Chapter Text
Rack fed on the energies of the young witch before him, using her power to boost her connection with the subdimensional energies and feasting, just a little, on her life force. She tasted sour. He’d fed from her before, and she didn’t have much strength left. He stopped reinforcing his strength before her hair started to fall out. No point in having an external manifestation of his cannibalism. Because that was what it was; he fed from others to strengthen himself.
Something nibbled on the edge of his consciousness. Someone -- something -- was waiting for him in the room outside, a presence he’d not sensed in quite a while. Something powerful, strong, but muffled. Bound. The personality as much as the strength itself. Curious.
He breathed in one last of sip of energy from the girl he had against the wall, and then let her go. She was black eyed with toxic dimensional power and giddy from the feeding. “Get out,” Rack whispered into her ear, and stepped back.
She fell to her knees, trembling. “Is… is that it?” the young witch said. “I said I needed a full hit. Don’t I get to stay the rest of the hour?”
“Enjoy what I give you,” Rack said. “If you have anything else to pay with--”
“But you know I give you all I have!” she insisted.
“Not my problem, sweetness,” Rack said said. “What I fed into you should last a few hours. Maybe a day if you’re careful with it. Go and have your fun.”
The girl used the wall to hoist herself back to her feet and went shakily toward the door, which Rack held open for her. She staggered out, glaring at everyone in the waiting room. Rack peered out into the space. Sure enough, there was the presence he had sensed, sitting in one of the waiting couches, bent over with his head on his hand, such a picture of despair it was hard not to feel sorry for the fellow. But Rack managed it. It was a vampire -- really the vampire of Sunnydale, the de facto master of the vampires in the area based on strength and power -- but he wasn’t wielding the scepter, so the vamps around were all running in a bit of an anarchical society.
There were reasons Spike wasn’t wielding power. For one, there was a chip in his brain, a souvenir of a rogue militant organization that had had the run of Sunnydale a few years back. The chip kept him from hurting humans, Rack knew -- though he wasn’t sure if he himself qualified these days; he’d taken in so much demonic energy that the chip might register him as a demon. For another, while Spike could rule other vampires and rule easily, he didn’t like the bother of it. He mostly only did it for his consort, back when he’d done it, a raven haired beauty who had been even more deadly than Spike. Spike had been taken down peg after peg after peg until he was as Rack saw him now, dead faced and despairing and patiently waiting his turn on a warlock for… what? What did he want?
Well, he seemed content to wait, and Rack knew Spike was short of patience, so that was odd. They’d worked with each other before. Rack had offered spells and knowledge in exchange for certain physical repayments from both Spike and Drusilla, and while Spike hadn’t come to him much lately, Rack still knew the old reform-Aurelian.
He did an experiment. He called a different client.
In fact, he called three more before he finally turned his attention to Spike, both because he wanted to see how much the vampire would put up with, and also because he wanted an empty house to work with the guy. Whatever it was Spike was after, it wouldn’t be small. Couldn’t possibly be small. Once he was softened up, Rack sent out his last client and called out, “Now Spike.” He let the vampire look up at him for a beat before smiling at him darkly. “Your turn.”
“About bloody time,” Spike muttered, and heaved himself up from the chair. Spike never used to have the patience to wait his turn. Three years ago, Spike would have just punched his way through the door before Rack was done with his first client. He wondered what the hesitation was, either reluctance or indecision.
Rack stepped out of the doorway and let Spike into his “office” lounge. “So, Spike,” he said. “Long time, no see, eh, man?”
“‘M not a man,” Spike said darkly. “Ain’t that the whole damn problem.”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Rack said evenly, sending out tendrils of magic to read Spike’s mind. It was hard to read; vampires had natural defenses against that sort of thing, and living magic washed off them like water over oil. Spike, fortunately, was pretty easy to read even without magic, his expressions and body language eloquent and obvious. A few pushes here, some rumors there, and the whole story became fairly clear. “I hear you usually get your magics from the other side these days.”
