The Dark Age

Stripped down to boxers, Xander crawled into bed and held the sheet up off the empty side of the bed, glancing at the door panel behind and above Spike’s head. Spike came farther into the room and dumped his carryall on the divan. “You’re sure?” He asked. Xander nodded, still looking at the panel.

 

It had been indirect glances from Xander, and two word sentences from Spike after the shower and during the walk to the Pool House. Use too many words and the tongue might trip onto a topic Spike was too strung out to effectively tackle. Establish eye contact and it might show up the painful effort Xander was making to bring things back to normal. Spike undressed and slipped under the sheet, Xander blocked out the skylight’s bright blue square of sky by pulling the sheet up over their heads. He closed his eyes, preventing the chance brushing of gazes.

 

Watching Xander’s face relax in the diffused light, Spike replayed the fight in the courtyard and returned to the same conclusion time and again. Fear had been chipping away at Xander, eating his confidence and feeding his insecurities. No disrespect to him, but Xander would not last a round with Groza in this state, would fall to bits seconds after the whistle went. The thought of it sent his protective instinct into overdrive. He may not be able to thrash Groza for Xander, but he could make damn sure Xander didn’t go into the ring without body armour.  

 

Hunger woke him.

 

He turned his head, pushing into the pillow as he looked up at the russet sky through the skylight. Lulled by Xander’s steady heartbeat and pampered by the sleep-warm body molded to his back, Spike delayed leaving the bed. He drifted his hand down and back to Xander’s hip instead, wriggled his rear into the crib of Xander’s pelvis.

 

Tresten had received the memo from Fifth Ranking: a cutting missive succinctly written and signed by the Watcher on behalf of the Vampire. Tresten disliked the Watcher already, but he acted upon the memo, taking the Advisors into his opulent den and reiterating to Groza the Trail’s many rules, old and new, with the aid of a bullwhip. His cheerful mood restored, Tresten wiped his blood flecked hands on a towel and sat on a floor cushion at his coffee table, writing out a program of events for Court.

 

“Jude,” he summoned.

 

Jude came away from his station beside the fireplace and knelt at Tresten’s shoulder, “Mi Amo?”

 

“You will ensure that a reproduction of the program is delivered to every household in advance of Court,” Tresten said, dipping his quill into a pot of ink.

 

“Yes Mi Amo.”

 

Tresten scrawled in silence for a while then suddenly grinned at Jude. “Tresten hears you incurred the Vampire’s wrath.”

 

“That is correct, Mi Amo. Master Spike requested enlightenment on a matter I know nothing of. I advised him to trawl a dead sea and he took exception.”

 

Tresten laughed. Two of the three Advisors seated in a row on the other side of the coffee table beamed. The Third looked at Jude with nary a smile. “How opportune that the vampire should seek shelter in the Arches’ safety moments after his conversation with you,” said the unsmiling Advisor.

 

“That is another matter I know nothing of, Amo Groza,” Jude replied. “Would you like me to send for the Runners who carried my arrow riddled body to my quarters? They will verify my conversation with the vampire.”

 

Groza thinned his lips and fluttered his snow white lashes in slow blinking.

 

“Has Amo dust in his eye?” Jude knee walked round to Groza, “I am adept at blowing dust from Earners’ eyes and it would be my unprecedented pleasure to serve you thus.”

 

Tresten’s laughter shook the table.

 

“My eyes are as discerning as they have always been,” Groza said with vehemence. “Spike has been alerted and if there is any blowing to be done, it will be Ruby blowing the roof off his citadel.”

 

Tresten laid the quill aside and leaned back from the table. “Unless Groza desires more of my undivided attention, he will desist on further talk of Spike’s citadel,” he said.

 

“Yet it is difficult to dismiss Groza’s suspicions Mi Amo,” Sargo shifted on his cushion. “Indigo may have alerted the vampire. It would not be the first time she has interfered.”

 

Tresten clucked at a speck of Groza’s blood on the cuff of his tunic. “No indeed. Send the charming Indigo a word of warning, Ruby. She is not to interfere.”

 

Ruby dispatched her emissaries. North and South winds howled down the tunnels, converging on Main Floor with storms from the east and sleet from the west. Hail stones the size of tennis balls pelted the Travelers not under cover, and they were many, as the storm had not been anticipated. Games and market stalls were abandoned as Travelers climbed over each other to reach the safety of caves and alcoves. Ruby became a twister, spinning parallel to the ground rather than rising to the sky, the pointed head of her vortex charging into the dark tunnel and her bulbous wind-skirt taking hostages from the Town Square. Buffeted against the walls and toppled down the stairs, the captives pleaded mercy and teetered towards the edge of the Void with Ruby’s cold breath at their backs herding them closer to the landless drop.

 

“A ransom of Tresten’s most abject, Ruby?” Indigo asked, lighting up her drawbridge. “I care not a whit what you do with them.”

 

Ruby’s gale pitched the captives into the black hole. “Dawn will take her new place and the boy will be a voice screaming in Groza’s dark. Your intrusion will not alter the course.”

