Summary: For a tincture of opium shall see all your troubles away.

London, England, January 1889


“Bugger,” muttered Spike.

Groggily, the vampire reached over, fumbling for the timepiece on the bedside cabinet. It was just after noon.

“Knew it was getting on,” said Spike. He pulled himself upright, and reached down to where his trousers were located, entangled in the remains of the watch’s owner. “Thanks for nothing mate,” muttered the vampire as he pulled them on. “You occupy the finest crock in all of Cheapside, and that’s bloody saying something.” Spike got to his feet, and made his way uncertainly across the room, avoiding the corpse of his host’s wife as he went. “Frigid old bint,” noted Spike. “You there Dru?” he called, tapping lightly on the door to the dingy garret’s only other room. There was no answer, so Spike gently pushed the door open. “Dru?” he repeated. “Poodle, you in there?”

“No,” said Dru as Spike entered. “The stars wouldn’t allow it.”

“Saints preserve us,” said Spike wearily. “Not the fucking stars again love.”

Dru turned, wagging her finger. “They’re no fornicators, they’re leviathans,” she said defensively.

“ ’Course pet,” said Spike. “You have to snap out of this Dru, we’ve got to be going.”

“Neptune objects!” said Dru vehemently.

“Oh, shag.” He knew he should have checked who Dru was drinking. Like as not, her victims’ blood had been swimming with gin and laudanum, so his woman would be swimming with the fairies for a good while.

Whole trip’s been a bloody washout, decided Spike. This was meant to be his return tour of London, the highest-class cabaret, but it had all gone to Hell in a troop of handbaskets. The rich sods had got the rozzers onto them before they’d even got started; all that bollocks in Whitechaple a few months back had got everyone on their tenterhooks in style. Not wanting to give up so easily, him and Dru had moved into London’s vast underworld without a second thought, but Spike had come to regret it. It was even worse than he remembered, and now this. It was just too much.

“Maybe I should stake you now?” he whispered as Dru made a little pirouette about a bloodied cradle. “Could be kinder on us both I recon.”

Dru looked him in his tired eyes. “Jupiter might have a thing or two to say about that,” she said, wagging her finger reprovingly.

It was obvious to Spike he was not going to see Dru pay a visit the province of the sane for a good while yet, so he turned and left her to what was remained of her mind. “I’ll be back later,” he said.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To see some stars of my own,” Spike replied.

* * *

“Tea?” said the store-holder. “What sort of tea?”

“The strong, Oriental kind,” said Spike, taking a long draw on his woodbine.

The store-holder shook his head. “Sorry mate, don’t know anything about that.”

Spike blew a long skein on smoke past the man’s saggy round face. “Yeah, I think you do,” he said, his voice taking on a distinct edge, like a whetstone had just been applied his words.

“No, sorry,” said the store-holder, impassive in the face of the theat. He’d seen off plenty worse than this peroxide nancyboy.

“Look,” said Spike, moving closer to the man’s face, his voice dropping to a whisper, “my mad sow of a mistress has taken off to twinkle with the bloody stars. Consequently I’m bored shiteless until she’s back from the Hatter’s teaparty, so have an urge to go and chase after some dragons in the interim. So why don’t you cut the foreplay, and tell me where the opium den is before I cut your flaccid dynasty off at this rotting generation?” His hand had closed round the store-holder’s crotch, and begun to tighten.

“Christ,” squealed the wretched man. “It’s down the second alley to your right, then along the road to the docks …”

“I’ll find my way,” said Spike. He gave his victim a twist for good measure, then let him fall to his knees.

“Bastard,” spat the store-holder as Spike departed. The vampire heard him, and considered plucking out his eyeballs so he could watch his spine being removed, but decided better of it.

For he had dragons to chase.

* * *

“What’d you make of the criminal plague that’s sweeping our godless city?”

“What’d you make to it sir?”

“I’d wager it’s a natural corollary of the lower orders’ inherent vulgarity,” opined Samuel Urqart, Superintendent of Detectives at Scotland Yard.

“Sir, no crime is vulgar,” replied his companion. “Although, I think, all vulgarity is a crime.”

Urqart gave a condescending grunt. “Impressive as your flamboyant friends may find them, sir, your fancy words won’t do anything of measure to help me get this abomination in check.”

