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Author's Chapter Notes:
Big hugs to Holly, Slackerace and Schehrezade for their wonderful suggestions and editing.
Chapter Four

Eight hours earlier…

“Giles!!!”

The combined voices of Dawn and Willow carried with the force of thunder down the empty corridors of the new Council building. It was fractionally homier than the original, but Giles found it more manageable and he hoped it would add life to the organisation that had, quite frankly, been seriously lacking. Travers had kept a very tight, unemotional and not-so-impenetrable ship and Giles was counting on the numerous slayers hired as security to keep them safe. Foolhardy perhaps, but there were many measures in place this time to warn them should anything untoward happen again.

Now, the beginnings of a headache were rushing in on him and he prepared himself for the twin hurricanes that were about to lurch into his office and blow his quiet, comfortable existence apart.

“Giles!!” they exclaimed again, just as loudly—just as urgently, though this time within the small confines of his office. The blasted window wasn’t even open so his head reverberated with the intolerable sound of his own name.

“I’m quite positive I’m not deaf,” he grouched, wincing as he watched them gather a new wind.

“So it’s easy to forget that an old guy like you still has most of his faculties,” Dawn covered, waving her hand in easy dismissal. “Listen up. We’ve got information and it’s kind of urgent.” She gave a sideways look at Willow, and the redhead was almost overcome with the rush to relay the news.

“Absolutely,” Willow nodded in agreement. “The coven just confirmed we have big problems in LA, which…we kind of knew, being that we spy cam on Angel all the time. He tried to fool everyone with that hokey glamour spell, but luckily the camera still films the truth and all it took was a few words to remove the spell and hey presto, we have his whole plan in living colour.” She paused and Giles waited impatiently for the punchline. Not that what she’d said so far wasn’t fascinating, but worrying over Angel and his ill-thought out motives for taking over Wolfram and Hart had long been eradicated from his list of must-do’s each and every morning. Giles knew the pillock would undoubtedly end up dead sooner or later, and judging from the way both Dawn and Willow were almost turning blue with the slow rationing out of their news, he was ready to believe the time was nigh.

Willow made no indication that she’d resume her tale anytime soon and Giles spluttered an exasperated sigh. “Is there an actual point to your bellowing in Council halls or am I supposed to guess?”

The witch’s eyes widened and she clasped her hands together nervously. “Oh! Angel’s attacking The Circle of the Black Thorn tonight.”

That got his attention rather smartly and Giles was standing before he’d even thought to do it, his chair almost toppling over behind him. “What the devil is he thinking?” The exclamation didn’t require an answer for all three of them refused to even hazard a guess at Angel’s motivations.

“Who cares what he’s thinking?” Dawn proclaimed wisely. “He’s totally going to get Spike killed…again…and then Buffy will wipe the street with his superhero ass.” Not that she was going to deny the wonderful visual putting a twinkle in her eyes.

Giles stared at her dumbly. “Oh my, yes. Spike. Well, we simply can’t let this happen. There’s no telling what Buffy would do to all of us if Spike perished before she has the chance to reunite with him. Bloody idiot, tying himself to Angel. Doesn’t he realise that that vampire brings death to all who stand by him?” The glasses came off in an agitated swipe and Giles clutched them hard in his hand. Chaos was about to be unleashed and he had so little time to organise anything.

“It’s okay, Giles. Willow and I have already sent Buffy the word and she’s on her way with her little troupe of super-soldiers. We thought if we sent Faith’s in as well, that should even the odds up a bit.” Dawn smirked knowingly. As much as Giles fancied himself the head of the new Watcher’s Council, so much went on around him that he was often the last to know the finer details. Or in this case, any details at all.

Behind her back, Willow clasped Dawn’s hand tightly. It had been difficult to engineer this rescue without Giles knowing anything about Angel’s activities, but the fear that he’d order them away from the whole thing brought bile to her throat. She’d learned too late to do anything to help Fred, and while she was unsure that anything could have actually been done, Willow hated that she wasn’t given the chance to try.

“The Circle of the Black Thorn,” Giles mused, a growing smile of respect on his lips. “Bloody impressive move if he pulls it off.”

“Yeah?” Dawn stalked closer, enjoying the look of discomfort he revealed as she stood right in his personal space. “Not so much if he happens to bring Hell down on all our heads.” She backed off abruptly and flopped down in one of the visitor’s chairs Giles had fastidiously positioned on the receiving side of his desk. “Besides, the things he had to have done to get into that secret club I’m positive I wouldn’t want on my conscience. Aaand, he’s expecting every single one of them to die. Kind of a useless act when who-knows-what’s around the corner just waiting for the good-guy numbers to be depleted by a souled vamp or two.”

Giles tiredly nodded his concession of the teen’s point and then focused on Willow’s shaky frame. “They might need an experienced and powerful witch should it come to what I think it will. I seriously doubt Angel really understands what he is about to unleash. While the act of striking a massive blow in eliminating The Circle is a noble one, it’s also foolhardy in the extreme. Wolfram and Hart are much more powerful than that and this is a fight Angel and his friends can’t win.”

“At least…not alone,” Willow interjected, an excitement for winning the un-winable fight beginning to bubble in her blood.

“Not even with the help of friends, Willow. Good cannot exist without evil; it is the balance we must fight to sustain.” Giles saw her sad, defeated expression and raised it with a deep sigh of remorse. “What Angel is planning will undoubtedly unleash hell on LA, but the Senior Partners have access to evil from all dimensions.”

