Feeding Habits

By Medea

Chapter Four

Spike wondered if Willow's quiet sorrow would make it easier to persuade her to kill, if she would welcome the solace of her predatory instincts. However, she surprised him with her determination to explore non-lethal methods of feeding. It was another night or two before she was ready to make another attempt. In the meantime, Willow vented her frustration and rage at Rom curses by ravishing Spike's body with such hunger that the blond vampire hoped she might never want to go out again. He was all too happy to satisfy her needs.

Too soon, she grew restless with the desire to roam the night, and asked Spike if he would be willing to make a *genuine* effort to help her with her new dietary regime.

"And when I say help, I mean help me *succeed*, Spike," Willow clarified sternly as she relaxed across his chest after a bout of frenzied coupling, "Not help me feel like what I'm doing is a waste of time."

"But it *is* a waste of time," Spike sulked insistently. However, he didn't want to risk alienating her, especially when she had only just begun to recover some of her old spirit, and so he relented fairly easily.

"We may need to break it down into simpler steps. You're still self-conscious about drinking from a human when you might be observed," Spike reasoned as he stroked his hands along the supple contours of her back.

"So I need to find ways to convince my targets to duck into a private, secluded area with a complete stranger," Willow observed sardonically.

"Your luck with college bars hasn't been too good. Perhaps what you need is a dark, noisy club," her companion suggested.

"Or a theater," Willow added thoughtfully, "How would you like to take me to the movies tonight?"

"Hmm, it'll cost you, luv....a box of Raisinets," Spike declared with a wink.

"You're on," Willow grinned back at him as she raised herself up to get dressed.

When they were both suited up, Willow and Spike left the hotel and walked a mile or so to the nearest cinema. Without really paying attention to the feature that was playing, they purchased their tickets, Willow duly bought Spike his Raisinets, and they slipped into the already-darkened theater. The film had started nearly an hour earlier, and the pair was greeted by a screaming teenage girl fleeing an unknown killer on screen. The two vampires smirked ironically at one another.

As the on-screen actress shrieked and shrieked, obviously marked for death, Willow slipped into a seat in the very back row. The row was empty, and there were five people seated in the row in front of her. It would be a small matter to graze her fangs against their necks and tap unnoticed into their veins. One after another she drank as silently as possible, holding herself to just under a pint each.

When she had finished, Willow was encouraged by her success. She sought out her companion and found him chuckling in his seat a few rows up -- to the considerable annoyance of those around him. Spike pulled her down onto his lap and grinned devilishly as he asked her, "So, how'd you do, luv?"

"I think I'm getting the hang of it," Willow whispered, ignoring the irritated glares of the other movie patrons, "But what's so funny?"

"You're not going to believe the movie we just happened to walk in on," Spike explained with bemusement as he directed her attention to the screen.

Willow looked up just in time to see the nubile young actress who had spent the past fifteen minutes screaming fall into the clutches of two atrociously fake-looking vampires. Right down to the Hollywood plastic fangs. Willow groaned in disbelief.

"You've got to admit, this is just perfect," Spike murmured as he squeezed her waist playfully.

"Are you kidding? This is *cheesy*!" Willow grumbled with contempt.

"SSSHHHHH!!!" came the angry hiss from a petite brunette seated in front of them.

Willow scowled at her, and Spike leaned in close to whisper seductively in his companion's ear, "Care for a little after-dinner digestif, luv?"

The redhead's scowl melted into a wicked smile.

A moment later, she pulled away from the brunette's neck, leaving two glistening wounds on the woman's smooth flesh. Rising up, Willow extended her hand to Spike and drew him out of the theater. She had achieved her goal for the evening and wanted to go home to celebrate her success in feeding so discreetly.

Or, at least she thought it had been discreet.

Because she dragged Spike away with her before the movie ended, both of them missed the minor furor that erupted when the house lights came up and half a dozen people discovered feeble trickles of blood running down their necks. Under any other circumstances this would have been cause for alarm, but a very strange thing occurred. Rumors rippled through the crowd and escalated into a narcissistic, giddy conviction that this particular audience had been targeted for a clever publicity stunt.

Apparently, fans of vampire movies could persuade themselves of just about anything.

Without intending to, and to her great chagrin, Willow had launched a sensation.

