Spark and Burn

by Diana G. Gallagher

  “I’ll tell you what happened.” Darla seethed with revulsion. “He went and got himself a filthy soul. Now he’s nothing, just like Angelus. What a waste.”

  “Not really—a waste, I mean.” Harmony shrugged. “Spike couldn’t kill Buffy before he got the chip. He had plenty of chances.”

  “But he failed,” Dru said, “over and over again, like a broken record stuck in a groove. Couldn’t kill her, couldn’t kill her . . .”

  Not true! Spike squeezed his eyes closed and covered his ears. He couldn’t block the sound of Buffy trying to kick the corpse out the door, and he couldn’t block the truth he’d been hiding from himself for five years.

  He hadn’t failed. . . .

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  For BethAnn and Kathryn Slade, fantastic Buffy fans and Betsey’s favorite nieces!

  Prologue

  Sunnydale

  May 2002

  “I could never trust you enough for it to be love.”

  “Trust is for old marrieds, Buffy,” Spike scoffed. He hadn’t invaded the Slayer’s bathroom hoping to save an insipid, ordinary romance. The predatory fervor that had driven them together had evolved into a ferocious, noble bond he did not want to lose. “Great love is wild and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes.”

  “Until there’s nothing left.” Buffy glared at him, her arms folded protectively over her gray bathrobe, her chin raised in defiance. “Love like that doesn’t last.”

  Wrong, Slayer, Spike thought. He and Drusilla had loved with a searing intensity that had lasted over a century. It had taken the raw power of his feelings for Buffy to shred that blood-tie with Dru. Somehow he had to make Buffy understand that.

  “I know you feel like I do,” Spike said, taking a step forward. It wouldn’t take much to rekindle the need that had fueled their passion: a look, his lips brushing her neck, his hands drawing her close. Then maybe she would stop fooling herself and admit that she loved him. “You don’t have to hide it anymore.”

  Buffy looked away, losing patience. “Spike, please, stop this . . .”

  * * *

  “Stop it!”

  The heavy door slammed against the wall with a sharp crack as Spike stormed into his crypt. He didn’t pause to close it. He could shut out the world, but not the memory of Buffy begging him to stop.

  “No, stop! Please . . .”

  She had lost her balance and fallen, pulling down the shower curtain and hitting the bathtub. When he had tried to pin her, she’d pushed him away, not with the Slayer’s strength, but with the desperation of a woman fighting for her dignity.

  But he, too, had been trapped by desperation. Determined to prove that Buffy loved him, he had been deaf to her pleas.

  “Don’t do this, please! Please . . .”

  “Buffy . . .”

  The sound of his voice enraged rather than soothed her. She fought harder, but the rejection only provoked the demon inside the vampire Spike had become.

  How could she not love him when he loved her with all his heart and soul?

  A withered heart that doesn’t bloody beat, Spike thought bitterly as he snatched a bottle of vodka and a glass from the stone shelf under the crypt window. As for my soul . . .

  He poured two fingers of clear liquor into the glass and set the bottle on the sarcophagus. His soul—the pathetic essence of a lovesick poet—had been mercifully evicted when Drusilla sank her fangs into his flesh to drain his blood and his humanity. He had never wondered what became of it, until he found out that Angel’s soul had been restored by a gypsy curse. Apparently, since Spike had no taste for Romanian maidens, his abandoned spark was doomed to drift in the ether until he was dust.

  “Please, Spike, please . . .”

  He had been so sure Buffy cared for him. She could not possibly have given herself so completely to someone she loathed. Even Dawn sensed that his being with Buffy transcended forbidden lust.

  Dawn. Spike tightened his jaw, cursing the Slayer’s younger sister, blaming her for that night’s disaster. If Little-bit hadn’t told him that his spontaneous, drunken tryst with Anya had hurt Buffy, he wouldn’t have gone to the house to make things right. He shook his head. But it isn’t Dawn’s fault I attacked Buffy and ruined everything.

