Chapter Text
“Your name is Isthgraid. I am your mother, you shall obey me.”
“Yes, mother.”
“You shall continue the name of Illyria, until your time too comes.”
“Yes, mother.”
“You shall seek your father. He will instruct you.”
“Yes, mother.”
“I shall leave you now. Learn well what your shell would teach you.”
“Yes, mother.
“I love you.”
The summer afternoon met Isthgraid cordially, the warm sunlight winking at him through leaves. His mother was gone now, he knew that well, but he was not alone. Indeed, on the slightest incline of his head the silver birches, or so they introduced themselves, began to chuckle merrily with him, waving hello and telling him the sights of the town he was in.
They called it London, and for much of the afternoon he wandered its streets, the breeze whisking between his ankles and beneath the soles of his feet as he walked along. Of course, his feet were covered in leather and rubber, so the feeling was deadened; he was formed in the image of his father.
His father. His mother had told him to seek him, but he knew not where to look.
A shadow of anxiety grew up within him, the first he’d ever felt. It seemed too dark for these cerulean skies, and he asked the birches how to be rid of it. They laughed again, still bright and sweet, and bid him find his father’s house; they knew the way. Pavement swept beneath him, and the moss in the cracks stared dazedly at his brisk footsteps.
He came to a gate marked ‘97’, in front of a path and next to a driveway that held a skulking black car, reared on its haunches and ready to pounce. A final push from the birches, a final whisper of breeze, and he let off the iron latch, swinging the silent gate wide open and edging down the path to the door, buttercups wide-eyed in the lawn beside him.
The doorbell rang and a man who had his face opened the door. The man frowned, then blocked the doorway with his body, tense and strong and angry. All too much so.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” his father hissed at him.
“My name is Isthgraid,” he replied promptly. “I am your son.”
There was nothing, nothing but a shivering silence, until the faintest gurgle hailed from the hall. His father turned his cheek, but the moment Isthgraid moved to take a look he was back, angrier than before. “My son ain’t blue.”
The shivers ran more deeply, until Isthgraid could feel them far beneath his skin. He was transfixed by the darkness coiling inside him, a darkness he couldn’t name. Another son? It couldn’t be. He was his father’s son.
His father’s hard eyes hurt him.
And then a golden hand lit upon his father’s arm. “Who is it, Spike?” For a moment he relaxed, and for a moment Isthgraid could see past his shoulder and into his world. The woman who had spoken stood in the hallway, all golden skin and golden hair, so different to his mother, and in her arms was a mewling infant: the other son.
The moment passed, and the door struck the oak frame harshly as it closed, but Isthgraid understood. Another son – another mother – his father had no place for him or his.
His insides felt as dark as the pine-green front door, but he didn’t understand why. He turned back to the summer, but the birches had no answers for him, wary and silent in the darkening sun.
At last a sly suggestion came at his side, just above his head from some skulking marigolds in a basket. A whisper and they were silent once more, but they gave name to the jealousy he felt, and with the name he felt it more, felt it whip through him as he stormed from the house and back into the road.
Isthgraid stopped then and stood, swatting the birches aside and staring at the sky. Evening would come, but now the day still hung there, as soft and as loose as silk.
The rubber of his soles ground into gravel, and he stared with hatred at the sky until stained clouds blossomed like blood. He stared until all light shed away, until there was nothing but him and the sky alone.
The birches wept unheard. Time stretched and bent. Isthgraid willed it take him and it did. Thunder cracked and lightning charged through him, suffusing his shell with dark.
Then, at last, he struck the earth again. Cold and verdant, it promised in a thousand snide whispers. The clouds were gone and he was left in the blue caress of the moon, shadowed and treacherous.
He rose, smiled, and set upon his task.
It was not long before Isthgraid caught sight of his father: his fluorescent hair flared against the night sky as he ran. From what he was running, Isthgraid didn’t know, but he gave chase. This was where it had all began, his father and that golden mother. This was where he could end it.
The soles of his boots thudded against the ground, the tattoo beating harder and harder as the grass gave way beneath him.
