Blackout

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

“I love you, too, Mama.”

  A second later Crowley said, “I’m glad you’re safe, Nikki.”

  “I’m better than safe, Crowley—it worked. Reet’s people found Drusilla, and Spike found Reet. I’m standing across the street from Reet’s burned-down building right now. Reet’s dead, and so’re most of his boys.”

  “So your plan worked?”

  Frowning, Nikki said, “You thought it wouldn’t? What kinda Watcher are you, anyhow, not trustin’ your Slayer?”

  “Well, I’m simply recalling your brilliant plan against those Pumbo demons. Took months to get the smell out of the carpet.”

  “Yeah, well, if you’d told me that they were allergic to leather . . .”

  Crowley laughed. “All right, all right. However, there’s a more legitimate concern. With Reet gone, rival gangs will be jockeying for position. Or perhaps the Mafia will move in.” He pronounced it with a short a on the first syllable, the way British people did.

  “That ain’t my problem,” Nikki said, “ ’less they’re bloodsuckers. Anyhow, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Crowley, you dig?”

  “I do indeed.” A pause. “It’s good to hear your voice, Nikki. I was worried. One of the neighbors has a transistor radio, so we were able to hear some news reports. It sounded rather ugly out there.”

  “It was worse than it sounded, believe me. But I did what I could. You heard anything about when the power’ll be back on?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “All right. I’m gonna head back down to you.”

  “Excellent. I’ll have a pot of tea on.”

  Usually Nikki drank Crowley’s tea only to be polite, but this morning, she for damn sure needed it. And his gas stove would still be working. “Lookin’ forward to it. See you soon.”

  She hung up and opened the door to the phone booth, the humid air blasting her in the face.

  Maybe she’d be able to find a bus to take her back to Times Square. No way she’d find a cab in Harlem this time of morning—or any time, if it came right down to it—but she was exhausted and didn’t really want to walk.

  Still and all, she’d done some good tonight. And Reet’s dead. I ain’t gonna complain about that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  New York City

  July 14, 1977

  11:40 p.m.

  The neon lights of the city were dimmed in Central Park as Spike and Drusilla rode a horse-drawn carriage up one of the transverses.

  Power had at last been restored to the city twenty-five hours after it had gone out. Spike had to admit, after running through half of Manhattan in near total darkness, that he liked it better when the city glowed.

  Certainly, he himself was glowing—he had Drusilla back. “I missed you,” he said as he whipped the horse with the reins.

  Next to him up front, Drusilla smiled that mischievious smile of hers and said, “My love will simply have to improve his aim, then.”

  Laughing, Spike gave her a quick peck on the lips. Were he not trying to control the horses, he’d have given her more, but he had to keep an eye on the beasts.

  Normally, of course, the driver would be the one steering, but he was far too busy being dead in the carriage. For some reason, he’d refused to accept Spike and Dru’s patronage because he wanted to go off shift.

  So Spike and Dru took him off shift permanently.

  They had spent the entire night making love amongst the daffodils in the park’s flower garden, then found shelter during the sunlight hours. After sunset, they had gone to a local pub to have a drink and a bite to eat—the beer was wretched, thanks to the lack of refrigeration, but the bartender was quite tasty—and Dru had suggested the carriage ride. They grabbed one on Central Park South, and away they went.

  As they turned a corner, a voice said, “You know, I should thank you two.”

  Recognizing the voice from this very park a few nights back, Spike pulled hard on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop.

  A very attractive young woman wearing the most fetching leather coat Spike had ever seen leaped down from a tree branch onto the pavement in front of the horse just as the beast came to a complete halt, making a snorting noise as it did so.

  “Well, well, well,” Spike said, “if it isn’t Nikki the Vampire Slayer. Thank me for what, exactly?”

  She was shaking her head, as if in amazement at something. “It was like droppin’ a dime in the jukebox and just waitin’ for the song to come around.”

  Spike frowned. “What’re you on about, Slayer?”

