” Yohei announced the plan proudly. “We bribed her friends to slip her a drug one night when she was visiting home. Then when she was weak, we killed her. It will take a day or two longer than usual for her to turn because she was weakened.”
Spike stifled his disgust and turned to Kumiko to watch her reaction.
“A regretful necessity,” she explained. “But we are only in this situation because of a setback inflicted by one of our own. Dracula has dishonored his line and made himself a minion of the slayers.”
“Figures, poncy git as always.”
“Shameful. He fell in love with a human and was induced to betray us.”
“Drac in love with a slayer?” Spike asked with slight hesitation. “Pathetic.”
“That's the business, Spike, but if you don't mind,” Kumiko reached her hand around the inside of Spike's coat and ran her fingers up his chest along the black tee shirt he wore. “Now I'd like to show you something more pleasurable.”
§
Kumiko's head crashed again into the carved oak panel. She was beginning to bleed from the force of it. Spike's blow cracked on her skin as she moaned. The sound carried through the rice paper walls on the upper level of the vampire's lair.
She threw her head back and the hair flew out of her eyes. Spike drove her into the headboard again as he penetrated her. This time he grabbed hold of her hair to hold her head up from behind with his left hand and hit her ass pointed up in the air with his open right hand. She cried out in climax and reached out helplessly as he rode her through her pleasure.
He rolled her over on the silk sheets and looked out on the city through the picture windows for a just moment before peering back down at her. He watched her expression of bliss spread across her body. “Well, pet, ready for the fifth round?”
§
“They poisoned her because they couldn't stand to pick off a slayer in a fair fight.” Spike swung his fist in the air as he growled into the cellular phone.
“You still can't just stake her in her sleep.”
“The hell I can't.” Spike dropped the phone on the bed and yanked off a piece of the oak headboard where it had been cracked. He plunged it into Kumiko's sleeping form sprawled lewdly above the twisted silk. His aim was true, straight at her heart.
But the wood splintered and bounced off her.
“Do you really think they would let her sleep without mystical protection? This is the most powerful vampire clan in the Far East.” Wesley's voice was still continuing to come from the phone.
Spike picked it up. “So what do we do? There's not much time.”
“Well, I wasn't expecting this call today. I still don't understand how you penetrated their inner circle so fast. It should have taken weeks to build up trust.”
“Yeah. You said it could be the end of the world so I did it faster.”
“I'll have to do some research on the basis of their technology with these photos you sent.” Wesley shifted and Spike could hear bedsprings.
“Are you still in bed? It's midday in Los Angeles, isn't it?”
Faintly Spike heard the voice of Winifred Burkle, “ready for another nooner Wesley?”
“Have you two even gotten out of bed since Charlie's big reset button?”
“Um, well,” Wesley looked over at the pile of Thai delivery cartons and empty pizza boxes by the side of his bed. “Not evidently.”
“Well, you better get to researching. With Angel and Gunn out in the Cotswolds you're the only backup I've got.”
“Harmony told me vampires can do it four or five times a day, no problem.” She whispered into his opposite ear, but Spike could still hear an ocean away. “You don't want to be outdone by a vampire, do you? Just one more time, Wes.”
“Tell her that's just a myth and get to work.”
“Uh, just, um,” Wesley stammered.
“Her power is rooted in the pointless invocations of Saga Vasuki. Spike should crush her like a cricket.” That was not Fred's voice. Wesley looked over at her, stunned.
“Uh, is everything all right there, Wes?” Spike could hear the change, also.
“Don't worry, guys. I can still remember being him. But I'm not, really.” Wesley still didn't move. “Really.” She rose up on her knees and kissed him softly on his forehead, pressing his nose into her naked collarbone. “Really.”
“We'll get right on it, Spike.” Wesley hung up the phone.
Spike heard a shout and a crash.
§
Satsu pointed Chihiro forward past her to the far end of the hallway. There was another weakness in the concrete floor of the level above where the air ducts came in and Chihiro was ready to pop up. The rest of Satsu's crew, three more slayers, scaled the last floor of the elevator shaft with her and cracked open the door.
Four slayers rolled into the room one after the other but the night guard was watching for them. Satsu was on him, driving him to the floor and staking quickly but vampires were pouring out of the offices and down the stairs of the huge two story atrium. They would have to hold off the horde and hope Chihiro could come through.
“Fall back, slayers. Defensive positions.” They set up a formation to defend each other and hold ground. The vampires came at them and succeeded in bruising the younger slayers but didn't make any killing blows. Neither were the vampire numbers falling.