  Spike gulped the alcohol, but it didn’t burn his throat or blot out the memory or dull the pain. Nothing could erase from his mind the look of terrified contempt on Buffy’s tear-stained face.

  “I’m going to make you feel it . . .”

  “Stop!”

  Spike crushed the glass in his hand. He could still feel Buffy’s body underneath him on the bathroom floor, twisting to escape his grip. At first the struggle had infuriated and then aroused him, reminding him of the fight that had shattered the barriers between them the first time, when they had literally brought the house down. Then, without warning, Buffy had tapped into her slayer power and sent him flying across the small room into the wall. The shock had brought him to his senses—too late.

  “Ask me again why I could never love you?”

  Spike hadn’t asked, but he knew. The chip in his head punished him with excruciating pain if he hurt one of the good guys, but he was still a demon.

  And she didn’t dare trust him.

  Spike shook splinters of glass off his hand.

  “Uh—knock, knock.” Clem stood in the open doorway. “I was just in the neighborhood so I thought, you know—there’s a Knight Rider marathon on TV. I got hot wings!” The flop-eared demon raised a take-out bucket.

  Spike barely heard him. The gravity of his attack on Buffy had staggered him again.

  “What have I done? What did I do?” Confused and wretched, Spike threw his head back. “What has she done to me?”

  “She done—who?” Clem asked.

  Spike turned away, waving off the question.

  Usually, if there wasn’t anything better to do, Spike didn’t mind hanging out with Clem. The harmless demon was as much an innocent as a human toddler, without guile or malice or an agenda. But tonight Clem’s cheerful company, Knight Rider, and spicy chicken would just wear on Spike’s nerves and augment his torment.

  Clem was innocent, but not dense. “Oh . . . the Slayer, huh? Gosh, she break up with you again?”

  “We were never together,” Spike said with a casual shrug. “Not really. She’d never lower herself that far.”

  “She’s a sweet girl, Spike. But hey!” Clem elongated the next word: “Issues.”

  That’s one way of putting it, Spike thought.

  “And no wonder with the whole coming back from the grave and what not,” Clem went on. “I had this cousin who got resurrected by some kooky shaman. Oooh, boy! Was that a mess.”

  “Why do I feel this way?” Spike spat out the question.

  “Love’s a funny thing,” Clem said quietly.

  “Is that what this is?” Spike demanded, putting his hand on his temple as he strode toward Clem. “I can feel it, squirming in my head.”

  “Love?” Clem asked, puzzled.

  “The chip!” Spike winced. Sometimes he did think he could feel the nasty device burrowing into his brain. “More like bits and chunks.”

  “Maybe a wet cloth,” Clem suggested.

  “You know, everything used to be so clear. Slayer�
��—Spike spoke through clenched teeth, striking out to his right, then his left to make the point—“Vampire kills Slayer, sucks her dry, and picks his teeth with her bones.”

  Clem listened in respectful silence, clutching his bucket of hot wings.

  “It’s always been that way. I’ve tasted the life of two slayers. But with Buffy—” Spike paused. Just saying her name evoked a depth of despair that threatened to destroy what was left of the dark, dangerous creature he had once been. “It’s not supposed to be this way!”

  Frustrated, Spike pushed over a brass bed frame. Clem flinched, but he didn’t speak.

  “It’s the chip. Steel and wires and silicone.” Spike leaned against the sarcophagus. “It won’t let me be a monster, and I can’t be a man. I’m nothing.”

  “Hey, come on now, Mr. Negative,” Clem said. “You never know what’s just around the corner. Things change.”

  Spike hesitated, then slowly turned his head. “Yeah, they do. If you make them.”

  An hour later Spike was on his motorcycle, roaring down the highway. He set his jaw as he left the lights of Sunnydale behind him. He was the master of his own fate, riding the winds of change.

  Things would be different when he got back.

