Creatures of Habit -- Excerpt
Blood filled his mouth. The vampire drank from the pretty college girl's neck. The girl had screamed, screamed for God and Mommy. Now her lips were turning blue, and her eyes were turning white. The blood kept coming, spraying from her neck like warm, wet, dragon's fire.
    When it stopped, he dropped the body. He stepped over it like a disposed candy wrapper. Still hungry, he moved into the shadows of night.
    Spike saw him slip around a row of Dumpsters that stood behind a campus diner. He thought for a moment about not following him, letting him go. What the hell did he care, really.
    But it wasn't any kind of moral dilemma that stopped Spike. It was the thought of blood, the thought of drinking blood from a girl's neck. It made all the difference. He flashed back to times when he and Drusilla fed with the abandon of aristocrats. Killing just for a taste. No longer about feeding or sustenance. All about the rush you get when blood fills your mouth, and it comes so fast you have to fight back the gag reflex and just drink. And you can't stop or it'll run down your chin. Then you find you're not drinking as much as lapping up the sticky red liquor like a thirsty dog in front of a water bowl.
    A hand on Spike's shoulder made him spin around quickly. He shook the nostalgia cobwebs from his mind. Even if it was because of some chip the military put in his head that prevented him from harming humans, he knew he was done with feeding. Resist the temptation. Just forget about it. Concentrate on the black-skinned vampire now standing in front of him.
    "It's like this—if you're gonna follow me, get your ass to followin'. I ain't got all night, player."
    "Parnassus?" Spike asked. "Parnassus Jones? Well, I'll be damned."
    "Damned you may very well be, brother. Damned indeed." Parnassus laughed. "How long's it been, Spike? Thirty years? Forty?"
    "Lost count, mate. But looks as though you lost your way. What brings you to Sunnydale?"
    "Blood. Power. Pursuit of the ultimate high. Same ol', same ol'."
    "Unfortunately you picked the town with the Slayer in it."
    "The low down in the downtown says the Slayer was dead, six feet in the ground. Makes the alley ripe for this cat, what I thought." Parnassus laughed again, this time sounding slow and choppy like a broken airplane propeller.
    His whole life, before and after the turning, had been slow and choppy. Parnassus—his Christian name lost in time and legend—was born in Mississippi in the mid-1800s, by all rights a miserable time and place to be a black man in America. His parents joined a wagon train as laborers to make the move out West for the Gold Rush when he was just a kid, taking him along to start a new life. He barely made it across the country alive. His mother didn't, the trip too hard and too long. His father died a bitter, angry man a few years after their arrival in San Francisco.
    Parnassus kicked around California for a while, doing odd jobs, eventually signing up with Central Pacific Railroad when he was barely working age, laying track for the western half of the transcontinental railroad. The forced labor conditions on the rail line didn't suit him, and he decided to get the hell out of the United States. So he traded his strong back for passage on a ship bound for Greece.
    Spike laughed at Parnassus's comment about the Slayer. "Out of touch with everybody but yourself, as usual. She's back, you know."
    "So I've heard."
    "Yep. Good as new." Spike lit a cigarette. "Hell, even a bit cuter, if you like 'em dangerous and deadly."
    "No matter—my plan don't involve her. Long as I gots a city full of blood drinkers, I'm in business."
    "You're not afraid she'll stop you?"
    "Not if she doesn't know about me. Not like I'm gonna go around and blow things up. Or do something stupid like try to bring about the end of the world."
    "That stuff's for amateurs, eh?"
    "Or vamps that gotta dust wish. Damn, I ain't playin' that game."
    Spike doubted the subtlety of his plan. He knew Parnassus's history—and it was anything but low-key. On the ship he took to Greece, Parnassus had met a distinguished gentleman named Kharílaos, who had offered to share his quarters and teach him the ways of the world. He started by introducing him to the taste of blood. It was Parnassus's first high, as he drank from Kharílaos's arm, still feeling the ecstasy of Kharílaos's bite.
    Sometime later he re-christened himself Parnassus Jones in a perverted baptism of young girls' blood. Spike met him much later during a couple lazy years in Tangiers, feeding on hapless expatriates and wandering souls no one would miss. Parnassus wasn't quick or overly aggressive, but he proved to be more bloodthirsty and sadistic in his killing than even Spike.
    "Remember Tangiers, Spike? Damn, you and me knew how to rush the action. But I found me a much bigger rush, and I'm laying it down in the S.D."
Spike licked his lips. His cigarette spent, he threw it to the ground. "It involve blood?"
    "Not just blood, my brother. I'm talkin' primo juice my players pay buck for."
    "Lots of bucks?"
    Parnassus clapped him on the back. "Folks shoulda called you William the Money 'stead of William the Bloody! Let me tell you 'bout the score."
    He leaned in toward Spike, closer than Spike would have liked. Spike flinched and tried to take a step back, but Parnassus grabbed him by the shoulder, leaned in closer, and whispered: "I got something called Jube—it don't do dick when brothers sniff it or lick it, but humans are all Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." He laughed at his own falsetto. "But here's the joint—feed on this meat when they're all crunched in the head, and it'll tickle your toes and wiggle your willie like you never been done."
    Spike made his hands into fists so that his slight trembling wouldn't show.     "Bollocks, Jones, I've tasted Slayer blood—it doesn't get better than that."
    "So you think. I'm tellin' you, Jube makes Slayer blood taste like milk."
Spike found himself frustrated by this conversation, more so than he should have been. He turned to leave as he pulled another smoke from an almost empty pack. "Sounds too rich for me. I'll stick to feeding off regular veins," he lied.
    "Shorty, I ain't chargin' you, I'm cuttin' you in. Tell you what—bring all your friends 'round to one of my soirees. More they spend, more I cut you in, aight? I'm not passin' this deal on to everyone—but you and me, we used to be tight. And I'm all about gettin' the word out on this damage."
    Spike paused. "When and where?"
    "I'm movin' in on a party scene, something the boys and girls 'round here likes to call The Faint. We got music and dancin' and—"
    "All right, what gives? Doesn't sound like your style. Fact, sounds an awful lot like someone else I remember. I guess you're still hanging out with that Velatti girl."
    "Funny you should say that." Parnassus wasn't laughing. "I give the girl the high hat years ago. Then bam, outta the blue 'bout a month ago, she's all puppy-dogging me, playin' like a groupie."
    "You're a regular rock star, Parnassus Jones," Spike said.
    "Damn, Shorty, I just keeps her around 'cause she's easy on the eyes is all. You know what I'm sayin'. How's that Drusilla girl of yours?"
Spike's frustration returned. He wondered how much Parnassus was playing him.
    "Dru's gone."
    "Good." Parnassus laughed loud, right in his face. "Never liked that funny-talkin' bitch."
    A foul wind blew up from the Dumpster. Spike was done with this conversation. So was Parnassus.
    "Faint. Just remember it, player. And spread the word for your ol' friend, Parnassus."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Creatures of Habit
Tom Fassbender & Jim Pascoe
Dark Horse, 2002
ISBN: 1569715637
$17.95 US
128 pages
Trade Paper
6 x 9