*TITLE:  The Heart's Filthy Lesson 1/18
*AUTHOR:  Mustangsally and RivkaT
*EMAIL: Mustangsally78@juno.com RivkaT@aol.com
*SUMMARY:  In 2001 the evil from 1936 has reared its ugly head, a
Nazi demon with an unpronouceable name and a vampire
henchman has decided to use Sunnydale as a recruiting center for
the disenfranchised and discontented undead.  How will Buffy/Spike 
and the rest of the Scoobies manage to consign this particular evil
back where it belongs?
Let us make it abundantly clear that the Nazis are the bad guys.
SPOILER WARNING:  Post - Fool for Love.  The bulk of Season 5 
Cheerfully ignored.
*RATING: NC-17 for violence & explicit sex acts (interetsed yet?)
*DISCLAIMER:  The characters are not ours and we would appreciate not
being sued.
NOTES: Idle hands are the devil's workshop.



The Heart's Filthy Lesson 1/18

"Shouldn't you be extinct or something?" Spike asked, and 
knocked back another shot.  

The Keshonte demon gave him a headachy look and got 
himself a little deeper into his own beverage.

"Speak for yourself, vampire."

"I haven't seen your kind in nearly a hundred years," Spike 
continued, swirling the Stolichanaya and A positive around in the 
highball glass,  

Sweet fuck, why was he yammering like a girl?   He'd wanted a 
drink, several in rapid succession, and not some escapee from 
Bullfinch's Really Big Book of Rare Demons at his elbow.  It had to be 
the drink making Spike so chatty.  He'd walked into the underground 
bar with the intention of getting pissed and staying that way for a week.  
He'd picked up some cash on an enforcer gig kicking ass for a little old 
demon from Pasadena.  Working that close to Sunnydale wasn't his 
idea of fun, but getting paid for tearing some bugger to bits was.  
Driving down Route 66 and converting lucre to liquor had been the 
plan, but a Keshonte demon next to him at the bar was rare enough to 
be interesting.

 

"I'm surprised you recognize 'my kind.'  Not many ever left 
Europe."  The demon's tone was hostile, but not overly so.  The 
tentacles on his head, thin enough to pass for dreadlocks in bad light, 
waved gently, showing that he wasn't in a dangerous mood.  

"There weren't many to begin with, mate.  Knew a few in 
Amsterdam, though, last century."

The demon grunted, and Spike decided he'd run out of nice.  
Waving his hand, he ordered another drink.  The barmaid was a 
slightly scaly lamia with big green eyes and big soft breasts.  He 
turned his attention away from her curves and concentrated on the bar 
top instead.  Women, couldn't live with them, couldn't be dead with 
them.  He'd spent roughly a hundred and twenty years, alive and dead, 
moping over one female or another.  Your problem, William-me-lad, is 
what the daytime TV shows call a cycle of failure, he reminded 
himself.  You only want the ones who don't want you.  Maybe he 
should try another therapist.  The first one had been tasty.

"They told me this was where all the demons come."

Spike looked up, distracted from his unusual depth of self-
analysis.  Now the Keshonte wanted to talk, now that Spike was 
settled in for a good wallow in self-pity.   He almost told the Keshonte 
to bugger off, but the blood-and-vodka combination swirling in his 
stomach relaxed him.  

"Oh, yeah, everybody comes to Rick's."  His Bogart 
impersonation, filtered through various accents, was so bad as to be 
unrecognizable.

"Rick's?  I thought this place was called Lovecraft's?"

"You don't get cable, do you?"  

The demon's expression was quizzical.  His kind had human 
eyes, warm brown irises trapped in a scaly pink face.  

"Casablanca?"

No dice; the demon continued to look blank.

Spike sighed, rummaged around for a memory of what polite 
conversation was, and remembered,  "So what brings you to the 
suburban wasteland?"

"What's it to you?"  

"You wanted to talk.  If you don't, fine.  Got some drinking to 
do."  His drink was clotting; he waved for yet another.

The demon hunched forward, obviously keyed up.  "I'm here 
looking for a Wirtschaftsministerium demon. Seen any?"

"That would be 'No'."

Which was a good thing since a Wirtschaftsministerium 
demon was only slightly less nasty than a wolverine crack addict in 
need of a fix.

"I have information that a vampire was trying to use the 
Hellmouth to raise the Wirtschaftsministerium."  The demon rocked 
slightly back and forth on the bar stool.  If he'd been a vampire Spike 
would have identified his tone as bloodlust, but that wasn't like a 
Keshonte.  The Keshonte were just another bunch of loser  human-
wannabes, swanning around Amsterdam reading poetry and eating 
pastry.  He'd heard vague rumors of some sort of healing powers.  
Spike didn't like healing, unless it preserved the food for later snacking.  
Wankers.  But maybe this wanker was a wanker with cash.

"I might be able to help you out, old son.  What's the story with 
this Wirtschaftsministerium?"

"He was blown off of this plane in a magickal accident about 
five years ago."  Damn, Spike *hated* the ones who put a "k" on 
magic.  It was so nancy-boy.  "But he wishes to return, and the 
Hellmouth is the best place for a remanifestation.  When he rises, I will 
be here."

"And what's the cagey bastard done to get your knickers in a 
twist?"

The Keshonte examined Spike, scanning his face with an 
intensity Spike found troubling.  The Keshonte seemed to be hunting 
for cracks in the infamous Spike façade, but since the Keshonte was a 
male of the species, it seemed unlikely any would be found.  "I'm 
Dracco.  You are?"

"Spike."

"No, really."

"No, really," Spike corrected him with an edge worn to 
sharpness from use.

"Spike, I'm looking for the Wirtschaftsministerium because he 
is a war criminal."

Spike barked laughter.  "Whose war?  A human war, a demon 
war, a war in this century, or from the beginning of time?  Demons 
have been doin' each other in since the first demon realized that he 
could smack another with a bit of rock.  It's not fuckin' worth it, mate."  
He leaned over until he was almost nose to nose with the Keshonte, 
"There's a Slayer within spitting distance of the Hellmouth.  Unless you 
got a pair big enough to deal with her, you better forget about the 
Wirtschaftsministerium." 

"I will never forget him -- Karl," finally, a name to cut down on all 
the boring Germanic syllables.  "I will always remember what 
happened to my people." Dracco showed Spike the inside of his 
forearm, the runes branded there.  "You don't see Keshonte demons 
because the Nazis destroyed almost all.  Most demonologists think 
we're extinct. They will be right, in two generations."  

"Those bastards were efficient."

Dracco knocked back the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth 
with the back of his hand.  His voice stayed low and intense and his 
brown eyes did not flicker from the vampire's face.

"Karl was part of the Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande.  He 
was their JagdKriegspfarrer."  The ridiculously long German words 
twisted something in Spike; he hadn't heard those particular syllables 
in a long time.  Americans with their acronyms preferred the sexier 
"SS," and left out the Death's Head part entirely.  "He ran a 
concentration camp near Birkenau for undesirable demons.  Keshonte 
wouldn't work for the Nazis, so we were undesirable. And, as you said, 
they were efficient.  The Wirtschaftsministerium demon known as Karl 
I have hunted since May 8, 1945." 

Spike, who could remember being impressed when halftone 
pictures started appearing in London penny newspapers, wasn't 
impressed with a mere fifty-six years.

"So how'd he manage to hide from you?"

"He's magically adept.  He's good at hiding.  And more than 
hiding.  Some colleagues of mine found him in Brasilia about twenty 
years back.  He tore them into pieces the size of postage stamps."

Karl sounded like he might be someone Spike would really 
enjoy killing.  Also Karl was a demon, which minimized the possibility 
of Spike's brain feeling like it was going to explode, and Karl was a 
Wirtschaftsministerium demon which made killing him even more 
attractive.  Karl sounded like a badass which made taking him out 
downright fun.  As a matter of fact, Spike was almost tempted to offer 
to take out Karl for free.

"You are talking to the right vampire, Dracco, I think I can help 
you out."

As she had so many times before, Fate stepped in and 
slapped Spike across his sharp cheekbones.  This time fate was 
looking like a succubus walking through the bar's front door carrying 
an infant's car seat in her shapely arms.  Fate was a bitch.

"Bloody hell," Spike breathed and moved to intercept the 
woman.

"This is not a good time," he told the creature in the baby seat.

"William, it's really nothing.  You're nothing," Marranzano the 
imp coughed and took a deeper drag of his cigar, "always broke, 
always in trouble.  I invested two grand in you and you're given me 
nothing but heartache and agita."

The Imp looked like a cross between a melted baby doll and 
Dennis Franz and was not on Spike's top ten list of favorite creatures.

"Shh, you're upsetting him," the succubus cooed and began to 
rub Marranzano's belly.

"Later baby, you're givin' me a boner, " the imp told her, and 
turned his pug-dog face back to Spike.  "I want my two grand, Willie 
and I want it by the end of the week or you're going to be perforated by 
something that started out life as a tree.  Capice?"

Marranzano began coughing and spraying Spike with hot imp 
saliva, which was disgusting even given Spike's flexible aesthetics.

"Two grand. End of the week."

"Two and a half grand.  Interest.  And don't try getting yourself 
killed to avoid me.  I'll just have your skinny vamp ass resurrected and 
kill you again myself.  Capice?"

"Unfortunately."

Marranzano and the succubus took themselves off to a corner 
booth and Spike slouched back over to Dracco at the bar.

"How much is he into you for?" Dracco asked.

"Two and a half grand."

"Right. You help me out with Karl and I'll bail you out with 
Marranzano."

"Sounds like a plan," Spike said, and they didn't shake hands, 
since a demon's promise is a demon's promise. "One condition."

Dracco's mouth twitched.  "There's always a condition."

"I want to kill him."

Finally, the demon smiled, and Spike was mildly shocked to 
see that his teeth were white and even, testaments to the power of 
orthodontia and bleaching.  "No.  But you can hold him down while I kill 
him."

"Right.  But you buy the next round."

Three double-rounds later Spike had decided that Dracco was 
the best friend he had ever had in his life, as he generally felt about 
anyone buying drinks after a half-dozen or so.  The next step in the 
inebriation process was the telling of truth and Spike plunged into it 
with the reckless disregard which was his habit.

"I saw one of the demon labs once," Spike said.  

Dracco's predicament had shaken loose the shattered glass of 
his memory and the shiny images rattled around his mind, a shimmer 
here, an edge there, a flash of pain in eyes, of blood on lips, memories 
that cut as they shifted.

"Were you ... a subject?"

Spike laughed into the A positive.  "They tried to talk me into 
signing up. I was more interested in the nightlife in Berlin.  You didn't 
get much more decadent than that."  Spike liked to tell himself that he 
was the model for the MC in Cabaret; it might even be true, since he'd 
earned a fair amount of useless Weimar cash in one of the clubs, 
snacking on unruly customers and terrorizing the girls into doing 
whatever management wanted.  "The SS liked having vampires; it fit 
the image.  The vampires liked the buffet.  I didn't want anything to do 
with it.  Never could follow orders."

"The lab?" Dracco prodded.

Carefully, Spike stepped around the broken shards in his mind, 
deciding what Dracco should see.  There were things that he didn't 
want to see again either.

"A woman, a vampire was with me at the time. We were 
making merry picking off the locals." The liquor smoothed out the 
edges of Spike's voice, returning it to the grammar and diction of his 
living life.  "It was a good time to be a vampire, so much chaos, no real 
rules other than Heil Hitler and shit on everyone else.  Snag is, my 
Drusilla was mad as a hatter when she was changed and changing 
didn't fix her, but she's got some other powers you might say - 
psychic.  You know Hitler was obsessed with the supernatural?  Was 
picking up every alleged magical object in Europe and hiding it in the 
mountains?  Of course you know, he probably boiled your parents' 
bones to see if eatin' you would transfer your powers, whatever they 
are."  He paused, but Dracco did not enlighten him.  

"The - what the hell were they called?  It was a nightmare."  He 
drank again and let his brain cells relax.  "Yeah, Schutzstaffel 
Himmelfahrts Kommandos  - say that five times fast.  The SHK were 
picking up demons and vampires as fast as the rest of the SS was 
making up shiny new decorations for their valor in terrorizing Jewish 
businessmen and raping their wives and daughters.  Another vamp 
ratted us out. Georg told his SHK buddies about Dru's talents, and 
they picked her up.  I went and got her out."

"What did you see?"  

He had to close his eyes against the memories.  Blood roses, 
blood rising like the tide, blood washing away the dirt of a thousand-
year reich.  "I saw too much," Spike admitted.

"They wanted to get the secrets of eternal life without the nasty 
demonic side effects," Dracco said, unnecessarily.

"Yeah, well, I showed them exactly what nasty demonic side 
effects look like, thank you."

And he'd spent the next day hiding in a warehouse sobbing into 
Drusilla's lap, demanding to know why she had done this to him and 
moaning about the awfulness of humans.  



The Heart's Filthy Lesson  2/18

Now that they were on the same side, Dracco was very chatty.  
Spike thought he might be lonely, in the sixth decade of hunting the 
demons who'd destroyed his people.  "I used to have real resources 
for this, you know.  We worked with the Israelis -- why do you think 
they were so effective?  They were very committed to the task.  But 
now the humans are all dead or dying.  On general principles, they're 
willing to assist in the destruction of any entity that was on Hitler's side, 
but it's not the same as it was when I could work with the men with the 
blue tattoos on their arms.  *They* knew why we had to keep going."

It had been a long time since Spike had that deep a 
commitment to anything other than himself and longer since he'd seen 
so much of a demon's emotions so close to the surface.  Humans 
usually wore their feelings around their necks like scarves for the world 
to wonder at, and Spike didn't think it was appropriate for the 
supernatural to do the same.

"Well, I'm all that you got now.  Unlucky bastard."

Dracco showed Spike his pretty teeth.

"What are you doing in this half-assed town anyway?"

"I'm an unlucky bastard."

"It's a woman.  It has to be a woman.  You vampires are such 
romantics."

"Well, there is one little chippie here I wouldn't kick out of bed 
for conjurin' demons."

"So, this ... chippie, what's she like?"

"She's the Slayer."  Spike got a kick out of the other demon's 
reaction: he twitched, then gave Spike the once-over, checking to see 
whether Spike was actually nuts.  "Yeah, she's a sweet little thing, but 
she won't have anything to do with me.  She only dates boys with 
*souls*."  He couldn't quite manage Darla's contempt for the concept, 
but he thought he'd conveyed the proper level of incredulity.  "It's all 
right though.  Plenty of fish in the sea."

"Ah, but some fish are tastier than others, eh?"

They shared a manly laugh.

Keshonte demons were known for their sense of smell and 
Dracco's nose drew them closer and closer to one of the many semi-
abandoned warehouses in the formerly industrial section of 
Sunnydale. There were lights in the ground level of one of the 
warehouses.

