Chevachee

'Why is he called the Scourge of Europe?’ I asked Dru once.

‘Hush, love. Don’t fret.’

‘Yes but why? What’s he actually done that’s so special?’

She wouldn’t answer, only sank down between my knees and gave me other things to think about, but I still wondered.

Being a vampire hadn’t turned out like I’d expected. I was about four years turned then and still having a pretty tough time of it. ‘It’ in that sentence being mostly summed up as Angelus. Angelus’s fists, belt and anything else he felt like using on me. His petty obsessions and ever changing demands. His endless talent for finding new ways of controlling me. His continuous fucking presence, in both senses of the word. His owning me.

And the other side. The fact that he could teach me things I was desperate to learn. That he kept me alive when by rights I should have been killed after about the first week. That he had made Dru and allowed me to be with her. That he was making me a vampire, which is the best bloody thing in the world. That my heart jumped every time he looked on me with approval. That I belonged to him.

Quite poetical really.

Anyway, after four years, just when I thought I knew it all, I finally got to find out.

We were in a house in… God knows where it was – they all seemed the same after a while. Somewhere in England. Probably one of the poncier areas of London. We were never allowed to go anywhere exciting. And we’d got there by the usual bloody routine: Darla, who could worm her way into anybody’s favour if she chose to, had sweet talked the neighbours or an agent or something to find us a large house in a quiet district where the owners had gone away. Then we’d charmed an invitation inside, which was my Princess’s speciality, and killed the resident servants slowly (very slowly in Angelus’s case) which meant we’d had nothing to eat but whining flunkies for the first week or so whilst we settled in. After a few weeks Angelus would announce that the hunting was starting to dry up, and it would be time to move on; there’d be a day or so of cleaning up and then we’d be off. The owners would return and blame the vanished staff, and no-one would ever be the wiser that vampires had been there at all.

Then we’d do the whole thing again.

Not exactly the thrilling ride I’d been hoping for; plus every few weeks Angelus would leather the stuffing out of me for some real or invented fault, if he thought I was getting out of line.

Learning how to pick my prey and how to hide corpses was how I spent most of my first four years; ranging over the same few hundred boring square miles, with the only variety being chasing off any wandering strangers who turned up. It was one of the best vampire territories in the world back then and we kept it because Angelus was as big, strong, and skilled as vampires come, and he could whip any trespasser into mush, my sire could. I learnt a great deal of what I know about torture from watching Angelus deal with intruding vamps. Well I suppose it showed how much he cared for the place. Quite a soft home-loving pussy cat, my sire. And I’d come to think that this was the only way vampires ever lived.

So, just like every other day, I rose first, which gave me an hour or two to myself. Not that this was some voluntary yen for early rising: oh no, I was never allowed to forget that I was the useless youngest, a view expressed by just about every word short of minion. So I had to carry out my speciality. I polished all the damn shoes, brushed whichever disgustingly expensive clothes he had chosen to wear, laid the fire, tried to make myself look passable, fed and watered the captives in the larder, and on and on and on. Just like being a sodding fag at school again. Until I could finally curl up with the paper, a very large whiskey and a quiet smoke; with half an ear cocked for the standard bellow of ‘Spike’, ‘William’, or ‘Boy’ which would tell me that he was up and what sort of a mood he was in.

They were some of the most precious minutes of my life then, the quiet times to myself in the last warmth of the afternoon, with the sun just peeking through under the curtains and me slumped on the sofa spiralling smoke rings up to the ceiling. With the short columns of newsprint headed by those magical words From our correspondent in… all I needed to send me off to another world.

But I couldn’t ever really go anywhere, not really. Because at the back of my mind I always knew that any second now he was going to shout.

As soon as he was up I would be put through a mini inquisition as to where I was going that night and what I’d do when I got there. There was actually a reason for all this: killing is easy – you just bite and suck – it’s fun mind you, but anyone can do it; the trouble was that we weren’t hunting mice. We were trying to trap bright, social animals, who tend to kick up a stink if too many of their number vanish without good explanation. Being immortal has few perks if some bloody vigilante cuts your head off with an axe in the middle of the day because you killed his girlfriend. So we had to keep a low profile, which meant Angelus restricted us to the homeless, isolated and lonely types who wouldn’t be missed. Don’t believe everything you read in novels: vampires haven’t survived for all this time by being noticeable. After all, when did you last hear that someone had been killed by a vampire?

Only I wasn’t very good at it at four.

You see, despite human myth, you don’t come out of the box knowing everything you need to survive as a vampire; especially not how to identify safe prey in the few hours every evening when our lives and theirs coincide. So Angelus was teaching me to hunt. And it seemed to take forever to learn to his satisfaction, with all hell raining down on me if I tried out any independent thinking. Sometimes he made it fun. But mostly he didn’t. Everything had to be done unbelievably slowly and cautiously and, oh yeh, with sodding style. Because Angelus was A Hunter before everything: to him that is what being a vampire means; and he was for ever working to experience finer and more imaginative kills. I never got him to see that it is all just faffing about and holding up the moment when you bite something.

The bit I found difficult was finding a suitable something. This was rarely glamorous. The fact is I’ve fed off more tramps, beggars and downright weirdoes than I care to remember. Oh and more and yet more sodding servants, sometimes I seemed to do nothing but chat up skivvies to make sure that they had no family regularly checking up on them. Then they frequently ‘Packed up and left without giving a word of notice. I suppose she must have been unhappy, the silly girl.’ Christ, I even remember my mother complaining about it happening to us when I was alive. If she’d allowed them a decent number of evenings off we would probably have lost the lot.

We also had to check for disappointed husbands and wives who would be deemed to have walked out on the family; failed businessmen who might be trying to escape the bailiffs; and the senile who could have wandered off and got lost. In fact what we had to find were all those hundreds of people who ‘go missing’ all the time without anybody blinking an eye. It takes patience, creativity and an unbelievable amount of experience. The only fun ones were the teenage runaways.

Every night therefore I was supposed to come up with a properly thought out, detailed hunting plan, which I usually did in the time between him shouting for me and my arrival at the top of the stairs, and then I had to recite it for his approval. I had recently taken to doing this in a sing-song voice while standing rigidly to attention, because I knew it annoyed the hell out of him. Then nine times out of ten he would reject it and send me off on one of his own convoluted schemes or take me out himself.

That afternoon though it got later and later and he didn’t appear.

I never bother with worrying, but I was beginning to wonder why. He’d been in when me and Dru came home, because I’d heard him and Darla shouting about something, but we’d just gone straight to bed and I’d not been listening after that. Now I started to wonder what they had been arguing about.