  Chapter One

  Sunnydale

  September 2002

  Spike sat in the darkness, still and silent. His was a crowded hell, and he didn’t dare move for fear more of the tormentors would awaken. Some of them were familiar. Others were long forgotten or those he’d only briefly met before he gorged on their blood.

  They all wanted a piece of him now.

  A horde of victims taunted him with cutting words, whispered curses, or outraged shrieks. A few sobbed endlessly.

  Others, mortals and monsters he had not slaughtered, had known him well or thought they did. They jabbed his tortured psyche with verbal pins poisoned by his past.

  He could not escape them. He had tried, but they had chased him across Africa, haunted the merchant ship’s cargo hold, and settled now into the basement storeroom of the new Sunnydale High School.

  The vengeful dead were merciless, and they infested the spark.

  “. . . just sixteen,” a girl hissed in a coarse Cockney accent. “Too young to die.”

  Spike muffled a deranged laugh, covered his ears, and rocked back and forth, but the voices wouldn’t shut up! They nagged him into the oblivion of insanity, finishing what he had started when he set out to get his soul back. . . .

  Africa

  May 2002

  A full moon hung over the Serengeti as Spike stashed the stolen Land Rover in the brush and pocketed the keys. The all-terrain vehicle couldn’t take him any farther, but he’d need it to get back to the African coast—if he survived the ordeal ahead. He walked into the tribal village knowing there were only two possible outcomes: success or death. Either fate was preferable to this insufferable existence as a caricature of himself.

  Intent on his destination, Spike ignored the women sitting around the fires outside thatched huts adorned with hubcaps and TV antennas. He skirted old tires, mismatched lawn furniture, baskets strewn about the sand, and a man who tried to block his way. The language wasn’t familiar, but it wasn’t hard to get the man’s drift.

  As he swept past, Spike spoke without breaking stride. “I’m not asking for permission, mate.”

  Whether protesting his trespass further or warning him away, the man backed off and did not follow as the vampire crossed the village boundary into a darkness the moon could not penetrate.

  Spike’s vampiric eyesight allowed him to differentiate subtle gradations in the lightless surroundings. The mouth of the cave appeared as a distorted shimmer in the fabric of the night. Wary of what might lurk in the demon’s lair, he flicked on his lighter as he entered. There were no obvious traps, but the flame illuminated a series of primitive paintings on the rock walls. The crude pictures of mutilated men gave Spike pause, but only long enough to catch his bearings. He knew what he wanted, and nothing would dissuade him. He walked on.

  Smaller corridors branched off the entry cavern, but Spike stayed in the wide passageway that led into the heart of the cave complex.

  “Do you seek me, vampire?” The commanding voice echoed off the walls.

  “You do the finger paintings?” Spike asked with a calculated dash of insolence. “Nice work.”

  “Answer me,” the demon demanded.

  Spike stared into eyes of blue fire set in stone. The demon’s gaze burned through his flippant facade, daring him to flinch. Spike knew his only weakness was that he wanted what he came for too much, but there was no point trying to hide it.

  “Yeah,” he said evenly. “I seek you.”

  “Something about a woman,” the demon said, sifting through Spike’s thoughts for the truth. “The Slayer.”

  Spike nodded. “Bitch thinks she’s better than me. Ever since I got this bleedin’ chip in my head, things ain’t been right. Everything’s gone to hell.”

  The demon’s eyes flared green on blue as it flexed clawed hands. “You want to return to your former self.”

  Spike’s gaze did not waver. “Yeah.”

  The demon laughed.

  “What?” Spike asked, annoyed.

  “Look what she’s reduced you to.” The demon snarled with contempt.

  “It’s this bloody chip.” Spike’s temper burned. Nobody could change him, not even the Slayer.

  “You were a legendary dark warrior, and you let yourself be castrated,” the demon said. “Yet you have the audacity to crawl in here and demand restoration.”

  “I’m still a warrior,” Spike insisted.

  “You’re a pathetic excuse for a demon.”

