THE DETAILS AND THE FACTS
Tara's stomach rumbled again, and she cursed herself and her inability to feed. Willow had been easy, willing prey. Rack, high on stolen power, had been unsatisfying – his blood bitter, like poison. She couldn't finish him. Unfortunately, the rest of Sunnydale's citizens weren't nearly as complicit as her lover and a strung-out majick junkie had been; they'd all gotten away. She now found herself walking along the paths of UC Sunnydale, willing the universe to provide her with anything – a drunken frat boy, an absentminded professor, an overly trusting freshman – so that she could feed.
As if in an answer to her wish, a young woman rounded the corner from the opposite direction.
"Excuse me!" Tara called out to her, and she stopped. "I just transferred here, and I'm a little lost. Can you tell me how to get to Old Hall?"
"Old Hall?" the other woman repeated, running closer to Tara so they wouldn't have to shout. "Sure it's just . . ." The sentence was cut off as Tara sank her fangs into her neck. The blood made a gurgling noise in her throat as though she was choking.
She didn't even try to hide the body. Bloodlust and hunger sated, she wanted nothing more than to go back to her hideaway and sleep – with Willow at her side.
Buffy groaned. A giant weight was pressing down on her from above, and she fought back against its invisible crush. She'd been fighting this foe for days, winning some battles and losing others. She was tired, and she wished the light would come back so she could see what she was fighting.
She wished that she could find a way to untie her arms, too. It would be so much easier. If she could just move her arms, her hands, her feet – or use any of the tools on which she'd come to rely. She could only struggle, thrashing her entire body in an attempt to dislodge it. Tired, she decided she'd let it win this time, and save her strength for a later battle.
The sunrise gave him an excuse to stay inside – to hide – to temporarily forget all that had taken place the day before. Tara, like he, would be driven back indoors. Willow would not yet have risen.
Dawn was still wrapped in his arms, snoring softly, congested from all the crying she'd done the night before. He hadn't been able to bring himself to move – as afraid of what would happen if he did as he was of what would happen if he didn't. He knew he should wake her now, if only for the appearance of telling her she had to go to school, but he knew it would also be pointless.
So he let her sleep. He wondered briefly what a terrible place the world must be that this scared teenager found his arms to be the best refuge.
She stirred at that point. Waking, and looking up at him with eyes that still seemed preternaturally large, she asked, "Spike?"
It was a single question, both frightened and hopeful, and filled with the shared sorrow of the previous night. There could be only one answer, "Yeah, 'bit," he said brushing his palm over her tangled hair, "I'm still here."
It was Anya who woke him. Sound asleep in the waiting room chair, he'd had no idea how much time had passed.
Abruptly, with a clipped, "You need to get up now," she shook him awake, and stood, impatiently, in front of him until he brought his bleary eyes to focus on her.
"Wha – Anya?" Confused, he finally asked, "What time is it? What are you doing here?"
"It's 2:30 on Friday afternoon. I came to get you to tell you that you can't sleep here anymore and also that Buffy is missing."
He blinked hard, trying to figure how he could have been so unaware of the passage of time, and then quickly realized that was the less important issue. "What do you mean Buffy's missing?"
"I went to look at her before I woke you up. She's not in her room. You told me the doctors said they saved her life, so she should be in her room. Only the nurses are saying she disappeared and they're looking for her." Anya explained with her simplistic logic.
Xander paled, and clenched and unclenched his fists. "I guess you're right, we should leave – see if anyone else knows what's going on."
"You should eat something," Spike spoke softly to Dawn who was currently filling page after page of a composition book with a tightly cramped pattern of lines and blobs. "When's the last time you had a proper meal?"
"Not hungry," she answered not looking up from the notebook. Over her shoulder, he could see the design looping back over itself although nothing touched or even intersected.
"You have to be hungry," he countered. "Look, it doesn't even have to be real food – I'll get us a Bloomin' Onion or a pizza or something, but I'm not gonna let you starve. You're too skinny already."
"Not hungry," she repeated, her pen still moving wildly over the paper.
"Fine," he sighed. "But I'm not gonna eat either."
The awkward attempt at adolescent psychology failed, and as his stomach rumbled he again cursed the iron will of the Summers women.
"What?" Anya looked up from the register, desperation and anxiety carved into every feature. She was looking for reassurance, and he was going to fail her – again. He was always surprised at how she could be so womanly in some ways, and so purely innocent and childlike in others.