“Why don’t we allow the abomination to be abominable for a while?” Urqart’s companion slunk back into the shadows that crept over the majority of his velvet-coved couch, and reached over to the small squat table beside him. He lifted the long bamboo tube to his lips, and took a long, deep inhalation of its contents. The opium, its vaguely sweet scent filling his sinuses, flooded into his lungs, engulfed his body, took charge of his mind. His gaunt hands fell against the ebony frame of his couch, his eyelids drifted closed.

“Damn it Dorian, there’s barely anything but the bloody chaff left in my pipe,” said Urqart irritably, his voice barely registering with his companion’s spiralling mind.

“You shouldn’t have inanely extemporised for so long then, should you? Get the boy to refill it.”

“I’ll damned well do that,” said Urqart. His voice was gone then, and the encroaching mist was welcomed to make its approach.

* * *

“Sir, this establishment is for regulars only,” said Mr Ho Lin firmly.

“Look, you daft yellow sod, I just want to come in and get buggered out my brains for a few hours, and I’m even willing to pay you for the pleasure,” said Spike, “so how about you knock that door of yours open and let me through?”

“My apologies sir,” replied Ho Lin, “but what I said stands. Perhaps a visit to Cleveland Street would be more in keeping to your request?”

“Why you cheeky Chink bastard,” spat Spike, driving his hand forward through the small hatch in the immovable teak door to tear into Ho Lin’s face. With an agility belied by his aged appearance, Ho Lin easily avoided the blow. “Call me a sodomite, would you?” spat the vampire, his rage causing his face to take on its demonic visage. “Come out here and try saying that, you gobby little wog!”

“Now, that would hardly be wise of me, would it?” replied Ho Lin with just the barest inflection of sarcasm in his words.

“Cunt!” spat Spike, headbutting the door.

“They may have widened their purview to include that at Cleveland Street as well,” said Ho Lin, shutting the hatch. “Good day to you sir.”

Spike threw a couple of colourful imprecations after the departing proprietor, then turned and slunk away. He headed straight into the nearest gin shop, exiting a few minutes later.

“Hey, Mr Ching Chang Arsehole,” bellowed Spike, “I’ve got something for you here.” There was no reply, so the vampire continued, “Alright, if you don’t want to come out and receive your gift, I’ll give it to you with my most dearly expressed gratitude.”

* * *

There were stars alright, clear and incandescent before him. So much bigger and brighter than could usually be glimpsed, so much more intimate. They weren’t stars any more, it was Charlotte, so close, so tender, his own Lady of Shallot, moving lithely over his yearning body. She was atop him now, moving up so he could move into her, but that was not his concern; all any sane man could hope for here was those eyes, that simile, that caustic, wilful and wonderful woman devoting herself, inexplicably and inescapably, to him.
“Fire!”

He waited, waited for it to begin, before the realisation dawned this was no opiate dijin.

“Fire,” the voice repeated, and slowly, fighting intractably every step of the way, his eyes slid open. “Who …” he heard himself say, but answer there came none.

He tried to rise, but found it impossible, which was reasonable enough. He sank back into his velvet folds, returning to her, except his Guenivire had gone, replaced with licking tongues of flame.

“Oh, dear,” he murmured. This time he succeeded in arising, helped on his way by the gouts of smoke that billowed around him, and this was not the sweet, sickening aroma of the dragon. He started forwards, blind amidst the pall of ash, smoke and flame. He felt his skin smoulder from time to time, but blocked it out, and pressed on until the first chinks of daylight pierced the choking shroud. He moved towards them, felt nothing, then all at once, the smoke abated and he was standing in a heavily overcast winter’s day. He looked back to see the entire opium den aflame, the cries of those who would die with the dragon they loved so dearly piercing through the alley.

He rubbed his streaming, smoke-stinging eyes, desperately trying to bring things into focus. The dull, deafening thud of falling masonry indicated the rickety chasing room was beginning to crumble, so he ran forwards, just escaping the pall of dust and rubble that rolled methodically down the narrow alleyway.

“Call me a sodomite would ya?”

