Drusilla's Roses (chapter eight)

Now, two days later, Drusilla was awake.  Her eyes snapped open and she shot bolt upright in bed, her head whipping from side to side as she tried to work out where she was.

It was dark, thank goodness, except for the electric light coming from an art deco lamp on her bedside cabinet.

She was hungry, desperate for blood, and there was Xander not four feet away, dozing in an easy chair.

Feed, I need to feed! And my white knight is here!

She looked at him, knowing that not long ago, with any other human, she would have fallen on them and drained them dry without a moment’s hesitation.

But not this one. Her head was clear as a bell for the first time in decades. She could not hear the stars and Miss Edith was long gone, left in one of the slimy nests she'd drifted through over the past two years. Heartbroken about losing her William to the slayer and lost without her vampire family’s protection, she had gone from prized jewel to pariah. She'd been used, abused and shunned by her vampire kin because she was “a f*****g pain in the ass loony,” or so a young fledgling had yelled at her.

His pack, whom she had been shadowing in a foolish desire for company, had fallen on her, and although Drusilla was a master vampire, endowed with remarkable speed and reflexes, she'd barely been able to fight them off.

She had just about freed herself when the pack leader stepped in and hit her.

She'd failed to duck in time and the impact had flung her head back with a sickening crunch.

Drusilla had gone down in a tangle of limbs, her tattered skirts billowing about her, too shocked and dazed to even sob. No one had ever hurt her like this. Not even Angelus. Belatedly, she realised how lucky she'd been. How much her vampire family had actually cared for her in their way, reminding her about things she forgot, defending her from demons who disliked her strangeness, always protecting her from the darker reaches of their world.

No more.

The pack leader was still standing in front of her. She could see his brown leather boots.

In other days she would have giggled or made up a rhyme to deflect his attention; but she felt too weary and battered to move, and she had an awful feeling her little tricks wouldn’t work on him anyway.

When she looked into his eyes, she knew why.

There was not the faintest trace of humanity to be seen. Beast that he was, Angelus had at least had a sense of humour; and her William had been an absolute teddy bear.

This man was evil through and through. Bald, heavyset and brutish, with the mottled cheeks of the heavy drinker, he was the product of old mining camps in the Sierra Nevadas or rough bars on the San Francisco docks. He had been mean and vicious in life. In death, he was totally in thrall to his demon.

He smelled of week-old sweat and piss, and his fangs were very long. She couldn’t stop looking at them.

Then she saw what he was going to do to her.

Even she shrank away in horror.

When it was over, he threw her out into the open. By pure blind chance, it was still night. She lay by a forest path for a while, whimpering softly, terribly hurt.

After a while, she sensed dawn coming and blearily thought about just letting the sun claim her, but some flickering sense of self-preservation dragged her slowly to her feet.

She smelled sea air. The ocean was nearby. She had always liked sticks of rock at the seaside. There would be no sticks of rock for her today, not after what had happened to her, but she would go there anyway.

Bent over, lurching, gathering what rags of clothing and shreds of dignity she could, Dru made her way down to the beach.

Her body slashed with bite wounds, she had wandered along the coast near Point Lobos at dawn, still wondering whether she should wait for sunrise and end it all.

So many times over the years, she had acted insanely, and so many times her family had saved her from herself, but given in to her whines and her wants.

So many times William had cared for her, protected her and unwittingly helped her stay sunken in her psychosis, letting her remain a silly little girl who talked to her dolls to avoid facing the fact she was a vampire and a monster.

But now there was nothing except the wind, the sea and the waves. William was lost to her, and no one else cared whether she lived or died.

The sky was brightening and, perhaps born out of shock or the desperate need for survival, a little sanity slowly began to trickle into Drusilla’s damaged mind.

This time, she painstakingly realised, there was nobody there to hold her hand and bring her out of the light. If she didn’t take responsibility for herself, she would soon be a pile of dust on a deserted California beach with no one to mourn her.

Mourn her? Every human and vampire she had met over the past hundred years heartily wanted her dead. They’d all have a party if they knew she’d gone and done the big firework!

As the sun edged over the horizon, a chuckle had escaped Dru’s lips, rapidly followed by a full-throated belly laugh. A sense of humour was a sign of sanity, and with some sanity restored, she'd run for a cave near the shore, giggling and throwing her gently smoking body onto shadowed sand, rolling onto her side and laughing as she listened to the breakers crashing on the shore.

And very far away, in time with the rhythm of the waves, Dru thought she heard a young girl’s voice, singing sweetly.

Miss Edith, she thought. Is that you?

But the voice just went on, reciting an old Victorian rhyme.

That’s not Miss Edith singing, Dru slowly realised. That’s me.

Why had it had taken her so long to work that out?

Because the sweet child she once was could not cope with her transformation into a demon. The only way for some of her original personality to survive was for it to hide behind the persona of a doll; and there Drusilla the novice nun had stayed for over a century while Drusilla the vampire killed and tortured innocents.

Now, for the first time in many a long year, the vampire regarded the novice and found the strength to compare the gentle girl she had been with the monster she had become.

It was almost impossible to reconcile the two, but she found that sweet voice very soothing. It was like clear river water running through her head, and she did not want to lose it.

She had watched the ocean from the dark all that day, trying to heal her mind, striving to make the tumbling images which had jumbled her brain for so long sharpen and coalesce.

