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When speaking with Buffy about how he killed Nikki Wood, he told something of a lie of omission. He and Nikki had danced for some time in New York when he'd gone roaming in Harlem hoping some remnant of the delightful, smoky, basement speakeasies remained. American Prohibition had been a bloody boon to the underworld and vampires particularly. Once he'd gotten word from the Vendok demon that Drusilla kept as a sometimes pet that the entire U.S. had become one lovely little box of secret candies, he'd taken her and crossed the pond.
And entire world meant to be hidden away from light and easy, public view - filled with warrens of dark tunnels and passageways, camouflaged doors and false walls. Places no one wanted to bring authorities to. Places of people willing to abandon careful notions, people already laced with the sharp, salt-bitter tang of rough gin. Places filled with music that crooned and pulse like the song of blood itself. He even got to see Louis Armstrong once. God that trumpet was a thing of beauty.
Man had a gift, and talked a lot about laxatives, too, for some reason.
Unfortunately, he'd come back to New York to find Harlem not as he'd left it. The underworld still thrived, it just wasn't his. And predators still roamed, but daylight predators. Obvious ones who fancied themselves above slinking around like vampires. Predators that broke down doors and shoved people like cattle into boxes.
Kind of ingenious and tidy, that, really. He had to appreciate the economy of the thing and the swirling stew of human misery wasn't necessarily bad. It's just that the Slayer picked up his scent very quickly. They had their own network of people looking out, people armed with crosses, holy water, sharp wooden things. They'd learned to carry around pencils as easy and disguised weapons. Some of them even drank the holy water and god but that made the blood disgusting. Like drinking sheer rubbing alcohol instead of gin, that.
Spike still remembers the surprise of finding a schoolgirl not worth the trouble because the bint had an entire pencil case on her (bloody fucking hell he left with with a broken off #2 in his chest), a really thick book and exactly no tolerance for his sort: vampires or white blokes.
Thus came the lie. The lie he told Buffy, the lie he told himself.
Nikki hadn't danced with him. He had danced with her. For all that he made himself a nuisance he never managed to be important to her. They weren't nemesises (nemesi? nemesees?). Nikki reduced him to common, to another vampire, another white man where he didn't belong. The last look on her face wasn't relief, but surprise. Sheer shock that a nothing had become a something.
He took no trophy from his first Slayer. No need to. She folded neatly, she cried out in the end, she looked at him with terrified, hopeless awe and despair. All his right and due, you see.
But Nikki, oh no. Just fucking bewilderment.
Because Spike hadn't actually gotten that lucky at all, hadn't had himself a good night. Nikki just had herself a bad one. Not the same thing, not precisely, not in the way it mattered.
It was just that one night as he and Dru and a couple of other local chaps from the East Side had been on the prowl for some good and plenties, Nikki and a couple of her trusty sidekicks from around the block had come upon them.
The East Siders got it first. Dru actually touched fang to neck before Nikki knocked her out cold. Boot to face, face to dumpster, body to concrete. Simple as that. Nikki stood back, cloth pressed again the sound in her lackey's neck and let her minions toy with him for a while. Training she called it. She even called out helpful suggestions as they pummeled him. When one decided to go for Drusilla, Spike decided it was time to take things downtown for a while.
As he fled, Drusilla draped over his shoulder like a skinny vampire carpet woman, smelling of grime and blood, he heard this:
"Hey, Niks, you want us to chase that limey bastard or what?"
A snort, a laugh. "Nah. He ain't worth it. Denise is gonna need stitches anyway. You two, get her over to Nana's. The rest of y'all, with me. We got bigger worries tonight."
Bigger worries.
He snapped his hands together in front of Buffy's face and looked for any sign of shock or spark. None came.
She threw money at him on the ground, paid him for services rendered and walked away. A reminder. He didn't really even have luck to fall back on, to say he had fortune at his back. No. Just Slayers who had bigger worries. Slayers who meant everything to him. Him who meant nothing to them. Just another. Beneath them. The most intimate, prized moments of his life. The moments when he and they knew the most fundamental, important things about each other. Life things. Death things. Bloody things.
And still, it wasn't enough. Isn't enough now to buy him respect, to buy him anything.
Spike contemplated, as he picked up the cash and shoves it into the pockets of the coat Nikki wore, the coat she looked so surprised in, the coat she laughed, "Nah. He ain't worth it" in, he wondered if he could make some kind of braided necklace or bracelet or something out of that blond hair of Buffy on the day she laid on the ground and looked surprised at him.
What Spike didn't know is that he neither got lucky nor exploited a weakness.
What he didn't know was that on the first dry night after those chilly autumn rains, Drusilla, skinny and sauntering as a stray cat prowled her way to Nikki's turf, smiling to the dark itself inside the tunnels to Harlem. She hummed jazz tunes and sang haunting lilts of the strains that she said the stones of the city still crooned to her. For Dru, talking rocks and stones were actually sensible. Spike seemed to get it. Memory's a thing and it was rather a pleasure to hear jingling piano keys and women with voices like velvet and feathers and the stony roughness of the streets echoing off these walls as they walked away licking the blood and gin off cheeks and lips and each other, back in those days.
Drusilla sang until Nikki was right over her head. Sang until Nikki found her, caught her, and bound her with the intention of getting whatever info she could on various nasties in the area and then maybe using her for a bit of practice.
But Drusilla just smiled and smiled and sang back to the Harlem stones all around them in the cold, damp basement they found themselves in. Even cuffed, arms around a pipe, she wiggled and tried to dance in her strange serpentine way.