Turning, he saw the figure, carrying himself with a casual gait that seemed wholly inappropriate for the situation, saunter past the coughing Ho Lin, who was bent double before him. The being, for he was no man, reached down and pulled the opium den’s erstwhile proprietor to his feat, and before he could reach the pair, the creature had sunk the long incisors that jutted from its mouth into Ho Lin’s neck. He ran towards them, but Ho Lin’s lifeless corpse had already been dropped to the ground as he arrived to face the inhuman creature.

“Who the sod are you?” said Spike as he stood steady and impassively before him. “You lookin’ for a brusing into the bargin?”

“My name is Dorian Grey,” said the opium chaser. “And yours is irrelevant, for it’ll soon be entering into posterity.”

Spike laughed, a manic, free laugh. “Bloody hell, hark at this sod!” he said. “Piss off mate, before you get your pretty looks rearranged courtesy of yours truly.”

“My pretty looks are safely deposited where you can do them no harm,” said Dorian. “Whereas yours clearly left you the moment you caught your sow of a mother on the way out.”

“Right,” breathed Spike, his entire body tensing as he spoke, “no cunt starts on my mother and lives.”

“Except, suffice to say, for her Sapphic whore,” said Dorian. Spike lunged at him as he spoke, catching the man deeply across his gaunt, pale cheek as he darted aside. Dorian spun and landed a kick in the bottom of Spike’s spine, but the vampire didn’t even flinch as he retaliated with his own vicious blow, landing his toe-capped boot into Dorian’s crotch. Such was the force of the blow he sunk involuntarily to his knees, and Spike’s boot had landed full into his face before he could draw another breath. His body jerked back and hit the dilapidated brickwork behind him, leaving a deep crimson stream in the wake of his gashed head as he sank to the ground.

“Bloody hell, I’ve seen nuns give me more of a going over,” spat Spike in contempt. “Now hold still while I take off what’s left of those pretty-boy looks.” The vampire headbutted Dorian with his crinkled brow, and drove his fangs into the man’s neck.

The blood was good, better than good. In fact, it was exquisite, a vampiric Châteaux ’64.

“Don’t expend needless effort,” Spike suddenly heard whispered in his ear. Before he could make another moove, he was already spiralling through the air, his fangs ripped from their sustenance. Several bones shattered as he impacted the alleyway’s other side, and landed face-first in the dirt. He was on his feet in a second, and looking straight into the face of the man he had been about to send to the beyond. Except, save for the bloodstains, the face was now exactly as it had been when Spike had first set eyes on it.

“What the buggery …?” he began in bewilderment.

“As I said” – Dorian drope a foot into Spike’s solar plexus – “you needent expend fruitless effort on sullying this fine countenance.” He headbutted Spike, flung the vampire over his shoulder in a flawlessly executed Karate move, and placed an expensive shoe against his throat as he hit the ground. “You can’t kill a cursed man, vampire,” said Dorian, “but unfortunately for you, the situation is not reciprocated.”

Spike shoved both hands under Dorian’s foot, and threw him off his throat and onto his back. The vampire and Dorian sprung to their feet together, and exchanged several vicious blows before Dorian again sent Spike to the ground, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and drove his face into the brickwork.

“Would you indulge me by explaining why you destroyed my favourite dragon house?” Dorian breathed in Spike’s ear.

“Get fucked,” spat the vampire, driving his foot into Dorian’s shin and breaking free.

“Oh very well,” said Dorian irritably. He dodged Spike’s first blow, and intercepting the second, cleanly broke the vampire’s right arm. Spike howled, but was already tearing at Dorian’s flesh with his other arm. Dorian again threw Spike across the alley, delivering a blow that cracked one of the vampire’s upper vertebrae as he did so. As he raked down the brickwork, Spike was in agony, but could still move, so pulled himself to his feet.

“You right bastard,” he said as he stood up, his eyes looking down at the shard of wood Dorian had just embedded into his heart.

“You’re welcome,” said Dorian as Spike’s body disintegrated. He dusted himself down, and went to see what had survived the vampire’s handiwork.

* * *

Back at the dilapidated garret, Dru crumbled to her knees, whimpering forlornly. “Oh Miss Edith,” beathed the vampire, cradling her blinded doll to her breast. “I suddenly get the feeling we’re all alone.”


© Byron, 2003