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Chapter 21

Buffy burst into Willie's instantly scanning the room for signs of trouble and of Spike. It looked like she wasn't the first rambunctious person to come in tonight. A couple broken chairs indicated that there had been a fight earlier in the evening.

There was no sign of Spike - not that she'd expected one. She'd come here for the one thing Willie always served: information.

"Not you, too," she heard Willie complain. She spun around to face him. "Not that you aren't always welcome in my establishment, Slayer. Please have a seat; can I get you something to drink?"

"I'm not here to drink, Willie. I'm here for Spike. Where is he?"

"You just missed him - well, maybe half an hour ago. Don't know where he was headed, although there's this dive on first street by the pier, 'The Mermaid's Grasp'. Can you believe they actually named a place that? No sense of class."

"Whoa, slow down. What do you mean, 'I just missed him'? Was he here?" Buffy was confused, especially by the idea that Willie would call some other place a dive, or talk of class.

"Yeah, came in, had a few drinks, ticked off a Kreslaw demon, Lenny there's still cleaning up the mess." He motioned to a scaly, grey demon who was picking up the remains of the broken chairs. "Then he left. He was pretty drunk. Glad to see you're finally doing something about him. That vampire is a menace."

It wasn't until she was out the door that it occurred to Buffy that she'd never gotten information out of Willie that easily. She hadn't even had to pretend to punch him. Her first thought was that it was a trap. But Willie was a better actor than that. He'd have played harder to get. He must really hate Spike. Something that most of the time Buffy understood. She also understood how Spike could be especially bad for business at a place like Willie's.

She had no choice but to head for the pier and wonder what was going on. Willie had made it sound like Spike was just on a drunken rampage, not in any trouble. Maybe he got away and was out looking for the mastermind behind the attack on his crypt. Or maybe, said a voice in the back of her head, he was never in any danger at all and he's just being Spike.

But she couldn't take the chance that Spike had gotten himself into another mess. After all, even if he was just being Spike, he could still be in serious trouble.

When she found 'The Mermaid's Grasp', Willie's talk of dive and class started to make sense. The building was old and run down. The windows had been painted over with thick black paint - probably for the sake of vampiric clientele. There was a big neon sign which showed what some people might have called a mermaid. The neon figure had impossibly large breasts and instead of a tail she had tentacles. She was really more of a squid-maid.

The bouncer at the door let her in without any question. His eyes lingered equally long on her crossbow and her cleavage. But he didn't say a word. As she walked inside she could almost feel his eyes on her ass. She was very self-conscious, wondering if she was wiggling or swaying in a way that anyone could construe as sexy. She really hoped not. In fact, she really wished she was wearing some really baggy sweats instead of her jeans and a tank-top with a jacket.

As she got passed the entryway into the main part of establishment, she realized sweats wouldn't be necessary. Most of the room was almost without any light, allowing the patrons to disappear into the gloom; only the center was lit. In the center was a runway with a pole.

As Buffy watched, a green skinned she-demon, with tentacles instead of arms, and wearing only a red thong and knee high boots, wrapped one tentacle and one leg around the pole. She leaned all the way back and spread her other leg out to the side giving the audience a very good view of her. . . thong. The audience hooted and hollered, making several rude and lusty comments.

"I could do that," Buffy said under her breath. Then she blushed bright scarlet as suggestive chuckles from the nearby darkness told her that several of the patrons had superhuman hearing.

Buffy wanted to run. She had never felt so uncomfortable in her life. But there was no way the Slayer was going to let a bunch of demons see her run. Especially the low lives who frequented a sleazy strip joint like this.

It would, however, take her forever to scan the room. The lighting was obviously meant to show off the girls, and keep the patrons from having to look at each other. Even Spike's platinum hair would be hard to spot in the gloom.

So, she headed to the bar which was mostly empty. Obviously, people got their drinks and moved to the tables around the stage. That made it easy to catch the bartenders attention.

"Um, hi. I'm looking for Spike. Have you seen him?"

'Lame,' she thought. But she was too flustered by the show going on behind her to be intimidating.

"Spike? Yeah, he's here."

It wasn't the bartender who responded but an average looking guy sporting the 70's pimp look who was the only other person sitting at the bar.

"Hi, I'm Lou. The owner. You said you were looking for Spike?" Buffy nodded. Lou seemed to be human and she wondered why demon bars were always owned by humans. "Come with me. He's in the V.I.P. room."

"Thanks. After you," Buffy said. There was no way she was letting this sleaze-ball behind her.

He got up, and lead her across the room to a door. Buffy noticed the sign on the door read, 'Staff Only.'

"There's just one thing," he said turning around. Buffy had only a moment to wonder why he had put on red sunglasses before there was a bright flash.





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