  “The puppeteer yanks the strings, and we all begin to dance once again,” Drusilla said with a smile.

  Ignoring Dru, Nikki said, “Reet. I figured if I told them about your sweetie pie here, they’d nab her, and you’d go after them. Either Reet would turn your ass to dust, in which case I got one problem off my back—or you’d take care o’ Reet.”

  For a second, Spike just stared blankly at the pretty face that stood before him.

  Then he put it all together: how Reet knew about Drusilla being in town, how he knew about her relationship with Spike. Her Watcher’s probably got a diary or something that talks all about us.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, you are a ballsy one, you. Got yourself two enemies, so you set us against each other. Nice!”

  “That was the plan. Once I dust you two, I can retire.”

  Grinning, Spike put his game face on. “Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we, love?”

  “I told you before,” she said, taking out a stake, “I ain’t your love.” She threw it right at Drusilla.

  Spike was able to lean over and deflect the stake before it could hit his sire’s heart, but the Slayer took advantage of that to do a somersault, pivoting on the back of the horse, and kick Spike in the small of his back, which was left exposed when he deflected the stake. Wincing with the sharp pain, Spike fell to the pavement.

  He looked up to see Drusilla going at it with the Slayer. Dru was a magnificent woman, but she wasn’t much in a scrap—especially not against this Slayer’s brutality. Clambering to his feet, Spike leaped and tackled Nikki, sending them both careening off the other side of the carriage.

  That was enough to spook the horse. The bloody animal started galloping.

  Sadly, Spike was in no position to try to rein the thing in, as he was getting his face punched.

  He managed to block one of the Slayer’s blows, then get a kick in, but it barely slowed her down. They rolled around on the pavement, neither of them getting the upper hand for more than a second—though in Spike’s case, that was due in part to his keeping an eye on the trajectory of the carriage.

  Once it went out of sight, Spike went a bit more on the offensive, throwing punches and kicks to beat the band, matching the Slayer’s brutality move for move.

  Somehow, he managed to get a kick to her head that sent her sprawling toward the very tree she’d been hiding in.

  Then, much as it galled him to do it, he ran.

  She’s a cunning one, she is, he thought as he went after the carriage. Played me like a two-bob fiddle and got me to solve her vampire problem for her. And she tracked us to the park. Some smarts on that one. The Chinese Slayer, Spike had sought her out, eventually finding her in the midst of the chaos of the Boxer Rebellion. But when faced with similar chaos in New York, Spike instead danced to Nikki’s tune.

  Turning round a bend, Spike saw the carriage picking up speed and heading toward the park exit at Columbus Circle.

  I’m never going to get to it before it hits the street. It was late enough at night that there weren’t many people about in the park itself—it wasn’t safe after dark, after all—but once the carriage got outside the walls of Central Park, Drusilla would be in serious danger.

  Pumping his legs faster, Spike ran toward the carriage, hoping he’d beat it to the street. Not that he cared if a few meat puppets got trampled, but he had gone to all the trouble of starting a massacre to
get Dru back in his arms, and wasn’t about to lose her now because a horse couldn’t hold it together.

  Just as the carriage went out onto the sidewalk on which sat the statue of Christopher Columbus, Spike jumped up, landed on the back wheel with one foot, and pushed off it to launch himself onto the top.

  Drusilla was unconscious in the driver’s seat, but Spike managed to move her gently to the side while he grabbed for the reins. Pulling as hard as he could, he got the horse to stop—

  —right in the middle of the street.

  Grabbing Dru, he managed to jump off the carriage right before a bus slammed into it. Suddenly freed of its bondage, the horse galloped off toward the New York Coliseum.

  As Spike gently set Dru down on one of the benches alongside the wall that separated the sidewalk from the park, the Slayer came running out of the exit. Barely pausing to switch strides, she gave Spike a roundhouse kick to the face, knocking him down to the dirty pavement. He managed to get in a quick kick to her stomach from the ground, but the only thing he actually kicked was her coat. Damn, that thing isn’t just pretty, it’s practical. Makes it hard to judge where she really is.

