“Oh, good God!” Giles felt the pangs of uneasiness that had been slowly building in the pit of his stomach explode into a fully fledged fear—a fear that he hadn’t felt since the night he had received the news of Buffy’s disappearance some weeks back.
The sight of the vampire before him nailed to the wall with large wooden stakes was sickening. He was barely conscious—the loss of blood making Spike appear gaunt and causing his complexion to take on a greyish hue as his blood dribbled sluggishly down the cream-coloured walls of the library.
With scarcely a thought to any possible lingering danger, Giles thrust the crossbow he had been holding into Xander’s surprised hands and quickly strode forward.
“Spike? Can you hear me?” Giles asked in a voice a little louder than the tone of his normal speech. A small groan sounded from the vampire and he blinked his eyes open slowly before letting his head drop forward again.
“I’m nailed to the wall, Watcher, not bloody deaf.” Despite the remark—or perhaps because of it—Giles grinned. He reached up and took a firm hold of the stake imbedded in the palm of Spike’s right hand. Distract him Giles thought to himself as he cast a wary glance at the vampire before turning his gaze back to the hand that was curled around the stake. You need to take his mind off the pain.
“I’m assuming they took Buffy. Was it Angelus?”
“Angelus? No, not Angelus. Smelt like some lackey of the—BLOODY HELL!” As soon as Giles had gotten Spike talking, he had secured his grip on the stake and pulled. It had slid out of his hand with a sliding wet squelch, causing the vamp in question to roar in pain and shift into his demon’s guise unconsciously.
“Fuck!” He moaned. His demon was emitting a slow continuous growl as it forced itself to push past the almost crippling pain. “Bloody hell, this gives me a whole new respect for the bloody Romans. Those tossers knew what they were about, going around crucifying people. It’s God-damned painful.” Giles tossed the blood soaked stake aside and moved to grab ahold of the next one.
The two teens standing behind the Watcher winced as the second stake was torn out and Spike emitted a pained groan and slumped forward onto the Watcher.
“Xander? Some help, perhaps?” Xander’s eyes went wide at suddenly being addressed.
“Help? You want me to…?” he trailed off gesturing erratically to the two stakes still driven through the arch of Spike’s feet. Xander felt his stomach roll in protest at the sight, but he couldn’t help but watch in morbid fascination as the vampire slowly moved his hand up to the stake still imbedded in his chest to pull it from its sheath within his body.
“Oh for—just hold him up while I see to his feet.” Xander snapped out of his fugue state and moved to support the vampire’s dead weight while Giles knelt down to tend to the painful task of pulling the stakes out as painlessly as possible.
Giles and Xander worked as quickly as possible as they freed him from the wall and carried him between them so that he was stretched out on the table as Buffy had been only a few hours before.
“He’ll need blood,” Giles said absently as he looked over the now unconscious vampire’s wounds. “Oz, call Joyce and ask her and the girls to make a quick trip to the butcher. Tell her to stock up on as much as they can and to pick up a few bottles of bourbon while she’s at it.”
Oz slipped silently away with a nod of affirmation.
“Watch over him while I see to cleaning up this mess. Make sure he doesn’t move more than necessary.” Xander nodded, glad that he hadn’t been allocated the job of cleaning the mess of blood spread across the library walls like some macabre painting of death.
Xander shuddered and turned away from the sickening sight and let his gaze fall on the vampire. If that was the state they had left Spike in then he couldn’t bring himself to think about the possible state of his friend. It there was one thing he knew about Spike—had known even before this sordid ordeal had started—was that he didn’t go down easily, and neither did Buffy.
Spike’s brows furrowed slightly in his state of unconsciousness and his lips move silently and Xander recognised it for what it was—her name. It made him wonder what exactly was going on between those two.
Twice now he had had the displeasure of walking in on them while they were in the middle of some serious kissage. He knew Buffy well enough to know when she liked someone in that way. She got this furtive look in her eyes as she glanced from beneath her lashes; her eyes seem to get this extra twinkle in them when the object of her affection walked into the room before she would blush becomingly. She would also start fidgeting unconsciously: playing with her hair, touching the tips of her fingers to her lips gently, adjusting her sleeves, twirling a stake if there was one nearby. Xander knew this because for months after they had first met, he would look for those signs every time he walked into the room and every time he was disappointed. Even now when he was with Cordy he still found himself glancing over at Buffy, hoping that she would be looking back with that look in her eyes that said she felt something other than friendship towards him—the way she looked at Spike these days.
Xander didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to admit it to himself or accept the facts that were displayed in front of him like some massive billboard complete with flashing neon lights. But as much as he liked to deny it, he knew deep down that it was true. Again she had chosen the vampire rather than him.
Xander didn’t like to admit it, partly ‘cause he had Cordy now—beautiful, feisty, wild Cordelia—but it still stung to think that Buffy would rather shack up with the undead that be with him. Living, breathing, human Xander Harris that wasn’t at least a century older than she, but still wasn’t good enough.