Him and Darla arguing wasn’t unusual – but it was normally restricted to the odd snappy word, not full blown shouting. The trouble was I hadn’t been entirely obedient over the last… well, four years, really, but there were a select few of my recent activities that I was particularly keen Angelus should not have found out about; hence I was keeping a wary eye on any dispute. There is supposed to be some lore that a sire won’t kill or permanently maim his childe, but it can feel more like a guideline when you’ve done something to piss off two hundred pounds and a hundred and fifty years of vampire, so I started to pay attention to the scent that hung in the air. It’s important to remember to do that, but at four I often forgot.

Blood, of course, from the last few meals; the normal sort of household smells, including that blasted boot-polish; my fag smoke; the smell of coal and horse-shit from outside, which were the predominant scents of life in those days. And the important ones:

Drusilla: light, always slightly orangey to my mind with a dark stickiness underneath. Still fast asleep, bless her.

Darla: who smelt like an old shoe-box to me. A smug shoe box.

And Angelus: bitter sweet, sulphur and sugar like a shot of strong whiskey. Only there was a great deal else going on there as well, that afternoon. Blood and sweat, come, tears, anger, disappointment, pride, rebellion, submission. And fear.

Not that I could identify all those at four years old but I could tell something serious was going on upstairs.

I lit myself another fag and turned to the next page.

‘Boy!’

Not my favourite alarm call. So I was up the stairs fast and looking as politely respectful as I could. ‘Yes Sire?’ He liked me to call him Sire when he was in one of the ‘boy’ moods; I’d become quite a good actor in those four years. I had to control myself not to look shocked at his appearance though, because he had a bruise across his cheekbone the size of a lemon and he was moving about as gracefully as the average marionette. Red eyes with a mean look in them as well.

‘Pack my bag and whatever rubbish you consider needful for yourself. I want you ready to leave in half an hour.’

‘Why? And were you fighting a demon or something last night?’

By the time I had picked myself back up off the floor he had gone downstairs, so I went into the master bedroom.

‘Don’t you knock?’

‘Oh. I thought you were asleep.’ Fortunately I had a quick inspiration. ‘I was trying to be quiet.’

‘And?’

‘Angelus said I had to pack him a bag.’ An awkward moment whilst I waited to see how she would take it, because if my relationship with Angelus had its ups and downs my relationship with Darla was at least steady: we hated each other.

One thing is demanded of a childe by vampire lore: respect for your elders. And that can mean anything they choose it to mean. This in my case meant Angelus and Darla, Dru having taken herself out of the picture on account of being mad. Angelus… well he was my sire. There is one simple reason why having a sire is so important to a vampire: forget the lore, forget blood rites and belonging and all that nonsense, right down at the bottom of it you need someone to look after you until you can do it for yourself. Vamps without a sire, and I’ve met a few of the poor miserable buggers, lead a happy free existence quietly starving or getting themselves killed until they learn by trial and error. I needed my sire. And Angelus somehow got my respect despite myself.

But Darla was another matter. As far as she was concerned I had only been made so that I could look after Drusilla, thus freeing up Angelus’s time for her good self. End of story. And I was nothing but a damn nuisance for taking so long to learn how. It was therefore my responsibility to mind my manners and keep out of her way until Angelus could finish with me.

I knew all this because she had told me so, in intimate detail, one memorable night about a fortnight previously. Dru had been screaming her head off over some vision of a Great Horror in the East Attacking her Darling, and I was desperately trying to comfort her and find out where Angelus was at the same time, since she wouldn’t shut up until she knew he was safe. I do have a vague memory of calling Darla a stupid bitch, during one of the tenser moments, but I can’t say I really meant it at the time. Seems she took it to heart though, because when Angelus came home and Dru had finally calmed down, she had him hold me down so she could damn near slice my backside off with that bloody hunting-crop she had.

Things had been edgy between us since. And I’d overheard her making comments like ‘It’s time he was taken in hand,’ so I was treading round her like a very cautious cat, on thin ice.

That evening though she didn’t look too displeased. She was loafing back in the great satin-wood bed, that golden mane of hers tossed out on the lace pillow-cases, a silk sheet just about preventing me seeing anything she didn’t want me to. And she was actually smiling as she waved a casual hand for me to carry on.

There were clothes scattered all over the floor, so I started to pick out the masculine ones, trying to ignore the scent of Angelus’s blood that was everywhere and the drops that were scattered all across the carpet, furniture, walls and ceiling. When I met the crop though, still soaking wet and tossed in the corner, I must have shown some reaction, because there was a snigger from the bed.

‘What did you think, William, that you were the only one who had to obey their elders?’

Well you could have knocked me down with a feather, because in four years it had never once occurred to me that she might ever treat him even remotely like he treated me. Yeh, he always did what she wanted, in the end, but I’d assumed that was just because he agreed. Not very bright of me, maybe, but I’d had other things on my mind.

So I was having a small personal revelation in the middle of that blood-soaked room and was too stunned to ask for any further details. Which was a shame since Darla might well have been in the mood to tell me some things, and that would have saved a great deal of trouble later on. But I left it too long and Angelus came back to supervise the packing, so I never got the chance.

Well, a little later that night we were standing on the railway platform, with Dru wrapping her arms around me and Angelus in turn, sobbing her eyes out and making us promise to write every day. Whilst Darla stood at a slight distance with a small smirk on her face and Angelus wouldn’t meet her eye. They had a few words together at the last moment though, and I don’t know what was said but he came back into the carriage looking a lot happier and with blood on his lips.

And that was that: doors were banged shut, shrill humans shrieked at each other, whistles were blown, and there was a vast hiss of steam as the brakes were taken off and the engine began to jerk its way out of Victoria station, carrying us on the Orient Express to Dover, the Continent, and beyond. For the first time in four years I was going somewhere alone with my sire, and I hadn’t a clue where or why.

My patience lasted as far as Bromley, which is about five miles down the line. I calculated that even if he was furious at being questioned he couldn’t do much physical damage in as enclosed a space as a first-class railway compartment, with the ticket inspector liable to be along any minute. But if I’d learnt a few things about being a childe in the last four years, then I suppose Angelus had learnt a bit about being a sire, and one of the things he had learnt was that you can’t teach someone by refusing to answer their questions all the time, however much fun the ‘elder mystique’ game is. So I actually got a response of sorts.

‘We’re going to the Continent.’ Well yes, I had worked that out actually, not even Angelus used the Orient Express for a simple trip to Ashford. ‘You and I are going to have some fun, my boy.’

‘What sort of fun?’

‘A chevachee. You know what that is?’

Now the answer was no, but unfortunately it was more complicated than that, because I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to know or not.

A wearisome feature of my training was that Angelus would hurl books of tedious vampire lore and magic at me and expect me to learn them. But one of the advantages of a sire as fickle as Angelus was that he seldom bothered to check if I had done so. A simple show of reading was usually enough, and since he’d never been to school (tutored by the local priest as far as I ever found out) he wasn’t up to the tricks of reading one book between the covers of another. Which I happened to be a past master at – although my tastes had changed slightly since my school days. I found it a lot easier fooling a master vampire than the average prep-school master. The result was I had a detailed knowledge of the more sensational illustrated magazines and ‘penny-dreadfuls’, and except for slayer lore, which I devoured avidly, I knew nothing like as much as I should have done about vampire history. My Latin sucks as well.

