Chapter 6:  Enemies, Closer

Buffy awoke in a very clean, very brightly lit hospital room. The walls were polished white stone, trimmed by lengths of steel raceway. Her arms and legs weren’t bound, but try as she might she couldn’t seem to move them.   It wasn’t paralysis; not the scary, Late-Night Telethon-y kind anyway. She could still feel the caress of linen beneath her. It was as though her entire body was trapped on the verge of sleep. A wave of sweet, unexpected nostalgia swept through her. Nights on the Via Blanco returned, along with the feeling that all of life’s sharp edges were filed smooth.

The Dragon was so close. She could almost reach it; almost touch its golden skin.

No, a voice in her head scolded back. Don’t go there. The Dragon never waits for you. He’s always close, but he never waits.

Be here.

Be here now.

As she squeezed the old wound closed, she was suddenly aware of being naked. Panic began to creep in around the edges of her brain like chilly fingers.

This was no hospital.

Frantically, Buffy tried to piece together the series of events. They were in the tunnel, running towards the escape hatch that she’d paid the Reggio brothers to install last summer. The robot had been acting strangely, like it knew her or something. Giles was hurt. She was carrying him. Then the robot knocked them down. Then she woke up here.

No, that’s wrong, she thought. Something was missing. The robot pushed her, but that wasn’t what knocked her out. She remembers seeing the creature spread itself out on the floor. There was a pulse of blue light and a very loud bang. A bomb, maybe?

She struggled to lift her head, neck muscles straining against an impossible wind. There were glimpses; a taut ponytail, a shaft of blurry white fabric. Somewhere close, a pair of female voices, arguing.  One voice was low and gruff, the other a musical Southern drawl.  She couldn’t make out what they were saying.  Sounds still weren’t hanging together very well, and the thought occurred that the bomb shattered her eardrums. She tried to tilt her head sideways, groaning from the effort. Her mouth opened, but all that came out was a somewhat pathetic squeak.

Then the voices stopped, and two faces immediately popped into view.

One woman was thin and pretty, but unnervingly pale. Her eyes were as pink as a bunny rabbit’s, the kind of pink you see in flash photography, each one framed by a gauzy bush of long white lashes. The hair was snowy white as well, though she seemed to be no older than Buffy herself. She was dressed in a form-fitting nurse’s uniform, more like something you’d see in an old Playboy than in an episode of “E.R.”  The nurse shot her a dreamy smile. Buffy didn’t recognize her at all.

The other face was quite familiar. She wished very much that she could punch it.

“Welcome back, General,” said Kennedy.  “Remember me?”

She looked older than Buffy remembered.  Her hair was dragged into a taut, militant knot that revealed a network of tiny wrinkles blossoming in the corners of her brow. She wore a kind of grey thermal sweater that reminded Buffy of a commercial she once saw for the Navy Seals. Her brown eyes twinkled sadistically in the florescent light.

Somewhere inside Buffy's chest, the demon stirred to life. She felt a long muscle tense in her right arm. It snapped up like a wild dog on a leash, missing the brat’s chin by inches. Her left leg followed suit, sliding harmlessly across the ridge of the albino nurse’s hemline.

“Wh-hoa!” Kennedy yelled. “Looks like our little Chosen One’s still got a little spunk left in her. And I don’t mean the sticky vampire kind, either.”

Hands grabbed her roughly, and she felt herself go limp again.  The world had lost its substance, somehow, gone all wet and ghostly.  Buffy's face buried itself in a small feather pillow, and she had to wrench her head to the side to keep from suffocating.

“See, I told you it wasn’t enough, didn’t I?  You’ll have to forgive, Nurse Nancy, Buff. She’s got a great head for science and all, but she’s new to the whole Slayer scene. Cooked up this nifty little neuro-toxin to keep girls like us from getting all herky-jerky and karate-choppy when we don’t want them to.”

The “nurse” planted a firm hand on her neck. Buffy’s hearing was gradually improving. She heard two quick. wet snapping noises, and a sound like someone whisking a bowl of Jell-O.

Something trapped inside her was screaming.

Don’t.

A pair of hands went about their obscene business.  She gasped again, this time loud enough for them to hear.

