Red Wine--Dark Slayer #2, First 2 Chapters Are HERE

**1***

Dawn slid her hand along the bedside table and frowned.

What is that?

She picked up the deck of cards, Bicycle brand. She opened the lid and slid the cards out. They had been used…they had lost their bendiness. She shook the deck once, cards falling out all over the floor. Along with the cards landed a note, which fell to the floor, onto her pink-slippered feet.

Dawn swallowed hard and leaned over, ignoring the cards all over her rug and reached for the little note. She clutched the yellow steno paper in her shaky hands, unfolding the one, simple fold. She could see the paper had been creased then carefully ripped to make it smaller at the bottom and on the sides. The handwriting was neat and loopier than she was used to seeing...old fashioned.

Nibblet—

Here’s the cards…you hold them in your hands, luv. You know what to do. Just be good and sing your sisters’ praises to the caseworkers.

I’ll see you again soon, I promise. And work on your Black Jack game ‘cause I plan to give you a run for your money when you get home.

Love,

Spike

Dawn’s eyes saddened as she read his letter, tears struggling against her will, wanting to make a descent from her big eyes. Glancing around her room, she couldn’t think of anywhere she could safely hide the little piece of paper and she couldn’t bare to throw it away even though she felt completely abandoned by the vampire. She certainly couldn’t let her foster mother find it while she was cleaning her room or something.

So he just left…without saying ‘goodbye?’ Jerk.

Dawn wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She slid the paper into her bra, adjusting it so that it didn’t show through t-shirt. She flattened her hand over her chest and looked at her work in the full-length mirror.

No weird boob-bumps here…just boobs.

Nodding her head in approval she headed downstairs for breakfast. Mrs. Klein was making waffles…she could smell them and so could her stomach. It growled in protest of her making it wait all night to eat again.

“Good morning, Dawn,” Mrs. Klein said kindly with a smile on her face as Dawn took her seat at the small table in the kitchen. She mumbled a “Good morning” and kept her eyes on her plate. Mr. Klein never joined them for breakfast. He left very early in the morning to work his construction job. David sat on the floor in his footsie pajamas, crashing a Tonka dirt loader against the side of the kitchen counter over and over again.

Davie honey, would you please come to the table?” Mrs. Klein asked and patted his hair.

He looked up at her and shook his head, then set his attention back on plowing the dirt loader into the counter, this time making a truck noise as he pushed the truck and a loud, “BAM!” as he slammed the truck into the wood.

Dawn stared at her waffles on her plate.

Am I destined to live like this…no correction, to suffer like this?

She silently prayed that Spike was right. Maybe if she continued to act good and attend school she could talk to her caseworker about Buffy, try to convince her that she wasn’t so bad.

But that would mean admitting that all the terrible things she’d done in Sunnydale…had been her own fault. Dawn picked up her fork and picked at her waffles while David loudly crashed his truck into the counter, hoping to God, wherever He was, that Spike was right for once.

**

Three Months Later…

“Fill it up.”

The bartender at Willy’s glanced from the empty drink glass back at the vampire who held it out to him with chipped, black, painted fingernails, holding it in his palm, holding it up to him as though it was some sort of church offertory basket. But what would either of them know about church, right?

He don’t know squat about repenting…he’s a blood suckin’ loser. Just look at ‘em.

The bartender shrugged and took the glass, poured some JD into it, sloshing some of it on the battered wooden bar counter. He added a small swig of store brand cola and swished it with a little brown straw, sliding it back at the vampire, not wanting to have much actual contact with him tonight. He was in a mood. Had been since…

“Good job, Short Bus. I’ll be sure to tip you extra, but only right ‘fore this whole blasted place goes up in smoke. Should be relatively soon considering the resemblance to hell you’ve got going on here and all that,” Spike muttered drunkenly and slammed over half the glass in one tilt of his bleached blonde head.

“Willy will be back tomorrow, Spike…and he won’t go for that kind of talk,” Phil snapped as he wiped a beer mug with a rather dingy-gray washcloth and flung it over his shoulder. He watched as Spike smirked, holding up one of the bar’s black matchbooks, ripping a match from its cardboard fold and lighting it with a glow of orange and a whiff of sulfur.

Spike stared at it, his drunk vision a blur, his eyes glistening in the flame light. He tilted his head, watching the flame reach the end of the match head and begin to travel down the cheap cardboard end…Spike licked his thumb and forefinger on his other hand and snuffed it out with a hiss.

“Willy can sod off. And then bugger himself…greasy weasel,” Spike slurred as he flung the dead match at Phil, missing and hitting the beer mug. He tilted his head back, taking in the rest of his Jack and Coke with another long slosh.

“Don’t you have someone to go bite or somethin’?” Phil mumbled and frowned as Spike snapped his fingers and pointed at the glass.

“Nope. Not a bloody soul in Sunnydale worth my time anymore. Not a soul…” he muttered and looked at the bartender, his eyes dark and clouded with alcohol, and something else.

“Slayer really got to you…” Phil began but immediately regretted it.

Spike jumped up from his stool, knocking it back onto the floor with a screech and a crash. He backed away from the counter, wobbly from drink, his face angry but tinged with pain. He pointed at Phil, a shaky, pale, finger poking out in the smoky dark.

“Shut your fucking mouth. ‘Least Willy knows when to shut his fucking mouth,” Spike drawled and stumbled out of the bar, calling over his shoulder, “Put it on my tab, Short Bus.”