‘Oh. A chevachee,’ I said. And tried to look suitably pleased. Angelus though wasn’t a fool.

‘You have no idea what that means, do you.’

‘Er…’

‘Well you’re in for a surprise,’ he smirked. And I decided not to push my luck any further.

The carriage was put on the boat at Dover and we avoided the company by feigning sea-sickness and keeping to our compartment with the blinds drawn down. Actually it may not have been entirely feigning in Angelus’s case because he spent most of the time sleeping, whilst I dealt with the stewards, ticket inspectors, passport officials and hundreds of other people who will keep pestering you whilst you are travelling. Of course he may just have been healing after whatever Darla had done to him.

I, though, was in a good mood. I was off travelling with my sire and we were going to have fun. With no Darla to distract him and no Dru to need mollycoddling. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Princess for ever and I did miss her, but there are times when it is nice to have a break. And I knew she would be alright with Darla: they almost liked each other in a ‘need someone to dress my hair and go shopping with’ feminine sort of way.

We had to get out before Paris because the sun was coming up. So we hopped down at some country siding where we stopped for coal, water, or one of the innumerable other things a train seems to need (or did in those days) and we hot-footed it to the nearest farm house.

That was when my education really got turned on its head.

Angelus stopped me at the end of the lane, looked me over, and pushed my hair and clothes into place before he was satisfied that I would just about pass muster. He of course was one of those people who can spend all night sleeping in a railway carriage in their clothes and still look immaculate. We made our way up the short, dusty French farm track, a bob-tailed sheep dog on the end of a chain sleepily barking at us as we passed the gate and then slinking back into his half-barrel when he caught our scent. There was a light on in the house – the farm folk already being up to do whatever it is that farmers do first thing in the morning.

‘Look respectable,’ Angelus growled. So I tried to look as respectable as I could, lugging a carpet-bag across a French farmyard at five o’clock in the morning. He knocked, and the door was opened by a surprised looking woman. A short conversation took place, from which the remnants of my schoolboy French managed to extract the words breakfast and travellers. She looked at us suspiciously, but she stepped outside the door to accept the proffered coin, and gestured for us both to come in.

Angelus took her there and then, ripping her throat out before she could scream and spinning her still dying corpse round to me as she started to collapse. I vamped and sucked my fill. Then we entered the farm house.

Two maids and three startled farm-hands were leaping up from their places with squawks of horror. We went in side by side, me and my sire. A punch to the belly for the first man followed by a quick uppercut to the jaw, knocking him to the ground. Up on the table, a kick out at a second man, and Angelus had him from behind and broke his neck a heartbeat later. Then I was across the table and jumping onto the first of the maids, bringing her crashing to the ground; whilst Angelus dealt with the last farm-hand. I was looking around for the other woman even whilst I slapped the one I had around the head to keep her quiet. ‘Where is she? Where’d she go?’

‘Stairs!’ Angelus barked, still busy with his prey.

So I left my maid, who wasn’t moving any more, and raced for the wide staircase at the other end of the kitchen, taking the steps three at a time. The silly bint was up there, cowering behind her bed instead of making a dash for the open air where the approaching daylight might have saved her. Maybe it had something to do with the baby mewling in the cot beside the bed.

When I came back down there was only one maid and two men left alive, including the farmer himself, a fat faced man with a stupid moustache, who must have come back inside whilst I was upstairs. Angelus had tied them all up and was starting to address the moustache with his pocket razor.

By mid-day I had got bored with watching Angelus play with his food and since I was well fed and tired I went to bed. When I woke it was dark and Angelus was asleep in a chair in the kitchen amidst something resembling a slaughterhouse.

I looked around in a filthy mood. For four years I had been taught: you can leave a mess but you can’t leave any blood, and you have to hide the corpses. Otherwise they will know a vampire has been there and you will bring all hell down on your head. This was going to be one long sodding cleaning up job, just because bloody Angelus thought he was showing ‘finesse’ in his kills. And I had little doubt as to who would be expected to do most of it. I sighed and wondered where to start.

Angelus opened an eye. ‘What are you huffing about, Spike?’

‘About having to clean up your bloody mess for you,’ I said.

‘Don’t be bothering.’

‘What? Why?’

He grinned back at me, enjoying my confusion. ‘Are you saying you want to, Will?’

‘Hell no. I just thought you’d insist. But if you’re offering instead, mate…’ I gestured for him to be my guest and went and sat on the table, reaching for a fag.

Angelus chuckled. ‘Well I’m certainly not doing any skivvying. Let’s be moving on.’

I gawped. ‘What about the danger, caution and all that, not attracting the wrong sort of attention?’

‘Are you feeling cautious?’

‘Bloody hell, no!’

‘Then let’s be getting on to Paris.’

Which is exactly what we did.

In Paris we hunted no less than three well known society couples through most of the fashionable streets in one evening and killed them all as savagely as we chose, leaving the corpses just where they fell; each with a ragged hole in the neck and half their blood missing. The next night the local vampire gang turned up to try to explain to us the error of our ways.

We were in the back storage room of a hat shop, which we’d broken into because I fancied nicking a silver and ebony rosebud hat-pin, as a present for Dru. And we were just considering whether it would be a good place to spend the day, killing the staff as and when they turned up, or if we would rather go and see if we could find either a hotel or a brothel to give us a room at that late hour of the night. Anyway, lord knows why this discussion was taking place in the storeroom, but it was, and in the middle of it five vampires walked in, in game face. Or rather demon face or true face as we called it in those days.

There was a brief shouted ‘conversation’ in French and then we charged.

Daft myth number two that humans have about vampires: we’re all naturally brilliant fighters.

Yeh, we’re strong and fast, got innate talent if you like, but having a punch like a cart-horse kicking is no sodding use if you can’t land it. When I first rose the average professional human boxer could have taken me out in five minutes. Angelus could do it in five seconds. The first humans I fought with I more or less squashed to death and it seemed to take forever. Not very elegant.

So I’d had to learn to fight, just as I’d had to learn to hunt, only this was something I really wanted to learn. He taught me the way he’d been taught, and it certainly wasn’t Darla who taught him.

She was one of natures born trigger-pullers. I imagine the invention of the pistol came as a great relief to her, since it must have been crossbows up until then and they are awkward things to carry if you care about the hang of your dress as much as she did. I somehow can’t ever imagine her with a long arm musket. By the time I knew her she always carried a Colt in her bag, with a small stake to follow up the work if it was a vampire she was dealing with. But apart from a few slaps I never saw her use her fists.

Angelus, though, was something of a traditionalist (although he denied it hotly) always being drawn to the old ways; and he’d tried to teach me to be the same.