“Ooh, I think she likes it Nancy!”

She tried to concentrate on the odd sensations rippling through her, knifing needles and the dull hammer edge of poison. She shut her eyes, tried to draw herself inward until the voices of her tormentors faded into the distance. The demon prowled along the edge of her mind, then, softy cooing his name. Relenting, she conjured him up, the way she used to do when he was still alive but very far away. Wolf eyes pierced through her, the dark eyebrow arching up like a question mark.

The answer was always “yes,” back then. Yes, do this to me. Yes, do whatever you want with me.

It was like a drug in those days. Sometimes, she’d just wanted the fire, the ferocity of fingers and lips attacking, cloth shredding, bodies smashing through toothpick furniture. Other times she had wanted very particular things. Weird things. Sick things, even. He'd understood completely.

He was there with her now, as she lay helpless on a clean white gurney, surrounded by enemies.

‘Shhh… Relax, pet. We’re going to play a game.’

‘What kind of a game?’ she wondered aloud.

‘Doctor.'

‘Oh boy!  I think I like that game. Wait, who’s the doctor?’

‘I am. Don’t you remember?’

‘Oh yeah. I remember now. You’re The Doctor. The Big Baaad Doctor.’

‘Yeahhh, s'right.  But we must be quiet, lamb. Mustn’t let our friends catch on. Wouldn’t be proper.’

Maybe I’m not proper. Maybe I’m baaad…

A long cool finger slid inside again, a knuckle brushing lightly against soft down. She felt a wet shock as the skin of his palm pressed momentarily against her thigh. She wanted to arch her hips, push back, strain against it. But she couldn’t do that.  Wouldn’t be proper.  Somewhere far away, she could hear the sound of something electric humming to life.

‘Now. This bit will sting, love.  But I want you to be a good girl and let the doctor go about his business, alright?’

Okay doctor. I’ll try to be a good girl.

Something hard probed at her; gently, and then insistent. A brief hiss of pain shot through her as it snaked its way inside.  She felt herself seize involuntarily onto it, strangling a cool, slippery surface with a muscle she never knew she had. A needle sank into the small of her back, touching off a hornet’s nest of nerve endings with a flamethrower.

Ooh, doctor. That hurts soooo much.

Good girl. Brave girl. You’re doing very well.

Now, you hold on to that for a few minutes, young lady, while I go an’ fetch my instruments.

Yes, Doctor.

Yes, my love.

***

Right.

That hurt.

Sodding Understatement Of The Year, actually.  Felt like his skull was the hotel room and the Mick and the Stones were having a bash. As his eyes gradually adjusted, he struggled to understand why he was in one piece and feeling bloody awful instead of being in several awfully bloody pieces.

Concuss grenade, he thought. He’d seen the Initiative blokes use them before, whenever a beasty got frisky but they weren’t finished playing with it yet. No permanent damage, but it gave them one hell of a raging headache.

The room was strange and yet dishearteningly familiar. Scorched stone walls, hung torches. Manacles dangling from the ceiling like jungle vines. And, of course, a personal pair wrapped snugly ‘round his wrists.

A damned dungeon.  How original.

He tested the chains. They were sturdy buggers; still, he might have broken through them if he wasn’t feeling so weak.  He hadn’t had a meal in a several days, or slept, for that matter.  Sometimes Spike forgot that he still had to do that last bit. Whenever he wore W&H’s fancy getup, he could just go charging about anytime, day or night, blankets be damned. But his mind would always need sleep, even when the body didn’t. It took a constant, Olympian effort for creatures like him to persist in the world of men, as though his very consciousness had to literally struggle under the heavy onslaught of science and reason. Being forced to watch a Discovery channel show about bloody comets with Dawn had drained him more than any hot and heavy marathon with Big Sis ever did. Go figure.

Buffy!

He tore at his bonds, roaring. The chains made a sound like an army riding, but held him fast. Images of her death flashed hot in his brain: a hundred different ways, burned and kicked and sliced and stomped, all while he lay like a useless lump. They would show no mercy on her.

He would show no mercy on them.