It started with columns in the arts and entertainment sections of several of the local newspapers:

'Latest Vamp Flick Has Real Teeth Even If Plot Lacks Bite';

'Popcorn Not the Only Snack At Recent Showing of _Mark of the Damned_.'

'You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll bleed!'

Were it possible, Willow would have blushed furiously the first time that Angel shoved a paper at her and asked if she had anything to do with this mysterious "publicity stunt". However, when her confession earned her the first genuine smile she had seen on her mentor's face since *that* night, not to mention his rich, full laughter, she decided that things could be worse.

Indeed they could. And they soon were.

A few nights later when Spike and Willow were wandering the streets, they saw them.

Tee shirts. Black, with red lettering.

They seemed to be everywhere, and each one was more gimmicky than the last:

'Got Blood?';

'Red Cross: It's Not Just For Breakfast Any More.';

and Spike's particular favorite,

'Fanged...For Her Pleasure.'

Willow nearly cringed when they came upon a trio of squealing, giggly adolescent girls who were admiring each other's brand new tattoos: twin red points on their necks, simulating the wounds of a vampire's bite. One wore a black tee shirt that said 'Bite me!' and bragged to her friends about what she'd do if she ever met a real vampire.

Spike's eyes gleamed wickedly as he and Willow observed the scene from a distance. He inhaled their scent and murmured appreciatively, "Virgins, all three of them...not more than sixteen, I'd gather."

"Spike, you aren't thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?" Willow chided him.

"Oh, come on, luv," Spike protested impishly, "Give the people what they want, I always say..."

"Sorry, but they're too small. You'll have to throw them back," Willow mused even as she kept a firm grip on her companion's arm.

"Mmm...rock them back is more like it," Spike chuckled, although he let Willow lead him away from the naive, tempting creatures.

Willow hoped that, like any other fad, this one would quickly fade. She duly responded to e-mail messages from Cyrene, Tara, Xander and Cordelia, all of which asked essentially the same thing: "Willow, was that *you*?"

She thought she couldn't get any more embarrassed.

Until the manila envelopes began arriving in the mail. Dozens of them, all addressed to The Unholy Spirit, c/o Angel Investigations. A few of the senders had the courtesy to include cards that identified themselves and offered a witty salutation. However, in all the envelopes the contents were the same: a set of plastic fangs from the Archie McPhee novelty supplier.

Word had gotten around to the lairs. She was now the butt of every joke in local vampire society. Willow swore she would *never* set foot in a movie theater again.

Just when she thought that the craze was diminishing, the *one* thing that could prolong her agony happened.

A far-right fundamentalist organization began a campaign to ban the movie, and flooded the press with letters to the editor raving about the corruption of America's youth by sinful Hollywood types who glamorized the occult. A spokesman for the Moral Majority thundered at a press conference that it was no surprise that high-school students were killing each other with guns when today's youth would rather fantasize about demons and vampires than read the Bible.

Naturally, the results were predictable. Ticket sales at the box office soared, and vampire tee shirts soared in popularity.

At this point, Willow just decided to accept defeat. She'd never live this down. Not if she survived another five hundred years and set herself up as Master of a Hellmouth. Never, never, never.

So she was completely unprepared when, amazingly, something good came out of the whole affair. A few weeks after the manila envelopes and plastic fangs stopped coming in the mail, Cordelia stopped by to drop off a piece of registered mail that she had signed for at the other office. Willow opened the envelope and was stunned to find a certified check, made out in her name, for $10,000. In shock, she unfolded the note that accompanied it and read:

"If you ever have plans for another such stunt, give me some advance warning. Consider the enclosed check an incentive. The tee shirts were the best I could do on such short notice. Still, it was a pleasure doing business with you."

The note was signed Andrew Murdoch. With a little investigation, Willow discovered that he was a vampire who, in life, had been in sales and marketing. Apparently, death hadn't snuffed out his zeal for profit.

Finally, Willow was able to laugh about it all. After she had arranged for Cordelia to set up a bank account for her and deposit the check, the redheaded vampire took Angel and Spike to Caritas to celebrate the improvement in her fortunes.

The Host bought her a drink and, with a wink, offered a toast to his favorite celebrity.

*****

Within another few months, Willow had grown fairly proficient at skimming, but she discovered that Spike had a point when he described it as subsisting. Although it enabled her to satisfy her basic needs without killing the person on whom she fed, there was something about not feeling the gradual extinction of a heartbeat that left her unfulfilled.