Now he was big on the jolly old mystique, my sire, so I didn’t know much about his formative years, but I had guessed he was taught to bare-fist fight as a human, with maybe some fencing as well. And then he must have picked up a lot more, from god alone knew who, after he was turned. Because it was the old English fighting style he had then (yeh, I know he’s a bog trotting Paddy but fighting wise it’s the same thing) only he learnt before the Marquess of sodding Queensberry came in and screwed the whole thing up with gloves and no hitting below the belt. This was the real old fighting, handed down from the ancient Greeks or the Vikings or something, which was part boxing, part wrestling, and part grabbing anything to hand and hitting your opponent with it. And you were positively encouraged to hit below the belt.

I’ve picked up some newer tricks in the east since, but that was how I was taught to fight by Angelus and I haven’t done badly with it. There were all sorts of rules nobody remembers any more, like the true times of the hand; the hand and body; the hand, body and foot; and the hand, body and feet; and the false times of the foot; the foot and body – and so on. Which translated as ‘If you move that damn foot first one more time, Spike, I will nail it to the floor.’ Then there was judgement, distance, timing, and all the rest of it; and dozens of stances, guards and techniques, both unarmed and with a bunch of different weapons. All of which he taught me. Oh, and a spout of psycho-babble ancient ‘words of wisdom’, to which I gave the attention that I considered they deserved.

God, I can almost hear him now, on one of those long quiet nights when the girls had vanished upstairs to do lord knows what, and we had pushed the furniture aside in the dining-room.

‘And outside guard, inside guard, hanging guard, St George— I said St George.’

‘What was wrong with that?’

‘You had your elbow too low, Will, you always do.’ Then his firm hands pushing my limbs into position. ‘And inside guard, medium guard, watch your feet, outside guard, that’s good, hanging guard, St George—’

‘Bollocks! Sorry. Can you show me again?’

We would practice for hours at a stretch, with a little extra experience from those occasions when I lost my temper and tried to take him on yet again. (Longest survival rate at that stage of my career: about six minutes. I was only four.) But this was the first time I was expected to fight another vampire for real, when the consequences of loosing would actually be worse than another beating from Angelus. I should have been scared.

It was as if a switch turned in my head and I had all the time in the world to think, whilst everyone else was moving like they were stuck in treacle.

I took the first vamp to come at me, threw a right hook at his ribs, which he blocked with his elbow, then he threw a left on my jaw, which sent me reeling back a bit. But being knocked about by Angelus for four years teaches you not to take much notice of that sort of thing, so I let him come back at me. He grabbed my shirt front (bloody Frog, going for the clothes not the man) gabbling some threat or other; and without hesitating I caught his wrist and twisted it, slamming his shoulder back with my other hand and kicking his leg out from under him. Next thing we both knew he was on the ground and I stamped on his solar-plexus so hard I could hear it splinter. Just like Angelus had taught me. And that was it: I’d taken out my first vampire, because he wasn’t going to move for a while with his chest caved in. And my blood was singing, and my mind was laughing, and there was nothing but the joy of the fight. And without pausing I danced on to the next one.

He proved tougher, because if I got in a few hard blows on him then he got some in on me too, and I might have been starting to get into trouble when there was suddenly a great shout and everybody stopped.

I had been vaguely aware of Angelus battling away near me, but I’d been dealing with the opponents immediately in front of me and couldn’t give much thought to the rest of things. Angelus though had been thinking, and he’d identified and gone for the other vampire leader, who he now had in a neck-hold with a stake up against his chest. It was the Frog boss who had shouted.

Another gabbly conversation took place, with the Frog sounding fast and scared and my sire slow and patient. I heard the name Angelus and gathered he was telling them who he was, using his reputation to add to their fear. Then the Frog said something to his minions, and after a little low growling they started to back off; the two relatively fit ones helping the injured pair (my first guy and another that Angelus must have taken down). I still hadn’t a clue what was going on but the four of them backed out of the door and I could hear them retreating down the passage and into the shop.

‘Spike, watch the door,’ Angelus said, and then he started to slap the Frog leader across the face. Back and forth, a dozen or twenty times. I’ve had that done to me and I know it knocks the senses out of you fast without actually making you senseless; and I understood he was softening the other vamp up for something nasty. When he was satisfied he dropped the stake and reached into his pocket for the strap he always carried.

I don’t have fond memories of that strap. It was an old leather belt with a fancy silver buckle at one end and the world was a less pleasant place when he had it out. One odd thing though: he’d crack it just about anywhere that he felt like, with a wicked force and a wickeder aim, but he’d never use the buckle end. I have no idea why and I doubt I’ll ever find out. The only clue I have is a small scar low down on his back, which looks like the shape and size of a belt buckle and which must date back to when he was a human. Funny, the things our pasts will do to us.

However, on this occasion my leather pal was swiftly used to pin the Frog’s arms behind his back, whilst the fellow’s own boot-laces were ripped out and tied tight round his wrists. Then he was forced down onto his knees and there was more desperate babbling and a great deal of submissive head ducking, before Angelus responded with a short statement and another bout of face slapping. Then he gagged the man with his gaudy French scarf, dragged him by the collar across to a sturdy wooden chair in the corner, and draped him across the back of it.

It was only when my gentle sire took out his pocket-knife, and started to cut the vamp’s braces off and pull down his trousers, that I realised what he was going to do to him.

Now all this time I’d been keeping mum, with my ears and nostrils strained for any sign of the minions returning. And that had seemed important enough when I thought Angelus was just going to stake the fellow. But the thought of them coming back and finding him inside their boss was even less comforting. I felt the conversation would make the last one seem like a few little old ladies arguing over who got the last slice of cake.

‘Sire,’ I said cautiously. ‘What if the others come back?’

Angelus, who was unbuttoning his fly, looked across at me and grinned. ‘They won’t come back.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m certain sure. He ordered them not to.’

That threw me. ‘He did?’

‘Of course he did, Spike. Do you think he wants them to know what is about to happen to him here?’

And it turned out Angelus was right, because I doubt those minions had gone far but that Frog leader never once screamed out loud, even after Angelus took the gag out. Even when Angelus buggered him until the blood ran and then vamped and bit his throat half out as he came. Even when he had me do the same afterwards.

I can’t say I enjoyed that, the first time I raped a man, but I managed to come, after a little coaxing and word painting about Dru from my sire. Because if I understood one thing it was that I wanted that guy totally humiliated. Beaten into the floor and whimpering humiliated. Humiliated enough that he wouldn’t even think about coming after us until it was too late. And if being dry-buggered by Angelus and his four-year-old fledgling was what it took then I sure as hell was going to do my part.

After that Angelus really let himself loose to play.

The vamp was sobbing like a baby when Angelus finally took his belt back off him and we made our exit out of the back window and took a cab for the station, to catch the train to Berlin. The tiresome thing was that I lost Dru’s damn hat-pin in the cab.