He wouldn’t rest until they had tasted every exotic flavor of misery and pain. Scalding hot oil on peeled flesh. Hounds eating entrails. Railroad spikes. At her grave, he would hang what was left of their bodies on a tree to rot.

Once he'd finished savoring this happy image, the rage inside him slowly subsided, yielding to the prickly sanity of dread. If they hadn’t killed him yet, it was possible she was alive too, and nearby. Perhaps being tortured; these types never could stomach a sharp, clean death if there was a chance they could rub it in your face a little first. Spike knew that particular drill quite well.

Eventually, he heard voices. One was composed of a growling, gutteral rubbish -- the Black Speech of some unknown refuge of Hell.  But, as they neared, he could make out the other one for sure. It was a dead ringer for that annoying little bird, the one who was always hanging off the Witch’s belt buckle in the days of Sunnydale's grand finale. It made a certain sense, her being behind it; the wench never could stomach playing second fiddle to Buffy, nevermind third, fourth or bloody eighteenth.

She appeared in the doorway wearing some G.I. Joe-type number, and grinning like Mr. Cheshire. He suddenly knew that Buffy was still alive, after all. Vampires were ruthless, soulless murderers, and if anything changed about their faces after a kill, Spike had never noticed. But the look of real human who’s just topped someone was altogether different, no matter who they were, always tempered with just the slightest twinge of regret. He figured this had little to do with conscience: it was the bloody finality of death, a door closed and never again opened. It was the reason serial killers re-enacted their crimes in such exacting detail, he supposed.

No, she hadn’t killed her. But she’d hurt her. It was as plain as the smile on her face.

Inside his chest, something dangerous began to growl. He lunged.

“Color me impressed,” said the bint. “Another little bundle of energizer bunnies. You Italians are tough, man.”

“I’ll kill you!” The sound of his altered voice hit the walls and shattered into a storm of feedback.  Instantly, a very large and brightly pissed-off looking demon charged to her side. He was a big grey fellow with milky white eyes, just like the berk he skewered in the temple. Spike still couldn’t quite place the breed, though; Angel was always better with these continental types.

“Settle down, fella,” Kennedy said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She drew seductively close, her pet beastie trailing half a step behind. Spike could hear the blood pumping in the long well of her throat, and desperately wished he could set it loose. “You know, I’ve heard a little about you: mysterious, masked superhero popping up all over Europe. Slaying beasties and rescuing maidens-fair. “ She squinted curiously into his faceplate, less than a foot away. “I guess you’re real after all.”

Spike decided to forego the pleasantries.  “Where’s Buffy?"

“Why do you care?” she answered, seeming genuinely puzzled. “She’s a nobody now. There are hundreds of us, exactly like her. Better, even, not to mention waaaay more motivated..."

She paused to fire a stiff uppercut into his solar plexus. A wave of pain ripped through his ribcage, and he felt the armor crack under the strain.

"See, there are two types of people in this world,” she continued.   “You have your well-meaning fools like Giles, Faith, Rosenberg, Summers. Sure they're talented, as far as that goes. But when it comes to saving the world, they've lost the thread. They’ve become selfish. Weak. They waste all their time focusing on all the small, pointless battles... that is when they aren't micro-managing each others' love triangles.  It's not their fault, really. They just don’t have the brains or the guts to see the big picture.”

“Yeah?  What’s that?”  As he said it, he noticed Kennedy's pet monster roving in a small circle towards him. He could feel the thing’s hatred sailing towards him on red waves.  It wanted to crack him like an egg.

“Control, of course," Kennedy said.  "I mean, bustin’ demons and dragons are one thing. Every once and awhile a bunch of scaly monsters are bound to get out of hand, force you to make with Big Beatdown.”  The pet demon snarled at this little insight, but its mistress ignored it.  She was securely in the driver’s seat with these devils, somehow.  “In the long run, though, mankind does a lot more 'evil' on a daily basis than anything you’d find crawling out of some silly old Hellmouth. Men who wage wars for cheap gas.  Men who sell women into slavery.  Men who abandon children to starve in the streets. Men, who...well, you get the picture.”

“Got it.  You hate men.”

Kennedy shook her head, laughing it away.  “Can't you see it?  The world needs order. Justice. Security. Slayers can provide that. With a little help, of course.” The demon hissed at him over the girl’s shoulder, and she cleared a path for it.