"No music, can't be a rave."

As demons, they had every reason to be in the area, so they 
just walked up to the place.  There was a big leatherboy vamp 
guarding the door, with swastika tattoos blazoned over now-
meaningless muscles.  Prison reject, Spike thought. 

"We late?" Spike asked.  He'd inferred that Dracco's 
commitment to subterfuge did not include conversing cordially with 
Nazis.  He just hoped that Karl's sycophants hadn't been studying the 
various demons Hitler had tried to wipe out, so Dracco wouldn't be 
outed.

"You missed the introductions -- but the Great Leader is just 
about to speak."  It took a vamp to get that worshipful, idiotic tone just 
right.  He held the door for them, and Spike gestured for Dracco to go 
first in case it was a trap.  As Spike passed the vamp, he staked the 
fellow with the stake he kept under his duster (no pun intended).  
Nothing against the fellow, except that he might be in the way were a 
rapid exit desirable.  

The good thing about dusting other vamps was there was little 
tidying-up required afterwards.  Brushing off the mortal remains of the 
vamp, Spike ambled into the warehouse with Dracco slouching 
alongside.  Sure enough there were some fifty-odd losers of the dead, 
undead, mortal and demonic persuasions.  A more pathetic group of 
creatures Spike hadn't seen since Gencon in New York in 1976 when 
Shatner locked himself in a hotel bathroom with a fire extinguisher.

At the front of the warehouse was a makeshift altar with the 
usual accoutrements of skulls, goblets, and candles.  Black candles, 
and Spike could smell licorice, which probably was not the mood they 
wanted to foster.  On either side of the altar were a pair of third-rate 
vamps wearing reconstructed Nazi uniforms that gleamed with 
polyester.  Spike remembered the smell of wool and blood from those 
days and realized that, no matter what the vamps thought they were 
getting right, they would never smell authentic.  There was a rumbling 
undercurrent of undead conversation and a shuffling of feet around 
some really ugly folding chairs.  

Folding chairs.  Ugh.  That was one of the problems that Spike 
encountered with younger vampires - the species in general had lost 
its sense of style somewhere around 1986. 

There was the sound of drumbeats -- recorded, Spike could tell 
-- and everyone quickly tried to line upp facist-style.  Straight lines, and 
even ones; Spike and Dracco got waved to the second row, where 
there was a gap.  They fit in, Spike on the very end and Dracco next to 
him.  The room held its collective breath, except of course for the 
vampires who just looked worshipful.  The drumbeats stopped.

A tall being in a long black cloak entered, carrying a candle.  
Spike couldn't see its face, though it was man-shaped.  The candle it 
carried in bony white hands threw dramatic shadows across the floor 
of the warehouse, and on the faces of the rapt audience.  It lit the 
candles on the altar until the flames seemed to dance in one 
continuous line across the table.  Spike couldn't help but shudder.  He 
was lucky enough to have avoided most of the centuries without 
electricity, but he'd heard stories about elders who got careless with 
fire, and he couldn't see why any self-respecting vamp would willingly 
get close when there were flashlights.

The figure turned to face the crowd, and Spike saw that it was 
wearing a silver skull mask.  Spike flicked his eyes towards Dracco, 
who gave a small shake of his head: No, that's not the 
Wirtschaftsministerium.  

It -- he -- began to speak, and his voice was compelling even 
filtered through the mask:

" My comrades! Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande! We meet 
here for the fourth time.  We have experienced in these four months 
the miracle of a resurrection of a defeated and demoralized and 
suppressed kind. Today this kind stands before us once more, 
restored in outlook and heart.  Each time we come to this city, we can 
look back on a month of work, but also on a month of 
accomplishments. 

"What a spirit seized our kind! How proud and manly it has 
once more become. It has overcome all the powers of destruction, 
collapse and dishonor, and has found once again the path to honor! 
Today we can again be proud of our kind! This miracle that has 
renewed our kind, my fighting comrades, is not a gift from Hell given to 
those unworthy of it."

The words had the ponderousness of a speech translated from 
the original German.  In fact, Spike could remember hearing 
something similar on the radio in the late thirties.  He and Dru had 
been holed up in an opium den, feeding on the slow-moving dreamers 
and sharing their hallucinations.  

Silver Skull picked up a human skull from the altar and crushed 
it in his hand.  The fragments drifted to the ground.  The humans in the 
audience gasped.  

"Now, the great transformation begins.  The first sacrifice is 
one unworthy, who we have cleansed, who will be our pathway to a 
greater destiny."

From the side, two costumed goons half-carried, half-dragged 
a young vamp.  She couldn't have been more than sixteen when she'd 
been turned, and she couldn't have been turned more than one night 
ago, from the confused look in her piggy demonic eyes.  She was 
another fake blonde, dressed in basic hookerwear, blue bra straps 
listing out from underneath her too-small pink tank top.  Spike guessed 
she'd been turned just for this ceremony, whatever it was.  Her face 
was switching from human to vampire and back, as if she were too 
frightened to control the change.

When she was in front of Silver Skull, the two Naziettes 
stepped back a little, each still holding on to an arm, so she was 
pinned like Fay Wray.  Naturally, she was none too pleased with the 
position; nothing good ever happened like that.  She could see the 
panting audience and, even though she had to be able to sense its 
lusts, for blood and otherwise, she still cried out, twisting her head to 
address them.

"Help me!  Please, help me!"  Her eyes locked with Spike's, 
and he had to force himself to watch Silver Skull instead.  This was not 
hard, because his next move was to reach out and plunge his hand 
into the vampire's chest as she screamed.  The hole in her chest was 
ragged, and undead blood leaked around the edges, clashing with the 
tank top.  Spike reached out and put his hand on Dracco's forearm, 
reminding the demon not to act yet.

Silver Skull removed his hand, displaying the vampire's heart 
on his palm.  It was about the size of a fist, with chunks of aorta and 
vena cava protruding like stubby fingers.  The vampire screamed 
again as her heart continued to beat, coating Silver Skull's hand with 
thick dark blood.  Spike could smell the peculiar dead/alive scent as 
large drops spattered the concrete floor.  He'd never drunk another 
vamp but Dru, but he could feel his face change and his fangs extend 
in desire.

Silver Skull worked the moment a bit longer, then raised the 
heart above his head and tilted it back, so that the blood began to coat 
the silver teeth of the mask.  Slowly, he squeezed, and blood gouted 
from the heart.  It must have been supernaturally linked to the body, 
because the amount pouring down over the mask, through the eyes 
and mouth, onto the hood and cloak, seemed unstoppable.

The heart burst with a wet popping sound, and fragments of 
muscle and gristle flapped out of Silver Skull's clenched fist.  The 
vampire stared at Silver Skull for a moment, shocked into silence.  Her 
flesh, alive so recently, was still pink and glistening inside, wrapped 
around her skeleton; Spike could see where Silver Skull's 
investigations had exposed her spine.  Then, heart destroyed, she 
exploded into dust, darkening the blood on the silver mask still further.

The crowd, as they said, went wild, roaring "Sieg Heil!" and 
other stupid Germanisms.

This was too much for Dracco, who roared a war cry of his 
own and pulled out a short thick sword and a pistol.  Spike was 
impressed by the pistol; too many demons were still living in the 
fourteenth century.  He was less than pleased by the strategy, seeing 
as how there was none.  But with Dracco chopping off arms and legs 
like he wanted to make a bouquet, Spike decided to follow along.

The first few moments were perfect, delectable chaos.  The 
crowd hadn't quite figured out that Dracco was not part of the show, 
and Spike was able to stake three vamps before he encountered a 
bleeding human.  Unthinking, he reached out for a mid-battle snack, 
and nearly fell over with the force of the headache.  When his vision 
cleared, there were two ugly bodies between him and Dracco.  One 
vamp, one thing he'd never seen before but that reminded him a lot of 
Chewbacca.  He growled and grabbed the vamp, whose cheap 
uniform squeaked under his hands, and shoved it into Chewbacca's 
chest.  The demon went over like a big hairy tree, and Spike hurried 
towards the altar.   Dracco was already there, flailing with the sword, 
the gun for some stupid reason back in his waistband.  He kicked over 
candles and chalices full of blood as he advanced on Silver Skull.  The 
only thing Spike could do was keep the others back as the showdown 
began.  Fortunately that wasn't hard because mystic freaks like Nazis 
had a thing for mano-a-mano, no matter how much more sensible 
overrunning the outnumbered would be.  All it took was a nasty glare 
and a shrug, as if to imply that, if Silver Skull couldn't handle a 
Keshonte, what kind of leader was he anyway?  

Silver Skull swept out a long leg and knocked Dracco over.  But 
Dracco rolled towards him, tangling legs and robe together so that 
Silver Skull fell on top of him.  They were punching and thrashing as 
Dracco tried to get a decent angle with the sword.  Smoke was 
beginning to rise from behind the altar, where some of the candles had 
gone over.  The struggling forms grew even more indistinct, as if they 
were merging through the force of mutual hatred.  A bony hand 
extended out of the fray and grabbed at something on the altar.  Spike 
realized that it was a knife as the hand raised it high above the 
squirming bodies, impossibly high, and just then Dracco's tentacles 
ripped the silver skull from Silver Skull and Spike could see his face.

The vampire had a round, pleasant face, or it would have been 
apart from a scar from his left temple to his nose, destroying the 
bourgeois symmetry, the plumpness that smoothed out any lines.  His 
one remaining eye gleamed absinthe-green from the fire now flowing 
around the altar.

"Georg," Spike breathed, not even meaning to say it aloud.

Georg plunged the knife into Dracco's side, and the Keshonte 
screamed, a high warbling sound like a teakettle.  Spike leapt onto the 
altar, ignoring the fire, seeing only Georg and a room five decades old.  
At his feet Dracco was still screaming.

Spike had heard it said that people who killed for revenge 
wanted their victims conscious, so they'd know whodunit.  He didn't 
care; he was going to stake Georg from behind.  But the vampire had 
always had an eye for the main chance, and he pulled the knife from 
Dracco's guts and whirled to face Spike.  Spike's fangs were fully 
extended, borrowed blood roaring for vengeance within him, a stake in 
each hand.  Georg's gnarled face was wary but lacked a spark of 
recognition, which annoyed Spike into a flash of good sense.  Instead 
of moving, which would let Georg set the order of battle, he stood and 
waited for Georg's attack.

In the recesses of the warehouse, something exploded.  Spike 
did not blink against the hot smoky wind that buffeted them.  Georg 
looked him over, evaluating his stance.

"Spike."  Even with the scar and the black socket where an eye 
should have been, Georg managed a heil-fellow-well-met smile that 
belonged in a corner pub rather than a Nazi meeting hall rapidly going 
up in flames.  "Small world, isn't it?"

Then Georg did a backflip and disappeared into the flames 
rising around them.

"Bugger!"  Spike considered following, but he only liked 
shooting flames when they came from his lighter, and these were 
growing out of control.  Staying in the warehouse, even for a fight, was 
just volunteering to become a charcoal briquette.

Beside him, Dracco wheezed and tried to stuff his insides back 
inside.  Spike shrugged and picked him up, heading to where he'd 
seen some windows on the way in, just in case something nasty was 
waiting at the main exit.  His boots did a Ginsu on the boards blocking 
the windows, and he kept his balance with Dracco-bits hanging out all 
over him very well if he did say so himself.  As they cleared the sill, 
something large inside the building exploded, and Spike had to roll 
himself around Dracco so that he'd hit the ground first, avoiding further 
damage to the Keshonte (and the attendant stains on his prized 
leather coat).

When he was able to stand again, Spike half-carried, half-
dragged Dracco back to the car.  "You're going to be all right," he said, 
not knowing why he bothered.  

The Keshonte blinked up at him and wheezed like a cat toy.  
"You know I'm not."

"I know a couple of witches, they'll fix you right up."

"No, I have no control over my own time."  What the hell does 
that mean, Spike thought, but then they were at the car and he was 
struggling to get Dracco in, wincing at the green ichor that slopped on 
the seats.  The car had seen worse, though not recently.  "You are a 
good man, Spike."

"Bugger that.  I'm just in this for the killin'.  Of which there was 
lots."  He tugged the seatbelt around Dracco, trying not to hit any of the 
wounds.

Dracco's gun was still stuck in his waistband.  Spike pocketed 
it for future use.

"I know the truth.  I want to help you with your problem."

"My problem?"  Could Dracco have guessed about the implant 
and why Spike needed a nonhuman to battle?

"The woman ... the Slayer."

"Don't worry about that."

But Dracco was off in his own world, mumbling to himself.  
After a while, Spike noticed a reddish glow surrounding Dracco's body, 
which he tried to ignore while driving.  A few wispy tendrils of the red 
haze touched him, smelling of incense and peppermints, but he didn't 
think they were dangerous.

"They shall not forget," Dracco whispered.

Dracco died as he slung the car into the handicapped parking 
slot by the magic shop.

Oh hell.  Oh bloody hell.

Spike sat in the car a moment, feeling vaguely ill and trying to 
figure out how to dispose of the body.  Blithe humans bumbled in and 
out of the magic shop while he sat and nursed his growing nausea.  
He decided that Giles had really gone to far with the neon sign at the 
moment that he decided he was going to throw up.  And he did, into 
the back seat, with a spectacular wave of blood that would have killed 
a human.  It just made Spike feel even more sick.  He grabbed at the 
door handle to get the hell out of the car, but his blood-wet hand 
merely slipped from the chrome and left marks on the upholstery.  He 
could hear the beating of his heart as he fell into it.

The Heart's Filthy Lesson 3/18



"I want to go out and meet all the pretty people," Drusilla had 
said.  Sixty years in, and he still wasn't used to her childish diction.

"It's day, love, best we wait a few hours."

"Are you denying this wonderful creature her slightest whim?"  
The hail-fellow-well-met voice from behind made Spike rise and turn, 
snarling, to confront its source.

"What's it to you, mate?"  

The tawny-headed vampire stood as straight as if a witch had 
stuffed her broomstick up his ass.  Only the smug smile on his face 
kept him from looking like a mechanical soldier.

"Ooh, so pretty," Drusilla said, reaching out a long finger to 
stroke the jagged silver lightning flashes on his uniform collar.  "And 
look at the lovely skulls!"

He smiled down at her, leaf-green eyes dancing merrily.  
"Lovely skulls indeed, madam.  And you are?"

She settled her wrap around herself and looked down coyly.  
Spike put his arm around her shoulders, and she obligingly leaned on 
him.  "I'm Spike, this is Dru, what the bloody hell is it to you?"

"I'm Georg," he said, bringing Dru's hand up to kiss it.  When 
she retrieved it, there were two puncture marks, still bleeding, and she 
giggled.  "You're quite a poet, Spike."

