Gray
Gray
After having her world destroyed by the Winchesters, Eve wanted to rebuild her family. She claimed a soul with his own dark power and his own moral gray. He would be her champion. Hopefully. Xander just wanted to go home, preferably before the hunters Sam and Dean Winchester caught up with him.
Chapter ONE :: Chapter TWO :: Chapter THREE :: Chapters 4+5 :: Chapter SIX :: Chapter SEVEN :: Chapter EIGHT :: Chapter NINE :: Chapter TEN :: Chapter ELEVEN : Chapter TWELVE
The setting may have changed, but Xander is still having a hard time coming to terms dealing with his powers and his fears.
Chapter Thirteen
“Well, the cows are safe,” Xander said as he looked out at the dirty streets and boarded up windows. This Chicago was way worse than his. Xander was starting to have a little sympathy for Giles and his desperate need to save his world. Their apocalypse seemed to have way more apocalypty damage to splash around.
Spike huffed. “That’s not a good thing, pet. We’re going to have to find a way for you to feed.”
“Or not,” Xander suggested.
Spike turned a yellow-eyed glare his way, and Xander held up a hand in surrender. They’d finally ditched ropes, but Xander now had heavy padded cuffs literally locked around his wrists and ankles. One click of one of the locks Spike carried, and he could have Xander hogtied in seconds. He’d demonstrated. More than he needed to, actually.
“I’m just saying that if I am developing powers, I would like to develop the power to live off human food for nice long periods of time. I’m not saying no to demon feeding forever.”
Spike frowned as he turned his attention back to the road. “Might not be a bad idea,” he said, and that was enough to shock the crap out of Xander. Spike listening to him. Pigs were flying somewhere in this world.
“In cities, there are a lot more choices for lairs. Public works like water treatment plants or electric substations can have some quiet corners, and people generally don’t think of them when they’re searching for hidey holes.”
“Because you can get dead by electrocution in a substation.”
“Humans can,” Spike said. “You and I would just get a real nasty jolt that would teach us to be more careful next time.”
Xander cringed. “First, that’s an assumption because we don’t know what would happen to me, and second, no, we aren’t testing it.”
Spike smirked, his cheekbones sharper than ever. “Now luv, how are we supposed to know the limits if we don’t push a little?”
“Now oh mighty annoying one, how are we supposed to know what kills me until after I’m the dead sort of unbreathing?”
“You might have a point there.” Spike glanced over. “I’m still almost sure that you’d be fine.”
“It’s the almost part that worries me, Spike. Let’s stick with things we’re absolutely sure won’t kill me.”
“Then we should cut you off the Twinkies.”
“But Spike, they have them in this universe. They have Twinkies. No bankruptcy, no interruption of the yellow cake goodness. No hoarding of gooey filling and overcharging on Ebay. Twinkies, Spike. Twinkies. I’m even willing to forgive this universe for not having any Doublemeat Palaces because they have Twinkies.”
“Daft,” Spike muttered as he turned the car onto a street that looked even worse than the last.
“A man has to have his priorities,” Xander said firmly. Of course, he was also firmly not thinking about where all the Twinkies went because Xander had definitely stopped needing to use a bathroom for anything other than a hot bath. It was creepy. Spike could talk efficiency and demonic consumption of energy all he wanted. Xander was still putting the lack of poo into the creepy column.
“Right then, start checking out the empty houses.”
“Um… for what?” Xander asked.
Spike rolled his eyes. “We’re looking for an empty house, some place that we can slip in undisturbed. If we were good little evil vampires, we wouldn’t care about any squatters because we could feed on ‘em, turn ‘em or if they really smelled high, just break their necks. Since we’re not evil, we need to find a place that others aren’t using. Usually that means a house or business boarded up so good humans can’t get in easy. Old businesses are the best bet for us.”
“And you want me to check for empty buildings?” Xander asked.
Okay, sure, he could check to see if there were any thought-ghosts running around, but the problem was that Xander could now see the thoughts and emotions that had attached to objects. A little girl’s favorite bunny trapped a memory of a child with red hair and a crooked smile. A rocking chair kept alive a ghost of a woman who rocked and rocked and rocked, her dead baby’s dress in hand. Spike said it was normal-that talismans only worked because thoughts and emotions did attach to things, but Xander was starting to worry that he was going to end up on that show they’d discovered the other day-Hoarders. If every object had a memory, how could he throw anything away? And then how was he supposed to explain why a broken rocking chair on an abandoned farmhouse’s front porch made him break down in tears? Yeah, he was screwed.
“The image from a talisman and the image from a human being can’t be the same. Search for living images.”
“Easy for you to say,” Xander complained, but he did it quietly. Spike’s willingness to use the ball gag was a little disturbing. He slowed his breathing, settling into a quiet inside his own mind that allowed him to watch the world through ghost glasses. Every person on the street-every kid leaning against a building, every woman carrying bags, every man hunched down on the sidewalk-had a small army of ghosts around them. Some appeared and disappeared, changing with the person’s thoughts. Others were more persistent.