For the first time since she had been turned, Willow came to the realization that she might not *want* to give up the kill completely, even if she could.

So Spike introduced her to yet another technique for her repertoire: something he referred to as "leeching", although she wasn't quite sure why. After he had explained it, Willow thought it sounded more like not letting anything go to waste. Basically, it involved draining mortally-wounded accident victims -- somewhat like finishing a can of soda that someone else had already opened. By Spike's reasoning, *technically* it didn't count as killing. And although it couldn't serve as a regular method of feeding, since there were only so many accident victims to go around, it would do in a pinch when she really needed to savor the taste of death.

However, one evening when she ventured out on her own, Willow learned an important lesson. Not all deaths had the same taste.

She was lurking about in the over-burdened emergency room of a hospital in one of L.A.'s more densely-populated, poorer neighborhoods when, unable to find an opportunity to drain one of the recent arrivals in the ER, she decided to wander through the other wards. With all the time she had spent visiting the Sunnydale hospital while she was still alive, Willow should have known better. For sure enough, since this particular hospital was, like all others, arranged in an incomprehensible maze that even the staff had difficulty navigating, the young vampire soon found herself completely lost.

The faint sound of weeping caught her ear. Willow surmised that she was in the Intensive Care Unit and followed the muffled sobs until she reached the closed door to a private room. Although she wasn't quite sure why she should be so curious, Willow pushed open the door and peered into the darkened room. Her demon vision enabled her to see an elderly woman, her body thin and frail, lying on a bed. She was hooked up to a variety of machines, and literally radiated suffering. Willow heard a catch in the woman's breath as she realized that someone had slipped into her room.

"Wh-who's there? Are you the nurse?" the woman asked.

"I heard you crying," Willow explained without answering the question.

"Oh," the woman mumbled forlornly as her respiration became labored.

Several minutes passed in silence, until Willow decided that it was time to continue her exploration of the hospital. However, as she turned to leave the woman stopped her, saying, "Don't go...please."

Willow looked at her as the woman continued, "I'm so tired of being here alone. My children....they keep me on these machines, but they won't visit me more than once a week. I'm just so tired....I wish..."

When the woman let her words trail off, Willow moved closer to her bedside and prompted, "You wish what?"

"I wish they'd let me go," the woman sighed heavily, "I don't want to live like this any more...but they keep hoping that *this* treatment will be the one that works...that the cancer will go away...I haven't known a day without pain in two months."

After another few moments, the woman whispered in anguish, "I wish they would just let me die in peace."

"Are you so certain of this?" Willow asked her ominously.

"It's the only thing I *am* certain of any more," the woman confirmed sadly.

"What if I could help you? What if I could give you the death you seek? Would you take it?" Willow offered in a suggestive voice. She waited as the woman considered the possibility.

At last, in a small, shaky voice the woman said, "Yes."

For Willow, it wasn't a complicated decision. Although she might be able to feel compassion without her soul, she gave little thought to ethical dilemmas. At that moment, all that she needed to know was that the woman had expressed a wish for death -- something Willow was fully capable of granting her.

Grasping the woman's hand in hers, Willow raised it to her mouth and sank her fangs into fragile veins in a frail, skeletal wrist. With practiced efficiency she drained the woman in minutes. When alarms sounded on the monitors that tracked the woman's life functions, Willow decided that it would be best to slip away before a nurse and several aides rushed to investigate.

She had barely walked thirty yards away from the now-deceased woman's room when it hit her. Paralyzing, mind-numbing despair. Willow nearly doubled over, and only managed to stay on her feet by leaning against the wall.

Tears burned in her eyes as a dry tightness seized her throat.

The depths of her sadness so overwhelmed her that Willow had difficulty orienting herself in her surroundings. Somehow, though, she found herself clinging desperately to a public phone and dialing the number for the Hyperion. After several rings, Angel answered.

"Angel...help me..." Willow rasped urgently.

"Willow? What's wrong?" her mentor asked, his voice laced with concern.

"It's so...I can't stand this...I want to die..." Willow sobbed into the receiver.

"Willow, don't do anything," Angel instructed firmly, "Where are you?"

"H-h-hospital," she stammered.

"Which one? Can you tell me?" Angel prompted her as he struggled to remain calm.