“And we have a super-powerful witch from one. We beat The First, Giles. We can totally do this.” There was no evidence of pleading in her composure; Dawn Summers had done a lot of growing and maturing since she’d lost her home. Brimming with a youthful measure of confidence obviously didn’t affect her calculations either.

The Head Watcher smiled fondly at the two girls. “As I am coming to continually accept, you are quite correct.” He turned from the proud teen and faced the aforementioned super-powerful witch; she’d once been just a girl who he’d first met when she was younger than Dawn. Exceptionally bright, but not the type one would guess would carve out a destiny in their perpetual fight against the world’s darkness. Marvelling at the amazing progress they’d all made, he smiled and nodded his assent. “Willow, report to sector five and perhaps you can claim the quick ticket to LA—just this once.”

“On my way, boss,” she called facetiously, already out the door and half way down the corridor. She’d only done the metaphysical jump twice before but both times it had been an indescribable rush.

Giles watched as she disappeared around the corner and then bowed his head in prayer. “And may all the gods give you every ounce of luck.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He didn’t usually drive during the day. The heat of the sun beating down on the black paint of his car, while not making it unbearable in the non-air-conditioned confines, always made him drowsy. The pain in his chest wouldn’t subside, however, so Spike had made the decision to push on and gain every mile ahead toward darkness, Sunnydale and the redheaded witch before he could make his head settle. Before he would determinedly calm the call for blood so he could think clearly enough to learn what he needed. And if he found that Willow Rosenberg had killed Buffy, the little witch would be fast finding out what it felt like to stare at the inside of a coffin.

He’d been parked across the street from Buffy’s house now for going on three hours, the sun the only thing stopping him from jumping out and kicking her door in before giving the aging house a gory new colour scheme. The curtains had been pulled open earlier in the day and Spike had watched as an obviously jittery witch studied from a number of old, musty texts in between her anxious pacing. If he wasn’t intent on slitting the treacherous bitch’s throat, he’d almost feel sorry for her.

Waiting for the sun to go down hadn’t helped him think of any workable plan, and now that the sky around him had long turned grey before sliding into very late night, Spike found his own brand of panic settle heavily in his heart. Buffy was either lost to him figuratively or literally and he was sick of being a useless wanker passively waiting to find out which it was.

It wouldn’t pay to rush in there unprepared—or even with the rudiments of a plan knocking around in his head. Willow had more ability in her little finger than Spike had had hot dinners and he wasn’t about to bargain his only link to Buffy for a quick kill. This town was notorious for twisting the normal on its head, and Spike wouldn’t allow himself to lose everything by being impetuous when he didn’t even know the full story.

The urgency to plan carefully deserted him completely when the object of his murderous thoughts suddenly came slamming out of the house and almost ran down the path into town. He’d concede it was a pretty swift jog for a human—there’d been no conscience decision to leave his car and follow, merely an automatic need to not let the evil little chit out of his sight. Melting into the shadows was easy for him—it was what a vampire did best—and not once did Willow betray she had any sense of him on her tail. His eyes glinting with malice in the full moonlight, lips twisting in pure hatred, he clung to her every step, breathed in her fear and felt his senses heighten with the intoxication. By the time he was through, he’d be drunk on her terror.

Not once did she look over her shoulder, and even in his lengthy experience Spike knew that was unusual. Most felt the creep of fear along their spine as eyes followed their path. Most could feel it in their gut as a killer stalked them. That Willow hadn’t reacted to him in the slightest told Spike more than he wished to know: either the bird was completely confident in her power should she be jumped by something big and scary, or she was distracted by something so serious and terrifying that it didn’t matter what she came upon.

Neither of those options settled well with Spike.

He wasn’t surprised when he followed her to a quiet street and watched as she stopped at the locked door of the little magic shop he remembered liberating of its shop keep on his last visit. He smirked as he saw her lips move, her quiet voice barely rippling the silence around her.

“Thought you was one of the law-abiding folk,” Spike growled into her ear, smirking finally at being dressed in her horror. Her back slammed into the glass door and perspiration broke out on her forehead before she remembered herself and straightened her spine.

“I wouldn’t look too closely at my throat, Spike. I could dust you before you even tapped into the vein.”

He tilted his head thoughtfully, all the while ignoring his gut as it roiled sickly at the smug expression on her face. It was true—the stories Buffy had told him in her darker moments had reassured Spike that ending up on the witch’s bad side would be the last thing he ever did, which meant that he needed to be on her good side. The quickest way he knew to do that was to remain in type. The bint didn’t have the first idea that he wore his evil as little more than a scar these days. And just because Dru had flogged all the big and the bad right out of him, it didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to act the part.

The leer was fuelled with repulsion, but Spike cheered on his ability to make anything look sexual. “That right, pet? Maybe it’s not your blood ‘m after,” he suggested, though he was bloody lost for words on what he could possibly want of her except her black heart on a plate.

His stomach churned as she turned thoughtful eyes to him. “What do you want, Spike?” She looked him up and down and he clasped his hands into fists and braced them against his sides to prevent the urge to slam into her soft body and do lots of beautiful damage.

“What do I always want in this town?” he replied truthfully. He stared deeply into her eyes until he was sure he'd touched ehr ruthless soul. "I want the Slayer."





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