“The other side?”
“The witch,” Rack said. “Slayer’s friend. Oh, but I guess she’s on the wagon these days, isn’t she?” He scoffed. “Is that why you came to me instead of your Magic Box lackeys?”
“Thought about it,” Spike said. “Figured there might be sommat at the shop, but happened to notice your place on the way over. Figured if I want the big problems solved, might as well pay the adept more than the supplier.”
“And you find yourself with a big problem, do you?” Rack asked, sitting down heavily on his couch, showing contempt for Spike’s troubles. “I can’t do nothing for that little electrochip issue of yours, you know that. I told you that ages ago when you first got it. Electricity shorts out my own powers. I can’t get close to it.”
“Wasn’t my question tonight,” Spike said ruefully. He leaned against the wall. “I have a more personal problem than that.”
“Do you, now?” Rack asked. He examined his own dirty fingernails, scratching at one with his thumb. “And what, exactly, might that be?” He kept his voice slow and languid, no hurries, no urgency. He could stay here all night. Let Spike be the impatient one.
But Spike didn’t seem impatient. He seemed pained. Rack scanned him and scanned him searching for injury, but could read nothing. Except there was still pain in the vampire’s eyes, in the tension of his chest, in his movement, in his voice. “Make it stop,” Spike said, his voice dark and raw and almost trembling, a whine underneath it like a wounded child, a desperation Rack seized on like a cat hunting.
“Make what, exactly, stop?” Rack said.
“I need something,” Spike said. “A numbing spell, maybe. Maybe a block. Maybe just a….” He stopped, fazed, and his lip trembled, his nose flared. “I need to make it stop.”
Rack was intrigued. Maybe he could get what he’d always wanted from Spike. Blood freely given. There was power in that, power he could never take by force. The magics involved read intent as well as the physical power of the vampire’s blood, and Spike’s blood was Aurelian, a direct line from the Master, who was dead now. Rack could open portals, bind places, even physically change the manifestation of demons with blood freely given from a master vampire like Spike. He tried not to let the eagerness show in his face.
“You need to be straight with me, Spike. What exactly do you need… stopped?”
“You got any spell to make a demon fall out of love?” he asked quietly, not meeting Rack’s eyes.
Rack would have crowed with pleasure, except he knew he’d lose his client that way. “Demons don’t love easily,” he said. “Has that been your problem? You fell in love with the Slayer?” It answered a lot of questions Rack had had over the years. “Is that why you run with the Slayer’s little gang these days? I thought it was for protection, due to your little military problem.”
“I can handle the damn chip,” Spike said. “Humans don’t scare me. It’s her.” He looked down. “It’s me.”
“You?”
“I can’t keep loving her,” he said.
“So why don’t you kill her?” Rack asked. “You’d be free of her, then.”
“Can’t,” Spike said.
“The chip again?”
“No,” Spike said. “I can hurt her. I just can’t let myself do it. Hurts too much more.” He looked hard at Rack. “I can’t let you do it, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d kill you.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “I may have more strength than you do, these days, vampire, no matter how potent your blood. Remember, I’m human, too.”
“No you’re not.” The vampire growled low, and Rack felt an instinctive terror, but he repressed it, gave no outward sign at all.
“Well, affairs of the heart are complicated beasts,” Rack said. “On a human, it would be simple. A twist here, a pull there, and all the emotion is easily squashed. On a vampire… that’s more sticky. Vampires don’t feel often. Some don’t feel at all. But when they do feel, well… all the hunger of the demon feeds that emotion. All the magic that keeps him alive fuels that inner beast. The power of the undead,” he whispered. “Is that why you can’t let her be hurt?”
“I just need to get rid of this,” Spike said evenly. “That’s all it is. I can’t feel this anymore, I can’t manage it. What do you need, Rack, to get this out of my system? Is it even possible?”