 

“I will intrude and should Spike be defeated, again I will intrude and one day, my interfering will light upon the one to alter Tresten’s course.” The draw-bridge begun its descent. “As for you, shrieking from such a distance on that ledge, why not traverse the Void and warn me to my face?”

 

Ruby’s wind bansheed along on the ledge, caking it with ice that stopped short of the Void’s lip.

 

“It is just as I thought,” Indigo said. “Ruby is all bluster.”

 

Fire deluged the ledge as soon as the draw-bridge touched ground. It flowed to the cave entrance and erected a fire-wall across it, gamboled up the staircase carved into the wall face and shut the archway at the top with bars of lava. Flame chased wind up and down the ledge, rising higher with the gale’s increased force. In Tresten’s den, Ruby fell into convulsions, blisters erupting over her arms and face and the stench of singed flesh emanating from her mouth.

 

“Pluto’s Chariot!” Sargo exclaimed, bustling claws going to re-fasten Ruby’s askew veil.

 

Groza was in pain from the bullwhipping and he was going to drag someone down into pain with him. He made a fist, clenching Sargo’s paws into unmoving, scale-covered clubs, and shuffled closer to Ruby, the better to watch her seizure.

 

Tresten chortled with tolerance. “Groza is so very vile.”

 

Jude remained straight-faced, arrow wounds weeping afresh as though linked to Ruby’s drumming heels.

 

Acute hunger woke Spike.

 

He edged out from under Xander, swung his feet to the floor and spared a glance for the black sky-light. The Amo had slept the day away. Devil may care yawn, distracted stroking of his abs, another glance, this time at the man sprawled on his front in the bed, sound asleep. Decision made, Spike dressed and left for the terrace restaurant. Giles, Fred and Dawn were at dinner on the terrace. He sat with them but didn’t, his consciousness taken up by Xander. A jug of blood later, he ordered a mug of tea to drink in and an overdue breakfast to take out. After dinner, Fred said she was off to “put in an hour of steaming before working on the Launcher.”

 

Giles pushed his empty plate away, placed the Demony book on his mat and called Dawn’s attention to the book. “I need to put a name to the Advisors if I am to help you use their strengths,” he said.

 

“Sargo, Ruby and Groza,” Dawn said.

 

“I was referring to their demon names – their species.”

 

“Do you seriously expect me to know that?” Dawn asked.

 

“I expect you to make an effort to describe them.”

 

“Sargo’s grey, short and fat. Ruby’s tall and she wears a veil. Groza’s thin and white,” Dawn said shortly.

 

“That doesn’t give me much to go on,” Giles was starting to sound impatient.

 

Spike leaned out of his chair to turn the book’s pages to the picture of Tresten and his Advisors at the Seventh Ranking railing. “That’s Tresten,” he pointed. “Sargo, Ruby and Groza.”

 

Giles tossed his glasses onto the book and pinched the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes shut. “Of course,” he said.

 

“Of course what?” Spike asked, jumpy as a fledge caged in with a stake-happy Slayer.

 

“Groza is a Tuska demon, sub-species Rothela,” Giles said, the wrinkles of a heavily brooding man creasing his brow. “The Rothela are dimorphs – take on human and feline shapes. Their hands are the suppository of their powers, enabling a psuedo-telekinetic faculty, that is, they co-ordinate mind and hand to manipulate without actually touching that which is to be manipulated.”

 

“Stale news Giles,” Spike said. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

 

“Their third strength is astral travel. Rothela have the ability to project their astral bodies to a point distant from their physical bodies. Dawn didn’t leave the ledge, not bodily in any case. She employed her emerging Rothela abilities to enter Indi’s courtyard.”

 

“He better not show his astral face around here, is all. He does, and I’ll slice it off,” Spike said, feeling puny in light of Groza’s multi-powers and overcompensating with aggressive pointing.

 

Giles scooted back from the finger that was jabbing perilously close to his eye. “How do you propose to slice off his astral face?”

 

“With a carving knife?” Dawn said.

 

“That approach is as sensible as attempting to carve a hole through air,” Giles said. “Although you could, in theory, attack his comatose body while his mind were out wandering…” he petered out, frowning anxiously at Dawn. “It’s advisable to avoid projection, Dawn. One can’t be too careful.”

 

“Yes sir, Mr. Giles sir,” Dawn sassed. She roamed to the balustrade, carrying on with the sass from there. “I’m sick of saying the same thing over and over and over. I didn’t project on purpose. It was projection that happened when I wasn’t looking.”

 

“That’s quite enough young lady.” Giles turned his stern glance back to the book and spoke to the terrace at large. “Sargo’s a Jha’ayt, far more problematic to slay than any other species I’ve come across.”

 

“How’s that? He looks like one thump could do him in,” Spike said.

 

“It would have to be one bloody good thump to break through his scales. They’re superior to titanium in terms of durability.”

 

Spike was liking the Advisors less and less. “What of Ruby?” He asked as a kitchen hand brought a hamper to the table.

 

“Monsieur Xander’s breakfast, Mi Amo,” the kitchen hand announced. “Chef will bring the flask of coffee shortly.”