"They're all gone," he said, sinking defeated into one of the chairs. "Willow, Tara, Dawn, Buffy – I can't find any of them."
"What do you mean they're gone?" she asked, confused. "People just don't disappear, Xander – not unless, well, unless they've been transported into an alternate dimension, or well, there was that time that Buffy was zapped with that ray, but, this is wrong. People aren't supposed to just disappear."
"I checked the hospital again. The security guards have looked over the video tape from when the nurse last took her vitals to half an hour later when they noticed her missing. There's nothing. The police are looking, too," he told her, and then, sinking even further back into the chair, he shook his head, in shock and disbelief, his voice breaking, "there was so much blood."
She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "It'll be okay," she told him, moving closer to embrace him from behind, and rest her head atop his, "it'll be okay."
"I wouldn't bet on it."
They both jumped at the comment and turned to see Willow in the doorway, her hand still on the bell to keep it from ringing. She was dressed in black, her hair hanging limply around her face, and Xander noted with a shiver, she was very much a vampire.
"Willow," Anya was the first to speak. "We thought you were dead."
"A reasonable conclusion . . ." She let go of the bell, and then forced the door shut behind her with a flick of her wrist. "But, as they say, rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated." She had continued to move forward as she was speaking, and Xander felt as though he were experiencing déjà vu. Something told him, however, that in this case, it wasn't an alternate dimension Willow; this was the real thing.
"Wh-what are you doing here?" Xander couldn't help but stare. The stark contrast between her skin and her hair, and the deep red lip color she'd chosen to wear was striking even as he kept reminding himself of how evil she was.
"I dunno," she answered languidly. He sat still, mesmerized, even as she now stood directly behind him and began to run her hand teasingly down his arm. "I thought I might pick up a few books."
He fought to keep from tensing under her touch. This was wrong.
Willow was a vampire.
She was a vampire, and she was evil.
She was vampire, and she was evil, and she was in the store.
She was a vampire, and she was evil, and she was in the store, and she was going to kill them.
"S-sure thing, Wil'. Whatever you want!" He knew that she could sense his fear. She was the one in the position of power, and his only hope was that they would be of more use to her alive than dead. Maybe that would allow them the time to get out of this mess.
Anya hadn't spoken yet. She sat across the table, pale and wide-eyed. He could tell, though, by the set of her jaw, that she, too, was not yet ready to give up. He took a chance. "Anya knows the store best. Why don't you tell her what you want, and she'll go get it for you. You and I can stay here and . . . talk. I'm sure there's a lot you want to fill me in on."
"Xander . . ." Anya started to protest. With a sharp glance and a barely imperceptible shake of his head, he cut her off.
"Black arts," Willow demanded.
Anya again opened her mouth to protest and then, after another sharp look from Xander, stopped. Instead, with an uncertain edge to her voice and artificial smile, she said, "Of course!" Watching over her shoulder with every step, she moved to the upper level of the store.
Willow took Anya's seat across the table from Xander. A half smile playing at the corner of her lips, she unabashedly surveyed him. "Xander Harris, what am I going to do with you? I don't need sex – well, not from you, and I don't need any minions – I'm powerful enough on my own, but you amuse me. I think I'd like to keep you around – maybe a pet."
"Th-that's good!" It came out as a yelp, and he again cursed what he perceived as his cowardice.
"Of course, Anya's going to have to die." She stated it simply, without any hint of emotion. "She'll just get jealous, and I can't have her in my way."
He looked up to the loft where Anya was still perusing the collection of books, his heart racing as he tried to find a way to buy her time. Again he cursed both himself and the situation. This was wrong. Willow – the smart one – was now plotting against him as his enemy. Buffy – the strong one – felled by a bullet and vanished from the hospital.
Heart was not going to get him out of this mess, but heart was all he had. "ANYA!!" He screamed it so loudly that even Willow flinched. "Get OUT of here!!"
The books fell to the floor with a crash, and he could hear the glass break as she dove through an upstairs window. Willow flew from her chair, reacting only with enough time to slap him, hard, across the face. His cheek stung and tears welled up in his eyes.
He looked up at her, his courage bolstered by that minor victory. Willow's eyes, angry and yellow, stared down at him. "That was not funny."
"No," he replied, defiantly, "I can't say that it was."
She turned her back on him, as though already bored by the exchange, "I'm going to have to go get my own books now."
He watched her back as she ascended. It was over. She didn't care if he left. Knocking the chair over in his haste, he flew from the store.