And that was how the game went for the next few weeks. We killed the choicest of the local humans, trounced the local vampires, and moved on before any of the consequences mattered. And the great thing was that the vamps we left behind were always too busy trying to clear up the mess we had left to be able to come after us. It was pissing on other people’s territory, you see, and as long as we kept our wits, fought well, and moved fast and unpredictably there was not a damn thing they could do about it. Perhaps in the old days we would have been mounted or required a black coach and human minions to drive it through the day. But it was the modern age (well, every age is, but it was the first modern age I experienced) so we moved by train, and we were swept out of our enemies reach by two hundred tons of steam powered iron every evening. We tore across the Continent, leaving a trail of havoc behind us.

Word got out by the slow and incompetent vampire grapevine that Angelus and his fledgling were on the rampage, and often as not the vampire clans melted away in front of us. Only returning after we had left, to try and recover what they could of their own hard won security and pride.

I was well fed every night, I was getting as much hunting and fighting as even I could desire, and Angelus hadn’t laid a finger on me. Not once in all those weeks: no beatings, no humiliations, no demands for obedience. Not once. He didn’t even ask me to polish his bloody boots. For the first time in four years I could do exactly what I had always dreamed of; I could be the vampire I wanted to be, not the vampire Angelus told me to be.

Oh, I didn’t delude myself, I knew I wouldn’t have lasted a day like that without Angelus; but I was also pretty damn sure he couldn’t have done it on his own without me. Because it turned out I was rather good at my job.

A vamp comes out of the ground with speed, strength, good senses and instincts, and then your sire trains you up as best they can – but we’re not all the same. And whether it was Angelus’s training or my own abilities or a bit of each, I don’t know, but the fact is I’m a good fighter. A bloody good fighter. Not just someone who likes a good brawl, which I’d always known, but a good fighter. And this was the first time I truly discovered it and enjoyed it.

Maybe Angelus knew all along. Perhaps he had seen what he had under his hands during all those long hours of training, and maybe he was proud of me and enjoyed making me the best he could. I rather doubt it. That’s a bit mushy for a vampire, especially one like Angelus. No, I reckon the old reason still stuck: he wanted someone who could look after Dru for him and he wanted it sooner rather than later. And he was too damn arrogant to ever think much of anyone else’s abilities compared to his own, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to see any admiration from him. But sometimes there was just a hint of approval in his eye at the end of a long day, and that was good enough for me.

I was happy, properly happy for the first time in four years, and if I forgot to wonder what he and Darla had disagreed about way back at the start of it all, then it was hardly surprising.

Only one thing in all that time struck me as odd. Now I’m not a pouf, but things are different amongst vampires, and within the family you pretty much sleep with everyone at some time or another. Hell, I’ve even screwed Darla, suitably supervised, and a damn fine lay she is let me tell you. Lot of experience I suppose.

So since my sire and I were seldom out of each other’s company for more than a few minutes together in all that time you would pretty much expect us to be shagging non-stop. Lord knows we had been back home. He’d top me on a regular basis, with just enough… Yeh, well, it wasn’t all bad with Angelus. He’d also let me suck him off – which is a heady experience for a childe, having their sire’s dick clamped between vampire jaws that can exert a force of eight-hundred pounds (that’s three hundred more than a wolf bite) and teasing it with your tongue and your fangs until he squeaks in pleasure. Of course you never do bite down, but it’s a fun feeling knowing you could. If he was in a really good mood he would jerk me off with his hand at the same time, or at least let me do it myself. And the nights I wasn’t with him, I was with Dru and he was with Darla, or we’d pair up the other way, or work in threesomes if someone was out late, or all four together if there was room. It built up the stamina.

But all too often with Angelus, it would twist until he just wanted to exert his dominance over me, so he’d get me whimpering with pain and desire all mixed up, and afterwards he’d always ask ‘Whose are you?’ to which the only acceptable answer was ‘Yours, Sire.’ Then he’d bite. And it’s not funny having to say that to Angelus.

Yours, Sire. For ever and fucking ever.

Only when I say he didn’t lay a finger on me: he didn’t lay a finger. Or a fang, or anything else. We worked our way through half the prostitutes and half the gifted amateurs that Europe had to offer, but as regards each other we never touched, except in the odd casual fashion two human males might. I never even saw him looking at me with that little quirk in his eye that would tell me what he was thinking about. It was as if he had turned that whole part of his personality off for the duration, and I certainly wasn’t going to risk waking it.

We criss-crossed Europe: Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, Venice, Rome, Monaco, Madrid, Bordeaux, Zurich, Salzburg, and a hundred smaller places in between; causing mayhem in all of them. With a sort of unspoken competition for who could be the most inventive. And I was Spike, or occasionally Will, and he was Angelus, or very occasionally Sire; and if we weren’t equals at least we were both respecting each other. And come to think of it, he was probably enjoying the break as much as I was – from Darla and Dru and being responsible for a home territory, and having to be careful.

We didn’t actually send any letters home, but a couple caught up with us in Rome. Saying that the girls were well, and nobody had tried to move in on our turf whilst we were away (not surprising since just about every vampire in Europe was trying to recover from our passing). And the weather was fine. And could we pick up some sticky liqueur thing for some magic potion if we passed through the Pyrenees. Which we forgot to do, incidentally.

So I wrote a postcard to Dru saying how much I liked being on my first chevachee with the Scourge of Europe. I like to think of the postman’s expression as he read it while walking up the path to make the delivery.

Then one night the train dropped us off in a remote little town somewhere in the Balkans, and everything changed.

I was all prepared for our usual bold killing, which by then seemed customary. But Angelus suddenly went all coy and started to run through all the old tedious routine of seek, stalk, observe, study, understand, plan, and take; which I’d almost forgotten by then. He eventually chose a homeless woman, a scabby flea-bitten bitch of the sort I’d have been glad of three months ago but now considered as way beneath me. But not only did he insist I drank my fill of her, as if she were the only kill we would make that night, he then made me cut her throat to hide the bite marks, and weight the body and dump it in the river, to make it look like she had been raped and killed by human thugs. I was annoyed at having to do all that, and maybe expressed myself a little too freely, because he suddenly flipped into ‘I’m your sire and you will do as I say’ mode, and then it really was like being back home.

Only three months of doing what I wanted had gone to my head, because I wouldn’t be brow-beaten but squared up to him and challenged him to ‘Bloody well explain for once. Or I don’t do a damn thing you want from now on.’

He gave me the Angelus sneer and I thought I’d better get ready to defend myself, but then to my surprise he actually answered. ‘We don’t want to be annoying the vampires in this territory, Spike. We are here to visit, not cause trouble.’

‘Visit who?’

‘Come along.’ He turned to go.

‘Do we really have to go through the boring mystique thing, mate?’ He swiped, but I ducked. Oh there was no question but I’d got faster in those three months. He didn’t carry it through though, just left and didn’t wait to see if I was following. Which I did because I was curious if nothing else.

