He sat on the floor amidst the ruin—the remains of what had been their latest home together. The need for the physical release of his fury had finally burnt off. Blood oozed from cuts and scrapes on his hands. He stared in fascination, having no memory of acquiring them. Maybe it had been when he’d smashed their bed to pieces? Maybe when the walls had disintegrated under his ministrations? It didn’t matter anyway, he decided, nothing much mattered at the moment.
 
He rested his head on one drawn up knee and went over for the thousandth time that night the reason behind his rage; her words replaying clearly in his mind.
 
He left her!? How dare she? How could she say that to him? When it was sodding well obvious to anyone with half a brain that she’d left him! The bitch had packed her things, minions an’ all, and left Sunnydale after rambling nonsense about him leaving her for the Slayer!
 
He knew that killing the Slayer hadn’t exactly gone as planned, but who expected her to have friends and family fighting with her, fighting for her!? Weren’t natural, not the proper order of things at all!
 
It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, he mused bitterly, and it wasn’t like he wasn’t gonna kill her. Just needed to try again, is all. Next time he would kill her, next time he would sink his teeth into that golden neck and drain her, feel her strength and her life gushing into him! Then he would find Dru and throw the Slayer’s lifeless body at her feet. Yeah, that’s what he’d do. He would show her, dozy bint!  He left her, what a load of bollocks!
 
He nodded to himself, satisfied at his solution, and drained the last of the bottle of Jack he’d been conversing with for the last hour. Sagging sideways to the floor and curling up in the midst of the rubble he drifted off; dreaming of blood and mayhem, of fists and fury, and of one petite warrior gleaming in the moonlight as she danced her dance of death. He licked his lips and smiled to himself as he slumbered.
 
He stirred the next day as the afternoon sun filtered in through the newly made windows his fists had created the night before; the scent of singed flesh filling his nostrils before the pain registered in his still sleep-dulled brain. One outflung arm rested in a pool of sunlight, smoke slowly rising from it in gently curling tendrils and he jerked it back with a curse. Bloody hell what was he doing laying here and why was the factory he’d lived in since his arrival in Sunnydale in such a bloody shambles? The fog slowly lifted and he remembered.  Oh yeah, that’s right, he sighed at the recollection, Dru had left him when he’d failed to kill that damned Slayer. Memories of the previous night came flooding back. He looked around, searching for a hair of the dog but unfortunately what hadn’t poured down his throat last night was decorating the remains of the factory’s walls.
 
“Guess it’s time to look for new digs, Spike, old pal,” he muttered to himself.  Maybe a haunted mansion or a mausoleum; something befitting a creature of the night such as himself, he reflected.