Oh, that was really too much.  He snarled and disentangled 
from Dru, but Georg stepped back and shook his finger, tsking.  
"Really, there's no need to get upset.  I've heard many good things 
about the two of you.  You look like good solid Aryan stock, the kind the 
Reich needs in its improvement efforts."

"I'm not so sure about this Aryan business," Spike told him.  
"Seems to me they're all just as red and runny on the inside."

"Well," Georg winked, "the humans are stupid about things like 
that.  But let me tell you, friend, the Nazis are the best thing to happen 
to Nosferatu since electricity replaced all those torches the humans 
used to keep handy!  They have plans to move the entire population of 
Europe into camps, where they can be controlled.  The cattle will be 
corralling the cattle, without any effort on our part.  What's more, the 
Nazis *adore* Nosferatu.  They offer us our choice of the lesser 
races."

Nosferatu?  The precious term rankled Spike down to his 
shoes.  This Georg with his berlinerisch accent, no better than Spike's 
guttural English one, and his fancy manners was nearly enough to 
encourage Spike to look around for something wooden with a point on 
the end.

Drusilla shuddered next to him.  "Oh, I can see the flames rise!  
The gold is melting from their teeth and running, running on the 
ground!  The sky is black from burning bodies, they burn so *dirty*, we 
can dance and the terrible sun cannot see us at all!"

"Sorry," he lied.  "I think we'll just sit this one out."

"Your choice.  But if you or your pretty lady want to get in on the 
ground floor, you just come see me at local Party headquarters."

As he left, Drusilla began singing a song about skin, and soap.

****

It was a hangover.  He knew it was.  It was the vile twice-as-
bad-second-hand-hangover he always got from draining drunks. Bad 
blood, less oxygen, fewer nutrients, less power, one hell of a buzz and 
then a bitch the next evening.  But he hadn't drained a drunk since the 
sodding chip wound up in his noggin almost a year ago-and --- 
Dracco, Karl, Georg, and Britney Spears flooded back into his 
memory.  Spike groaned and tried to sit up.

"He's awake." 

"Is that a good thing?"

"Well, he could explain what he was doing in the Ford Explorer 
out front.   That would have been hard to explain to the parking police.  
No Mister policeman, I don't know who left the unconscious vampire 
and the dead demon in the handicapped spot, maybe it was a drive-by 
dead demon dumping."

Oh hell, it was that nit-wit Willow and her *special friend* Tara 
nattering on at him with their dippy witchy singsong voices.  It was a 
little late for any help from them for Dracco.  He shook his head to 
clear it and blinked at blonde and red hair, at the round eyes staring at 
him with mild puzzlement.  Inexplicably, he was glad to see them.

"Are you all right?"  He couldn't tell which one spoke; he was 
too busy trying not to see three of each.

"Oh I'm perfectly well.  When I'm perfectly well I always vomit 
blood and pass out in cars next to dead demons.  That's the picture of 
wellness for me.  What do you think, you silly cow!?"  The shouting 
made his head throb a bit more and he winced.

"He sounds fine," Tara offered.

"Where's Dracco?" he asked.

"Xander and Anya took him down to the recycling center and 
they're going to put him in the newspaper to steam burner."

"You're going to burn my friend in a rubbish tip?" Spike 
demanded.

"He's being recycled, at least.  Circle of Life and all that," 
Willow said. "Eco-Reincarnation."

"He was a Holocaust survivor, you git!  You burned him in an 
oven, you think you finished the Nazis' work for them?"  Willow gasped 
and staggered back.  Spike's headache was getting worse and he 
started to feel queasy again, as well as an unfamiliar heaviness in his 
chest.  Maybe he was having a heart attack.  Did vampires have heart 
attacks?  He'd heard about one vampire in New Mexico who had 
drained a human with food poisoning and had been sick for weeks 
after.  Maybe he had caught something from the bovine blood he'd 
been stealing from the butcher shop - mad cow disease even.  Now 
Dracco was being burnt up with thrown-out newspapers and junk mail 
like a sale circular from a discount store and the thought of it was 
making him feel awful.

"I feel bad about Dracco, I mean, really bad."

"Well, he's dead, it's natural that you would feel bad."  Willow 
was still pale, but recovering.

"Unless you were a vampire.  Soul is conscience.  Spike has 
no soul," Tara reminded them, "You must be feeling guilty because 
you think that there is something that you could have done to prevent 
Dracco's death."  

"Hang about there.  I'm not filled with guilt, thank you."

Head throbbing with his heartbeat, Spike sat up and realized 
that he was lying on the floor beside the counter at the Magic Shop.  
Fortunately, the sign was flipped to closed and there weren't any 
human TV dinners wandering in and out. All he needed was a little live 
food dangled in front of his nose and he would be off on one of his 
impotent rages again.  Instead, he rolled his neck to loosen the tight 
muscles in his neck and shoulders while Willow and Tara stared at 
him as though he was about to sprout an extra arm or two.

"I think he did something to me.  Before he died."

"Was it revenge?  Did you kill him?"

He glared at Willow.  "No, I didn't kill him.  Why would I punch 
holes in a fellow and then carry him here for your help?"

Tara went over to the book table and retrieved one of Giles' 
monstrosity catalogs.  This one was bound in what looked like ostrich 
skin, though it might also have been avian demon.  "The Keshonte 
demon's powers have to do with time manipulation.  If he did 
something to you, it must have to do with time."

"Do you feel older?  Or younger?" Willow asked perkily, 
hopping from one foot to another.  Lesbianism and research 
challenges really agreed with her.

"I feel *vile*," he explained.  "I ... it's like I don't want to think 
about Dracco bein' dead, but I can't stop.  I keep thinking I should have 
--"

"Sounds like guilt to me.  Not time manipulation."

Tara tugged at Willow's poofy fake-Indian shirt and they had a 
whispered consultation.  He would have tried to listen in, but he didn't 
feel it was worth the effort.

"We're going to try a little spell," Willow said.  

"Do I need to get up and run?"  He wasn't fully recovered from 
Willow's last adventure.

"No!"  For someone so socially awkward, she really didn't know 
when embarrassment would be appropriate.  "This is just a spell we've 
done before.  Actually a variant.  And it's going to work this time, 
'cause Tara isn't going to screw it up on purpose."

Spike rubbed his aching head.  "Just give me a few minutes 
and I'll leave you to it."  But he was too dizzy to stand.  Even leaning 
against the counter took all his strength, and the dull snuffling of their 
motion and chanting from the depths of the shop lulled him into 
complacency.

Tara came bounding up to him.  "We figured it out.  I think.  
What I think the Keshonte demon did was use time manipulation to 
resurrect your soul.  They can do it to replace damaged limbs or 
eyesight or things like that, and it stands to reason they can heal souls 
too."

"That's stupid!  Vampires don't have real souls, they have 
demon souls, except for Mr. Bloody Intense and Silent."  Spike 
struggled to his feet, with the counter in a supporting role, in order to 
get some dignity back.

"Angel is different --" Willow had her hand on Tara's shoulder, 
so the two could present a unified front.

"So I've heard," he drawled, heavy on the irony.

"Look, how much do you know about vampire demonology?"

"How much do you know about how your insides work?" he 
snapped back at her, stuck  suddenly into a flash of pulling ropes of 
entrails from a fortuneteller's stomach -- Dru had said that if the girl got 
such messages from chicken guts there must be much more wisdom 
inside her, but the silly wench had died before giving any insights.  He 
felt nauseous, and furious.

"Off-topic," Willow shook her head as Tara continued, "Look, 
when a vampire demon enters a dying person's body, it comes from 
the netherworld.  Usually they don't have much personality, having 
been lolling about waiting for something to happen since, oh, the 
creation of the universe.  So the body's original thoughts and 
memories come along, only all filtered through this evil demon's 
viewpoint."

"So?"

"So the original soul is kicked out and goes to the etherworld 
like all the other souls of dead folk.  When the gypsies cursed Angel, 
the curse just went and picked a soul out of the etherworld, something 
that was hanging around, maybe waiting to be born, maybe just bored 
with the un-life.  Same thing happened as with the demon -- no 
particular thoughts or memories, so it glommed on to what was 
already in Angelus's head, only this time with a soulful viewpoint.  And 
then when he and Buffy --"

"So the old man's on his third soul, eh?  Bit of a slut, don' you 
think?  Three souls seems a little promiscuous."

"The Keshonte demon didn't work that way.  When I say it 
resurrected your soul, I mean it pulled your body's original soul back 
from the ether-world and rebound it into your body.  Once it's restored, 
that connection is natural, not magical, and you're stuck with it until 
death.  You can't even be revamped, because the demon already 
inside you won't let that happen."

Spike let this sink in and swim around in his brain.  He didn't 
much like the idea of having a soul foisted upon him without consent.  
Worst of all, it was his old, used, soul.  The soul that belonged to a 
milquetoast of long ago, a part of him that had ended with his human 
life.  What if that raving twit came back, what if he went all weak and 
wet again?  He'd rather be dead and in hell than be the pillock formerly 
known as William.

"This is not acceptable.  You have to help me get rid of this 
soul thing," he said.

"Maximum 'No.'" Willow said and stepped back a bit.

"Come on, girl.  No one opened my head so the chip's still 
there. I'm still toothless. "

"Even if we could-"

"This doesn't sound like a spell.  Not one that can be reversed, 
anyway,"  Tara spoke with quiet confidence.  From her, it was credible, 
maybe because he hadn't known her back when she was still worried 
about detention.  "It may be a curse or a geas, but it doesn't sound like 
a spell."

"So what do I do now?  Move to LA and start brooding?"

"We have to talk to Giles."

Speaking of pillocks . . .

Grabbing his coat from the counter, Spike pulled it on and felt 
the heavy leather enfold him like a devil's wings. He felt like himself 
again.  This made him feel only slightly better.

"Bloody useless the whole lot of you," he snorted.  "Couldn't 
figure your way out of a paper bag."

Taking that as an exit line, he made his way out and headed 
home to his crypt.



The Heart's Filthy Lesson 4/18

"Knock, knock," Giles poked his head around the decorative 
ironwork door of the crypt.  Spike didn't bother to look up from the TV 
set.

"Go away," he suggested.

As an Englishman, Giles found it almost as impossible to 
cross a threshold uninvited as any vampire did, so he stood in the 
doorway and peered around.  Spike reached for the remote and turned 
the TV off.

"Might I come in?"

"Suit yourself."

"I've been talking to Willow and Tara," Giles' voice trailed off as 
he stepped into the crypt. "Interesting what you're done with the place.  
Quite nice for a mausoleum."

"It's a crypt.  Mausoleums are completely above ground." Spike 
felt around under his chair for the bottle of vodka he had left there a 
few nights earlier.  "The rumors of my soul have been greatly 
exaggerated." 

"Spike - if you're just being coy."

"A soul.  You'd think I'd notice, right?  No visible manifestation.  
Take that back to the Scoobies and sod off, would you?"  He opened 
the vodka bottle with a fang.

"If you should develop a soul, it would change things."

"Look, been there, done that, not impressed." Chip or no chip, 
Giles was beginning to piss him off and he hauled himself out of the 
chair and advanced on the former Watcher, "Isn't there something that 
you should be doing?  Like looking something up in an old book?"

Giles straightened up and moved toward the vampire, caring 
not that a very old being was encased in what appeared to be a young 
body, and he spoke in his schoolteacher voice.

"Were you not so determinedly abrasive, one could almost feel 
sorry for you."

Spike was seriously tempted to fling the bottle at the Watcher, 
but it was his last bottle and it was full.  Instead, he slumped back into 
his chair and began to remedy the bottle's full state.  What was it that 
the world wanted to inflict a soul on him?  He gulped down an easy 
quarter of the vodka bottle and felt the liquid burn his throat.  
Theoretically, vampires weren't supposed to drink anything but blood, 
according to Stoker's infamous line "I never drink. . .  wine."  But that 
hadn't been the only thing that Stoker had gotten wrong.  The thoughts 
of the past day were whirring around his brain like errant fireflies and 
all he wanted to do was howl like a wolf in a trap.

"Save it for someone who gives a f---"

"Giles?  Are you in here?"

"What is this?  Bloody Grand Central Station?" Spike groaned 
as the Slayer walked in.

As usual, she was decked out in the latest in teenybopper 
wear, something strappy and filmy all gold and white and clinging to 
her hard little breasts and frighteningly flat stomach.  It was disgusting.  
She never failed to make his undead heart hitch in his chest, her spun-
sugar and marzipan outside covering the black iron and steel 
underneath.  All creamy skin and candy floss hair and sudden death.  
She had eyes that a boy could lose himself in for the better part of a 
month, and even with the vampiric overlay, Spike was still a boy.  She 
stopped and turned up her upturned nose.

"What are you doing here?" she sniffed at Spike.

"I live here.  Want a drink?"

"Pass," she said and turned to Giles, "Willow and Tara tell me 
that Spike has gotten a soul from a Keywhatsis demon. "

"Keshonte," Giles corrected.

"Whatever. So the soul thing.  Is this true or what?"

Spike was too entirely enraptured with the image of Buffy in the 
altogether to answer immediately.  She wrinkled her nose at him.

"Slayer, I didn't know you paid house calls."

"I'd say 'bite me' Spike, but you might misunderstand me."

"That I might."  Her hair moved with a perky life of its own.  It 
probably had its own dates and fan club.  

"He looks the same, Giles.  All mopey and ... worthless."

"Listen, if I want your abuse, I'll come beg you for it."  That was 
really too close to the truth, he thought.  "I don't feel any different."  
Except for the part where the thought of killing made him sick.  But he 
expected to have the bloodlust back soon.

"With the chip, it might not much matter," Giles suggested.  
"Unless the remorse overwhelms you."

Spike laughed and drank again.

"It will happen, Spike.  You will know what it is to relive all your 
murders, all your viciousness, from the perspective of an ensouled 
being."

"That could be fun.  I enjoyed the killin' so much the first time 
around."

Giles held up his hands.  "We might have an unprecedented 
circumstance here.  If Spike really has had his soul resurrected . . ."

"I told you.  No soul here."

"Methinks the vampire doth protest too much." Giles had the 
decency not to smirk at his own humor.

Buffy was walking the floors, sussing the place out for possible 
attack.  She wasn't paying him any attention, since he was no threat.  
"Can we check? Is there some way we can find out if he has a soul?"

"Tara cast her demon-sensing spells, that's the most reliable 
evidence we have at this point."

"It's bloody unfair, you make a decent financial arrangement 
with a bloke and he goes and throws a soul on you at the last minute.  
That is no way to do business," Spike complained and took another 
pull on the vodka, "Now could you two just bugger off and leave me 
alone?"

"We need to find out." Giles protested.

"You go find out, leave me out of it," Spike snarled and 
brandished the bottle at him.

"You're being unreasonable-" Giles began.

"Go away!"