We made our way up through the little town, which was perched on a mountain side with a river at the bottom and the houses clinging increasingly precariously to the slope the higher you went, and narrow pot-holed streets winding back and forth between them. It was a largish place of its sort, I suppose, with two or three churches and the railway line running along the river valley, but it felt small to me after all the big cities we’d visited. Large enough to get lost in though, yet Angelus seemed to know where he was going, even if he hesitated and considered from time to time, like someone who hadn’t been that way in a long while.

Eventually we turned off the road onto a little narrow foot-path, that climbed up the slope between ancient pine trees and whippy young birches, with musty fronds of bracken brushing our sides and the soft crumbling carpet of pine needles under our feet. The path forked and we took the narrower way, almost only an animal track, where we had to duck under low branches and scramble up steep places in the rock, where there was no foothold that a human could have found and only creatures with our night vision could begin to attempt the climb in the dark. My nose was twitching though, because the scent of strange vampires was heavy on the air. And yet with an underlying familiarity that made me wonder.

He stopped again. ‘We’re almost there. Now, what’s your name?’

‘My name?’ I pondered this. ‘Spike. You’ll remember me if you think hard enough. Name’s Spike. We have met.’

‘I don’t have time for this, boy. Your proper name.’

I sighed. ‘William, Sire.’

‘And the rest of it.’ I looked puzzled. ‘For the love of Mike. Why do I waste my time on you, boy, remind me?’

I grinned. ‘Because you just can’t do without me, pet.’

‘Your name, boy, is William, childe of Angelus of the order of Aurelius. Say it.’

I rolled my eyes and chanted back, ‘William, childe of Angelus of the order of Aurelius. What’s the order of Aurelius?’

He blinked. ‘Do you ever actually read any of the books I tell you to?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Well then you should know, shouldn’t you. I’m not going to waste any more time so listen carefully: there are some powerful vampires in there, boy, and they will stake you sooner than put up with your winning ways, so behave. Keep your demon face on and be respectful, and this shouldn’t be taking long.’

‘What about—’ I saw his expression. ‘Fine. Let’s go then.’ I donned my demon face and gestured for him to lead on. Whatever Angelus wanted from these people I wanted to get it over with and get back to the fun.

There was a hole in the hillside. Possibly a disused mining shaft, possibly a natural cave, I don’t know which, I’m not a bleeding engineer, but we went in and Angelus picked up a stick and banged on a little gong that was hanging in a dark corner. Ringing the doorbell it seemed.

Three vamps appeared quickly. Swarthy, hulking brutes in demon face, who snarled questions at us in some lingo that sounded a bit like Latin. My sire, master of every bloody tongue on the planet, answered in tones that sounded quite polite for him. There was a bit of whispering amongst the strangers and then one of them loped off down the tunnel whilst the other two planted themselves squarely across the entrance and loured at us. We waited. Angelus folded his arms and glowered back but I went and squatted down against the wall and prepared to light up, reasoning that this could take hours. Angelus snapped at me, ‘Stand up. Leave that thing unlit. Come and wait here beside me.’ I sighed audibly but came, sticking my thumbs in my belt and trying not to look too bored. The door wardens watched my every mood with silent contempt.

After what seemed like hours the third vamp finally came back and ushered us to follow him. We made our way deeper underground.

There was little light, just the occasional flickering torch, and the tunnel twisted back and forth and forked repeatedly, so I was soon hopelessly lost. I wasn’t very good in tunnels then, because apart from the occasional foray into the London sewers, and one unfortunate spell in a Yorkshire coal-mine, I hadn’t done much underground work. Angelus was a great believer in the fact that your food source was above ground, so you might as well spend your time above ground, and he always got very testy if we were forced to use the sewers as a means of getting around during the day. Come to think of it, that was probably why he got so cross in Yorkshire. If he had been a human I would have suspected he was claustrophobic.

Well, I was soon utterly confused as to which way would lead back out and completely at the mercy of our guide, which wasn’t a reassuring feeling. Eventually though, somewhere deep within the mountain, he stopped and pulled back a large leather curtain, crusted with bronze medallions, which clashed and glittered as they swung together. Angelus ducked his head, since the entrance was low, and went in. I followed.

The echoing cavern was immense, with seven blazing torches providing enough light to show the gleaming black rock in all but its most secret reaches. There was the sound of running water coming from the far wall, where a glistening sheen skimmed over the surface. If this was a mine it presumably wasn’t a very safe one.

I’d never been in such a melodramatic, draughty pit before in my life.

There was a large wooden chair in the centre of the space and poised on it like a fey Roman senator was the ugliest vampire I’d ever seen.

‘Angelus!’ he said in a sing-song voice. ‘So you’ve come back again. And brought me your latest spawning too. How exciting!’

My sire then did something I’d never seen him do before, very briefly he ducked his head in a manner approaching respect, though I could see the effort it cost him. ‘Master.’ He gestured for me to stay where I was and approached the white bat creature. And bugger me but he actually went down on one knee. ‘Angelus of Aurelius, childe of Darla, asks admission for his childe to the ancient and revered order.’

‘And why should I grant that to you, Angelus, who spurns our company and our ways, and only turns up once every fifty years, when you have yet another of your brats you want admitted? Oh I hear of your deeds, Angelus. But what use are they if they are not aimed towards our common goal? Why should I stoop to share more of my power and my wisdom with you, or any of your spawn?’

Angelus looked up and shrugged. ‘You’ve done it before.’

The Master leaned forward sharply. ‘And I ask the same price as before.’

I couldn’t see my sire’s face but I saw him nod. ‘Yes.’

‘Very well. You may stand up. Come here, childe.’ He beckoned to me and I approached. ‘What is your name?’

‘William, childe of Angelus of the order of Aurelius. ’cept it’s actually Spike.’ I said.

‘Oh! Spike is it! What have you made, Angelus? Another lunatic?’

‘No,’ I said crossly.

‘Let me see.’ He got up, minced forward, and grabbed my face between his disgusting yellow claws. ‘Well, Angelus, another pretty-boy for you to play with.’

I wasn’t having that, so I glowered at him and slipped back into human form. He let go of me as if I’d been red hot steel and then, so quickly I never saw it coming, struck me full across the face, which knocked me back. ‘You keep the visage of that corpse hidden in my presence. I forgave your sire for such insolence once, but I may not be so tolerant with a worthless whelp like you.’

I felt Angelus grab me by the shoulders. ‘Behave,’ he hissed in my ear, and he forced me down on one knee, bending my head forward into the traditional posture of deference. Which I at least knew how to adopt, because he sometimes made me do it for him. I re-vamped out and decided to wait and see what would happen.

What happened was that the Master resumed his seat and said nothing for a very long time. Then he abruptly gave a rough growl, delicately drew one of those sharp claws across his wrist, and held it out towards me. ‘Come. Drink.’