"I never seen one like this before, Nikki," one of them said to the Slayer.
"Neither have I," the Slayer responded and she stepped up to the waspish, fish belly pale creature that was more fairy than vampire. As if some unfortunate mating between Tinkerbell and Dracula had resulted in this bloody love child. "You wanna start answering some questions or do I set my people loose on you now?"
"That's not necessary. I've been very good and not spoiled my appetite for supper. I didn't have any biscuits for tea, not at all," Drusilla responded, eyes wide, expression chaste and naive. Nikki shuddered and the creepy feeling of all the implications of this woman settled deep in her gut, deep as the part that carried her son and feels the approach of demon.
She knew to the bone that in this creature's very being, something very wrong happened. Worse than the usual turning.
"Yeah, maybe you shoulda," she said, raising eyebrows as she leaned back a bit. "Where's Spike."
"Oh, Louie's got to use the loo. The loo loo. Lookie loo, lookie loo, the Slayer's looking for you know who."
"This broad's not workin' with all the lights on," one of Nikki's people said with the tone that said came as a shock that the brokenness went so deep in Drusilla even though they all knew it anyway.
Nikki gave a laughing huff and put her hands on her hips. She tilted her head, studied, walking around and around as was her way. Nikki never did like to hurry. She liked to take the time to see and know, get her head and her hands all the way around a thing. Deliberate, was the word Crowley used. Deliberate. A deliberate, purposeful woman, a woman who took things easy. Easy as Sunday Morning, this Slayer. Easy as the slow dance jazz. Easy as wine and blood down the throat.
A woman who knew the fundamentals of being slow in a hurry, that was Nikki Wood. That was the Slayer.
So she strolled, taking her own very sweet time until she teased some sense out of the thing that laughed and chittered and almost tried to kiss her once as she passed. She leaned up against the pole, deliberately bracing one hand on hip near the stake she holstered back there instead of a gun.
"You came to talk."
Drusilla smiled, corners of her red mouth turning up like a raven lifting it's wings to find carrion.
"My William will wear your skin. Your fine black skin like a panther. Rawr. It'll be his armor. He'll be proper black knight with your black skin all 'round him. Don't be angry, little black kitty. Don't scratch at the furniture, it isn't polite and you shall be put out with no milk tonight."
This white thing saying those words brought the itch to her skin and her fingers, her knuckles ached with the need to reach out and take that stake in hand. She ran her tongue over her own canine teeth and leveled her eyes. Nikki knew how to school herself. You never show them where to hit, never let the see if they hit the target or not. Leave them guessing whether you're playing tough or they're just way off.
"Is that so? You don't say. Because last I saw Spike, I was thinking he's got all them nice silver rings. His fingers are about the size of mine, wouldn't you say?" Nikki asked, turning her face just a fraction to direct the comment to her friends. She holds up her right hand, fingers splayed examining them. "Look real nice on me. I might take 'em so they don't go to dust. Whatch'yall think?"
"They kinda ugly. Sell 'em," one of them replies.
"Yeah, but still. Keep one for myself. A trophy."
"Silly kitty. You can't have any bells on your toes. What use have you for music? You shan't ride a cock horse."
"Did she just say -"
"She's English," Nikki said and dismissed any further discussion with that tone alone. "Talk to me, English. You came all the way uptown for something. I know you just didn't decide to crawl on back after we killed most of your last crew. Speak your peace."
"William's going to wear a fine black skin. Beautiful, really. It curls around him like black smoke from the factories and the chimneys. It's positively suffocating." She laughed and the word came out with so much relish. Like others would have said, beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful.
"Well, thanks for letting me know that. Nice of you to drop by. Let me call you a cab to Dust City."
Nikki pulled the stake and decided that she wouldn't give Drusilla over to her friends for practice. That gut deep sense that perhaps Drusilla was both predator and prey made the decision for her.
"You'll let him. You'll let me go to see the show and dance and drink gin, won't you kitty? I've been ever so good and the stones are singing singing ringing ringing ting ting ting."
Nikki leaned right on in, her eyes fixated on Drusilla's white, sharky teeth. She lacked two in the back of her mouth, just beyond her lips.
"If you got a particular reason you think I should let you go, now's time."
Drusilla leaned against the pole and hugged it tighter. She closed her eyes and and her claws dug into black painted metal. "Your little birdie."
"Excuse me?"
"A little spring robin. Red, red, red robin."
Nikki went rigid with equal parts rage and fear. She leaned even closer. "That was the very last thing you should've said to me, woman. You or your boyfriend even think about it and you'll be spending the last goddamn moments of your life praying for me to just stake you."
"I would never hurt such a pretty little birdie all alone and looking for mummy. But he won't find you."
"You're pushing on my last nerve here."
"He'll flitter and fly with the crows and the terns and your little bitty robin will perch where Spike burns," she whispers. "He's going to watch William go to hell. Poor William. My poor beautiful Spike!"
Drusilla slid down the pole, nails raking along the paint to make white scratches until she's fell to her knees, then sat and sobbed pathetically.
Nikki smiled. "Now that I believe."
The basement door creaked and hard fast steps came down the rickety old stairs. "Nikki, we have a bit of a situation!"
Nikki eyed the caterwauling Drusilla and decided her to be secure enough. She gathered her people and followed Crowley upstairs.
When they came back before dawn, all that remained of their unreal captive laid on the floor. Broken glass, bloody hand cuffs. That and the scratches down the pole.
- END -