  But the Slayer made her first mistake when she broke off fighting Spike to go for Dru. Spike clambered to his feet and leaped onto Nikki’s back, trying the same trick he had in the park, and he wasn’t letting a garbage can distract him this time.

  Baring his fangs, he went for the Slayer’s neck. . . .

  * * *

  You ain’t getting me that way twice, honky, Nikki thought as she brought her thick platform heels down on Spike’s booted feet in rapid succession, then—just as she had the last time he grabbed her from behind—head-butted him, and finally elbowed him with each elbow. It sent him stumbling backward toward the street.

  Was hoping to do the easy kill with Drusilla, but I guess I ain’t that lucky. Not that she objected to beating Spike first—in fact, she was probably better off. If Spike was really that devoted to her—and he torched Reet’s place just to get her back, so he probably was—then dusting his best girl might just get him riled.

  Spike was grinning at her as she turned around to face him. He was wearing dungarees with holes in them and a black T-shirt, like last time, but no leather jacket—unsurprising, given the heat and humidity, even this late at night. This shirt was different, though—it was a muscle shirt, with a tear down the top of the chest, and it was covered with safety pins.

  “You are a tough one, pet.”

  Nikki decided she liked “love” better. “I ain’t your pet, neither,” she said as she lunged forward with a punch, which he deflected, then another, which he didn’t.

  Definitely better to save Drusilla for when I’m done. Right now, Spike was having fun. He’d been talking all sorts of jive in the park the other day about dancing and music—this was just a game to him, and he was having fun. If his sweetheart got dusted, he might start taking this more seriously, and Nikki didn’t want him that focused.

  Their tussle took them into the street. This late at night, there wasn’t as much vehicular traffic, but they were drawing a crowd. Across from the park’s exit, a bunch of people were walking in various directions, departing whatever event had been going on at the Coliseum that night. Here by the statue, a few others were watching the fight with horror or glee.

  “Man, somebody should call the fuzz.”

  “Right on, brother—you call ’em.”

  “Kick whitey’s ass, soul sister!”

  “Show that bitch what’s what, my man!”

  I love this town, she thought wryly as she got in a kick to Spike’s torso, then another to his chin. Before he had a chance to recover, she lunged with a right haymaker to his temple—

  —which he grabbed before it could strike. Not missing a beat, she kicked him in the groin, which got him to let go of her right fist while she used her left to sock him in the jaw.

  She kept at him, punching and kicking and punching and kicking. The fight had now taken them all the way over to where Central Park West and Broadway joined up, right by a subway entrance.

  As she prepared to put him down, right here at the top of the stairs, he surprised her with a gut punch, knocking the wind right out of her. Doubled over, she fell to her knees for a second, hoping to lull him into thinking she was worse off than she was.

  When he moved in for the kill, she rolled onto her back and kicked out with both feet. Only one foot actually got Spike, but it knocked him straight back and down the wide staircase to the subway.

  Dammit, didn’t mean to do that. She got to her feet and ran down the stairs after him, but he had gotten up from the bottom of the stairs and kept running into the station. What the hell’s he doin’?

  Then she figured it out. He’s protecting Drusilla by getting me away from her. No problem—I can always come back for her.

  An old white guy sat in the token booth and looked completely uninterested in the fact that someone had just jumped his fare. Spike had leaped over the large wooden turnstile and then headed straight for the IND track downstairs instead of the IRT track that was right there.

  Nikki leaped over the turnstile herself—if the clerk don’t care about Spike, he ain’t gonna care about me, and I got little enough bread as it is without spending fifty cents just to chase a bloodsucker—and ran after Spike, figuring that he wanted to be down below with the rest of the rats.

  As she ran down after him, she heard the PA system go off, but it was the usual incomprehensible gibberish. Been riding the subway since I was six, and I ain’t never understood a word they’ve said the whole time. There weren’t that many people in the station this late at night, and most of them didn’t even give Spike or Nikki a second glance.