Suddenly, however, he was on the ground. There was pain in his left shoulder. The echo of a cry resounded in his ears.
The figure of his father was fading all too quickly, but as Isthgraid regained his feet a hand clasped around his wrist. The fingers were small, feminine; she was, of course, the woman who had made the cry.
“Spikey, please – I’m sorry!”
He rounded on her, ready to pull away and continue pursuit. Her hair was yellow, a shade close enough to the golden mother’s to make him hate her. Her clothing was brashly red and blue, ugly as it clashed with the green around them. Why was she restraining him? His father was vanishing into the night with every passing second.
“You’ve gotta believe me! I didn’t mean to say those things!” And then, suddenly, she thrust her face in his chest and wrapped her arms tightly across his back. “Oh, Spike, I could never kill you. It’s just – you hurt me sometimes, you know? And then I get so mad…”
Hurt? Kill? Spike? Isthgraid wondered at the woman in his hands. His father would be lost by now, but was this the one from whom he had run? He had feared her. If he had feared her then he could fear her again. Did she want the same as he did?
She pulled back then, her pale face – one attractive feature, at least – completely open. Isthgraid began to smile. He should make her trust him, make her feel the hurt and hate that as much as he did. She could become the perfect ally.
However, in response to his smile, she frowned. “Hey…” she said. “Why are you blue?”
And then Isthgraid stalled. She thought him to be his father. What should he do now? Would she ever trust him were she to know what he was?
He called out for help, and the grass whispered in reply. Of course; there was no better way to engineer her hatred than to shape it himself, to convince her that he was his father and act as he would, to build her trust and break it. He did not yet know how, but the course would come and then she would aid him, unknowingly.
“Spike?” He had been silent too long. As he blinked she gasped, her hands flying to her mouth and her yellow hair bouncing ever so slightly. “Oh my god,” she cried. “The soldiers found you, didn’t they? And made you blue?”
He could act as his father. He could answer this. “I…” Perhaps he could not. “I’m sorry?”
As her eyes widened further, he realised he had not answered correctly. “What happened to your voice? And… and why are you standing so still? You’re acting so weird. And you know the soldiers, right? Right?”
He did not understand. His shell was supposed to teach him the modes of communication, why was it failing him now? How was he ever to kill his father if he could not converse? The floods of grass around them had no answers.
“Oh my god, do you even know who I am? What’s my name?”
He stared into her damp eyes, just listening to the dark rush of the wind. He felt it run within him, yet it also brought no answer.
“I… do not know,” he said at last, lowering his head. A gesture of submission: he hoped that it might allow him to still gain her trust.
And then, without warning, her arms again reached around him, strangely soft and warm. Her touch was wholly alien, and as he looked into her shoulder the scent of flowers too rich for this environment drifted past his nose. It was disconcerting, but, he realised, it was pleasant.
The embrace ended, and the night seemed slightly cooler than before.
“I’m Harmony,” she told him. “And I’m your girlfriend. And, uh… we love each other loads.” She nodded vigorously. “You always buy me presents, and next summer you’re gonna take me to Paris.”
As she smiled brightly at him Isthgraid could not help but smile in return. He wondered whether he need break her trust at all.
The grass called him coward.
Hidden away within some gabbing woods, Harmony taught him so many things: the pleasures of the flesh, the joy of dulcet laughter, the art of the ‘manicure’. Yet for every thing she taught him she raised a dozen feelings from the recesses of his own shell, which taught him further.
He learnt that beauty was far greater than ugliness, and that life was far greater than death, and that happiness could come from the simplest of things: Harmony, for example, buying her blood instead of killing for it.
In those few weeks, safe with Harmony and the gruff but gentle voices of the lichen, he came to realise he was happy. He came to realise just how much she undid him, and how much he loved her.
Yet when he ventured out the grass still called him coward.
One day, on the way home from the blood merchant, Isthgraid saw a purple unicorn, fashioned of synthetic fur and stuffed, in the window of a shop. Without thought he purchased it, using the money for which he had traded a golden bracelet three nights ago.