"Spike, there is an opportunity here to study the essential 
nature of the soul and how it relates to the entire physiology and 
psychology of a vampire demon ---"

Spike's face burned at he felt the change move upon him.  
Fangs grazed his lower lip and he was out of the chair and moving on 
the former Watcher before it became a formed thought.  The air 
moved like water around him, and he knew that he was moving at high 
vamp-speed, blurring through time like a blade through the air.  The 
bottle shattered somewhere off on his left and he had his hands in 
Giles' shirt front and was shoving him up against the wall, his fangs 
extended and mouth opening to move in for the kill.  Giles' expression 
of frozen horror barely registered in the corner of his mind.

"NO!"  

And he was slammed backwards and into the floor, the un-
breath knocked from his undead body, his mind spinning like tires in 
the mud as he relived the last thirty seconds.  He had attacked Giles 
without premeditation, he had reverted to the lowest level of vampire 
reaction, he had been angry and hungry and had sought to get rid of 
the irritant and quench his thirst for blood at the same time.

No headache.

It was as though the chip was no longer implanted in his brain.

Well fancy that.

He started to laugh.  Soul or no soul, he was a killer again.

Buffy was bouncing on the balls of her feet with her little hands 
in fists while Giles picked himself up from the crypt floor.  Her eyes 
were flicking back and forth between Watcher and vampire as though 
she were watching from cheap seats at Wimbledon.  

"Giles, explain.  He just almost bit you nearly."

"What a revolting development," Giles sighed and stood up, 
rolling his head on his shoulders and stretching his back as though it 
hurt him.

Spike stopped laughing and lounged on the floor.

"I suppose it wasn't nice of me to frighten an old man like you, 
Rupert."

"Shut up!" Buffy snapped.

"It appears that the chip can't overpower his natural instincts 
now that he has a soul."

Spike rose from the floor in a fluid movement, aiming a 
predatory smile at Buffy.

"You know, I'm feelin' just a bit hungry right now."

Wrapped in his coat, he melted out into the darkness of the 
cemetery.



The Heart's Filthy Lesson 5/18

Spike made his way into the alleyway behind the Bronze.  It 
was last call, the college students wandering back to the dorms after a 
hard day of wasting their parents' tuition money and a hard night 
squandering their pocket cash on beer.  He lit a cigarette and stuck to 
some shadows just beyond the dumpster.  A blonde.  He really wanted 
a blonde that night; he wanted one down to the pain in the pit of his 
stomach.

Three drunken girls giggled out of the back door, flicking their 
hair and clomping like deer on their platform shoes.  Their skins were 
so fresh; they still had that new-human smell, a smell that was rapidly 
eclipsed by the familiar sweet smoke of pot.  So young, so cute, so 
bloody stupid.

He crushed his cigarette out underfoot and advanced on them, 
pulling a fresh one from his crumpled pack.  He smiled at them.

"Got a light?" he asked.

The blonde's head snapped around and gaped at him, decided 
quickly that he wasn't a cop and giggled.

"Guess so," she said and held out a lighter.

"Ta ever so," he said.

One of the brunettes cocked her head to the side and gave him 
a look of blatant interest from under her eyelashes.

"You're English?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"Been here long?"

"A very long time," he said and flashed her a ladykiller smile.

It took about ten minutes before he had them eating out of his 
hand.  It didn't take much in California.  The girls lost it for the accent 
and the bad-boy attitude almost as fast as they lost it for Ricky Martin, 
and he didn't even have to wiggle his bum to do it.  The two brunettes 
finally figured out that he was more interested in the blonde and faded 
back into the Bronze.  The blonde, whose name he carefully forgot the 
moment after she told him, had her tongue in his ear and his leg 
sandwiched between her thighs and was rubbing against him.  The 
poor thing was obviously unsatisfied by the resident athletic prats 
hanging about the University and was desperate for some kind of 
sexual satisfaction.  She smelled a little sweaty, but in a good, tasty 
way.

He bent his head down, felt his face flare hot with changing, 
tasted the salt on her skin.

And felt the tide of nausea, no the tidal wave of nausea, smash 
over him like - well, a tidal wave.  

The next thing he knew, Spike was half-sprawled on the 
ground, his hand clamped over his mouth, feeling as though he was 
about to spew up his vampiric guts.  Fuck.  The blonde hovered over 
him, her face registering disconnected dismay.

"Too much to drink?" she asked.

"Hmmmm," was all he felt safe enough to say without throwing 
up on her shoes.

"Ummm . . . Look, it's been real, but-" she scrabbled around 
in her purse, came up with a slip of paper and scribbled on it, "Call me 
sometime, okay?"

Again, fuck.

By the time he slunk back to the cemetery and to his crypt 
again, Buffy and Giles were gone, leaving no trace that they had ever 
been there.  Ripping off his coat, he dug out one of the medical supply 
blood packs from his stash and punctured the plastic with a fang.

Bloody hell, what good was being free of the chip when he 
couldn't sodding eat?  Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice was 
suggesting that he ring Angel and get some advice on how to deal with 
this whole soul thing.  He told the voice to shut its bloody hole and 
sucked on the blood bag in earnest.



The Heart's Filthy Lesson 6/18

"This is a whole bunch of not good," Willow offered over 
cappuccino at the espresso pump the next morning.

Seated across from her, Buffy crumbled her muffin between 
her fingers and sighed.

"This is a high point of badness.  We have Spike being Mr. 
Pointy Teeth again plus he has a soul which makes me think that 
killing him isn't---"

"Kosher," Willow finished for her.

"When Angel lost his soul, it was pretty obvious.  Spike is 
otherwise. It isn't much different except for the non-effective chipness 
of it all."

"In Advanced Psych they were talking about learned behaviors 
as opposed to personality traits," Tara offered between sips of tea.  "A 
personality trait might be formed in utero, as left or right hand 
dominance is, while a behavior is something that you learn as you 
grow up.  Like the way that guys like cars.  They like cars because all 
the other guys like cars and it gets imprinted on them.  Men living in the 
jungle don't know what a car is, so they don't like cars.  It's a learned 
behavior.   Now a personality trait is something like being a jerk or 
being shy.  No matter where you are you're shy.  You're shy in LA or 
you're shy in the jungle.  There are probably as many jerky people in 
the jungle as there are in California."

Willow frowned.

"Maybe not.  But I see your point.  If Spike's inherent Spikiness 
is his personality, he might have been just as Spiky back in the day 
and if he never became a vampire.  Soul or no soul, he's Spike."

"I'm not comforted by that."

"No, it's not helpful at all, is it."

"If we figure out how to un-soul him to make the chip work it's 
like we're turning him into a demon, which is really contrary to 
Slayerhood.  And I shouldn't kill him because he has a soul, but with 
the soul the chip is as useless as last year's Vogue." Buffy sighed.  
"This is a little out of my depth."

"Who wants to talk about Keshonte demons with your best 
friend Xander?" he asked and plopped down in the chair next to Buffy, 
slopping his latte onto the table.

"We were just getting bummed talking about Spike."

"Well here's something to brighten your day.  That Keshonte 
demon that Anya and I hauled away to the trash dump yesterday was 
carrying a couple of interesting things.  One of which was close to 
eleven thousand dollars in cash, which Anya wanted to keep.  The 
other thing was this-"

Xander pulled a leather-bound notebook the size of a 
paperback book from his back pocket and laid it on the table.  The 
worn pages fanned outwards and were filled with notes, drawings, and 
photographs pasted within.  "Seems like our mysterious stranger had 
a past."

"Are those spells?" Tara asked.

"No, they're not.  I stayed up most of last night reading this, and 
it's amazing.  That Keshonte demon was the Simon Wiesenthal of the 
demon world.  He spent his entire life hunting down demons and 
vampires who worked with the Nazis and killing them. It reads like an 
Indiana Jones aventure.  Listen to this," Xander picked up the book and 
began to read aloud, "Picked up Verteidigung's trail outside Jakarta.  
Three days journey into the bush.  Caught him after nightfall on the 
third day.  Cut out his heart and watched his body burn to ash.  It is 
just one name out of many that I can cross from my list.  All will be 
avenged."

"I didn't know that demons and vampires worked with the 
Nazis," Tara admitted.

 
"Can't see that making it into the regular history books, can you?" 
Xander put the book down and picked up his coffee. "The only problem 
is that he wrote about what he did after he did it, so he mentions hiring 
Spike in Pasadena to help him find something called Karl."

"And we can assume that Karl is one of the bad Nazi 
demons?"

"Well, he can't be good.  The Keshonte demon wouldn't have 
been after him if he was a good guy.  There's one other thing about 
Spike in here.  Apparently, the Keshonte demon was going to pay him 
to find this Karl guy.  The money is Spike's."

"Bet you had a hard time straightening that out with Anya." 
Willow said with a grin.

"Oh, I'll be dating the sock puppet until she stops sulking."

"To summarize, " Buffy began, "The Keshonte was a good guy, 
he killed Nazi demons and vampires and one of them must be around 
here somewhere because he hired Spike and brought him here.  I 
have to ask Spike for information about the Nazi demon.   I also have 
to give Spike money. And Anya is mad at Xander so he'll be 
experiencing secondary virginity for a while."  She looked around at her 
friends at the table.  "Do I have to mention that this is a bad hair day all 
around?"





There were red and black flags flying in the train station, and 
Dru shivered each time they passed underneath.  With his arm hard 
around her waist, Spike half-guided, half-carried her through the dour 
crowd of mortals trying to catch the trains out of Germany.

"Just follow the train all the way to the last stop.  Angelus will 
meet you in Moscow," he repeated for the millionth time since he'd 
found the bite marks on her thighs -- bite marks that hadn't been his.

No matter how much Angelus hated him, there was no way 
that the ensouled fool was going to turn away a damsel in distress.  
Imagining Angelus freezing his pious ass off in Russia while reading 
the telegram Spike had sent had almost freed his dead heart enough 
to laugh.  Angelus' curt  "YES. STOP" had been the welcomest thing 
imagined, even though it meant that he was now in debt to Angelus 
once again.  But it was a small price to pay for Dru's safety.

  

"What do you do when they stop at the border?"

"Show them my papers."

"If that doesn't work?"

"The gold coins."

"If that doesn't work?"

The madness brightened her dull eyes for a moment.  "Why 
can't I just kill them first?"

"Because if they find out what you are, they will send you back 
here," he explained and dragged her to the last train on the tracks.  "I'll 
be on the next train, right behind you."

He was lying.  There was a good possibility his plan could go 
wrong, as his plans tended to, and he'd be in the cleaning Frau's 
dustpan rather than on a train.  Swinging her up onto the train, Spike 
found that Dru's fingers were biting through the gray wool of his coat, 
hard enough to break the skin.

"Come with me, the train carries death like packages."

"I'll be along shortly," he kissed her forehead and gave her the 
best fake smile that he could, "Be a good girl and don't eat too many of 
the passengers."

He thought he heard muffled moaning from a thousand throats 
as the train pulled out of the station, but it may have been from his own 
heart.

Spike killed an SS officer and took his uniform and papers to 
get in to Party Headquarters.  He could have killed a brownshirt, but 
the SS uniforms were so much better-looking, and if he couldn't exact 
vengeance while looking good, there almost wasn't a point.  The big 
black coat was a good thing.  It fluttered heavily around him as he 
stalked through the front doors and a minion Heil'ed him en route.  
Georg's office was on the third floor.  Through the glass door, Spike 
could see him bent over paperwork.  Paperwork!  Vampires filing 
reports was unnatural.  The Nazis had taken all the fun out of random 
killing.

Behind him, Spike heard the moan of a human not quite dead 
yet.  Reflexively, he wiped his lips.  Wouldn't do to talk to Georg with 
someone stuck in his teeth.

The doorknob squeaked as he turned it.  Georg looked up.  
Surprise flickered across his round, pretty-boy face and then was 
sucked into oblivion by his practiced welcoming smile.  "William the 
Bloody!  Come to join us?"

"Not Bloody likely."  Georg's hands were lost behind the stacks 
of paper; he could have a stake, or even a gun for the good it'd do him.  
"You told your goosestepping friends about Drusilla."  

"It's well known that she has weird powers," he said 
reasonably.  "She tells the fortune of every Nosferatu she sees."

Spike was tired of explanations, so he jumped onto the desk 
and kicked Georg in the face.  The vampire was already rising, a silver 
flask in his hand, and his chair crashed to the floor behind them.  
Georg staggered back and managed a vicious punch that caught 
Spike in the sternum.  Now they were both in the narrow space 
between the desk and the back wall of the office, struggling.

"There's no need for this," Georg said, his face close to 
Spike's.  "Drusilla's got enough in that mad head of hers to go around."  
Spike snarled and headbutted him.

The flask couldn't be good news.  Spike slammed Georg's 
hand against the wooden wall, trying to get him to drop it.  A picture of 
Georg shaking the Fuhrer's hand in front of a platoon of troops 
crashed to the ground, goldleaf frame cracking, as they careened into 
a filing cabinet.  Papers swirled around them like angry ghosts -- lists 
of names, train schedules, maps.  Georg kicked Spike in the stomach, 
pushing him back into the cabinet again, and Spike felt several ribs 
crack.

He whirled and kicked Georg in the side, then followed up with 
a fury of punches driving the vampire into a corner.  Georg was still 
fiddling with the flask, trying to open it.  Spike saw the silver top spin off 
just in time to drive the heel of his hand into Georg's shoulder.  A clear 
liquid arced out of the container, splashing across Georg's face.

The vampire screamed as his skin began to blister and 
blacken, crumpling like paper in fire.  Holy water, Spike reckoned, and 
pulled back.  He could hear cries from outside -- his handiwork had 
been discovered.  He could stake Georg, but it might make more 
sense to let the youngster live out his undeath as a hideous cripple, so 
that when other vamps saw Georg they'd whisper Spike's name.

"You shouldn't take what don't belong to you," he told Georg, 
whose hands were clawing desperately at his face, and turned to face 
the humans outside.

The first human through the door left a big red stain on the rug.



The Heart's Filthy Lesson 7/18

"I have money for you," Buffy said by way of greeting.

Spike, who was shooting alone at a table, picked up his beer 
mug and saluted her with it.  "I been waiting years to hear that from 
you."  He must have an entire wardrobe of black jeans, black leather, 
and cheesy red silk shirts.  Never mind that the look worked for him, it 
still lacked the necessary variation that was the true mark of style.  
She wondered whether his underwear was equally monochromatic, 
then shook the thought away with a shudder.

"The Keshonte demon owed this to you.  For services 
rendered."

She held out the rolled package of money to Spike and it 
quickly disappeared into the inner recesses of his coat.  He smiled and 
flagged down a waitress.  "Buy you a drink, Goldie?"

"We have to talk."

"Something else I've longed to hear.  Two more of the same," 
he told the waitress.  He turned back to his pool game, which annoyed 
her no end.  She was going to set the agenda here, no matter what 
Spike thought.  

