Giles handed everyone, including Tara and Spike, a book thicker than their legs. He even rooted around in his secret stash of texts to find anything pertaining to these so-called Gentlemen. When everyone was suitably furnished with a book that could crush a person’s weight, he settled down with his own to study.
Willow and Tara had opted to study in the spare bedroom, lying on the bed with their feet in the air, and looking through current studies regarding men of all sorts. Xander and Anya took the more ancient texts, perusing other cultures and any legends or tales with men or groups of men involved. Xander was soon snoring and drooling on a page that explained how men were transformed into eunuchs for certain rituals. Anya found it ironically amusing.
Buffy sat cross-legged on the couch next to Spike, studying a book called “Men and the Zodiac; Know Your Homicidal Maniacs!” Spike on the other hand, was studying a book of fairy tales, and he considered which one had the more boring tome.
‘Got any leads, pet?’ Spike snuck in a thought that made Buffy jump.
‘Not unless you’re a Scorpio male with certain signs in Mars,’ she groused back. ‘And stop talking to me. We agreed, remember? If you wanna talk, use the board. It’s bad enough they saw us kiss.’
Spike frowned with concern. ‘Regretting the Big Bad, Slayer?’ Spike sent to her, thrusting her title at her like a bad taste.
Buffy quickly turned to look at him and bit her lip. ‘I-I don’t know what I feel, Spike…that’s the honest truth. Yes, I liked your kiss very much…but it’s all so new to me. Most people have three speeds when they deal with things: slow, medium, and fast. I only have one. Slug. Or sloth, take your pick.’
He had to agree with her on that point. Getting Buffy to admit to something that she didn’t want to could cause her to dig in her heels. ‘All right pet, it’s your call,’ he assured her and went back to reading about the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk.
She watched him for a few more moments and returned to her own reading, laughing here and there about how psychotic some men could get. Spike looked over her shoulder a time or too and chuckled himself. He was curious, though, at the actions of the Scoobies with regards to what they witnessed earlier. Other than the nice smack down that Giles had delivered, no one said a word. Even the Whelp keep his mouth shut…or better yet, his marker capped. He then chalked it up to everyone being worried about the lack of voices, and once they returned, he would have hell to pay for it. Bugger it all.
While lost in his thoughts, Buffy had drifted off to sleep, head drooping on his shoulder. He looked down at her golden hair and smiled to himself as he dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. A light tapping had him turning his head towards Anya who had quirked an eyebrow and a smirk plastered on her face. She made an “O” with one hand and used the index finger of her other to insert into the “O”, raising her eyebrows in a question and nodding in Buffy’s direction.
Spike looked confused for a moment until she started moving her finger vigorously in and out of the hole her other hand had created. Spike’s mouth gaped open and then he grimaced, lifting two fingers in a backward “V” telling her to stuff it with her ideas about the Slayer and him doing the horizontal tango. Bad enough she was asking him about it, if Buffy were awake he’d be dust right about now.
Muttering to himself inside his head, he returned to a story called “Die Herren” in the poncey book Giles had given him…as if he couldn’t be trusted with a proper text; he had this ridiculous book of fairy tales…hang on a mo! His gaze intensified as he really began reading the German story concerning a group of Gentlemen that come a town and steal the inhabitant’s voices in order to procure seven hearts, which they needed once a year to survive. The pictures were detailed and gory and Spike silently congratulated the person responsible for the gruesome work.
Spike wrote “Found Something!” on his board and raised it in the air, tapping for everyone to see. He hadn’t accounted on Buffy’s head moving if he raised his shoulders, and so he grimaced in sympathetic pain as her head hit the back of the couch in a loud ‘thunk.’
‘Ow!’ she mouthed before she realized no one would hear her, and she rubbed the back of her head, glaring at Spike in irritation. He gave her an ‘I’m sorry’ look and tapped on his board. She glanced at it and a smile spread across her face. Without thought, she reached over and hugged him, pressing a soft kiss of gratitude on his cheek. He smiled and winked at her, which made her blush from the roots of her hair to the tip of her funny nose.
“What did you find?” Giles had written on his board and showed Spike, now that everyone had gathered in the main room.
“7 Men & No Voices!” Spike wrote and held up his book to indicate where he’d found the information.
“In a fairy tale book?” Buffy questioned as she capped her marker.
“Oi can’t help where I find info!” Spike groused with his board.
“Will someone please wake up Xander? Even without his voice, his snores are LOUD!” Willow asked with her board as she covered her ears.
Anya reached over and slapped Xander on the face, causing him to snort and wearily open his eyes. Apparently she’d done this a multitude of times. He looked around to all the faces that were watching him and frowned in confusion. “Did I miss something?” he wrote in very shaky handwriting.