  “Yeah?” Spike shot back. The demon was a bloody idiot if it thought a few insults could intimidate him into backing down. He took the offensive. “I’ll show you pathetic. Give me your best shot.”

  When the demon hesitated, taking his measure, Spike knew he had won the first round.

  “You’ll never endure the trials required to grant your request,” the demon said.

  “Do your worst,” Spike retorted. “But when I win, I want what I came here for. . . .”

  Sunnydale

  September 2002

  Spike squeezed his eyes shut and banged his head back against the storeroom wall. He had gotten what he asked for, and it burned hotter than hellfire.

  “Serves you right for loving the Slayer, Spike,” Dru taunted Spike from the darkness, one of many who haunted his dementia. “The pixies in my head were quite correct about that.”

  “It’s not love,” Buffy scoffed. “You can’t love without a soul.”

  Yes, you can, Spike thought, but people with souls can’t love you back.

  The Slayer knew that the chip had only harnessed his killer instincts. The demon remained inside him, embedded in the empty spaces his humanity had fled, forced to feed on foul animal blood, unable to prey on the innocent, denied the means of fulfilling his savage destiny. As surely as Drusilla had changed him into a vampire of uncommon cunning and strength, the Initiative, with their heinous chip, had turned him into a demonic eunuch that Buffy could tolerate and use, but not respect or love.

  He had finally gotten the message and embarked on a fool’s errand to get the missing spark back.

  Another hysterical laugh rumbled in Spike’s throat. He bit his lip to smother it.

  He had slaughtered the demon’s minions and passed every torturous test devised by the guardian of disembodied souls. At first Spike’s desire for Buffy had reinforced his determination to prevail against adversaries who wielded fists of fire and swords of molten metal. But as he vanquished one challenger after another and his physical strength waned, pride had fueled his resolve as much as love. Maybe more, Spike thought, in a burst of rational clarity.

  The demon’s taunts had ripped psychic scabs off old, festering wounds. The venom of ridicule was more painful than the flames that scorched Spike’s sk
in, more potent than the sting of swarming beetles. He would rather have ended it all than failed, but he couldn’t die leaving his business with Buffy unfinished. He had survived the tortures and won. But the prize was contaminated.

  The instant the demon thrust his soul back into his body, he had been overwhelmed by the anguish of the damned. The physical pain he had endured to pass the trials had been excruciating, but fleeting. The emotional torture unleashed by the spark was a thousand times worse.

  And the misery would last forever.

  “What have you done?” A man wailed.

  “Murderer,” an old woman grunted. “Go to hell.”

  “Mommy!” A child shrieked.

  “You’ll always be a limp, sentimental fool . . .”

  “Mother . . . ,” Spike muttered.

  His mum’s elderly face, wrinkled and twisted with disgust, flashed through his mind. Spike jumped to his feet, screaming, and slammed his fist into the wall. He had been an idiot, and now he was condemned to the hell for the deranged—Compliments of the Slayer.

  Spike had killed Buffy many times since leaving the African cave—choking the life out of her with his bare hands, impaling her with the stake she raised against him, driving his fangs into her neck—in his dreams.

  “Nightmare,” Spike rasped, hanging his head.

  “Poor Spike. I pinched the lost boy, but you wouldn’t wake up,” Dru said. “Instead of midnight picnic parties and sweet dreams bathed in blood, you followed your heart into the nightmare.”

  Spike didn’t have to see Drusilla’s pale, exotic face to know she was pouting. During more than a century together, she had perfected the art of making him feel guilty about real and imagined slights. Indebted and in love, he had catered to her every whim, rarely refusing her anything—until the Slayer.

  “Not my fault,” Spike whispered.

  “Naughty Spike,” Dru cooed, becoming visible in the lightless room. Her straight dark hair skimmed the shoulders of a black gown trimmed in red. “Mustn’t tell your mummy fibs. The Slayer isn’t dead and buried forever and ever.”