"St. Mary's," Willow answered with a whimper.

"All right, I'll be right there. Listen to me, Willow, I want you to stay where you are. Don't. Do. Anything. Wait for me," he pleaded with her. She promised to wait, hung up and then curled up in a chair near the phone.

Half an hour later, Angel and Spike found her huddled there, weeping despondently. Angel wrapped his arms around her protectively and rocked her gently as he asked, "What happened, Willow?"

When she was unable to stop crying long enough to answer, Spike surveyed their surroundings and guessed what had reduced her to such a state.

"Bloody hell, luv...did you feed on a terminally-ill case?"

Willow nodded.

Spike groaned, and Angel held her even tighter. "That was a mistake," the blond vampire observed, "You should never drain someone who is suffering so much that they *want* to die. Their despair sucks you down with them. It's driven more than a few vamps to commit suicide."

"I...d-didn't...know," Willow choked through her tears.

Angel soothed her gently by kissing the tear tracks on her cheeks. He then bit into his own wrist and pressed the wound close to her mouth. Willow accepted it willingly, and as she drank his blood the feelings of despair subsided somewhat. After a few moments, she began to grow calmer. Angel withdrew his wrist and glanced up at Spike, who then crouched down in front of Willow and offered his wrist in turn. As she rested against Angel's chest and suckled at Spike's vein, Angel tenderly bit into her neck and sipped lightly. It was as if he was siphoning out a poison, and soon Willow's mind began to clear.

"Feeling better?" Spike asked when she released his wrist. He reached out his other hand and sympathetically caressed her cheek.

"Yeah...although I don't think I'll be trying that again soon," Willow declared fervently.

"I should have warned you," Spike muttered, "I guess it just didn't occur to me that you might try this."

"It wasn't anything I planned to do," Willow explained, "It just kind of happened. She was in pain...she said she wanted to die...I didn't see any problem. At least, not until it was too late."

"We can talk about this more later," Angel assured her, "For now, we should probably get you home. You need to sleep this off."

The three of them rose up and followed the signs that pointed them in the direction of an exit. Willow leaned against Angel for support, still feeling somewhat sickened, while Spike strode ahead of them. At one point they rounded a corner just in time to see the doors to an elevator slipping shut. The motion caught Willow's eye and a jolt of recognition hit her as she glimpsed the figure inside the elevator.

A Lei-ach demon.

"Angel!" she hissed urgently, "They're here! Or, at least, one of them is."

"Who?" Angel asked as her warning put him on the alert. Spike also whirled around to stare expectantly at the redheaded vampire.

"The Lei-ach demons. I just saw one in the elevator," Willow asserted.

Immediately Angel's glance snapped to the panel above the elevator doors, which ticked off the floors as number after number lighted with the passage of the car. At last, the level 'B2' remained illuminated, indicating that the elevator had come to a halt in the sub-basement.

Angel looked to Willow and asked hurriedly, "Will you be all right on your own for a few minutes?"

"Can't I help?" she countered.

The dark vampire shook his head. "Not this time. I'm still concerned for you after what happened tonight. Besides, I don't think this will take long," Angel assured her before turning to his childe and saying, "Spike, you're with me."

"Right," Spike agreed.

The two males stormed off toward the stairwell near the elevator shaft and left Willow to wait in the corridor. They hastily descended several flights of stairs, and Angel wondered aloud whether they'd be able to find any make-shift weapons for their attack. All he had in his trenchcoat pocket was a single stake.

Spike shrugged indifferently and said, "Ripping their heads off always works for me. Slayer ran up against the likes of these back in Sunnyhell. Not much to get worked up about, really."

Stealthily they left the stairwell and moved out into the rarely-frequented corridor of the sub-basement, its walls lined with pipes and ducts. Fairly quickly, they discovered a clutch of five Lei-ach demons in a spacious room that housed the hospital's environmental controls. The demons were unprepared for an attack, which enabled Angel and Spike to decapitate two of them without a struggle. Confronted with the destruction of their comrades, the remaining three howled and launched themselves at the vampires. The fight was savage but quick, and within ten minutes Angel and Spike stared down at the corpses of five headless demons.

"All in a night's work," Spike announced casually. "Feel the need to tidy up, or shall we just go find our little minion and take her home?"

"Let's figure out where the hospital disposes of its biohazardous wastes," Angel proposed.