Spike sank a last shot and turned to face her.  "Social call?"

"The point, quickly.  Fangs off civilians.  Stick to the blood 
packs from the medical supply and we'll call it even."

He hitched a hip up on the edge of the pool table.  "Doesn't 
sound even to me.  What do I get out of it?"

Buffy took the beer mug from the waitress, sipped it and 
frowned at the bitter taste.  Maybe it was something that you got used 
to after you killed a few million brain cells.

"You get to live."

"Are you threatening me, Slayer?"

"Duh?"

Barking a laugh, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Erudite, as 
always."  She didn't know whether the smoking or the vocabulary word 
bothered her more.

"Bottom line time.  The Keywhatsis demon was hunting other 
demons - big-time bad Nazi demons.  He probably told you something 
about it before you let him get killed.  We want to take out the Nazi 
demons.  You have information.  We have money.  It's simple."

Hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, Spike narrowed his eyes 
at her through his cigarette smoke.  Well, she could pose as well as 
the next vain vampire, and she shifted her stance and crossed her 
arms in a way she knew made her look even cuter than him.

"How much money?"

"Four thousand now and five thousand when the demon is 
dead."

She thought that he choked on the smoke, but he recovered 
quickly.  "What the hell kind of bake sale is ol' Rupert running in that 
store anyway?  Is he selling any illegal herbs out of those big glass 
jars?"

From her jacket, she produced another paper package, bigger, 
heavier and more expensive than the last one. His eyes bounced 
between her chest and the cash.

"Nine thousand?"  It made her feel better that Spike was 
impressed too.  He tried to swing the pool cue back and forth 
nonchalantly and only managed to drop it.

"I can shop a lot on nine thousand dollars, Spike, and I hear the 
Mall calling me."

"Better hurry. Bebe might be having a sale."

She could admit, at least to herself, that Spike's ability to banter 
had probably saved him from Mr. Small Sharp and Pointy more than 
once.

"One condition."

She raised an eyebrow.

"There are always conditions."

"Ask me nicely, say please," he taunted her.

She considered the corny routine of throwing the money at him 
again.  His eyes seemed gray in the low light of the Bronze, gray and 
stormy, like he didn't understand himself either.

"Please, help us."

His fingers seemed very white and very bony when he took the 
money from her outstretched hand. He had, she realized for the first 
time, pretty big hands.  The thought disturbed her so she tucked it 
away.

After a brief stop for Spike to deposit his cash in his cache (the 
Mellon family mausoleum), he led Buffy off to the burned warehouse 
where he and Dracco had encountered the Nazis.  As they walked, he 
gave her a brief outline of events: Georg killing the girl-vamp, Dracco 
attacking, the escape.  She had the feeling that he hadn't really killed 
seven at one blow; more likely he'd just slunk out while no one was 
looking.  

When they arrived at the warehouse, the walls were black with 
fire and the windows were empty eye sockets looking out into the 
night.

"Nice," she commented and stepped over some blackened 
cinderblocks that seemed to have exploded from the warehouse.

"Well I only take girls to the very best places."   He looked 
around, sniffed.  She could smell old blood, a truly lovely Slayersense, 
but nothing smelled fresh.  "They've moved somewhere.  I don't 
imagine that they'll be coming back here any time soon."

"Thank you, that information was so useful."  

"You wouldn't know what to do with useful information if I drilled 
your skull and poured it in."

Deal or no deal, Buffy took the opportunity to haul off and land a 
swift one straight to Spike's nose.  He bounced to the side and 
grabbed at his face.

"Gob, enough with that, all ride?" he snapped in a clogged 
voice. "Come up with something more original."

"What would a Keywhatsis demon be doing in Sunnydale?  
What would he be hunting?  What was going to happen here, Spike?  
And don't waste any more of my time!"

She glared at him while Spike wiped blood from his nose and 
unwillingly wiped it off on his black jeans.  "The problem with you 
young Americans is that you have no concept of history beyond the 
founding of MTV."  He spat blood into the night air.  "Horrible things 
happened not so long ago that everyone wants to cover up."

"Like vampires?"

"Like humans worse than any vampire.  Hitler was responsible 
for millions of deaths in a few short years, which puts his kill ratio far 
and above any master vampire that ever lived.  He had all kinds of 
humans - Jews, Romany, Catholics, mentally and physically deficient, 
homosexuals, and anybody who looked sideways at a swastika -- put 
to death. He summoned demons to enhance his powers, he tried to 
co-opt vampires - he wanted to make the perfect undead soldier." 

The mist that came in from the ocean began clogging up the 
areas between the surrounding trees, low to the ground, like 
something in a dream.  All Buffy could do was stand and listen to the 
tale as the hackles started rising and dancing around on the back of 
her neck.

"The Nazis captured Dru and tortured her in one of their 
underground bunkers.  I fought my way in and out.  The blood was an 
inch deep on the floor before I finished."  He was looking in Buffy's 
direction, but he couldn't see her.  "Dru was tied down like a 
madwoman, and her eyes were like the Hellmouth itself.  They brought 
her things to read - pieces of jewelry, a gun, and someone's skull, as 
if her gift wasn't as mad as she was."  He stopped and drew a long 
breath.  He didn't need the oxygen; he needed the pause.

Buffy couldn't move, stuck somewhere between feeling sorry 
for him for the pain of the past and wanting to punch him in the nose 
again for making her feel sorry for him.

"They had gotten vampires to sire other vampires, kept the new 
ones locked up and starved for blood.  Some had eaten away their 
own hands and feet because they were so hungry.  I turned them 
loose on the 'scientists'."

The moon was coming into view behind the warehouse, 
lighting the broken windows like a dollhouse.  Standing in front of a 
window, Spike turned into a solid silhouette, and she could no longer 
see the twisted expression on his face, only hear the pain in his voice.

"They vamped a fucking baby.   It couldn't crawl yet, it didn't 
have any teeth.  But it had the face, and the eyes.  You don't vamp a 
baby.  I got Dru out of there and we left Germany, went to Moscow for 
awhile.  Europe sucked.  There wasn't a safe place for a vampire 
anywhere until 1947."

A snowball had formed in Buffy's stomach.  Spike shook his 
head, and she could hear his long leather coat flap against his legs like 
wings.

"The vampire that Dracco fought, his name is Georg, he was 
one of Hitler's pets.  Georg is planning to raise a 
Wirtschaftsministerium demon named Karl."

"A demon named Karl?"

"Well, he's hardly going to be named Manuel, now is he?" 
Spike snapped.  "Karl was the one who gave Hitler his little idea about 
the Final Solution.  He gave himself a fancy demonic title to go along 
with all the other stupid Nazi pageantry.  Karl and Georg got history -- 
way I heard it, they got together at the Wannsee conference and 
slaughtered their way through the war together.  They must have split 
up to avoid the secret Nuremberg trials held for demons.  But demons 
forget, times change, their message can rise again in the brave new 
world of California.  All that you Yanks care for is spectacle, blowing 
the budget.  And Nazis give great spectacle."

"Well we can't let this Georg raise the Whoseywhatsit demon, 
can we?" she asked.  "And if Georg is a vampire, he must be staked."

"Georg is a master vampire as well as a warlock, he avoided 
British assassins for decades, and he's halfway to raising Karl who 
Dracco hunted for fifty-six years.  What makes you think you can do it?  
You and your pathetic little crew of losers?"

"We have to do it, Spike, failure is not an option."

"Get familiar with failure; it happens."  He rummaged around in 
his coat pocket for a moment, and came up with the big bundle of bills.  
"Take your money back.  I won't be helping you."

He lightly tossed the bills to her.  Buffy caught them with one 
hand and watched him turn to go.

"Spike," she called after him, "what happened to the baby?"

The wind rustled through the trees as he melted into the 
darkness, and his voice was barely louder than the rustling as he said 
three words.

"I killed it."

The Heart's Filthy Lesson 7./18

Nighttime Sunnydale.  Not exactly a happening kind of place.  
Spike leaned against a retaining wall near the center of town and 
considered his options.  He could go to Lovecraft's for a drink and try 
not to pick up another demon that could lay something even worse 
than a soul on him, he could go and tease the Romanian guy who ran 
the Quicky Mart after midnight, or he could go back to his crypt and 
see who was on Conan O'Brien.  None of the options was really 
appealing.  The image of Buffy standing in the rubble outside the 
warehouse was burnt into the interior of his brain like a cross. Damn.

A Ford Escort full of drunk teenagers screamed by.  Spike 
could smell the beer in their blood and his mouth started to water.  
Maybe he's just go back to the Bronze and see if his stomach upset 
had passed.

"Spike."  The voice grabbed him and whirled him around.  It 
wasn't a human voice.

A tall man was standing underneath a nearby streetlight, 
setting flame to cigarette.  Something cold and ugly started creeping 
up Spike's spine.  The man was a vampire, that much he could tell, 
and had something magical wrapped around him like a bad smell.  
The cold and ugly thing knocked on the base of Spike's skull and 
gained entrance.

"Georg," he said and assumed his toughest attitude.  "I should 
have killed you in Berlin."

Smiling, Georg snapped a lighter shut and advanced a few 
steps.  His hair was the same as always, sandy gold layered like 
perfect brushstrokes, but he had two glimmering green eyes and no 
scar.  

"I was thinking the same thing."

Throwing back his head, Georg laughed, a normal laugh, which 
stood Spike's fangs on end more than a howl of evil merriment would 
have.  He was holding his face together with magic, Spike realized, 
psychic plastic surgery.  If Spike had known Georg had the potential 
for such power, he would have killed him back in Germany.  Sixty 
years of running from all the people and demons who were still mad 
about the Nazi thing had obviously pressured Georg's powers into fine 
hard diamond.  The missing eye had been the only thing keeping 
Georg from looking like the sleekest burgher in town, and with the 
magical mask he looked like the president of the Better Business 
Bureau, the one no one could ever believe liked messing with little 
boys.  

Clapping his arm around Spike's shoulders like a long-lost 
friend, Georg pulled the other vampire close.

"You look really well, really, really well.  Seems like California 
agrees with you," Georg's voice dropped to a silky whisper, "Is it true?  
Are all the women blondes with long legs? Prone to opening them at a 
moment's notice?" His eyes sparkled with delight, like Santa Claus on 
acid.

"Enough to keep it interestin'," Spike admitted, worried that 
somehow Georg was rummaging around in his mind without letting 
him know - it was an uncomfortable kind of idea.  He shook off 
Georg's arm and stepped back to where he could keep a better eye on 
the other vampire.

"It's wonderful to be here, near so much demonic energy 
bottled up, just waiting for a Nosferatu with a vision.  *And* they have 
two hundred channels on cable!"  Shaking his head at the wonder of it 
all, Georg reached out and smoothed the front of Spike's duster.

"This is nice, did you get that around here?"

"Look, I'm sure you just aren't here to chat about the weather 
and my jacket-- "

"I've heard things about you, good things," Georg offered the 
pack of cigarettes to Spike, who helped himself, "I hear that you're a 
can-do kind of Nosferatu, that you've just about made this town your 
own."

"So?"  Despite his attitude, Spike's vanity spread its wings and 
preened.

They smoked in silence for a moment.  Spike felt creeping 
unease, as if he were at a car dealership, about to talk himself into 
buying chrome detailing and a ten-year maintenance plan.  

"Imagine my surprise when you were with the Keshonte 
demon-was he a friend of yours?"

"That's none of your fucking business."

"Don't you ever tire of being just a Nosferatu for hire?"

Georg's eyes gleamed in the streetlight's glow, and Spike could 
feel the net of the vampire's gaze drop down around him.  Not every 
vamp could bedazzle another one; it was a talent like painting or 
making really good Margaritas.

"If you've got a point, get to it and quit wasting my time."

Georg laughed his happy laugh again and the undead flesh on 
the back of Spike's neck crept uncomfortably.

"I think we can help each other out, here.  I need help rounding 
up all the Nosferatu over sixty years old, I don't want them getting in 
the way.  And they'll be useful in the upcoming ceremony.  When I 
raise Karl, you can name your price. If I remember correctly, you never 
could turn down a deal that would be to your financial advantage. "

According to the rumors back in Berlin, Georg had only been 
turned in the late 1920's himself, during the bad Weimar years when 
demonic possession might have seemed better than peddling your 
ass for a wheelbarrow of cash whose value diminished with every 
rotation of the wheel.  By getting rid of all the older vampires, the ones 
smart enough to survive a century of rapid change, and controlling the 
young, stupid ones, he was cutting out any serious competition.  Of 
course, that also meant that Spike was ultimately going to have to go, 
a prospect which didn't cheer him much.

"I don't-"

"You just think about it.  Don't make your mind up now, " Georg 
gave Spike a friendly clap on the arm, "I'll be in touch."

With that, Georg took himself out of the circle of light from the 
streetlamp and promptly vanished into the darkness, leaving his still 
burning cigarette on the ground as the only sign that he had ever been 
there.





The Heart's Filthy Lesson 8/18

"Right, changed my mind," the Magic Shop door banged shut 
behind Spike, "Georg's gotten on my wick.  You should kill him."

Buffy blinked, not really surprised, while Giles looked up from 
the book spread open between them with an equally unfreaked face.

"He thinks he can pay me to bring him Nosferatu  -- I mean -- 
vampires to sacrifice."

"So you're back on board?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah, but you still have to pay me."

"Tell us about the ceremony you observed at the warehouse," 
Giles asked.

Spike began pacing around in the open area in the reading area 
of the store, his coat slapping against his legs.  "I think it was a 
preparatory ritual.  One Nosferatu - fuck! One vampire is sacrificed in 
order to prime the mask.  Later, the wearer of the mask sacrifices 
more vampires, with lots of magic circles an' other paraphernalia.  I'm 
not too sure what the result is, because I was out of there before I 
heard the end of the story.  But I'm guessin' it ends up with the 
Wirtschaftsministerium on top of a pile of bloody corpses.  Those 
fellows generate slaughter like football players generate riots."

"Football players don't --" Buffy stopped, confused.  

"Never mind," he said, and grinned at her.

"I don't think we should pay him," Anya said primly from her 
perch on the sales counter.  "He has a soul now.  He should be doing 
this for the greater good."

"I don't see you volunteering *your* time here at the shop," he 
pointed out.  

"You're right.  Giles, we should all get paid overtime for this."  
She hopped down and came over to the table. 

Giles threw his head back and rubbed his temples.  "Anya, no 
one gets paid for fighting demons."

"Then I think we need a union...." The massed force of the 
glares from everyone else silenced her.

Spike tried to pitch his voice just for Giles.  "I'm thinking maybe 
one of your books has some sort of information about this soul 
business.  It's not cramping my style, but I'd like to know more."

"I'm a soul-man, da da da da," Xander sang, imitating Dan 
Akroyd's deep bass.

"Fuck off," Spike suggested.

"Sensitive now, aren't we?"