Everyone rolled their eyes and turned back to Giles, who was writing on his board again. “Spike, do you think you could read up on the Gentlemen?”
Spike frowned. “Yeah, why?”
“We need to be on same page, and I have an idea,” Giles flashed his board to him and began wondering off to find something.
“I think Rupes lost marbles as well as voice,” Spike confirmed to everyone, as he tapped his temple a couple times with his marker. This earned him a slap on the arm from Buffy.
“Buffy and Xander come with me to the campus,” Giles had written on his board as he returned carrying something.
He handed Spike several transparent sheets and pointed between them and the book. “Give a summary of who and what they are, and how to kill. Have ready by this evening!”
Buffy frowned, but got up from the couch to follow Xander and Giles as they headed out the door. She looked back at a very perplexed Spike, who was trying to figure out what to do with what he was given. ‘Spike…be careful,’ she whispered to his mind.
He turned sharply around and pinned her with a heated stare. ‘You too, Buffy. Please be careful…besides, should only be me that gets to take you out,’ he caressed her mind then gave a waggle of his eyebrows.
Buffy smiled full throttle and chuckled to herself. ‘Nah, you’d miss me too much. But I would consider you taking me out…on a date,’ she offered but was distracted by Giles blowing the horn on his car. She smiled again and was out the door in a flash.
Spike was left with a tingly feeling that started to spread throughout his body. If his heart could beat, it would. He turned and looked at Anya who had a smug look on her face and she nodded with the in-out motion again. Yeah, they were all bleedin insane.
*******************************************************************************************
Giles drove to the UC Sunnydale campus and parked near Buffy’s dorm. They got out and Giles wrote something on his board. “Need to find a classroom that has an overhead projector for this evening.”
‘Why?’ Buffy shrugged.
“Want us all on same page, Spike will update with slides on Gentlemen,” he wrote with exasperation.
Xander and Buffy nodded and they split up to find a classroom that would hold the Scoobies without attracting too much attention. Buffy shied away from Rhodes Hall, so Xander took it and began his hunt.
The campus was deserted, most of the students having stayed in their dorms or at home since classes were cancelled until the ‘Laryngitis’ epidemic was under control. The hallways were dark, but there were a few lights on in classrooms indicating that maybe some of the professors were about.
Xander stuck his head in one room and spied an overhead projector sitting on a long black table next to a desk. Sitting at the desk, was an older woman concentrating on her work and she seemed not to notice Xander’s presence. That was until she tapped her pen in irritation at having been disturbed. Xander looked sheepish and approached the crabby looking woman.
“Can we use your projector this evening? I promise nothing will happen to it!” Xander wrote on his board and showed the now frowning woman.
She got up and started writing on the class dry erase board behind her. “What for? Classes are cancelled until further notice.”
“I know but this is for extra credit. Prof. Giles wants us to do,” Xander floundered until he could think of something. “An outline! For German! Yeah!”
The woman eyed him carefully. Xander immediately regretted asking this woman, as she gave him the creeps. He wasn’t getting the “I’m a big human sack of evil” vibe like he sometimes got from people, but she was way up there on the wiggy factor. She shrugged and wrote on the board after a few moments.
“You may have the classroom from six until eight pm. After that, the doors lock and you’ll be stuck here,” she finished with a malicious smirk.
“That’s fine, thanks!” Xander penned quickly and left to find Buffy and Giles.
The woman watched him leave, picking up the phone as she did. She dialed a series of numbers, hit pound and then hung up. A few moments later, a man entered the classroom in full military gear to stand in front of her. She began writing on the board again.
“Put an inconspicuous observation camera in this room. Have it done by four pm. We’re going to have visitors.”
Riley nodded his bruised face and left to follow Professor Walsh’s orders.
****************************************************************************************************
When Buffy had seen where they were heading that evening, she immediately stopped in her tracks. “That’s Walsh’s room!” she frantically wrote on her board and showed everyone.
Xander’s eyebrows raised into his hairline. “OH CRAP!” he apologized by writing it several times all over his board. He had never seen Walsh before and had no idea before today that she was involved.
“I doubt she’s there now, and I don’t think she knows Xander is one of your friends,” Giles assured her.
“I’ll check it out,” Buffy wrote and she inched her way in the doorway. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she motioned for the others to follow her into the classroom.
They kept the lights low and everyone took a seat. Willow and Tara sat next to Buffy while Xander and Anya sat a few seats over, Anya munching on popcorn like she was at the movies. She’d seen Spike doing the transparencies this afternoon and it promised to be quite a show. Giles sat next to Buffy, frowning when Spike produced a boom box from under the desk. Giles spread his hands in confusion and mouthed, ‘What are you doing?’