“Oh, it’s possible. The question is, are you willing to pay the price?”
“I can get money,” Spike said darkly.
“I don’t need money. I can get money. I can have gold poured in from other dimensions, it’s not money I want.”
“I know,” Spike said. “I’ll pay in blood.”
“Oh, but you don’t have any minions these days to sacrifice for my payment,” Rack said. That was how Spike and Drusilla used to pay for his services, a sacrificed minion or two, which was power enough in the course of things. “And I don’t want any, anyway.”
“I know what you want, Rack,” Spike said. “I said I’ll pay in blood.”
“Freely given? Contracted to me by magical bond?”
“I’ll pay whatever it takes,” Spike said.
Rack loved it when they said that. “And if I asked for your heart?”
Spike hesitated. “Yeah, even that,” he said. “Do you want my dust? I could pay that, too. That’s where I am, Rack. It’s you or the sun, that’s where I’m headed if this gets any worse. Do you understand me? You take this out of me, you make it stop, you stop the pain, or I tear you limb from limb, and if that kills me, so help me, at least I’ll be out of it.”
“I don’t need your dust,” Rack said. “And I don’t need your heart, since that wouldn’t give you what you want, anyway. Your heart isn’t where your love lies, that is just where it manifests the ache. Your love is laced all through you, through every atom of your demonic magic. Every breath you don’t need, every shift that animates your corpse, every trickle of hunger, every twist of your bone, your very fangs are in love with her, aren’t they?”
Spike was trembling. “Can you take it away, or what?”
Rack grinned. “I can maybe do two things,” he said. “Both of them will cost you. I can cover it up, a numbing spell, like you ask. Or I can remove it entirely.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Numbing spell is temporary. Your emotion, your love, is fueled by your demonic aura, it will reassert itself eventually. Don’t know when. Ten, twenty, maybe a hundred years from now you’ll wake up and find yourself in love with the Slayer all over again.”
Spike groaned. It seemed involuntary. Rack had done this on purpose. The idea of waking up in love with a long dead corpse, back where he was now, only with all the pain of her death atop it again, Rack knew would be a horror beyond coping for the vampire in the state he was in.
“Or,” Rack said, “I can remove it and let it manifest as its own creature. But you’d lose a lot of power in the spell. Not to mention my payment.”
“What power? And what payment?”
“Your strength would be diminished. Your resistance to the sun, any thrall powers you’ve developed. It would take decades to bring you back to where you are now if I take enough of your inherent magic to galvanize your love into its own being.”
Spike waved his hand. “Whatever. And payment?”
“You said you’d pay in blood,” Rack said. “I’d need a quart of the stuff. Yours, Aurelian, freely given, contracted through physical and magical contract, mine to do with as I please in any dimension I see fit.” He grinned again. “And no take-backs.”
“Done,” Spike said without a second’s hesitation.
“But there’s one more thing,” Rack said, knowing he’d have to say this, or the blood wouldn’t technically be freely given, and he couldn’t use it as broadly as he wanted. “The Slayer’s been a part of your life for a long time. If I remove your love for her… well. Your memory is part of the magic, too. You might find yourself a little fuzzy about a few things.”
“I don’t want to remember I was ever in love with her,” Spike said dully.
“Oh? Well, that’s easy, then. You won’t. Power. Blood. Memory. It’ll cost all three to get what you want.”
“Will I still feel like this?” he asked.
“No, you won’t,” Rack said. “But there’s one more price.”
“What?”
“You have to trust me.”
“Trust you?”
“I can’t do the spell with you conscious. You have to let me put you under.”
Spike hesitated.
“You already said you’d be willing to dust for this,” Rack reminded him.
“You’re right. I would,” Spike said. “Well, doc, where do you want me?”
Rack stood up and stretched. “This couch would do. Come on over.”
“You don’t need anything to prepare?”