"Was it the fuck or the off givin' you problems?"

Anya deftly stepped between Xander and Spike, forgetting once 
again that she was no longer a vengeance demon.

"Transitions are rough.  I know that.  So maybe if you just 
enhanced your coolness, it would go easier for you?"

Smiling, he snapped his teeth at her, "It doesn't get any easier 
than this."

Giles tugged at his glasses.  Spike wanted to cut his hands off; 
that would stop that particular tic.  "This whole progression of events is 
amazing.  Do you know you've answered centuries of speculation 
about the impact of the soul on the physical brain?"

Buffy looked confused, flipping a stake idly from one hand to 
another.  Her hands were capable of such precision.  Imagining them 
on a male body, on his body, kept him tossing and turning during the 
day.  And now he was undead and ensouled and still all alone --

Anger boiled low in his chest.  The others were smiling at him 
as though he were a small dog that had done a particularly amusing 
trick.  Once again, they were thinking that he was safe.  First chipped 
and then re-souled like an old pair of shoes - as though the worst thing 
that he could do was hurt their feelings.  The hell with that, he thought.

And vamped, throwing an arm out to grab Willow who'd 
wandered in too close.  "The food just walks right up to me, beggin' to 
be eaten.  When will you people learn?"

Buffy went from indifference to rage before he blinked.  "Let her 
go."

With one arm around Willow's waist, he used his right hand to 
brush her hair away from her neck, a slow intimate caress that made 
Buffy's gold lame top shudder in sympathy.  He was counting on Buffy 
to stop him.  There was no way that he was going to go down in a 
nauseated heap in front of them, even if he had to let some fairly 
spectacular bullshit fly.

"But she smells so good," he said reasonably.  "Not as good as 
you, of course.  But hamburger's easier to get than caviar, right?"  He 
pressed his lips to Willow's throat, feeling the blood jump up to meet 
his fangs, and extended them just enough to break the skin. He felt 
slightly queasy but it was nothing that he couldn't control.

The sight of blood broke his hold on them, and suddenly Spike 
found himself on the floor, Tara's arms thumping uselessly against 
him.  She was keening and hitting at him with soft fists like an 
amphetamine-crazed rabbit, and he threw her off as Willow scrabbled 
away into some book-lined corner.  Tara quickly followed, and he was 
on his feet facing the Slayer.

"I hate to steal a line, but we've had this date from the 
beginning."

"I'm not the one who keeps breaking it," she said.  And it was 
true.  He'd been a coward for so long, hoping that things might 
improve.  But the soul wasn't going to go away.

"You've passed up so many chances, Slayer.  If you let me live 
now people will start to talk."  He could smell her, some ten feet away.  
She smelled like milk and honey.  The beads on what passed for a 
blouse glimmered in the dark light of the room.

She snarled, the cute curl of her lip detracting somewhat from 
the threat.  "It's a real soul?" she asked, obviously directing the 
question at Giles as she stared at him.

Spike answered.  "Yeah, the full luxury package with the CD 
changer.  Even got those trick Firestone tires.  The ones that go 
boom!"

"I don't want to kill anyone with a soul.  It sets a bad precedent.  
Am I allowed to kill him, Giles?"

"Oh, now you're taking orders again?  How decisive of you.  
Come on, Slayer, take some responsibility for yourself."  He feinted 
forward, and she spun and kicked like some demented wind-up 
ballerina in one of Dru's music boxes.  A lamp went over and 
somewhere something shattered.  He smiled, knowing that it would 
make her angrier.  "That's my girl.  Put on your red shoes and dance 
the blues."  His fist moved too fast for his own eyes to follow, and her 
head snapped back with the force of the blow.

But she was already kicking him, and he was slammed back 
into the wall, sliding down until his feet hit the floor and he swayed, 
already moving to her side.  "David ... Bowie ... you're ... not," she 
gasped in between punches.  He was at least as happy that she'd 
gotten the reference as he was to be able to dodge her blows, and get 
in a few of his own.

Hands from behind grabbed him away from the Slayer and 
threw him to the ground. Surprised, Spike shook his head to get his 
bearings.  But then Giles was kneeling above him, blocking Buffy.  
"Stop this provocation right now.  I will not let you manipulate Buffy into 
destroying you.  If your conscience troubles you now you'll have to 
make the decision to kill yourself *by* yourself."

Spike grinned up at his countryman.  "What makes you think 
my conscience troubles me, mate?  Haven't you met enough humans 
with evil hearts to know better?  A soul just means you have a choice.  
You know, humans hurt me worse than Angelus ever did, and he was 
a master of the demonic arts."

"Suicide by Slayer?" Giles asked, ignoring Spike's logic.

Buffy narrowed her eyes from where she peered over Giles' 
shoulder at him.

"You will NOT use me like that.  You want to kill yourself?  Do it 
off my clock!"

"ALL RIGHT!" Giles roared loud enough to make Spike's 
vampiric ears ring.

The former Watcher stood up and brushed off his trousers, 
"We can debate all this later on.  Just -- Spike, keep your fangs off 
Willow and everybody else until further notice or I will let Buffy stake 
you."

"I'm not an attack dog," Buffy groused and flung herself into 
Giles' chair.

Spike stood up and went to hover near the door, fiercely aware 
that he was getting a stereo glare from the witches in the corner.  

"This is important, and we can't waste time fighting amongst 
ourselves.  Willow and I have been researching the ceremony as 
Spike described it to Buffy.  We believe the most likely explanation, 
given what Spike told us about Georg and this Wirtschaftsministerium, 
is that Georg has recreated the Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande and 
is trying to raise Karl, the JagdKriegspfarrer."

"Gesundheidt," Anya piped up.

"These names are giving me a headache," Buffy muttered.

Giles looked in need of aspirin himself.  "As far as I can make 
out from the book that the Keshonte kept, the vampire summoning the 
Wirtschaftsministerium demon needs to be wrapped in the mantle of 
Totenkopfverbande in order to have full control over the demon.  The 
circle of power Georg needs to raise the Wirtschaftsministerium is 
created through the sacrifice of twenty vampires."

"You're just showin' off because you can pronounce those 
names," Spike taunted Giles.

"In any event, they can't have the mantle.  We have to get it 
first.  The Keshonte indicated that he thought it was with a group of 
were-coyotes living in a freight yard outside Victorville."

"Oh yuck. Victorville."





The Heart's Filthy Lesson 9/18

"Don't talk to me," Buffy said and glared out the passenger side 
window.

"I wasn't," he said and pushed the Explorer over the speed 
limit, "I wouldn't waste my time."

"And you can also stop looking at me like I'm an Egg McGuffin."

 The illogic of it stunned him to silence and he goosed the 
engine up a few more miles an hour.

"Aren't you going a little fast?"

"Aren't you being a little bit of a bitch?"

"I'm being a bitch?  You snack out on my best friend and I'm 
supposed to be Miss Happiness?" she crossed her arms over her 
chest. "And why should I care about some demon that wants to kill 
vampires.  Makes my life easier."

"Start the wholesale slaughter of vampires and it's just gonna' 
lead to something even worse."

"And the wholesale slaughter of vampires is bad in what way?" 
she snapped and did a little nostril-flare to show that she was angry.

"Your an' my perspectives aside, it just leads to somethin' else, 
an' somethin' else.  Next thing you know, they start sacrificing other 
dispossessed minority groups."  He paused and collected his 
thoughts.  "All the vampires, all the demons, all the witches, all the 
Trekkies, and all the boy bands.  Mind you, the latter one might not be 
a bad thing."

"Vampires are evil, they kill people." 

"Yeah?  Got over that one pretty quick with Angel, eh?  
Forgettin' that he wasn't exactly a choirboy back in the day.  Vampires 
are predators, and humans are prey, it's just a food chain, evil don't 
enter into it.  How you think that cows and chickens feel about you?  
Eat hamburgers, Buffalo wings, wear leather pants?"

Tight leather pants, he reminded himself.

Very tight leather pants where he could just about make out the 
non-existent line of the dental floss that passed for underwear these 
days.  Nice tight leather pants.

A piece of paper blew across the road.  In his reverie, Spike 
thought it was a cow and swerved.  Buffy yelped and grabbed onto the 
dashboard.  She continued to huff and steam for the remainder of the 
hour-long drive.  Spike chain-smoked and threw the butts into the 
desert outside, ignoring her glares and pointed throat-clearings.  It had 
been his experience that Slayers didn't live long enough to get cancer.  
The lights were bright and far apart out in the desert, and it was with 
many stops and turning arounds that they finally found the colony of 
abandoned freight cars near the skeleton of a once-thriving rail line.  

They exited the SUV.  "Listen, we might try a bit o' negotiation 
before you start your usual beatin'-things-til-they-squeal routine," he 
said.

Cocking her head to the side, Buffy considered him, like a 
golden eagle trying to decide if the thing on the ground was really food 
or just bait.  "You're different."

"Aren't we perceptive," he dripped ichor better than a chaos 
demon.  "I'm surprised that you manage a thought in that pretty vacant 
little head of yours."

Spike the macho and William the Bloody Pratt were doing 
elemental battle in part of his psyche and it was obvious enough for 
even Buffy to see.  Next thing he was going to be reciting more poetry 
and listening to Celine Dion.

"Not as Spike-y."

Pulling himself up to his full height, he sneered down at her, "If 
you think I've gone soft, girl, you better try to think again.  I'm more me 
than I've been in a long time."

"Meaning this is going to get royally screwed up?"

Spike opened his mouth and then shut it.  Arguing with Buffy 
was like trying to talk to a conservative talk show host.  He never 
understood her logic and all it accomplished was annoying both of 
them.  Instead, he made an "after you" gesture at the light coming from 
behind one of the boxcars.

The weres were human tonight -- good news, that, because 
their supernatural strength was slightly less.  They were sitting around 
a fire, the source of the light that had led Buffy and Spike to them.  
Something big was turning on a spit.  Spike tried not to look too close.  
He couldn't risk a return of the nausea just now.  One of them was 
plinking out a song on an untuned guitar; the others were engaged in 
desultory Spanish conversation.

"Que honda!" Spike called out.  "Puedo hablo con el mas 
chingon?"

He flashed them a gangsign he'd picked up from the Latino 
vampires he'd met in LA.  Buffy glanced over at him as though he'd 
sprouted wings. 

A girl who looked to be in her twenties, with hair curling to her 
waist, Frida Kahlo eyebrows, and the kind of dark smoldering eyes that 
gringos adored, detached from the group around the fire.  She was 
wearing khakis and an embroidered blouse that showcased truly 
impressive cleavage. For about two seconds Spike forgot Buffy 
Summers ever walked the planet.  She gave Buffy the kind of 
contemptuous scrutiny that blondes get from the greater nonblonde 
world.  

"La mas chingona, I'm in charge here, and humans aren't 
welcome."  She had a heavy Mexican accent.

Spike gave her a flash of vamp-face.  "Not exactly human, are 
we?"

Buffy got straight to business.  "We're looking for a mantle that 
has magic powers.  The mantle of, of, of -"

"Totenkopfverbande," Spike assisted, so they both glared at 
him.

"No me anden vacilando, and I don't know what you're talking 
about."

"It's important," Buffy insisted.  "There are some Nazis in town 
and they're planning on using the Mantle to raise a really nasty Nazi 
demon.  I'm the Slayer; I can protect the Mantle better than you can."

The girl snorted and crossed her arms over her chest, to 
Spike's dismay.  "No chinges con migo .You may scare vampiros with 
that, but usted no es nada aquí."

Buffy repeated the gesture.  "I guess we'll have to see about 
that."

"Matémosles," one of the other weres suggested, "Even the 
vampiro can die."

Well then, negotiations were over.  Nothing to be done but go 
along with Buffy.  "You know, I'm kind of in the mood for some Mexican 
tonight."  

The weregirl bared her teeth.  Even in human form, they were 
scary-sharp.  

"No estamos asustados de usted."

"You should be afraid," Spike warned.  "Thought you were 
coyotes, not Chihuahuas."

Behind her, the other weres began to growl and rise from 
around the fire.  The guitar stopped, and Spike adjusted his stance.

There was a howl from the other side of the fire.  The weres' 
heads snapped back and forth, looking for something that couldn't be 
seen through the flames, and hurried towards their leader.  One said 
something in rapid Spanish to her.  Another, probably the pack 
shaman, had what could only be the Mantle wrapped around his 
shoulders; it looked heavy and metallic. 

"You brought them here! Éste es su incidente," the girl 
accused.

From around the edges of the fire, vampires began to emerge.  
Spike counted eight when they stopped moving and paused for effect. 

"All we want is the Mantle!" one of the vampires called out.  

"Isn't that original.  We got here first, now piss off," Spike 
warned the tatty vamps standing too near the fire.

The wereleader looked at Spike and Buffy, then back at the 
newly arrived posse.  Eight vampires versus nine werecoyotes, one of 
whom looked pregnant: the odds were tight, and in other 
circumstances Spike would have wanted to watch.  And then feed on 
the leftovers.  

The girl hissed something at the pack member wearing the 
Mantle.  He reached up and unwrapped it, folding it neatly.  Then he 
tossed it into the air above their heads as all the werecoyotes began to 
run away.

Spike appreciated the strategy as he ran for the Mantle; 
appreciated it less as he missed it with his outstretched arms and the 
thing knocked into his head like the world's heaviest rain of toads.

Half-blind from the Mantle and a cut leaking black blood into his 
eye, he fell on his ass when the first vamp slammed into him.  He felt 
burning pain across his midsection - a silver knife; the vamps had 
come prepared for weres, not vampires.  Cursing, Spike rolled on top, 
grabbed a stake from his jacket, and staked the vamp without even 
seeing it.  He paused a second to adjust the Mantle around his 
shoulders for safekeeping.  It was shaped like a metal lionskin, and he 
felt certain it was a good look, but then the next one was on him and 
he had to box and kick without regard to fashion.

Behind him, Buffy was dispatching vampires with her usual 
dispatch.  He dodged as one rushed him, then lunged to drive the 
stake into its chest as it turned for another go.  Something solid hit him 
in the back, staggering him, and he spun to find a vampire holding a 
piece of firewood that had snapped like an overstressed crayon.  The 
vamp looked as confused as Spike felt, but he didn't question fortune 
and kicked her into the fire, where she burned like a Roman candle.

Two more vampires converged on Spike, one on each side so 
that he could only see both in his peripheral vision.  The stomach 
wound was slowing him, and he couldn't keep track of both.

Spike felt Buffy heading for them, and ducked.  Sure enough, 
she vaulted over him, feet thudding into a vamp's chest.  The move 
caused him to lose his balance, though, and he sprawled in the dirt as 
Buffy pounded a stake into her victim.  Bouncing to his feet, Spike tried 
to locate the final vampire, but all he could hear was the roar of a dirt 
bike heading into the desert.  No telling whether Georg's crew had 
reinforcements; best to get the Mantle to a place of safety.