“So it’s to be torture is it?  Kind of my specialty, bitch.  Do your worst.”

“Torture a man with no name?  No face.  Sounds like a major waste of time, if you ask me.  Seems to me that you don’t know anything worth knowing.  Very few people do, these days.”

The monster gripped each side of the Sun Helmet, its rows of shark teeth flickering madly in the torchlight.

"So long, stranger."

A pair of clawed hands twisted sharply.

The world went black.

***

Drugged.

Again. Wonderful.

Rupert awoke in a clean cell, hands and feet bound to a chair. Again. This particular routine was getting to be a little tiresome, to say the least. He felt the sensor shift back into place, and immediately began broadcasting the environment, trying to serve up some additional clues for whomever it was he was able to synch up with back in the tunnel.

Unfortunately, the signal had to be randomly assigned. Thanks to that grenade, he didn’t have time to link up with the WatcherNet search engine. So he sent out a general REDCOM.SEEK command, a nifty little safety feature he’d dreamt up for situations like this one. The satellite would dump his visual feed to the first available device, remaining active for as long as he was conscious.  However maddeningly rare that seemed to be these days.

Luckily, his generally bedraggled state was enough to fool the children into thinking he was asleep longer than he actually was. He was able to get some very good reads of highway signs and landmarks on the journey in, including an extensive shot of the terrain at the border crossing. He even managed to get several full facial images of his captors discussing directions to the castle. If he was lucky enough to synch with a good lip-reader, they’d probably be rescued any minute now.

His cell, however, was disappointingly devoid of detail. There was only a small, barred window, his chair, and a large steel door with a foot long grate in it. The rest of the room was white stone, buffed smooth as silk. It all seemed surprisingly new, considering the way the castle had looked from the outside. Their enemies had kept fairly busy, it seemed.

He knew the place well. Never actually been here, mind you, but he’d read so much about it in the literature over the years that it felt like a second home. It was Castelul Drakul, an ancestral palace of the infamous Romanian despot, Vlad Tempes. Dracula’s summer home, practically speaking. The castle’s location had remained a closely guarded secret for centuries. It seemed both strange and oddly fitting that a rogue army of Slayers should take up residence there. If only he’d thought of it first.

Hopping like a mad insect, he inched the chair over towards the door. “Hello, there!” he cried out. “I say, is there anybody there?”

A gruff Amazon appeared in the grate. He recognized her as April Mahoney. The girl had joined Faith’s Army a little over a year ago, a late bloomer from Queens, New York. She was only sixteen then, hardly able to comprehend her powers, let alone the strange war she’d been recruited to fight. There was something vaguely tragic about the girl’s case. What was it? Something to do with her family, he recalled.

“April,” he gasped. “April, what’s happening.” The girl just glared down at him, expressionless. “Please,” he said. “Please, I need to know if she’s okay.”

April’s lips seemed to hover around her teeth. Her lidded eyes spoke of the kind of loss he hadn’t seen in a very long time. “Don’t know, G. Dead, for all I fucking care.”

He remembered, then. Her family was slaughtered in front of her. There was nothing supernatural about it. A “home invasion,” he believed they called it.

Four men had broken into April's house one evening. After scouring the place for money, they raped and murdered her mother, slit her father’s throat. Afterwards, they drowned both of her younger brothers in a bathtub.  No witnesses, they thought.  It happened six years before the Awakening. While he was teaching Buffy Summers to slay vampires in Sunnydale, April Mahoney had hidden herself under a sink in New York City, watching her entire life disintegrate through a crack in the cabinetry.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not entirely sure of what.

The girl hovered motionless for a moment, then disappeared. He sat quietly for several minutes, ruminating on the past decade of his life. Considering how much had happened, it had passed in an awful hurry.

Summoning his strength, he hopped back to the small barred window. He concentrated once again on the wilderness below, taking care not to move his neck around too much, to keep his gaze level and his focus deep. It was a clear day. He could see for miles. Behind his back, he began to move his wrists in a gentle see-saw motion over a rough shard of wood on the base of the chair.

“Take a good look, whoever you are. See us.”