Spike had turned on the projector and slid a piece of the transparency onto it. “To get you lot into the mood!” he scribbled quickly. He reached over and hit play on the CD player and an eerie sounding organ filled the air. Everyone looked at each other as chills ran up their spine from Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor playing.
“Couldn’t you have chosen something a little cheerier?” Giles wrote and he glared.
“What? You wanna do this you mankey git?” Spike wrote on the overhead and pointed to Giles.
“I’m just waiting for Lon Chaney to pop out somewhere with an organ,” Xander wrote and showed everyone.
Spike threw his marker at Xander and beaned him on the head. “Shut up and listen up! Err…pay attention!”
Spike cracked his knuckles and laid a transparency on the glass plate, turning to pick up the sheets he had accidentally knocked over. When he stood up, everyone was pointing at the canvas screen behind him. He turned and looked at the upside down and backwards sheet that he had put on the plate, turning it and flipping it to correct the position.
“Who Are The Gentlemen? By William X. Pratt” was written as if a cover page for someone’s thesis. Everyone turned and looked curiously at Spike for an explanation of his last and middle name. Finally realizing what he’d done, Spike rubbed the bridge of nose and shook his head with an emphatic ‘NO.’ He quickly drew lines across the names to cross them out. Like it did any bloody good.
Everyone began writing on his or her board with the same question, “What is your middle name?” They all flipped their boards at him and he sighed heavily. Wishing he could growl in frustration, Spike wrote, “If I tell you, will you bleedin idiots shut your gob so I can get on with the presentation?”
They all looked at each other and then turned back to nod in agreement. “Fine. Xavier, end of story,” he marked on the sheet in short order, then throwing the sheet aside for a new one.
The organ music was reaching a crescendo when he placed the next transparency on the glass. “They are Fairy Tale monsters, originating from Germany. The story is Die Herren.”
“What do they look like?” Willow wrote on her board and showed everyone. None of them had seen anything yet, so it was possible that they were nocturnal.
Spike gave an ‘Ah Ha!’ gesture with his index finger and pulled out another clear sheet. He laid the ghastly picture of seven men of varying heights on the projector and everyone cringed in disgust. The men looked like the rejects for the Joker with their plastered maniacal smiles and hollow eyes. They were all thin and lanky with what looked like metal teeth, bald heads rounding out the grisly visage.
“Where did you get these pictures?” Giles wrote on his board. He was highly curious at the detail that was shown on the transparency. It looked Xeroxed and he wondered how he was able to get a hold of such equipment in the short time frame.
Spike hefted the heavy book and opened it to the page where the story had begun and pointed to the picture on the glass. “I copied the pictures from the book.”
Giles and the Scoobies were stunned. The picture looked almost real…frighteningly real, as if he had taken a photo of the group. “That’s quite a talent you have there, Spike,” Giles admitted, and everyone nodded their head enthusiastically.
He took a not-so-humble bow and continued. “What Do They Want?” was the next on the glass.
Anya raised her hand and waved it around, bouncing up and down in her seat like a kid that has to ask permission to go to the bathroom. She pointed to her chest several times but kept getting blank looks from the group. Then Xander cupped his chest and mouthed, ‘Boobies?’ with a confused look on his face as to why these monsters would want women’s boobs.
Anya tsked in disgust and threw some popcorn at him. By this time Spike had put the next sheet on the glass and she pointed to it. Everyone turned and gasped at the picture. Spike had drawn himself in game face (how he remembered what he looked like they had no clue) clutching a heart that had just been torn from a victim, blood everywhere. Apparently he had made liberal use of the red marker. Underneath was the word “Hearts.”
Buffy grimaced and twirled her finger, motioning him to move on with the next slide before she hurled. Tara had covered her mouth and her eyes bulged at what Spike had drawn. Spike tsked and made a pfft sound, writing “PANSIES” in bold letters across the top of the picture.
Shaking his head, he dropped the next transparency on the glass. “They Come To a Town.” It seemed that Spike had grown tired of creating virtual masterpieces and started drawing stick figures instead. Seven stick figures, their heads grossly out of proportion with their bodies, stood on a hill overlooking a small town. In the middle of the town was a large house that suspiciously looked like Buffy’s. He subtlety winked at her and she blushed.
“They Steal All the Voices So No One Can Scream,” was the next sheet laid on the glass. This had just four stick men standing closer to town holding up a box above their heads. Several squiggle lines came from the city to the box, Spike pointing to the box and then pointing to all of them, massaging his throat.
“What happens then?” Tara wrote on her board, slightly lifting it to show everyone.
