Turn on the Fan
It was bad enough Markowitz went on national television and told the entire world what a select few already knew; it was another thing entirely to be standing there, watching that thing developing and bubbling in the sky.
Not many things scared Spike anymore, but that was certainly one of them.
He stood in front of his crypt, lit cigarette stuck in his mouth. Faith’s voicemail still rang in his head, even several minutes after he first heard it. Spike hadn’t seen Markowitz’s landmark performance, mostly because his TV broke two weeks ago, but somehow it didn’t surprise the vampire.
But he recognized what he saw in the sky. He remembered the last time a portal opened up over the sky in Las Vegas, the pure chaos and fear it caused. This looked a little too much like that, even if the portal wasn’t actually open yet.
Key word being yet.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself, taking a drag and sucking in his cheeks. For all of his worries concerning behavioral modification chips and the like, it turned out Project Integration’s biggest problem was keeping the whole thing secret. It had been a week since Spike turned in his badge, wanting desperately to keep Uncle Sam from taking him into custody again.
He knew when he signed up this would be a bad idea, and yet Spike did it anyway. Mostly out of a selfish need for direction, a desire to make his own way in the world now that he no longer found himself playing second-fiddle to a Slayer or another vampire with a soul.
But one common thread in every time Spike tried venturing out on his own: things turned disastrous sooner or later.
He understood Faith’s concern on some level; with her checkered past, it was entirely within the realm of possibility for the government to come after her when the project started going south. After all, why wouldn’t a fugitive get all unlawful again once federal shit started going down?
Spike didn’t really have that to worry about, though he was still a little concerned the government might try to shove a chip in his head again. Because that worked so well the first time, and what better way to shut the vampire’s mouth?
Clark County was going to hell in a handbasket. Not that it hadn’t before, but this time it was so much worse, because this time everyone knew it. It was so much easier to save the world when everyone wasn’t running around in a supernatural-induced panic.
Spike hoped Markowitz was dead by now, he really did. It probably wasn’t the soulful way to think, but after giving a tell-all like he was with Barbara bloody Walters, he deserved whatever happened to him.
Besides, it wasn’t like Spike himself was willing to do the deed. Dude probably tasted like bad beef, anyway.
For a moment, the vampire wondered if this would go down like Sunnydale. Big-time center of mystical convergence threatening to boil over into the “real” world, causing widespread panic, fear and even a little death … if things went as bad as the Champion expected, all of Clark County might become a crater when all was said and done.
And Spike didn’t exactly feel like reliving that sort of thing, so it was becoming abundantly clear to him he had to leave. He wasn’t sure where he’d go – though Los Angeles sure as hell wasn’t an option. Spike figured he could probably return to Europe, find his own way out there.
Or perhaps Cleveland. He knew there was a Hellmouth there, which probably meant the city needed its fair share of help when it came to vampires and the like. Then again, if this news had spread that far, who was to say things weren’t any worse on that side of the country?
Spike flicked his spent cigarette into the ground with a smirk. The irony was, Drusilla had the right idea all along: get out of town before the shit really hit the fan.