An Englishman Abroad - Chapter Four
At that, he and the Shaman held hands and chanted something in a language I didn't understand. And I do speak thirty seven human and demon languages. Though some of the minion ordering phraseology tends to be limited to grunts and ugghs, so they aren't too demanding.
***
I am frozen in place.
Brain fully functional? Check. Eyesight the same. At least whatever the shaman did to me hasn't resulted in me having to go back to glasses all the time, as opposed to reading glasses. Being vamped helped a lot. I can see fine even when not vamped out for driving, the telly, and normal stuff. Reading hurts after a while though. It’s a real shame though, always loved books. You can see why I gave up wearing them though. You try being the big bad feared vampire with glasses falling off your nose. Difficult in a fight too. Not to mention the grief I got from peaches about them.
Hello, mouth and voice still functional.
"Oy! Communication skills here, you tossers! You can probably get a course on it! Or is it the Sunnydale influence? Don't talk to the vamp. He might actually have a chance to know what's going on!"
"Sorry, Spike, but for this stage you won't be able to move a muscle, other than those involved in the senses. You have to be able to feel everything."
They picked me up and plonked me under a tree. Guess Rupert doesn't want sunburnt vamp, as he makes sure that daft hat is still firmly planted on my head.
"You will be here for some time. You will not be able to move. What you will experience should help, but might prove painful. It is necessary though."
More funny words, some wacky smoke and a couple of crystals. No fire this time though. If I am gonna be here a while I am going to feel a bit chilly once the sun goes down. Vampires don't have the same sensitivity to temperature changes as humans, but we do feel it. With the changes that tear made in me, and my blood, I think I'm gonna feel the cold when it's dark.
"No fire?"
"No defences; no limits. Samuel and I have some scrying to do. Nothing to do with this. We will be on the other side of the lake. You won’t be able to see us, or hear us, but we will be back - eventually."
And they just up and left. Story of my life - again!
***
There's a little hyrax - looks like a squirrel: same size as a squirrel: closest relative - the elephant. And they say Mother Nature has no sense of humour.
It's on some rocks basking in the sun. It's completely missed the cheetah stalking it through the bush. Should be a nice easy meal. Gorgeous animal, pure lean predator, sharp claws and some truly impressive teeth. It springs, but at the last moment the hyrax sees it and goes off running.
Suddenly I'm not me. I'm being chased, swatted with sharp claws; I just know pure fear and adrenaline. I can't escape. I'm too slow; it's too fast. The claws trip me and the fangs go into me. Pain, fear and death are all I know.
I come back to myself, still shaking.
***
Moments later smoke forms. Out of it comes a woman in black. Honey brown hair, mixed with plenty of grey, done up in a bun. Blue eyes surrounded with the marks of too much grief. A mourning broach making a sad counterpoint to the mourning rings on her hands.
"Mama? No! Now that's cruel!"
"I wept for you. My dearest son. My blessing, and my solace in widowhood. My pride. My clever, good son. I buried you. I kissed you for the last time. I still have the broach from your lock of hair. It matches the rings from the two sons I had already given back to God. Then I'm told even your grave was desecrated. Your sisters and I couldn't bear it. No grave to tend, your body missing."
"Mama, no please don’t cry. I'm here. I love you. I always loved you. I created so much trouble that we had to leave London so you'd all be safe." Tears were rolling down my face, but I couldn't even move to wipe them away.
"Your friends, the ones that said such lovely things about you at the funeral, all dead - so horribly. That Addams girl, who was so sweet, sent away to the Continent and never seen again. All so soon after losing my own dear brother. Your brothers tried. John was so good to the girls, but he was so busy in the City. It was never the same. Dear Henry wrote such wonderful letters and took Lizzie back with him to India, but he was so far away. I needed you. We all needed you."
"Mama, I'm sorry. I didn't know what I was getting into. Once I did it was too late. I couldn't come back. I wouldn't have got the chance either. I didn't meant to make you suffer."
"But you could make others like me! How many other mothers like me, William? How many lost their children? How many lost beloved wives of husbands? How many lost dear friends?"
It seemed that untold thousands of black clad mourners filed through me. The anguish, the loss, the question "WHY?" went through me again and again.
Their sheer pain was agonising. I've been tortured by artists of the medium. Angelus in his more whimsical moods, Darla like a cat playing with a canary. Hey - even a Hell-God. I would have traded hours of that to get rid of this agony. But it just kept coming and coming.
"Goodbye, darling. We will see each other again. I know you can do this."
She kissed me on the forehead, like she had when I was a child. Then she and the others disappeared.