Spike smiled kindly at the girl and he placed the next sheet on the plate. It showed two stick figure men this time with a third that looked quite like Spike behind them, hovering over the bed of a person…that suspiciously looked like Xander! The men and Spike were sporting gleeful smiles as they repeatedly stabbed the poor boy on the bed; blood everywhere once again.
Before anyone could write or mouth anything, Spike flipped the next picture up and it was even more horrific that the last! Blood was splattered prolifically on the men, on Spike, and on the boy’s bed. It also featured a grinning Spike and Gentlemen holding the heart of a dead ‘Xander’ high above in one hand, a scalpel in the other. Two large ‘X’s’ covered Xander’s eyes to indicate his demise as Spike finally heard some spluttering.
“That’s me, you bleached menace!” Xander said furiously with his marker.
Spike looked at the body and then back at Xander. “Nah, this one is cuter,” he wrote as he pointed to the dead body in the picture.
Willow, Tara, and Buffy all exchanged disturbed looks. Anya just shrugged her shoulders in mild appreciation of his work. She’d seen worse…hell, she’d caused worse! Giles was mumbling to himself inside his head, berating himself for not doing the presentation as Spike seemed to be having way too much fun with the gory pictures.
“How many hearts do they need?” Giles waved his board at Spike.
Spike pointed to everyone in the classroom. “Seven,” he wrote to specify how many people were in the room.
Xander snapped his fingers and pointed to his board. “How do we kill them?”
Buffy raised her hand and started acting like Anya did earlier, bouncing in her chair. She took her left hand and made a fist, pumping up and down in fast order towards her body. Xander and Spike stared at Buffy with lust in their eyes and Giles grew red from head to toe. Buffy looked at them blankly. She pulled a stake out of her bag and produced the motion again, stabbing up and down towards her body.
Xander finally understood what she meant and Giles looked relieved. Willow and Tara pretended that nothing happened. Spike, however, still had that lust glaze in his eyes and he tucked his tongue behind his teeth in a leer. ‘Later pet,’ he sent to her.
Buffy frowned in confusion at first and then flushed with embarrassment at what she had done. She hid her face behind her hands and slunk down in her chair hoping no one would notice her for the rest of the night.
“No Sword Can Kill Them,” was the next transparency. Spike had drawn another figure that looked disturbingly like Xander…with five swords sticking out of him and a big grin on his face. He proceeded to draw more knives and swords being run through Xander.
Xander huffed and held out his hand in objection to what Spike was doing. “I’M NOT DEAD BOY JR’S PINCUSHION!” Xander wrote in caps and everyone mentally heard his whine resound in their head.
Giles ignored Xander and then tapped on his board to get Spike’s attention, being that he was so focused on making a picture of a Xander kebab. “So how do we kill them?”
Spike looked up and groused. “A Princess Must Scream And They Will Die,” he wrote on a blank transparency. He then quickly drew a somewhat decent picture of Buffy screaming her lungs out and several dead stick figures along side her. “And It Has To Be A REAL Voice.”
“So how do I get my voice back?” Buffy wrote on her board and showed Spike.
Spike was ready to give an answer…any answer but that. He let his hands drop to his sides and he shrugged his shoulders. “Buffy should patrol tonight,” Spike finally wrote and he started drawing a curvaceous image of Buffy…with large breasts and a pert behind, pouty lips and long flowing hair. That was, until a marker hit him in the groin.
‘Oi! That’s my meat and two veg! Watch the family jewels!’ Spike winced as he shouted at Buffy for throwing the marker.
She sent him a scathing look and pointed at the picture he was drawing…in front of everyone! He looked at her and then back to the picture with a leer. ‘Nah, this time you’re cuter,’ he thought with a wink.
She shook her head in exasperation as she and the Scoobies got up from their seats. They returned the room to normal and shut off all the lights, leaving before the clock struck a quarter till eight.
They never noticed the two cameras that caught the whole scene, nor were they aware of the Initiative that watched the group with interest bordering on insanity.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Many thanks to all those that have stuck with this story...as Sotia says, it is her lover (they have feelings for each other) while she only thinks of Hunter's Bane as pure sex. She's a sick puppy. But I love her any way. Zoe I miss you hun, come find me! Thanks to Mary, Vara, Jane, Sirc (your reviews are short, but welcome) and Cordy. You guys rock. A special thanks to Dusty and IBE, thanks for jumping aboard my mental mind-fuck of a wagon (pardon my french). I've changed the music that the presentation is done to in the series to one that I liked better. It's creepier anyway. The link is included here. Direct quotes from "HUSH."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_oIFy1mxM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_oIFy1mxM