“I’ll be taking all the power for this from you,” Rack said. “So, no. I have all the equipment I’d need right in this room already. Have a seat, and I’ll get right on it.”
Spike hoisted himself off the wall as if his body weighed three times what it did, and let himself fall onto Rack’s couch. “And I won’t remember what this feels like?” he asked.
“Not a whiff of it,” Rack promised him.
Spike sighed as if the very thought offered him relief, and tossed his feet up on the cushions. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll kill you gleefully,” Spike said.
“If this doesn’t work, I’ll kill you before you even wake up. How’s that for a bargain?” Rack asked.
“You won’t get my blood freely given that way,” Spike said.
“I’ll write up the contract,” Rack said.
“I’ll sign. But I won’t pay until I get my spell.”
“We have a bargain.” Rack whipped the contract out of the ether -- he always had a few ready -- and filled in the details, then had Spike sign. It flashed with a magical bond as Rack signed, too. Then Rack took out a crystal binding jar, and a channeling wand, and turned to Spike on the couch. “Lay back, vampire, and trust to old Rack.”
Spike hesitated one last time, then lay his head back on the cushions and took in one final breath.
And Rack sucked his consciousness out with the wand.
It wasn’t an easy spell. Spike’s love for the Slayer fought him. It was strong, powerful, brutal, ravenous, destructive. It was hot and sultry, insidious, ferocious, ruthless. Rack struggled with it; it fought him every inch of the way, making him pant with his own repressed emotion, tearing at him savagely. There was nothing gentle left in this emotion. Rack realized many things as he battled it. The Slayer had nurtured and fed this beast, and had also used and abused it. It was pained, bruised, tortured, angry, despairing, bitter. It was a demon worthy of Spike, really. This child of love his demonic magic and psyche had birthed, severed from the rest of his magics, was one of the most powerful things Rack had ever fought. His own magics were diminished by it, exhausted as he wrestled it into the jar. It only fit there because it was incorporeal, and he could shrink its size and power down inside the crystal to something manageable.
But he didn’t have the strength to destroy it. He’d thought he would, that he’d slice Spike’s love for the Slayer out of him, squash it beneath his own warlock magic, and that would be it. Gone like a snuffed-out candle flame. But that was not how it worked. The thing was utterly indestructible.
Well, he didn’t have to tell Spike that. He managed to squash it into the jar, his own body and spirit aching and bruised from the battle, and he got the lid on before it slipped back out again. Trembling, gasping, he picked the jar up and hid it behind a cushion. Once he’d replenished his own magics -- that was going to take quite a number of clients to refuel him; it was going to be days. Oh well -- he would send the jar to another dimension, and it could cause its own havoc there. In the meantime, it was out of Spike. That was all Spike had asked for, and all he had to do.
Fortunately it would be a little time before Spike woke up. Good thing. Rack flung himself back in a chair and let the grayness in his vision overtake him. Fuck. Spike could have warned him! Though he supposed the fact that Spike wanted it out of him in the first place had been warning enough. If Spike had managed to love Drusilla with as much passion as he’d had, and hadn’t bothered quashing that emotion, it stood to reason that this love for the Slayer was much more powerful and destructive. More powerful and destructive than Spike could manage, apparently. Almost more than Rack could manage. Almost more than anyone could manage. No wonder the poor vampire had wanted it gone.
He passed out for a bit, after wrestling with that thing. Rack let the world swirl around him and didn’t wake up until it was nearly time for Spike to come back to consciousness. Fuck. He’d never do anything like that again. He couldn’t take it.
He was impressed all over again by the vampire. His blood freely given would be so potent, Rack was already reassessing the spells he could perform with it. He could be the most powerful warlock in the western hemisphere with that stuff, if he used it right. He climbed back to his feet, trembling, but ready. Things were looking up.
Except for Spike, of course. He’d given up the lion’s share of his power tonight. Things were probably going to go very badly for him, ultimately.
Still, that wasn’t Rack’s problem.