***
A small herd of elephants came down to the lake for a drink, magnificent beasts with great ivory tusks. After seeing Mother, this reminded me of the hunting trophies my brother and uncle had sent home from India. Tiger skins, stuffed birds, racks of horns, tusks, an elephant's foot umbrella stand. All were quite normal in our station in life, something to be proud of having.
But I could smell humans. Not the Watcher, nor the Shaman. They would surely see me. How could I explain what an Englishman, in a purple Ecuadorian hat, was doing, unable to move, under a tree, in deepest Tanzania, with tears running down my face?
I didn't have to. They brought out their AK47's.
I shifted again. I was the great matriarch of the elephants, taking my family from water to fresh food. Responsible for my whole family: with my baby trotting beside me. Then, pain, more pain, my own, my child's, my whole family, all dead.
The poachers took the tusks and just left the once great animals to rot.
Thinking of the trophies made me sick.
***
More smoke. Another woman appears. But this one is dressed in cheap tawdry finery, reeking of gin. A worn face, eyes that had seen too much. Still young; but looking so much older.
My first victim.
I remembered Angelus, holding the streetwalker he'd brought with him, to the cemetery for my rising. Him whispering to her that he would feed her to the devil himself.
I remembered how, half-feral from digging myself out of my own grave, her fear and the scent of her blood had called to me like nothing I'd ever craved before. I remembered my fangs sinking into her throat, and the sweet taste of blood rushing into me.
I shifted again. I was her; with teeth in my throat.
"You killed me. You killed my child that waited for me in that foul little room when I never came back. You didn't even know me."
I saw her life. A poor family in the country sends a daughter to London to be a kitchen maid. No chance to stay at home in an agricultural depression. Working all hours, working her fingers to the bone, and only fourteen. The footman her only friend. Only until he gets what he wants. With child; a fallen woman. He denies it's his, turns his back as she's turned out. No character so no new job. Living in absolute terror of the workhouse. Takes in sewing. Can't feed herself or the child. Only one way to get money. The horror of it drives her to drink. The big Irishman, the fear. Death.
"Sorry, I'm sorry. I never knew there was a choice."
The lake boiled. My victims erupted from the lake, all of them passing through me. My mind assaulted by life after life, after endless life, all with only one thing in common. I killed them. Their hopes, their dreams, their pain. their chance to do; all cut short by my fangs, and my whims.
***
It took a long time to stop the tears. The sun had moved across the sky to mark early evening before I got some of my composure back.
***
A pride of lions were using the elephant corpses to ambush a wildebeest drinking at the lake. There were four females and a young male. They formed up in a long slow stalk. They were in an arrow formation. The wildebeest was completely oblivious. From a stalk they moved into a lope, but just before they could break into a co-ordinated run, the young male went off too soon.
Never been a problem of mine.
The wildebeest was last seen heading for Kenya and some slightly more patient lions. The females looked very annoyed. The male seemed to imply it was nothing to do with him. I wonder who that reminds me of?
At least this time I didn't get torn apart by lions. Felt like it though with all those people.
***
More smoke. Oh joy.
This time it's a feral girl, in rags, with mud on her face and dark skin. Slayer, from the vision the Shaman showed me. There are no words from this one, just her death at the teeth of a sister neither can recognise as such.
More Slayers... all of them in fact. All their deaths experienced as my own.
Fangs, claws, horns, clubs, rocks, you name the instrument of death it was included. Death in life affirming battle. Suicide by vampire. Death pointless and arbitrary. A Roman Slayer choosing to die in the bath - her wrists slit - as befits a patrician, rather than support the burden any longer. A Spanish Slayer burnt by the Inquisition, as a heretic and a witch. A Jewish Slayer gassed in a camp. So many Slayers killed by their own Watchers: some turned and put down; some in that stupid test; others so badly injured they couldn't heal when the battle demanded a new Slayer. So many that died alone and desperate. So many with the death wish. I felt myself kill the Chinese Slayer, felt my own neck break in a subway train.
Worst of all - Buffy.
The Master's fangs, and the murky water. Angel's fangs taking me close to death. The energy draining me as the light swirled around me. The peace I hadn't had with the other deaths - something different.
I could move finally. In theory anyway. At least I could wipe my face.
***
In the distance I could see Giles and the Shaman. Good job too. It was getting very dark, and the hippos were getting ready to get out of the water. I read my Lonely Planet before coming over - most dangerous animal in Africa. No way was this boy staying here much longer.
"Ah, Spike how are you?"
"Fully empathised, totally full, can't take too much more right now. Need a fag actually too." So I light up, and it works its magic.
"Good, pleased to hear it. Sorry, know it was hardly pleasant. But we have a bit of a situation."
Then she appears, literally.
"Anyanka?"