Continuing home he believed he should feel content: his love would love it, and surely that was all he wished for? The foul grass, however, would never let him forget the truth. The gift was a lie. He himself was a lie, an imitation of the man Harmony truly loved. He was nothing.
His shell commanded that he tell her the truth, that he allow her to see what he was. To let her continue to believe that she had his father, when in truth she had only him, was cruel. She believed they were the same: both vampires, kindred. He, however, was nothing like her – he was a mere shadow of another’s form
The cool cave welcomed him as ever, but Isthgraid could not hold back his shiver. This was not his home, not really. He placed the blood inside the refrigerator, recently bought, and snuck up to the bed, heart lightening as he saw Harmony half-asleep on her side, yawning gently. Her body threatened to arch and in an instant he was filled with longing. He doubted he could ever let this go.
With his boots removed he lay beside her, eyes guiltily aligned to see down her pearly negligee. He reached the unicorn down, still in his hand, and walked it up her thigh, mildly disappointed that it failed to catch the bottom hem.
The unicorn reached her arm and Harmony awoke, eyes widening in brilliant delight.
She kissed Isthgraid then, forcibly grateful as she hitched a leg over his and pressed herself fully against him. He reached down, doing what the unicorn had failed at before, and gasped as he found her supple skin. He felt as free as water, gliding back and forth over cool pebbles that yielded before him to greater softness.
Then she was crying. It took a moment, but he changed his touch to comfort. He begged her to tell him what was wrong, wondering uneasily whether she had guessed the truth.
“Blondie bear, I can’t… I can’t keep lying to you. I love you too much…”
“Lies?” His shell fell cold, and the tears of his own betrayal rose in his eyes. This, surely, was of his own creation. “No, love,” his voice was choked, “it is not you who is lying.”
She looked away, pulling his being out of his throat. “Don’t look at me like you care,” she whispered and he wondered whether she had heard him. “This is all a dream. You’d never buy me unicorns. You’re gonna get your memories back and it’s gonna be awful. You hate me.” She felt lost to him, though her leg was still cocked around his. “You hate me.”
And then Isthgraid understood.
Before, his anger, his jealousy, had been cold and virulent. Now it immolated him. His father had hurt her. He had known that before, yet it had not seemed so important then. He had hurt her so much that she was still not healed. His father, it would seem, held more power than him even in his absence.
Isthgraid knew he would wear this mantle no longer. No matter that it would tear them apart; he could not pretend to be the one who would hurt his Harmony so any longer. He could not bear it.
“My love,” he said, daring to touch her hair. “I am not who you think me to be.” Her fragile face turned back to his and he found strength in it. “There were no soldiers. My name… is Isthgraid, and I am new to this dimension. The similarity in appearance I bear to – him is nothing but an unhappy accident.”
“Iss…” Lines grew across her forehead, each scoring worry into his chest. “You’re not Spike?”
“No. I am not. But I love you still.”
For a moment she was still. He was still also, but inside a thousand motes of violence clashed and tore the strands that built his shell.
“That’s really weird,” she said at last. She wriggled her leg behind his own. “We’re still gonna have sex though, right?”
His mind caught up after his lower half had already reacted, pushing her into the bed so hard she shivered. “Should you wish it, love.”
“Ohh, Edie…”
Many hours later, as the new night rose, the grass called to him. His father had hurt Harmony, struck her deeply with a thousand barbs beneath her skin. He deserved destruction.
He no longer cared for the golden mother or the other son. His mother had told him to answer to his shell, and his shell cried out for Harmony. His pride would not be satisfied by the sated glaze of her eyes, or the way she blossomed as he kissed her. It demanded more.
He pushed the door open, ignoring the hiss of the moss at its base. The crypt was as dark as the night outside, as dark as his father’s heart. The demon deserved to die in darkness, without foreknowledge of his end, without a chance for honour.
Isthgraid, however, had gone no further than a step inside the door when he was pressed by the neck against the wall.
“Heard you coming a mile off, mate.”