Phil frowned as Spike nearly fell out of the bar, slamming the door open against the wall outside. The door flung back shut with a slam. The bartender took Spike’s glass and flipped it over.

Vampire reject…

**2**

She had been gone three months.

They had been three very long months and there was no end in site. And had she left any idea as to where the hell she’d gone to? Of course not. That’d been too easy.

Spike walked through the cemetery, keeping his ears open for the sound of crumbling earth and the hissing rasp, the first words of a newborn vampire springing forth into the dark, moonless, night. And of course if he didn’t catch the birth…he’d smell the baby.

Buffy.

Y’know, she’s going to be the death of me. I knew that when I signed on to this…relationship. What the fuck! What relationship you stupid, git?! I’ve got nothing here. She’s not mine and she certainly made that damn well clear when she skipped town.

“How long do we have to stay the hell out here in the bloody cold?! It’s all blue lips and chapped hands and frankly I’d like to have use of my eyeballs but if they dry the hell out…!”

“Shut up, Spike,” Willow snapped and pointed.

Spike averted his attention and watched as the familiar golden blonde tresses bounced on the very familiar shoulders of the young woman beating the crap out of the newbie vampire not 20 feet in front of them.

But it wasn’t his young woman. It was his bot.

Buffy Bot slammed the vamp into a tree and smiled down at him with ruby red lips. She waved at Spike and Willow who just stared, then glanced back down at the vamp.

“You have very bad hygiene. Your hair is dry. I’m thinking we should whip you up a damn good hot oil treatment…” Buffy Bot said with a smile as she staked the vamp, turning him into dust, “…But I don’t have time for that. I must find more of your scaly-scalped brethren.”

“Oy, Bot…uh, Buffy! That’s enough for t’night,” Spike called to the bot. Willow nodded in agreement. Willow walked up to the bot and led her away by her arm.

“But I was just starting to feel the burn, Willow…” the bot began as she followed Willow with a very visible spring in her leather-booted step. She twirled her stake and giddily laughed to herself.

“Yeah, sure you were. Time to go home and re-charge,” Willow advised.

“I’ll go pull the car ‘round front,” Spike muttered and ran across the cemetery lawn.

The whole Godforsaken lot that is Sunnyhell owes us. They’re just lucky that Witchy Woman here is good with the gadgets…lucky she had kept pieces of the bot and could duplicate them. And their damn lucky I give a damn still ‘cause right now this place could be crawling with demons and vampires without her here to slay them all.

Willow and Buffy Bot stood on the curb and waited for Spike’s Desoto. He rolled up with a glug glug glug of the loud muffler and leaned across the passenger’s side to unlock the door and push it open for the girls.

Buffy Bot beamed and jumped into the front seat with Spike, who let out a sigh and turned to look out his window. Willow climbed into the back.

“Back to the Batcave with you, bot,” Spike muttered as he pulled away from the curb.

Buffy Bot nodded and smiled at him. She reached over and touched his shoulder, causing him to flinch. “You’re always so funny, Spike. You’re the funniest vampire I know.” Her porcelain teeth flashed at him through her red lips, her lashes blinking…mocking him without her knowing it.

Spike swallowed hard and said quietly, “Yeah, funny.”

Willow leaned over the seat and tapped his shoulder. “Can I bum a smoke?”

“Oh, yeah…sure.” Spike reached for the pack of cigarettes on the seat and handed her a book of matches.

Willow took them from him and pulled a cigarette out of the pack and handed it back to him over the seat. “Whatever happened to your Zippo?”

Spike stared ahead, watching the street lights flash past him, watching the dark houses with their inviting porch lights, orange against the gray night, float past as he drove. “Got lost somewhere, Red.”

“That’s a shame,” she answered and lit the cigarette hanging from her mouth with a match, waving it out and flicking it out the window. She blew out a puff of smoke and rolled the window up just to a crack. The cool night air snuck through the opening and Spike turned up the heater.

“Yeah.”

**

Willow set the bot up in the spare bedroom. She didn’t really need a bed, she felt no actual discomfort from physical fatigue, but Willow rested her on the spare bed anyway. Her battery pack light beeped as she was recharged, her body lifeless.

She shut the door with a click and headed to her bedroom. Stripping of her clothes she pulled a white t-shirt out of the dresser and crawled into the bed, stretching out, feeling the empty pillow next to hers.

Tara.

She looked up at the ceiling. She would not cry. There was no point. She had done it herself. She had cheated on Tara, had lied about the girls she had been seeing, had lied about using magic.

But isn’t just about everything these days a big lie?

Willow waved her finger towards the light and it shut off. She smiled to herself as she fell asleep. There was nothing to worry about. Anything she wanted to accomplish could be done through magic. It was just too bad Tara had been too naïve to see it.

 Too goody goody and well, sorta bland.

She rolled onto her stomach and sighed.

Some people just don’t know a good thing when it’s right in front of them.

She stopped and thought of that for a moment, realizing the same saying could apply to her and Tara’s relationship. But she quickly dismissed it and re-centered it on magic. That was the only good thing now. The only thing she could rely on.

Power…sweetness cloaked in energy and light.

She closed her eyes dreaming of the red and green aura, the lights of energy, zipping through the forest trees, floating back to her fingertips, the commander of her own destiny.

~More to come!