Angelus hauled me up by the collar. ‘Lap, don’t suck,’ he whispered, and pushed me forward. I went down on one knee again and lapped. And let me tell you it tasted disgusting. I was probably supposed to feel overcome with awe, or thrilled by the power coursing through my veins. What I actually felt was nauseous. He didn’t pull his wrist away too soon as far as I was concerned.

‘And the price,’ the sing-song voice said, and I wondered what to do.

Angelus hauled me to my feet again and spun me around to face him. ‘Hold on tight and try not to yelp,’ he muttered.

‘Eh?’

Then my eyes widened with shock because he was undoing my belt and fly. Not leaving me time to do anything he slammed me down across a flat alter like rock and I was pinned under his full weight. His left arm appeared in front of my eyes. ‘Hold it,’ he said, so softly only I could hear. And I grabbed that arm with both hands and gripped like mad because my trousers had just been yanked down; and I could feel the cold sharp tips of long nails brushing over my bared skin.

I held on for dear life and burrowed my face into Angelus’s arm; and I kept my determination not to whimper, all the time that foul white slug was hammering into me with a savagery that outdid anything Angelus had ever attempted. Even though it felt like a branding iron was being forced further and further inside, and I could feel the blood and come starting to trickle down my legs. Even though the pain and humiliation built up with every inhuman thrust. It seemed to go on for ever.

Then abruptly it stopped, and Angelus’s weight was lifted off me and the arm withdrawn, and I pushed myself up shakily and pulled up my trousers. I was only four.

‘What is your name?’ the sing-song voice asked cruelly.

I turned round slowly, keeping my eyes lowered so he would not see the hate in them.

‘William of Aurelius, childe of Angelus,’ I said. And I have no doubt it is entered as such in some sodding stock-book somewhere: written in blood with a black ravens feather quill, I expect.

I heard a low chuckle in response. ‘Oh yes. You are a childe of Angelus. A fine little toy bantam. So… Leave him here, childe,’ he said to Angelus, and it was the only time I ever heard anyone address him as such. ‘I will break him in, over a year or two, and teach him the value of the blood of Aurelius.’

I couldn’t see his face. All I wanted was to see my sire’s face and know what he was thinking. But he had his back to me; those great, broad, black shoulders were all I could see, and his head slightly bowed in submission. And a scent coming off him like the night it had all begun.

Please Angelus… Please…

The bat waved a claw at me. ‘Leave us, childe.’

Angelus spoke to me without turning. ‘Wait outside, by the first torch point.’

I left without a second glance, my blood boiling with fury. And fear.

I found the torch point and stood and slammed my fist repeatedly against the wall until the blood started to run and I could think about that pain instead of what had just happened. Then I stood with my head buried in my hands for a long while and tried not to think about anything at all.

Eventually I looked down into myself for the still cold centre where I could lock all the misery, and I slid back into my proper face and lit a fag.

I was having a quiet smoke when another vampire came along.

He was a big bastard and he walked as if he owned the corridor. He stopped when he saw me.

‘And who are you, boy, that dares to act like a human in the Master’s halls?’

Well I’d had my fill of all this bull-shit. ‘My name’s my own bloody business. And I’d call them gloomy tunnels, not halls.’

He seemed genuinely appalled that anyone should address him like that and at a loss for words for a while. So I took another long pull on my fag and eyed him.

He seemed to recover. ‘I shall enjoy pulling you apart one piece at a time, boy. Do you know who I am?’

‘No. And take a wild guess as to whether I care.’

‘I am Praecepto, Master of the Novices. And you will shortly learn what it means to show no respect to your elders, boy, when I tie you to the wheel of discipline and crush your limbs one by one. By what right are you in this place?’

‘Cos I’m waiting for my sire.’

‘Your sire? Ah, I know who you are: you are the childe Angelus brought today to be accepted into the order. You should be proud, boy; it is not every childe that the Master accepts. But clearly you have to learn the meaning of respect. You fledglings are all alike. I will teach you that respect, and for every drop of blood you shed you will learn to praise the Master’s name.’

‘Fuck off.’

He lunged forward but I ducked under his arm and drove the fag against his cheek. I even surprised myself at how fast I moved. He didn’t flinch though, to give him credit, he just tried to grab my throat. But throat grabbing had been one of Angelus’s specialities in the early days and I’d found a way to deal with it. Most people try to go down, which puts the approaching fingers at eye level. And that isn’t nice. I jumped up instead and kneed him in the balls at the same time; so all he got was a fistful of my shirt front and me bringing my clasped hands down on the nape of his neck as I came back down. He was doubled up in front of me, so I followed through the advantage and slammed my left into the side of his head and tried to cut his legs out from under him. Unfortunately he still had too good a hold of my shirt, and he managed to swing round as he went down and hooked my legs out instead; and I felt myself falling under him. If he pinned me, I was dead; so I threw my hand up right under his chin, snapping his head back, and though he still fell on top of me he was confused enough so that I could squirm out in time. Then we were both back up and squaring off.

This was serious now. He was no longer treating me as an insignificant fledgling: he knew I knew how to handle myself and he was concentrating.

I threw the first punch, he blocked, and I blocked his return. We sprang apart, then came in again. And again, and again. Swings, throws, blocks, guards, sweeps, every trick I’d been taught and a few I hadn’t, to try and land that knock-out move or get myself into position for a disabling bite. This wasn’t practice with Angelus, this wasn’t a pub-brawl with half drunk humans, or even a territory squabble with over-wrought pack vamps; this was me alone against a master vampire who wanted to kill me.

I loved it.

Like everything worthwhile in life, fighting is about two things: training and concentration. I’d had the training, which meant I knew what I was doing and had the stamina to take the punches and keep going. The concentration was all my own and always has been. Sex with Dru and hitting things are the only two occasions when boredom isn’t an issue with me.

Something new happened that night, though. Because whilst I was fighting at my best – blocking his moves, trying out my own, exploring for his weaknesses, and waiting for an opportunity – I was also aware of my surroundings and planning ahead. Never breaking concentration, but not just locked into the little immediacy of the fight. I knew that the corridor was still empty, but I was also aware of listening for any approaching sound, because if this fight became two against one I would have to change tactics and retreat. Yet this wasn’t a distraction, it was all part of what I was doing, which had just moved up to a higher level than anything I had done before.

God, I was getting good.

He made a mistake. He stumbled on an uneven patch of ground. He’d done it once before, after which I’d gone in closer and tried to finish the job with a leg sweep, but he was fast and righted himself in time. If he’d been a tad slower I would have had him that first time. Now he did it again, only I had seen it coming and was ready for him.

I took a step back and let him fall flat on his face.

Did he think I was a complete idiot? I can see when someone is manoeuvring to get back to a particular place, and when they’re fake-acting a stumble.