The Heart's Filthy Lesson 10/18

Spike followed Buffy into her house.  The lights were out, Joyce 
and the brat undoubtedly sleeping the sleep of the magically protected.  

"That Mantle was pretty useful. Repellin' stakes and all that.  I 
should get me some of that - what - Kevlar?  See if it does the same 
thing."

"Bad idea.  It would make you look *fat*."

"Far more frightening then death," he agreed, rolling his eyes.

By that time, Buffy had her hand on the doorknob of her 
bedroom, and whirled around to face him, her hair whipping across his 
nose.

"Why are you following me?"

"Do you think that our escapee didn't recognize me?  If I go 
back to my crypt I'm goin' to wake up dead.  Safest place for me is 
right next to you.  They've got a bit of a fear of the Slayer, you know," 
he raised a scarred eyebrow at her, "Only 'cause they don't know you."

"I could have killed you many times," she snorted and sat down 
on the edge of her bed to unlace her boots.

"And why haven't you?" he asked, leaning against the door so it 
closed behind him.

"Extenuating circumstances," she enunciated and padded out 
of the room on her soft little feet.

Spike waited until he heard the bathroom door close and then 
he started undressing. 

When Buffy returned from the bathroom, decked out in a baggy 
pair of sweatpants and a loose top, she was something other than 
happy to see him in her bed with the covers pulled up to his chin, trying 
to look as innocent as possible.

"What the Hell do you think you're doing?"

"Hiding."

"Not in my bed you're not."

"For once in my profligate, facinorous, nefarious, and flagitious 
un-life, a Slayer actually needs to treat me as a valued commodity."

"Not."

At least she understood the last part of the sentence.  The truth 
of the matter was that she was looking both pale and tired, a good look 
as far as he was concerned, but with her stamina, it most likely meant 
that she was tottering on her metaphorical platforms.  As if to 
underscore the point, she plopped down on the side of the bed and 
gave him a tired glare.

"Get out of my bed or I'll stake you."

"Let's not fight.  Climb in and I swear I won't lay a fang on you."  
He batted his eyelashes at her.

"Not a fang or a finger," she warned and pulled back the 
covers.

"No fangs, no fingers."

"Do you snore?" she asked.

"Do you?"

She slid down between the sheets.  Compared to his, her skin 
was boiling hot.  The wound on his stomach began to burn as it 
sensed her blood.  Warm human blood would cure him in a matter of 
moments.  Only problem was that this human's blood was strictly off-
limits.  He may have killed two Slayers and drunk the blood of one, but 
this was an utterly different situation.  He felt his fangs itching to extend 
while another bit of him was starting to extend of its own volition.  Yes, 
he did want the cachet of conquering another Slayer, this time more 
intimately.  But it was something more than that, something he didn't 
want to explore that deeply.  Undue introspection wasn't his gig.  

She was starting to breathe heavily, not quite snoring but it was 
a close call.  His chest started hurting again.

He could feel the warmth of her body.

She could want him (and he knew that she did) and she could 
need him for this gig (and this he knew) but she wasn't ever going to 
love him.  She wasn't ever going to understand the feeling that 
threatened to draw him into the undertow of her blood, under the 
surface of her warm skin.  But two out of three wasn't bad.  Drusilla 
had registered about .5 on each one of those attributes, so in a way he 
would be moving up.  

He reached out and touched her shoulder.

She was as hot as the teakettle he remembered at his 
mother's house.

"Buffy?" he asked.

She didn't answer.  She was asleep.  Her pulse was beating in 
her throat. He could get drunk from her smell; as sure as he became 
drunk from those who carried alcohol in their veins.  With her eyes 
shut in sleep, she was like a sculpture on a tomb, an idol formed to 
grace an ancient temple.  He wondered if the ancient ones had 
worshipped their slayers, nubile forces of death and destruction 
protecting the villages from killers in the night.

Groaning, he turned on his side and faced a teddy bear.

"Sod off, you," he warned the bear.

The bear didn't even blink.





Spike dreamed of golden sun.  Buffy had been wearing a white-
and-yellow striped swimsuit and a sunhat with a matching ribbon, and 
telling him to put on his sunscreen so that they could have the picnic.

"Spike!"  That was not the tone she'd had in the dream, he 
groused as he opened his eyes.

"That's my name, don't stake it to death," he drawled.

"That's not your name, that's a stupid-ass nickname you 
dreamed up because you thought it sounded cool."  

She was wearing pajamas with little pink pigs floating on 
clouds.  Outnumbered among the pigs, there were a few blue dogs.  
But that didn't entirely excuse her tone.  "Feel free to stop being a 
stereotypical California bitch at any moment."

"I need to shower and you need to leave."

"What, now?" he gestured out at the morning. 

"When I'm out of the shower, you are to be gone."

So of course he just sat on her bed, legs crossed at the 
ankles, lounging as if a sweet-smelling girl's bedroom was his natural 
habitat.

When Buffy emerged from the bathroom, her arms were 
raised and she was rubbing her hair with a yellow towel.  "What?" she 
asked.  "I just brushed my teeth, there can't possibly be anything stuck 
there."

He closed his eyes, and quoted: "Yet when we came back, 
late, from the Hyacinth garden,/Your arms full, and your hair wet, I 
could not/Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither/Living nor dead, 
and I knew nothing,/Looking into the heart of light, the silence."

When he opened his eyes again, she was staring at him, 
something wounded in her expression.  Finally she moved, pulling the 
tie of her robe even tighter and brushing past him.  "I need to get 
dressed," she said.  "Get out."

If he didn't know better, he would have said that the look on her 
face was fear.





Wrapped in a toweling bathrobe, Buffy's mother whisked into 
the kitchen, noticing that there was a vampire drinking coffee at her 
kitchen table.

"Buffy, I hope you made a full pot," Joyce Summers blinked 
around the room for a moment, as groggy as a zombie pulled from the 
grave, "Hello Spike."

"Mrs. Summers."

"Spike *just got here*," Buffy lied.

"Can I get you cereal or something?" Buffy's mom asked.  
"Eggs?"

"He's a vampire, Mom, he doesn't eat food, and we're fresh out 
of blood," Buffy said in a prissy little voice, not happy that her mother 
was doing the Donna Reed routine with the Vampire From Hell.

"Oh," her mother said in her not-awake voice, "Should he not 
be out now or something?"

"It's overcast, I'm not in imminent danger of bursting into 
flames."

Rolling her eyes, Buffy hurried to the basement and shoved a 
fresh dozen stakes into her backpack.  Daylight or no, it never hurt to 
pack wood.  She folded the mantle of Tote-cop-for-bandy over the 
stakes and zipped the zipper.  Buffy could hear her mother's voice as 
she headed up the basement stairs again.

"Well, you know, Angel has that detective agency in LA, you 
could do something like that."

"Not exactly my scene, Mrs. Summers."

"Well what did you want to do when you were aliv-before you, 
uh, became what you are?"

Oh God, her mother was having the Career Talk with Spike.  
Everyone knew vampires didn't have jobs.

"Actually, I wanted to be a writer.  I -"

"We have to get to the Magic Shop before it opens," Buffy cut 
him off the best that she could.

"I know you're busy dear, but is there any way you watch Dawn 
today after school?" Buffy's mom asked as Spike finished his coffee.  
"Her ballet class was cancelled this week."

Sure that she was doing the big blush, Buffy grabbed the 
coffee mug from Spike and jammed it in the dishwasher, "If she takes 
the bus to the Magic Shop I can keep an eye on her there."

Great, Buffy, big-time slayer of demons and vampires had to 
baby-sit.  Spike was looking vague-ish and being quiet-ish which 
meant that he was storing up the information to tease her with later.  
Whatever was going on in his twisty head was not showing on his 
face. She realized that she hadn't paid enough attention to him before 
to know.  He was so irritating, like a sandal strap that kept rubbing and 
rubbing no matter how many times you wore the shoes.  

.

Once her mother was gone, Buffy leaned across the table and 
hissed at him, "Don't make nice-nice with my mother. She's not a pork 
chop for you to drool over."

"I only drool over you, pork chop."

Buffy wasn't sure how she was supposed to take that, so she 
settled for the Look of Death.





The Heart's Filthy Lesson 11/18

"The texts say that the Mantle of Totenkopfverbande is 
indestructible."  Giles took off his glasses at the assembled group, as 
if to impress upon them the seriousness of the matter.  Spike had to 
admit, the unbeatable foe just seemed less interesting after the third or 
fourth time, sort of like the American presidential election.  But Giles 
fiddling with his glasses was eternally annoying.  Maybe he could just 
nail them to Giles' face and be done with it.

Xander snorted.  "Indestructible and unpronounceable. What is 
the deal with the names?  Why can't we have the mantle of Steve?   
No we have to get the mantle of Toten-ankh-amun."

"Germanic organization, Germanic demons, and therefore 
Germanic names," Willow looked up from the tome she was perusing.  
"Am I the only one, Jewish-ness aside, who is really creeped out by 
this whole Nazi thing?"

"Well, Nazis are pretty creepy, Willow," Xander agreed.  "It just 
shows that demons haven't cornered the market on awfulness."

"Pound for pound I'm sure that demons out-nasty humans on 
any scale," Anya piped up, as if feeling as though she had to bring in 
the demon perspective on this multi-species roundtable.

"Anya, you play for this team now," Xander reminded her.

"Yes, well, it says here that the Mantle survived immersion in 
the heart of a volcano.  The author of this volume speculates that only 
a trip to Hell could destroy it."

Buffy sat up straighter at that.  "We are *not* opening the 
Hellmouth just to get rid of this ... Mantle."  It wasn't just the 
blondeness that drew him, Spike thought, or her delicate wrists like a 
wood-nymph's and blue eyes that begged to be filled with tears.  It was 
the contrast -- the fact that she could deliver sudden death with a 
pirouette and only be concerned with how her hair had fared.  
Fundamentally, she was more callous about death and destruction 
than he'd ever been, just by the force of her self-absorption.  He 
admired that.

"What are our other options?" Willow asked.  

"I'm afraid I don't know," Giles said.  

Spike was still watching Buffy. He wanted her to admit how the 
blood rushed and hummed inside her in response to the violence.  Half 
of her drama came from denying that she wanted the baddies to die.  
She'd never accept a supernatural police force with trials and carefully 
graded punishments.  Even the minimal rules of the Council had been 
too much for her.

"What are *you* grinning at?" she snarled.  Her halter-top was 
blue, with gold and white beads making little flowers across her chest.  
Tight white leather pants completed the outfit, like God's personal 
dominatrix.

"Well," Spike said, drawing out the word until they all were 
staring at him.  "There is one thing you could try."

They all gawped, until he gave up waiting.  

"Tell us, please, Spike, what could we do?" he narrated in 
falsetto, then switched back to deep-scary voice.  

"Why, children, the answer is obvious.  Grab yourself a 
vampire, put the Mantle on him, and then cut off his head."

"I've got a thought about the proper volunteer," Xander said, just 
as Willow said, "You know, I've always wondered why the clothes 
disappear when a vamp gets dusted," and Giles perked up, opening 
his mouth to offer an explanation.

"Stop!" Buffy said, and the incipient chaos calmed.  "Giles, did 
my ears deceive me or is that a good idea?"

The twit actually took off his glasses and rubbed his temple 
before venturing an answer.  "Erm, well, I'm willing to give it a qualified 
perhaps." 

"Qualified rapture," Spike said and rubbed his hands together, 
"Now what do you say I go and find us a disposable vampire?"





"There's something different about you-"

Philip was the kind of vamp who'd spent just a little too much 
time actually dead before the demon took control of his body, which 
gave him eau du corpse and a tendency to drop chunks of flesh from 
time to time.  The general stupidity of the average person who became 
vampbait explained a lot about the mean and modal vampire 
intelligence level in recent decades.  Spike looked at the other vampire 
the way that a genuine Gucci bag looks at the kind made in Hong Kong 
and sold by street vendors.

"Yeah, I had my hair done.  Now can we get on with the show?"

"I heard there was some kind of chip in your head so you 
weren't a vampire no more," Philip said, undaunted by Spike's 
abruptness.

"I'm still a vampire," Spike explained.  "I just have -- I just had 
trouble eatin' regular-like for a while.  But I've put that behind me, and 
to prove it I'd like to stage a little massacre.  And if you help me you'll 
drink and make merry like never before."

"What's your plan?"  Thank Hell Philip was easily led.  Spike 
noted the vamp's baggy pants, and the grimy T-shirt under the 
multipocket vest with bloodstains indicating it was stolen off some kid 
who'd been too cool for Philip in high school.  Spike was doing 
vampirekind at least a great a favor as humankind, and the fashion 
police might even give him a commendation.

"There's a study group meeting in a building on the Sunnydale 
campus.  It's a public place, so we can surprise them, and it's 
isolated, so no one will hear the screams."

Philip accepted this without further comment, and they headed 
outside the bar.

The capture went down as smoothly as baby's blood.  Xander 
had rehabilitated a few of the Initiative taser guns abandoned in the 
underground facility, and Philip folded like laundry into Spike's waiting 
arms.  It was even simpler to wrap the mantle around him, tucking it 
into his pants in hopes of making it more clothes-like.  Spike wanted to 
wait until he woke up, just to see the look on his face, but Giles vetoed. 
that.

They tied Philip to a piece of Buffy's training equipment that 
looked to Spike like a cross between a torture device and a sex toy.  
Rather appealing, really.  Philip's head lolled above the post.

"Ready?" Buffy asked, twirling her sword like the cheerleader 
she might have been.

"He's teed up like a T-ball in PeeWee league," Xander said.  
"Just take a swing."  Giles made his disgusted face, and Spike was in 
agreement.

Buffy's vorpal blade went snicker-snack, and Philip's head 
tumbled to the ground, bouncing two and a half times before exploding 
into dust.

All eyes -- all remaining eyes -- turned to the headless corpse.  
Was it a corpse even though Philip had not technically been alive?  
Hadn't been dead, either.  Post-corpsal, maybe.  Spike was glad he 
didn't have breath to hold as they waited for Philip's body to follow the 
head.   The Powers That Be were awfully inconsistent about that -- 
they liked making vamps go to dust dramatically.

It must have been half a second later, but to Spike it seemed 
as long as the latest Britney Spears album.  Philip's body crumbled, 
leaving the restraints to flop loosely to the ground -- and the Mantle 
went with him.

Everyone except Spike let out an audible sigh.

"Well that was anti-climactic," he said, smiling at the rest.

"The JagdKriegspfarrer will be quite enough to handle even 
without the Mantle," Giles chastened.

Buffy pouted.  "Party pooper.  What does this monster do, 
anyway?"