  As she leaped down the last few stairs, she saw that a graffiti-covered uptown D train was pulling out—

  —with Spike hanging onto the metal connector sticking out of the last car, still grinning like a fool. He’d gone back to his regular face, and he was waving at her.

  All of a sudden, she was back on the 79th Street Boat Basin, forced to watch as Darla sailed away, and unable to do a thing about it.

  Not this time.

  She ran for the train.

  As she passed one man, she heard him say, “Damn, bitch, just wait for the next one!”

  She leaped for the back of the last car just as it was about to disappear into the tunnel, arms outstretched. Her fingers closed around the dirty, cold metal, and she was able to settle one foot on the metal floor that jutted out from the back of the train. The displaced air from the now fast-moving train whipped through her Afro and blew out her coat behind her like a race-car parachute.

  By this time, Spike had already forced the door open, and he kicked her from inside the car. She managed to keep her grip, but almost lost her footing. Quickly regaining it, she kicked back, knocking Spike back into the car, and giving her a minute to steady herself. Spike said something, but she couldn’t hear it over the din of the subway train as it clattered down the tracks.

  The D ran on the express track, and it wasn’t late enough for it to make local stops. That meant it wouldn’t be stopping until 125th Street, skipping past seven local stops. She jumped into the last car, the back door sliding shut behind her. Spike came at her with a punch to the stomach, which she took, then grabbed his wrist and flipped him over onto his back.

  She took half a second to confirm that there was no one in the car. The last car was usually the emptiest, and this one was no different—though the door to the second-to-last car was shutting, indicating that someone had just gone through it. Probably ran like hell when Spike came crashing in.

  Spike struggled to get to his feet, but she jumped on top of him, her knees pinning his shoulders and some of the safety pins digging into her own dungarees. She reared back to punch him, but Spike managed to get his feet up and kick her off him, sending her head over heels. She managed to convert it to a flip, doing a quick somersault and getting up to her fe
et.

  When she turned around, Spike was also on his feet, smiling at her. He’s still playing his stupid games, dancing his stupid dance. Time to end this. Time to end him.

  So the next thing they did was something Nikki could only categorize as dancing. Using the poles that ran down the middle of the car, they jumped and kicked, each dodging out of the other’s way gracefully, neither one landing a blow—partly because the damn train was wobbling back and forth on the track, making it impossible to plant yourself to get a good kick in.

  Then, finally, she was able to nail him in the face with a hook kick, which sent him stumbling over to one of the long benches that lined both sides of the train.

  He got up quickly, though, and got in a punch of his own. They started trading blows, and it was Columbus Circle and Central Park all over again, only he was laughing.

  Laughing!

  That did it for Nikki—she just lost it. Snarling, she deflected one of his punches, whirled around, twisting his right arm in the process, and then held him in place while she hit him with two roundhouse kicks to the stomach with her platforms, then punched him in the face, again sending him sprawling onto the benches. This time, though, she didn’t give him a chance to get up, but grabbed him by the back of that stupid shirt and slammed his head into the space between the top of the seat and the bottom of the window. Then she walked him across the car and slammed his head right into one of the windows.

  It shattered, but the noise was barely audible over the din of the train. In midsummer, the subway trains’ windows were all open, which made it nice and loud in the cars, and breaking a window did nothing to quiet things down.

  To Nikki’s surprise—and revulsion—Spike let out a primal scream while his head was sticking out of the window. Nikki had been hoping that the train was close enough to the sides of the tunnel to rip his head off, but no such luck.

  He managed to push his way back into the car and land a few more punches. Nikki’s cheeks and jaw burned from the blows, but she was the Slayer, and she could take it.

  Then he grabbed her and slammed her into one of the doors, then started punching her in the spleen. It didn’t hurt much, though, because of the coat, the latest in a series of reasons why she loved that piece of outerwear. Not bad for something I found used in the Village for ten bucks.