He caught himself and rolled, but I got in one serious boot stamp on his right hand, and I heard the little bones crack; and when he stood up it was a useless bloody pulp. He didn’t stop though, just shoved it in his shirt front a la Napoleon to keep it out of the way, and came back in before I had time to plan how to use this.

I admit that surprised me, so he got in a couple of hard lefts before I was expecting it. But I recovered and he was at a serious disadvantage now. He knew it perfectly well because he darted back and went for the only weapon within reach: the torch.

He wrenched it off the wall and held it out towards me in a text book example of the medium guard. Which means stuck out in the middle at waist height. And that told me a lot about his attitude to fighting in general, since some people won’t touch that guard with a barge pole whilst others consider it the only true way and the foundation of all else. Except of course he was forced to do it left handed which must have annoyed him.

It made no difference to me. I’m left handed anyway, but Angelus had taught me to fight with both hands because it is a bit like being a left handed bat at cricket: against some opponents it is enough to win you the game on its own. Whereas this guy was clearly someone who had never looked beyond his own bollocks of the ‘correct’ way.

Mind you I was still unarmed myself, so I was having an unpleasant moment. He gathered forward, again nicely textbook, except he was still thinking right handed so he muffed the foot work correspondingly which gave me time to dodge back. I really wanted a weapon though, to equal his reach.

I pulled my belt out, since it was the only thing I had. Another obscure advantage of having Angelus as a sire: you learn how to fight with a belt, since there is frequently one being waved around during squabbles. I could see his sneer of contempt at this unorthodoxy.

‘What are you going to do, boy? Whip me to death?’

If they are talking they aren’t concentrating, so I went in and caught him across the eye with the buckle end. He tried to bring the torch in on my arm, whilst it was extended, but I let go of the belt so the rest of it snapped across and slapped his face. And I ducked under and caught his wrist, whilst he still couldn’t see properly, smashing it back against the wall which broke the pine-wood torch in half, and the burning end dropped to the floor and went out. We were plunged into near darkness. He lashed out and kicked me in the back. So I had to roll away, which I turned into a somersault to keep my balance and when I got up he was fumbling for the rest of the torch. But I went for the broken stub faster than he did and then we both had one.

Again we circled.

I was feeling surprised that he hadn’t called for help, but supposed he must think it a matter of honour not to need assistance against Angelus’s fledgling. Something like that must have been going through his mind because he started to babble.

‘Do you think I am going to take this from you, you little tyke? A dung-heap rat of Angelus’s? Oh yes, I know your wonderful great big sire, boy. I held him down over a hundred years ago whilst the Master took him, the same as he just held you. A dung rat whose spawned another rat. Does it make you proud to think of your magnificent sire in that position, boy?’

I kept quiet. I know when to try and psyche someone out, but I also know when not to rise to it. I was watching his eyes, waiting for that flicker of preparation that would show he was about to make his move.

‘He thought he could stand up to the Master, the same as you think you can. Shall I tell you how long he lasted, boy? Five years he lasted, before he came crawling back for help. When she had abandoned him and he craved the power, knowledge, and the recognition only the Master can give.’

I was thinking, I just found out who taught Angelus to fight.

‘And he had to pay the price twice as high because of it. Him and every fledgling he sires, that is the bargain. Does that make you proud, boy?’

Thank you so much, Angelus. But I still waited.

‘He gives you up and he gives himself up, and Darla makes sure that he sticks to the bargain, the price of her own disrespect. Because Darla—’

I went straight in through his guard and the stake was in his chest whilst he was still speaking. ‘I knew there was a reason I hated that bitch,’ I remarked.

He gazed down at the stake in horror. Blood was gushing out on either side. ‘You missed,’ he gasped.

‘No I didn’t: I stopped. One tap and you’re dust, mate.’ I grinned at him. ‘Down on your knees, Mister Novice Master. And toss that stick away.’ And he dropped and threw away his stake, because with the slightest pressure from me he would indeed be powder.

‘If you kill me they will hunt you down in every corner of the globe,’ he spluttered, pink foam flecking his lips as he spoke. Actually he had a point, and I could hear approaching footsteps.

‘Well you know, I was brought up to not kill my own kind,’ I said. ‘Which I’m guessing nobody ever taught you. Only now I’m thinking maybe it’s actually just a guideline. So why don’t you clear off down that tunnel, real fast, and save me the moral dilemma, mate.’ He nodded his head dumbly. ‘And when anybody asks, tell them that you got beaten up by a nasty big bad vampire, called Spike. Say it.’

‘Spike,’ he snarled. Though I somehow doubt he ever told anyone.

I pulled the stake out and stepped back, and with a growl of rage he limped off as fast as he could.

‘Keep from boasting as it not only shows weakness of mind, but generally ends in disgrace,’ I quoted after him. Because sometimes I did remember the sayings Angelus taught me. ‘Which is a load of bollocks, mind,’ I added.

A few seconds later Angelus turned up.

‘What happened to the torch?’ he asked. He was looking extremely cross and was walking with a marked stiffness that I didn’t choose to think about.

‘Some chap came along, pulled it off the wall and smashed it,’ I said. ‘Said his name was Praecepto.’

Angelus walked over and picked up my belt which was still lying on the floor, he brushed the dust off it and doubled it over in the old, all too familiar gesture, then let it dangle quietly ready at his side. ‘Praecepto. What happened to him?’

‘Oh, he got beaten up for not showing respect to another vampire. He limped off that way with a smashed paw and a hole in his chest about the size of this stake here.’

Angelus took in the bloody stub in my hand. Then he looked back up, met my eye steadily and ever so slowly a smile spread across his face. ‘You didn’t!’

‘I did.’

‘There’s my boy!’ He held the belt out, returning it to me. ‘Come on, Spike. Let’s go home.’

It’s nearly a hundred years since I last saw Angelus. That was on the night I killed my first slayer and he told me he now considered me ‘One of us.’ And that is a good memory, one of the best. It took me twenty years of hard slog to earn that comment and I’ll never forget it. Then he buggered off.

I’ve changed a lot since then. A hundred years of being my own master has done that. Hell, I reckon I could even take him now, if I had to. But it was the grounding he gave me that let me get as far as I have, and I haven’t forgotten it. Both the rough and the smooth. Maybe it would be nice to meet up again as equals and talk over old times.

Or maybe not.

But we’re heading for Sunnydale now, Dru and me, and they say that it’s a whole different ball game there. The hell mouth changes the rules entirely, you see. Energy you can ride on to cure my princess, and bewitched humans that don’t blink an eye if you kill them every night in the main street. And a slayer. I’m going to get me my hat-trick at last. Because there have been some bloody great moments in my life and two of the top ten have been killing the slayers; and I sure as hell want to add a third. But the first moment I had that was anything like that, the first time I was really, truly happy as a vampire: that was the last night of my first chevachee; when I beat Praecepto right outside the Master’s own front door. And I made the Scourge of Europe smile.