Spike smiled more widely.  "It pretty much runs the demonic 
gamut.  Dismemberment, flesh-eating, grave-robbing, auto-
cannibalism when bored, arson, rape, wearing really loud clothes like 
Xander-boy here.  You get the picture."

"Auto-cannibalism -- That's *not* eating cars, is it?"  Buffy 
sounded worried.

"No, Blondie," he said, and could tell that Giles was the only 
one to catch the reference.  

Given what he now knew about Giles, he probably wasn't the 
only one in the room who'd had nasty sex to Debbie Harry's rapping in 
"Rapture."  To tease her in a way she'd understand, he brought his 
arm up to his mouth and mimed chomping down.  She stuck her 
tongue out at him and then looked appalled by her own casualness.  
She was so used to him as a eunuch.  Her conduct undoubtedly 
stemmed from the easy way he'd sunk into ineffectiveness. The 
Keshonte couldn't have been right about him, though.  It was only the 
soul that kept him here, and the desire for revenge on Georg.





The Heart's Filthy Lesson 12/18

Buffy altered her regular patrol route.  The Nazis were the 
types to pick a warehouse for their ceremony so they could hang their 
stupid bloody flags.  They had no use for a nice roomy cemetery.  
Spike followed her as they tramped through the gray streets of the 
District Formerly Known As Industrial.  

"What are all these empty buildings doing here, anyway?" she 
groused as they strolled down yet another trash-lined street.  "Empty 
buildings are just asking for trouble."

Spike had heard from the local vamps that the area used to be 
devoted to defense contractors.  One vampire, who'd been around 
when Spike first showed up to toast the Chosen One, told him that you 
could eat well just on the military inspectors who came poking around, 
trying to figure out why a widget cost umpty-hundred dollars.  For 
some reason they didn't get that the Sunnydale death rate kept labor 
costs high.  He thought this explanation would bore Buffy, however, 
and remained silent.

He heard a skittering noise and raised his hand.  Buffy stopped, 
but knocked his hand aside anyway.  He pointed toward the side 
street, and they tiptoed closer, staying in the shadows.  Two figures 
hurried to the bricked-up building in the middle of the street.  Buffy 
made as if to go after them, but Spike restrained her.  They knocked 
twice on a black spot, which turned out to be a door that opened in a 
blaze of silvery-blue light.  Spike could hear eerie chanting, and wails.

"What are the odds that there are two eldritch ceremonies 
going on down here tonight?" he whispered.

"Why would anyone have an Elvis ceremony anyway?" she 
snapped.

"El-dritch. Black magic, demon and devil stuff."

"Let's go," she said, and he grabbed her again.  She wrenched 
her arm away.  "Soul or no soul, you don't get to paw me every two 
seconds."

Spike stepped back, held his hands up and set phasers on 
killing sarcasm. "Regardless of your personal space problem, if Georg 
is in there, he's got twenty vampires ready for sacrifice.  Which means 
he's got somethin' powerful enough to corral twenty vampires.  Call 
your Watcher, tell him to bring everything you've got."

She frowned, considering, then took out the cellphone.

They waited for the others, Buffy sitting on the hood of the car 
and swinging her legs like executioner's axes because she refused to 
let Spike smoke in an enclosed space.  After five minutes she was 
bored enough to talk to him.  "Do you wish you'd never been vamped?"

"Kind of a personal question, innit?"  He was in no mood to 
indulge her.  Truth or dare, now, that would have been tempting.

"I figure I'm entitled."  She reached up and stretched, 
deceptively small muscles standing out along her arms.  Her top this 
time was pink and asymmetrical, with cutouts in strategic places.  
Though maybe they were tactical places; Buffy could be hard to 
fathom.

"I'm glad I'm not dead," he admitted.  "As for the rest, I enjoyed 
myself more without a soul and its attendant bad poetry.  Pain was 
pleasure and pleasure was pleasure too, and there was no such thing 
as regret..."

"Yeah, 'cause that explains the way you behaved when Drusilla 
dumped you."

"She didn't *dump* me."

"Spoken like a true boy, vampire or otherwise."

"Anyway, it's not so different.  That Keshonte demon had more 
good in his little claw than most humans have in total, and he had a 
demon soul.  Human souls aren't the only ones around, you know, and 
if you're tryin' to get rid of anything without a sanctioned, human soul, 
that makes you no better than the Nazis.  Kill anythin' that's not like you 
or that makes you afraid of what you might be."

"Spike?"  Her tone was hesitant, almost friendly now.

"Yessss?" he hissed, still mad about the touching thing earlier.

"What was Vancy?"

"What?"

"You said Georg and Karl met at Vancy."

"Oh, Wannsee.  That was where the bureaucrats met to deal 
with the administrative hassles of  the Final Solution.  Gas chambers 
disguised as showers, furnaces for burnin' hundreds of bodies, all that 
requires a lot of organization, a mountain of red tape, right?  It had 
been goin' on smallscale for a while - a massacre here, a 
concentration camp there, but it had lacked efficiency.  Wannsee was 
where they worked on achievin' economies of scale, if you know what I 
mean."

"Georg and Karl were part of that?"  Her face was an unwritten 
book; he couldn't tell what she was thinking but he shuddered anyway.  
He'd have thought the history would be unreal to her.

"Yeah, creatin' McConcentration camp."





Spike let Buffy take the human guard at the door.  She punched 
him unconscious instead of breaking his neck, but Spike was really in 
no position to complain.

Georg's voice boomed around them as they entered the 
warehouse.  It was as if he were speaking directly in Spike's ear, 
though Spike could see the rock-star headset wrapped around the 
silver mask.

"We have fought as one fights only for the most priceless gift 
that this world has to offer. What have we given over these months in 
work, in sacrifice, in devotion, in fanaticism, in contempt of death! We 
were successful not only because I was your leader, rather far more 
because you were my followers. The miracle of our coming together 
moves us all."

Georg paced around a circle of captives, working the crowd 
like the audience for Who Wants to Be a Neo-Nazi?  Neon chalk 
designs covered the ground within the circle.  Spike looked away when 
the rune that meant Cthulthu seemed to shuffle towards him.  "Not all 
of you can see me, and I cannot see all of you. But I feel you, and you 
feel me! The belief in the greatness of our kind will make us large, it 
will make us rich, it will make wavering, cowardly, anxious ones brave 
and courageous!  Through the sacrifice of these, unworthy to bear the 
name Nosferatu, we will take the world as has been our right since the 
beginning of time! "

The crowd roared.  The chained vamps struggled more 
frantically to get free.  Spike could see the dust shaking from the bolts 
in the floor, but they'd never get loose in time.  Georg walked over to 
the biggest vampire, smiled up at him, and thrust both hands into his 
chest.  This time, he crushed the heart in situ, and the vampire 
exploded around his fists.  Spike had to admit the dramatic force of the 
image as the massed neoNazis screamed even louder.  

"We can break this up any time now," Buffy said, but she 
looked uneasy.  Georg moved to the next one in the circle.

Spike couldn't stand the thought of Georg receiving all that 
adoration one minute longer.  "Right, slaughter time," he said and 
strode into the crowd, a stake in each hand.

The first three fell without attracting any attention.  He was 
lucky that the crowd was vamp-heavy; he could shoulder humans 
aside without any soul-protest, and that was good enough.  Then the 
muttering of the crowd grew louder around him, and demons who 
weren't totally focused on the ceremony in front of them began to turn 
and growl.  He devoutly hoped that Scrappy-Doo and her gang were at 
his back as he kicked in the face of a particularly nasty-looking green 
fellow.

The commotion was beginning to compete with Georg for 
participants' attention.  Spike could feel the moment when Georg 
realized that something was wrong; the other vampire's gaze flashed 
across his face like sunlight.

"Spike!" the jovial voice stroked his ears from every direction.  
"Come to sign up?  We offer a complimentary bookbag and mug for 
our new members!"

Spike rammed out an arm to the left, and something inhuman 
squealed.

"I don't read and I already got china," he said, kicking a minor 
blue demon in the stomach so hard that it squelched.

Georg stepped out of the circle, absently ripping the heart out 
of another chained vampire as he went.  "Then you must be here for 
the slaughter."  In his peripheral vision, Spike saw Buffy execute a 
perfect somersault with a half-twist, landing between two vampires 
who blew apart simultaneously.

Georg swirled his hands in a strange kung-fu motion, and the 
path between them was suddenly clear.  "And I'm always happy to 
oblige when it comes to slaughter."

Spike preferred to skip further banter.  He had the feeling he'd 
come off the worse.  So he shrugged, causing his duster to flutter 
around him menacingly, and dove for the other vampire, planning to 
knock Georg down and pin his arms to be safe from spells.

But Georg was like a brick wall, and Spike's ears rang as he 
staggered back - not too far, because Georg had him by the 
shoulders, wrenching his right arm out of its socket as Spike added 
his own howl of agony to the symphony of chaos around them.

"You know, I never did know what Drusilla saw in you," Georg 
smiled and pulled Spike a little closer, "and I bet she didn't know either 
after I had her.  I don't suppose she mentioned my name in any 
awkward moments?"

Caught in Georg's cement grip, Spike's furious lunge turned 
into a humiliating jerk.  Before he could do anything else, Georg had 
his hands around Spike's throat and was squeezing, hard enough for 
black and red to sparkle in Spike's field of vision.  Spike could see the 
details of his Nazi colonel's outfit; this one, unlike those clothing his 
henchman, was the real deal, down to the swastika-branded buttons, 
which seemed to whirl as Georg's fingers cut into his throat, 
threatening to pop his head off like a daisy.

"Fuck you," Spike choked.

"Not the answer I was looking for," Georg said.

Spike's flailing legs caught Georg in the nuts, and the other 
vampire relaxed his grip.  Then Georg's eyes widened in surprise as 
an arrow emerged from his shoulder.  He spun and saw Giles, 
desperately trying to reload his bow.  Cool. Go Giles.  Somewhere 
behind Giles, the rest of the gang goggled at the demons and 
vampires and losers, oh my.

Georg grabbed at the crossbow bolt and pulled it free with a 
snarl.

That was enough for Spike to regain his footing and lunge for 
Georg again.  They thudded into a squirming mass of demons and 
Spike almost went down, but the memory of Drusilla screaming, 
screaming had him by the throat with a tighter grip than Georg could 
ever use.  He managed a left-handed uppercut that knocked the silver 
mask askew and sent Georg staggering, and then another kick in the 
balls that put the vampire on the ground.

"I am doing this for the greater good of the race!" Georg yelled, 
rising up on his elbows.

"We're vampires, asshole.  We're not a race and we don't do 
anything for good!" Spike was frustrated, and he stalked towards 
Georg, pushing demons and humans aside.

Georg smiled -- Spike could see only one side, peeking out 
from behind the mask, which made him look like a seriously deformed 
Siamese twin -- and it was enough to stop Spike cold.  "I guess you're 
right," he said and reached out a hand to make magical gestures.  A 
vampire in stormtrooper drag sailed out of the main fight and into his 
outstretched arms.  For a moment their embrace looked cozy.  Then 
the vampire looked down to see the stake protruding from his chest.  
"Master?" he said, looking deep into Georg's eyes, and exploded into 
dust.

The earth groaned and a sudden wind rose through the 
warehouse, tearing at Spike's clothes.

That was the twentieth vampire, Spike realized.  Somehow, all 
the ones we killed here counted too.  He must have drawn a larger 
magic circle than the one we can see.

"Aw, fuck," he said and launched himself toward Georg again.  

Screaming triumph, the vampire raised his hands to the skies 
(really the warehouse ceiling but Spike just knew that, in Georg's head, 
he was reaching to the stars) as if everyone was supposed to stop 
now and contemplate his victory.

He blinked and dropped his arms when Spike put the stake 
through him.  

"What are you --?" he said, looking honestly bewildered, like an 
accountant confronted with years of false returns.

"Payback's a bitch," Spike advised as Georg blinked in surprise 
and puffed into dust.  The silver mask thudded to the ground, and 
Spike quickly stuffed it into his pocket for later pawning.

Behind him, Spike could hear newly-minted screams.

Not wanting to make Georg's mistake, Spike turned toward the 
circle.  A cloud of oily green smoke was dissipating, revealing the oily 
green Wirtschaftsministerium.  It looked like a sea anemone.  That is, 
how a sea anemone would look if you were the size of a Sea Monkey. 
Well, a sea anemone with rainbow tentacles, bullfrog eyes and a 
circular maw lined with a triple-row of shark teeth.  The 
Wirtschaftsministerium looked like something Salvadore Dali would 
have designed while suffering from food poisoning after a bad batch of 
calamari.  The Wirtschaftsministerium extended tentacles in all 
directions, wrapping them around the left-over chained vampires.  

"Oh good," said a cheery, insane voice that needed no 
amplification, "hors d'oeuvres."

Spike's shoulder was screaming louder than the dying 
vampires, and he staggered a little as he tried to get back towards the 
circle.  He could hear Xander yelling, a wordless war-cry that made 
him wonder about the boy's stability.  Now that the acolytes had seen 
the Wirtschaftsministerium, some had changed their minds and were 
heading toward the door.  Demons, humans, and vampires buffeted by 
him, each species managing to slam into his shoulder with its own 
special elan.

"Hey there, Big Ugly."  Buffy's voice cut through the clamor.

"Well, well," the Wirtschaftsministerium replied.  "My own 
private Princess Leia."

A Wirtschaftsministerium was bad enough, but a 
Wirtschaftsministerium with delusions of Jabba the Hutt could do 
serious damage.

"Where's Georg?" Karl called, waving his tentacles in agitation, 
"Georg called me."

"Georg isn't available right now, can I take a message?" one of 
the lesser demons stuttered.

"Oh damn," Karl sagged for a moment within his tentacles and 
then perked up and sized the demon foolish enough to speak and held 
the demon so he could look at the terrified, squirming demon's face, 
"and I was really looking forward to working with him again.  Oh well."

The Wirtschaftsministerium bit off the demon's head the way a 
child massacred a gingerbread man.

"Can somebody get me a beer?  I need a beer to wash this 
down with."

Grunts and cries followed.  Spike tried to get a glimpse of the 
battle from over the remains of the panicking crowd.  Buffy was 
flawless, as usual, but the Wirtschaftsministerium was even better.  It 
moved tentacles every time before she struck and lashed tentacles at 
her from where she could not see it.  "She's outmatched," he shouted 
at the rest of the gang, as Buffy hit the floor with enough force to 
bounce.  She tried to rise, but couldn't avoid another blow.

Tara and Willow ran forward, holding a piece of rope and 
chanting.  The Wirtschaftsministerium lashed out with one long, 
tongue-shaped tentacle, and Tara was snatched away, towards its 
central body.  It continued to whip Buffy with several tentacles as it 
wrapped others around Tara, bulging and rippling obscenely around 
the witch.  Tara's high scream cut through the noise, then stopped.

"Give me a darkness spell!" he ordered Willow, who was just 
standin