 

“Ruby, and Indi for that matter, is an unknown quantity,” Giles said when the kitchen hand had left. “Their use of the elements implies that they’re from the same demon genus, but their profiles don’t match that of element-commanding species. Tresten’s proportions point to demo-gigantean ancestry, however, I can’t be certain without carrying out further research.”

 

There were still so many unknowns and Spike grimaced at Giles as though this was the Watcher’s fault somehow. Giles peered into the hamper. “Any particular reason Xander’s not out here with us?”

 

Spike wrapped his hands around his mug of tea and slouched low in his chair. “He’s asleep.”

 

“Does he often eat in his sleep?” Giles asked.

 

He knuckled his temple and gulped down his tea all in the space of three seconds. “You settled into your room, Bit?”

 

“Kind of. Fred and I are sharing the one next to Giles,” she said, not turning to look at him. “Come see this, Spike.”

 

He went to railings, trailed by Giles and Bob with the flask. The Were-demons on duty had congregated in the training pool, Select and Drone packed in a tight circle, heads thrown back, mouths open.

 

“It’s not a full moon,” Spike weakly reasoned.

 

Full moon or not, the Were-demons were shape-shifting. Hackles rising, demonic snouts pushing out of their human faces, they swiveled their heads in unison and bayed at him. “Watcher,” he whispered, involuntary shudder back from the railing. “Giles…?”

 

“I’ll have to look it up, Spike. I’m not conversant with Were-demon behavior,” Giles marshaled Dawn to the table. He looked shaken.

 

“Advisors stirring trouble,” Bob placed the flask in the hamper. “It don’t take no book reading to grasp that. Stirring’s what’s got them Weres going, and Groza stirs it faster’n a electric blender.”

 

Spike grabbed up the hamper. “Start Nibblet’s training tonight Giles. Start now,” and he ran to the Pool House.

 

The Dark Ages were cruel times for squint-eyed folk. A lazy eye could get you classed with witches and burnt at the stake with them. What more if you had fangs, hunted by night and slept by day? Tough times William, starvation and zealous clergymen rapping on your coffin lid.

 

Where most saw the end of our kind, I – and a few other bright sparks like me - saw opportunity. Squint-eyed people wanted to live as much as I did. Feuding landed gentry wanted to extend their territories as much as I wanted the clergymen to stay out of mine. Clergymen had to live somewhere and had to have a flock to lead; the somewhere they lived and the flock they tended were owned by the landed gentry.

 

I – and the few like me – lured the folk accused of witchery with promises of protection. We favoured the less scrupulous gentry and snuffed out the lives of their competitors, pledging to cull the competitors’ progeny in support of our favoured. For this, we Immortal Protectors asked only that the accused lead their accusers to slaughter and that the gentry drive the clergymen from their - our lands. We asked the small price of a claim. We claimed the accused and the unprincipled gentry as our own and throughout the Dark Ages we feared not the knocks on our coffin lids. We knew them to be the gong of the dinner bell and the sounds of opportunity.

 

When the Age passed, the majority of Immortal Protectors returned to the hunting grounds. Unfortunately a faction of Protectors had grown slothful and rejected the law of hunt. Why hunt when blood was brought to their tables? Why shiver in the winter cold when warm, willing claimed sat on their laps, drawing the chill of Unlife from old bones? These Protectors defiled the sanctity of the claim. They turned a means of survival into the luxury of life by proxy and opened the door to other master vampires who would do the same. Immortal Protector has become synonymous with indolence and dishonor.

 

The Aurelius are princes among vampires. They are proud of their cold veins and do not live life by proxy. If you learn nothing else from me William my boy, learn this: claim a man because your heart tells you he is childe, and not because your winter cloak grows threadbare. Claim him because you believe him to be extraordinary, capable of becoming your equal – as equal as a human can be to a vampire at any rate.

 

Don’t take my words as permission to go out and claim. Humans will always be sheep to me and consequently, to my descendants... 

 

So said The Master at Spike’s introductory meeting with him. Supremacy had rolled off the first Aurelius’ tongue, filling the underground chamber of his London home and holding the newest member of the Aurelius clan spellbound. For days afterwards, Spike, still very Williamish at the time, had immersed himself in books on claiming and pestered Angelus to perform a claim so Spike could, “study the mannerisms of a claimed man.”

 

Angelus had taken him to a brothel and shown him how to “skin a sheep alive and keep it alert,” with a combination of brine water and smelling salts.

 

Spike hadn’t pestered again and now stood outside Xander’s door, regretting his lack of hands-on know-how. Not that this would put him off. He was going in there and shielding Xander like he should’ve done long ago. The best of his protection, Xander was getting that.

 

He thrust the door open, crossed the threshold, kicked the door closed with his heel and winced, his hopes nose-diving when Xander sat up. A pattern of bruises covered Xander’s chest, dark purple studs in a row where Spike’s knuckles had landed, plum crescent moons down the side of his neck where Spike’s fingertips had gripped. He didn’t think Xander would talk to him, let alone agree to a claiming.