He let out a heavy sigh as Oz walked back into the room. The two teens communicated silently with a look in the others direction before Oz took the other seat beside the wounded vampire. Now they would wait.
The guards had changed post not even 15 minutes ago and already Buffy could tell that this one was her surest way to freedom.
He couldn’t look at her. He had come in, lay down on the cot in the corner of the room and studiously avoided any eye contact with anything even remotely in her direction.
She didn’t know how she knew—perhaps it was some fancy empathy power that was part of her new demon package—but she could tell that this one cared. Not about her—no, in no way did he harbour any care for her welfare, rather he cared that what they were doing was wrong. He cared about the guilt he felt at being part of the team holding her. He cared about clearing his own conscience. He didn’t like what the others were doing and she could use that to her advantage.
Only he refused to acknowledge her, let alone even face her. Ignore the problem long enough and it goes away. She let out and internal snort. Well, not me, Mister, she thought.
Her attention was snapped away from studying the man—though she made no outward signs of having been distracted—as she heard the approach of Travers and her father outside of the door to the room she was being held in.
Her eyes narrowed on the man. If he was her weakest link then she was going to have to make use of him and soon. Whatever her father and the head of the Watchers Council had planned, she was running out of time.
Even as the thought ran through her head the door to the room swung open and her father stepped in with and inanely insincere smile plastered across his face.
“So we have no idea where Buffy is, who took her, whether she is okay, or what they want?” Xander was the first to speak, running both hands through his hair in a frustrated gesture. “Oh and let’s not forget mister I-lost-my-soul-so-now-I-want-to-eat-you-all who is trying to turn us all into pin cushions.”
Giles sighed. Sometimes it was hard to remember he was working with teenagers, who though still in school had proved themselves more than capable on more than one account. And, of course, sometimes it wasn’t.
“I understand where you’re coming from, Xander. Things look hopeless but we must remember that they are not. What we need to do is take a step back and consolidate what we know and try and piece together where everything fits. We’ll have a better chance at being useful in getting Buffy back if we know exactly what we are heading into.”
“And how exactly do you propose we do that, Rupert?” Joyce said as she ascended the basement stairs and made her way into the kitchen.
“How is he?” Willow asked, looking over the older woman’s shoulder and in the direction of where Xander and Giles had placed Spike, who had still yet to regain consciousness.
“I couldn’t say. I have no idea how quickly vampires heal, but it doesn’t look good.” Joyce replied as she slumped wearily onto one of stools by the kitchen counter.
“He should be fine in a day or two as long as we make sure he gets blood regularly. If he was still feeding from humans he could be healed within a few hours, but as that is no longer an option it will take longer.” Giles’ reply was punctuated by the removal of his glasses from his face in a familiar gesture as he moved to polish them on a handkerchief he seemed to have pulled from nowhere.
“Well we can count out saving Buffy until Spike joins the land of the conscious at least. He’s the only one who knows who took her—not to mention the only one who would stand half a chance at getting her back and remain alive,” Cordelia said from her position next to her boyfriend. For once no one had anything to say to her comment.
The room was unnaturally silent as they all slipped into their own thoughts. Cordelia wasn’t wrong in what she said. They could do nothing in regards to saving Buffy until Spike woke up again. They had all discussed it earlier, and given that Spike had said it wasn’t Angelus who had taken Buffy, that left the Watchers Council.
“Let us focus our efforts on the prophecy then. If we can decipher any more of it and find out exactly what the Council may want then it may at least give us some indication of what they plan to do with Buffy,” Giles said, pushing himself away from the counter and striding out of the room in search of his books. There was barely a murmur of protest from the teens, who followed in his wake.
Travers raised his tea to his lips thoughtfully and took a small sip of the hot liquid as he stared at the man in front of him.
“You know as well as I do, Hank, that the ritual must be performed by the end of the week. How do you hope to control her enough but then to make her go through with it? I don’t have time for her childish outbursts and penchant for disregarding orders. If anything goes wrong to prevent this ritual from being completed it will be your head that’s on the line.”
A slow smile spread across Hank’s face.
“Don’t worry. Have I ever let you down before?” Travers merely cocked and eyebrow at the question. “Besides, I whipped a little something up that will leave Buffy completely at out disposal by the end of the week. We’ve been lacing the food she has been given with a little drug that will ensure that she will follow any orders we give her.”
Travers returned Hank’s sinister like grin, reassured once more that his friend wasn’t about to let him down. If Hank said he’d have his daughter under control, then he would trust that when the time came he would have her under control.
“Very good,” he said before giving the man a small friendly smile. “I trust you completely, Hank, you have always come through for me. But we can never be too careful and this is far too important for me to have something as trivial as the Slayer’s free will mess it up. This is my destiny. The path that has lain before me since the moment of birth.”
“And come Friday evening, all your years of waiting will finally be at an end.” A small chuckle burst from the Council leader’s lips.
“Yes, it finally will.”