Beth sighed as she watched her great-grandsire sitting in the sun. He was everything every vampire wished to be. Older than any vampire had ever been, William the Bloody had the best of both his human and demon side.
Able to walk in the sun and see his own reflection, yet still a vampire. He was the Invincible One, the Master of every vampire on Earth. Minions, Childer and Masters alike envied him, his abilities and his power. He had faced now countless Slayers and killed every, but one, who he had defeated yet spared.
But only those closest to him, his Childer and theirs knew the truth about William.
Hundreds of years ago, when he still went by the name of Spike, he had a chip in his brain, rending him unable to hurt mortals. For a few years he lived like that, surviving on the friendship of the spared Slayer and her friends. One night he was fighting some demon or another when a shadow of one of the Old Ones appeared before him. The Old One offered Spike eternal life, without the chip, as the strongest vampire on Earth if only he spilled the blood of the one he cared the most for.
William agreed, and the Old One short-circuited the chip. Spike joined the Slayer in combat, thinking that his infatuation with her made her the one he most cared for, and having no problem in spilling her blood. He was confident that the wording gave him a loophole. Spilling blood didn’t mean death necessarily, a cut, he thought would be sufficient. A cut that he could easily give her.
But the demons were slayed and William had no chance to cut the Slayer. He had sat down on a tombstone, holding the sword he had used that night. Her grandsire told me that the rage inside him grew and grew, so he got up and turned, running through with his sword one who was approaching him.
It turned out to be the mortal Xander, who wanted to know how Spike was doing. Tara told me that the howl of rage and grief that William emitted chilled her then mortal bones. She witnessed as Spike pulled the sword free from Xander’s stomach, then gathered the mortal to him. Her grandsire Tara was one of the good ones back then, so she and her lover used magic to keep Spike from turning Xander.
William refused to move, and sat in the park still looking at the blood in his hands, waiting to greet the sun.
But the sun came and went, and he remained undead. He asked the Slayer to stake him, but it didn’t do any damage. Decapitation was tried next, but nothing cut through his skin.
Every Slayer he fought, it was with the intention of losing, but when they failed to kill him, he killed them.
He gave up on the Slayers 50 years ago. Now, he just sits in the sun everyday, tears shining in the light, hoping that this will be the day he will be forgiven for his blindness and sins, and be allowed to join the love of his life in the afterlife.
She watches from the shadows, safely inside the mansion, then turns and goes up to her room. He’ll still be there tomorrow.