When she woke up again it wasn't white, but a yellow – filtered sunlight through gauzy curtains. There was a tree outside – and a crocheted canopy on her bed. She had absolutely no idea where she was.
Beeping. There was still beeping. And tubes. There was an IV in her arm. She sat up, and ripped the tube from her arm, barely noticing the sting of the adhesive tape. A tiny spot of blood welled up where the needle had been and she brushed it away.
The beeping grew faster, and she turned to see a heart monitor resting atop the heavy oak bedside table.
"You're up." The voice came from the open door way. It was the man from the hospital – Dr. Davis – only she was beginning to think he wasn't really a doctor.
"Who are you?" Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears – harsh, strained, hoarse.
"Buffy . . ." The voice came from the shadows, but she didn't wonder to whom it belonged. She would've known the warm, learned, British accent anywhere.
"Giles?" She felt tears running down her face, and brushed them quickly away. "Giles, what's going on?"
She saw Dr. Davis step aside to admit him, and he was soon at her bedside, wrapping her in his arms. "Dear God, Buffy, you really need to stop doing this."
"Doing what, Giles?" she asked, confusion fueling her anger. "I don't even know what happened." Her voice grew stronger as she used it. "I was with Warren, and then . . ." She paused and looked down at her chest, noticing for the first time the row of stitches emerging from the neckline of her pajama top. "He shot me . . ." As the realization passed through her, Buffy shivered in spite of the warmth of the room.
Giles remained stoic, silent. There was nothing he could do or say that would serve to reassure her.
She pulled away from him, gingerly angling her body to face him. "What happened? Where am I? How did you get here? Where's Dawn?" Her panic grew with each question, and the heart monitor, began to let out an alarm, to indicate a dangerous acceleration in the Slayer's heartbeat.
"Shhh. Please try to stay calm," Giles attempted to soothe her. "You're not going to do anyone any good if you don't get better first. Please try to relax."
"You relax!" Buffy angrily ripped the electrodes from her body, daring both Dr. Davis and Giles, with a glance, to stop her. "You still haven't told me what I'm doing here! Or," she added, pointing to Dr. Davis, "who that guy is. I'm beginning to suspect he's not a doctor."
"I am a doctor, Buffy," he said, entering the room for the first time, to shut off the still blaring monitor. "I'm also a Watcher."
"You don't sound British." It was the only argument she could come up with.
"Not all watchers are from England," Giles told her, "And Dr. Davis is also a powerful warlock. You're still in California. The Council has moved you to one of our safe houses, so you can rest and heal without the added questions that would come from the Slayer's accelerated healing. Dr. Davis will supplement modern medicine with some of his majicks."
She wanted to argue. This wasn't right – and yet, all she could say was, "I suppose it's better than a hospital." Grudgingly, she added, "Thank you."
Giles cleared his throat – and Buffy looked up at him. Not meeting her eye, but instead keeping his focus trained at some point outside the window, he stated simply, "Your sister's missing."
Buffy sucked in her breath and shook her head, "No. . ."
"Buffy . . ." he spoke her name softly, but it still had a sharp edge of warning to it
When she looked up, he added "Willow and Tara are also missing."
She stiffened, but something told her this wasn't the worst of it. Giles continued, not waiting for her reaction. "There was a lot of blood at your house when the police went there – not just yours."
"Warren?" she asked, no longer caring that the tears were falling freely.
Giles didn't answer her question. Instead, as though he hadn't heard her, he continued with his dispassionate recitation of the facts, "Someone saw a vampire that looks a lot like Spike kill Warren at Willy's bar the other night."
"Spike couldn't . . ." she began, and then stopped herself, the memory of her last encounter with the vampire in question filling her with a white hot rage. Spike could. Spike had.
"I'll kill him. And if he's done anything to my sister, I'll kill him twice." She threw the covers back, ready to leap from the bed, until Giles' firm hand on her shoulder stopped her.
"Not yet," he attempted to reason with her. "You're not strong enough yet."
"I'm the Slayer," she argued, "I heal quick." She tried to push him aside, and realized he was right. She didn't even have the strength to do that.
"Not that quick," Dr. Davis had joined Giles at her bedside. "But we can speed the process a little. Here," he handed her a mug of a deep brown liquid that smelled like a mixture of peppermint tea and jaegermeister. "Drink this."
She wrinkled her nose, but complied – she'd do anything if it meant she might be well enough to do kill Spike.
TBC . . .