But the madness was still with her and the devil remained resolutely on her back. She sobbed and raved and searched for a way to hold on to that sweet voice of hers, but it was an uneven battle, fought out between a demon and a woman already dead. Late in the afternoon, she even tried mouthing some words from her old Latin rosary.

Halfway through the Lord’s Prayer, it did occur to her that as a creature of evil, she was taking a hell of a risk. She had heard of other vamps who’d tried it combusting on the spot.

That struck her as funny all over again and she’d giggled over her Latin verbs.

Dru, old girl, how else are you going to try and get yourself killed today? Find a nutty Christian cult, tell them you’re the essence of evil, hand them all stakes and suggest they have a poke?

She had laughed until she hiccupped, but that sweet little voice had strengthened. The young girl’s high voice merged with the older, deeper cadence of the demon, and in a husky contralto, they had whispered to her that they were one.

I am Drusilla, she thought, human and vampire, little girl and wizened whore, young novice and old killer. I am myself again.

The sun had set and Dru had dived into the sea, letting the salt water help her vampire physiology heal her wounds. Then, after an hour or two underwater, she emerged from the shallows like a dark Aphrodite, naked and shockingly beautiful.

There was a beach house not too far away. She could hear the heartbeats of the family within.

Easy prey with a wardrobe of fine designer clothes to boot, no doubt.

Oddly, she found herself hesitating. Dru shook her head in consternation. She was still a vampire. She killed people. That was what she did.

Well maybe she would do it tomorrow. It had been a very strange day and she definitely wasn’t feeling quite herself.

Go feed off some animal in the woods tonight, then, and see how you are in the morning.

But she had not drunk from humans again, although she'd felt like it when she tore the muggers off Xander and her bloodlust roared in the heat of battle.

And a few days after her sojourn by the sea, she'd been dozing in a roadside shack on the way to L.A. when it seemed (as Xander later put it) as if a gong really had rung in her head and silver rain surged in sparkling electric showers all through her body.

To the north, the First had just been vanquished, the Hellmouth sealed and the town of Sunnydale demolished.

And at the centre of it all, her William had died a hero.

Dru felt him die. He had been part of her for a hundred years and more, and the pain of losing him threw her to the hard earth, back arching, mouth open in an endless howl.

William, my William. Oh, what a fool I was. Good, evil, what did it matter which side I took? Why didn’t I realise how much I loved you? I should never have left you, should have stayed with you ‘til the end. Fought alongside you and the slayers…

What? Slayers? More than one?

Surprise slightly superseded shock. She saw a vision of slayers fighting the Atula Khan in the Hellmouth.  All of them, every potential slayer turned into an actual slayer by the Scooby witch.

She had felt the balance of power shift from evil towards good as Willow activated every potential; and even as the demon possessing her recoiled in horror from this, the voice of sweet Drusilla the novice strengthened still more, and she found herself smiling.

Is this what it was like for you, my William? she thought. Making the choice, loving the good?

Could it be this way for me?

What a strange, delicious thought! But she wasn’t up to contemplating it calmly. Losing William still felt like taking seven stakes straight through the heart. She crouched like an animal, crying and howling for him, the strength in her arms and legs running away like water.

It was an hour before she could sit up, and she had sobbed until she was dry. She tried to say a prayer for William, but choked up when she got to his name.

The pain eased a tiny bit, though, and she remembered the time that demon, the Judge, had told her she stank of humanity. She hadn’t been very pleased about it then, but she was positively reeking of humanity now, and this time she didn’t mind at all.

Dru chuckled a little bit. Despite everything, it was nice to have her sense of humour back now she was sane. She realised her stomach was getting growly, too. She would have to feed soon. She didn’t want to go chasing coyote again. Too much exertion for too little reward. She would have to start making plans and she wasn’t used to doing that.

What now? she thought rather desperately. What am I going to do now?

A face swam before her eyes. A vision, not supplied by pixies, elves or the moon, you silly girl, but a vision nonetheless.

Her white knight. His features etched in light of palest gold. And there was something else in a dank, dark corner behind him. A church? Yes, an old church. In L.A.

So that night Dru had drifted onwards to Los Angeles, somehow failing to notice an old yellow school bus loaded with the Scooby gang and a ragged assortment of slayers pass her by on the Interstate.

Now she was here and there was Xander, looking too tasty by half, damn it.

He stirred, but didn’t open his eyes.

“Xander! For God’s sake, wake up!”

“Huh?”

Oh, at last.

“Dru?”

She saw joy flood over his face, wanted to hug him but stopped herself. Hug him, touch him, and she wouldn’t be able to stop herself biting him.

“Xander. Please. My tummy’s really, really growly.”

“I guess that bottle I gave you wasn’t enough.”

“What?”

“I fed you while you were asleep. AB negative. The hard stuff.”

He had taken care of her while she was unconscious. Oh, he was lovely! She almost    forgot she was hungry and a slow, warm smile spread across her face as Xander passed her a packet of blood.

One packet followed another until finally the hunger subsided.

“Oh, dear,” she fussed. “I’ve spilt blood on the counterpane. It’ll never come out.” She found herself laughing and crying at the same time, tears mixing with the blood as Xander stayed by her side, all the wound up tension leaving him now he knew his beloved enemy was well.