One vampire on the upper level came up to the balcony with a shotgun.
“Evasive positions, slayers, there's a gun up there.” Satsu began to worry. There was to way to stay out of the line of fire from this defensive position. The vampire was right above them.
Then the vampire fell down like it was thrown over the railing, landing right on Satsu. She rolled it over and grabbed the weapon. Then Satsu ripped the wooden stock off the gun and staked the vampire with it. She looked up and her slayers were holding positions around her. She felt a little pride swell inside her.
Chihiro made it up behind the vampire horde and started back toward the offices on the far side of the atrium. Satsu smiled until she saw Ayaka coming up behind her with a dagger. Satsu shouted but Chihiro couldn't hear over the fighting. Ayaka plunged the dagger into Chihiro's back and she fell. Ayaka transformed and let down her fangs. She could smell the blood of her former comrade.
Satsu couldn't get over in time. There were simply too many vampires there. She moved ahead in a fury but Ayaka's fangs were penetrating Chihiro's neck.
Then a flash of black leather and white hair came down from above and enveloped Ayaka and Chihiro with a cloud of dust. When Satsu arrived at Chihiro's position, it was another vampire leaning over her slayer and Ayaka was gone.
He was looking over her back and neck, his fingers covered in her blood. Satsu leaped forward to knock him away before he could do any more damage. Instead of plowing into him, she felt her arm twist and nothing but air and then painful impact.
She ended up on her back on the floor. Satsu didn't even understand how the vampire accomplished that but he was still standing over Chihiro.
Chihiro sat up between Spike and Satsu.
“Chihiro, can you get out of here?” Satsu advanced on the vampire to keep him away.
Chihiro nodded. She was covered in blood, but she was starting to stand up slowly.
“Mission accomplished, ladies. Get down that shaft and on home.” Satsu shouted over the radio wrapped around her ear. “You get down to the lower level and get the troops back safe,” she ordered Chihiro. “I'm taking care of this one.”
Satsu was sure this particular vampire was too dangerous to survive.
§
She grabbed onto his ankle. That didn't make it any easier to leap up to the balcony level. And it certainly didn't make it any easier for Spike to slip away in the confusion. The slayers were escaping down the elevator shaft, their fallen comrade slain and their secrets safe.
Except that this one was still right on Spike's tail. She was a tough chit, too. He tried scaring her off with a few street fighting moves but she came right in under them. He was going to have to hurt her to get her to stop.
That wouldn't be too tough; they had yet to make a slayer Spike couldn't beat. Well, they'd made one but she was special. And Spike didn't like to think about her, either.
The problem was that any damage done to a slayer right here would lead to her being killed and turned just like poor Ayaka. There was only one way out and that was getting away from this building.
Spike was tired of all the minions already anyway.
He crashed open the emergency stairway exit and started climbing up and up to roof terrace. Two more floors of machinery and equipment and he he was in the open air with no one else behind him but the slayer. He hated to leave her here alone but she was a strong one. She'd be able to fight her way back down through the vampires.
Spike backed up to the edge of the roof and watched her advance on him. She was so determined and smooth. A few of her moves reminded him of a slayer he was not going to be reminded about.
Spike stepped right back to the edge of the building, both heels hanging just over the precipice.
“End of the line for you, vampire.”
Spike smiled and took one step back.
He landed softly on the sidewalk, twenty three stories below. An old lady walking past shouted out in surprise and turned around to run away.
Spike was surprised, too. He looked up and saw Satsu following after. She was balancing her fall the way Angelus had taught Spike over a century ago. But she wasn't doing it quite right.
She came down on her head twenty feet past where Spike landed. He rushed over and lifted her into the air by the back of her Kevlar vest to inspect the damage. The teddy bear head sewn on her outfit was attached by only a thread, blood covered her forehead and eyes but it wasn't gushing. Her head lolled over on his wrist and one arm hung loose, dislocated.
He slapped her lightly and tried to ignore the splashing slayer blood filling his nostrils. “Slayer, you still there?”
Her eyes fixed on him but she was too weak to make more than a token effort to get away. Spike started to wipe blood out of her eyes with his free hand. Then he realized he had only ever seen one human, one slayer, use that jumping technique. Anyone without it, even with slayer healing, would be a dead puddle of broken bones now.
The only human who knew it was the one he'd taught late one night on patrol after they'd cleared an abandoned five story apartment building of vampire nests.
Spike looked into Satsu's cleared eyes. He grabbed her dislocated arm and forced it back into the socket where it belonged. That hurt enough to grab her attention.
He told her, “She really should have taught you how to land.”