Within a short while they had disposed of the Lei-ach demons and were riding the elevator back up to the floor on which they had left Willow. As they waited while the elevator slowly ascended toward their destination, the elder vampire said to his childe, "Spike...I'd like to have the rest of the evening alone with Willow."

That Angel phrased it almost as a request rather than an order surprised the blonde vampire. True, his sire had expressed a desire to end their unspoken rivalry over Willow, and had willingly allowed Spike to monopolize her time of late. But his decades of experience as the Scourge of Europe's most defiant childe hadn't done much to prepare him for a sire who asked rather than simply taking what he wanted.

"Sure thing, mate," Spike acceded to his wish, somewhat self-conscious.

Knowing his childe well, Angel smirked and brought his full, imposing height flush against Spike's body. Brushing his lips against Spike's ear, he taunted, "I could smack you around a little if it would make you feel better..." Then, with a quick but fierce nip at his childe's neck, Angel pulled away just as the elevator doors opened.

Frustrated that the flicker of desire wouldn't be satisfied by the elder vampire...at least, not that night....Spike scowled at his back and grumbled, "Bloody wanker!"

*****

When they returned to the hotel Spike left the two of them at the entrance and went out to make the most of the remaining evening hours. His sire's teasing had left him feeling edgy, yet he wouldn't be able to resolve his tension with either of his preferred partners.

Perhaps a trio of sixteen-year-old virgins would do the trick...

Striding away with his duster billowing behind him, Spike hoped that the one little chit could indeed be persuaded to do everything she'd claimed she'd do if she ever met a real vampire.

Willow and Angel proceeded into the lobby, loosely joined by arms that were casually draped across each other's shoulders, and returned to their suite. It had been several nights since they had shared it, but any awkwardness was dispelled by Willow's frightening incident, which allowed them to slip into the familiar roles of mentor and protege.

As they climbed into bed Angel pulled her closely against him in a protective embrace and rested his chin on her head. Willow could almost hear the wheels spinning in his mind. Although they were relaxed together, something about his posture betrayed both a desire to speak with her, and a hesitancy to act on this desire. Each time his hands paused in their meanderings across her skin, Willow detected a slight shift in his jaw, as though he were just about to give voice to his thoughts but then held back. Just as she decided to tell him to come out and say what was on his mind, he beat her to the quick.

"Willow...I realize it's been a difficult evening for you. But there's something we should discuss about your decision to feed from that patient. If you're too tired now, we can put it off until tomorrow night, but we still need to deal with it."

She sighed, hoping she wasn't in for a lecture. "I am tired, but not too tired. Why don't we talk now?" Willow shifted herself in Angel's arms so that she could look at him, although she contented herself with resting against his shoulder for the moment.

"I only bring this up because your situation is unique. It would be pointless to discuss this if you were a conventional demon, because demons have little concern for the living," Angel began, "But you can't treat the terminally-ill as an easy solution to the demon's craving for the kill. Even if it seems as though the person in question is willing, that decision isn't yours to make or to act on."

"You're right," Willow admitted hesitantly, "To me, that seems like a pointless ethical debate. Maybe it's because I'm tired, but it's hard for me to understand what you're getting at. I didn't think I was making a decision for anyone. She asked, I gave her what she wanted."

"It's not quite as simple as that," Angel explained patiently, "When a human being is in that state -- in pain, faced with the inevitability of death -- judgment is easily clouded. A wish that someone expresses in one moment might be rescinded in the next. Not to mention that there are the feelings of the person's family to consider. What you might have seen in the few moments you spent with that woman would have been only a limited portion of the entire picture. It wouldn't be enough for you to judge that what she said to you was indeed her choice."

"Oh...I guess so..." Willow acknowledged his point, although she still found it difficult to understand the problem. Without her soul, and subsisting as she did upon the deaths of others, the ethical considerations involved in euthanasia were a little too abstruse for her to appreciate. However, Angel's opinion did matter to her.

"Maybe it's too early for Advanced Ethics," her mentor admitted as he glimpsed her inner struggle through the perplexed furrowing of her brow.

"Umm...would you mind a lot if it were? I think I've stretched about as far as a minion can go..." she mumbled wearily as fatigue finally overtook her.

"And then some," Angel agreed tenderly as he coaxed her to settle in against him for a much-needed sleep.

Continue