Spike stopped at a red light, and Xander studied a young woman with dreadlocks pulled back into a wild ponytail. She had a strength to her, but a weariness as she pulled a boy along after her, and Xander watched a tall woman with a spear and a heavy iron collar follow behind, an invisible honor guard, ready to strike at any danger. The woman wore a… a necklace. It had a small wood disk that an ancestor had brought from Africa. The woman had earned it for success in her first hunt, and she would not part with it, even when the bastard white devils stole everything else. She swallowed it.
That woman walked behind her descendant now, and as they passed the car, the ghost’s eyes turned to consider Xander coldly. Okay, that was new. Xander got the feeling that this particular ghost wasn’t as helpless as most. However, he noticed that she was firmer. Okay, maybe firmer wasn’t the world. She didn’t fade in and out with the drifting thoughts of others. Her form was her form and not a single atom strayed. Normally these ghosts kind of trailed off around the edges and then randomly dissolved into smoke.
When the light turned green, Spike hit the gas. “Mate, if you go staring at women like that, you’re going to invite trouble.”
“Hey, you’re the one who told me to look for ghosts.”
“Specter.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t,” Spike said firmly. “So, did that one back there have a specter?”
“Oh yeah,” Xander agreed. “A scary spear-wielding specter that looked at me like she would be very happy to skewer me if I even looked at her descendent wrong.”
“Huh.” Spike sucked his cheeks and seemed to think about that for a time.
“Huh what?” Xander finally asked. He still wasn’t big with patience, and some days Spike seemed determined to annoy him to death.
“Some talisman’s do carry curses or blessings. It could be that you’re picking up on objects that carry an intent like that,” Spike said. “Like that trucker… you said that he had a necklace of women’s teeth, and it had tried clawing him.”
“Um, yeah?” Xander shivered. Considering he’d gone up against a hellgod and the mother of all monsters, the fact that a human was the creepiest thing he’d ever met really said something about his species. His ex-species.
“Pet, you couldn’t see talisman specters until we’d practiced a good bit. It could be that the women died so horribly that their deaths turned that necklace into a cursed object.”
“And the curse then fell on the truck driver by reaching out to me so I would…” Xander let his words trail off. So he would kill the guy, and Xander had. Xander had killed him, not that he was feeling guilty about it. He’d been a raping, murdering asshole. But Xander did feel bad that he’d killed someone without meaning to, which was also slightly assholish.
“These powers of yours might turn out useful after all,” Spike teased.
“Yeah, yeah. Considering that you keep telling me how powerful I am and how you have to sit on me to make sure I know my place in the pecking order, trying to downplay my demony mojo now is kinda late, Spike.” Xander pulled at the heavy cuffs. They were brown leather with heavy steel bands that connected to even heavier clasp locks by a pair of thick links. One extra heavy lock and three D-rings were evenly spaced around the cuff, and Xander pulled on one of the rings. He knew from experience he couldn’t get the cuffs off, but he couldn’t stop pulling at them anyway.
“What has your knickers in a twist then? Spike asked, but before Xander could answer, he added, “and if ya lie to me, you’ll be gagged and hogtied the rest of the day.”
Xander immediately swallowed the ‘nothing’ he’d almost said.
Spike came to another red light and stopped, and that let him turn his attention to Xander, which was not of the good.
“Lean forward, hands behind your back,” Spike ordered.
“But-”
Spike’s eyes yellowed, and Xander put his hands behind him. Spike reached over with a padlock and quickly clicked it shut. Sighing, Xander leaned back into the seat.
“You’re a bully, you know.”
“I know when you start trying to figure stuff out in your own head, you always come to the wrong conclusion. You’re not good at being a demon, Harris.”
“Yeah, hey, I already figured that out. I tried to get Eve to focus on you instead because of that.” Xander clamped his mouth shut. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Ya did, did you?” Spike gave him a long look. “You probably should have avoided saying that.”
“Probably,” Xander agreed.
Spike pulled the red ball out of his coat pocket.
“But hey, you need me to look for specters so we know where we can lair up,” Xander offered brightly.
“Open,” Spike ordered.
After sighing, Xander opened his mouth and let Spike push the ball in.
“I’ve been finding lairs since before your grandfather was born, so you sit there like a good baby demon and think about what you’re going to say the next time I ask you why you’re upset. Keep in mind that if you’re not very honest and very thorough, you are not going to like what comes next.”
Xander sighed again. He didn’t like what he had now. He pulled against the wrist cuffs, but nothing gave. Yeah, for all his demony power, he couldn’t break one bondage cuff designed for a human. And okay, it was clearly designed for a massive human, but still, it didn’t inspire confidence.
Worse, Xander didn’t know what he was supposed to tell Spike when he finally decided to let Xander talk. Hey, Spike, let’s not make that scheduled call home to Willow because I don’t want her to know I’m a demon now. In fact, let’s never have anything to do with back home at all. In fact, running sounded good. Yeah, that’d go over like a bean fart in church.