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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the delay, this chapter went walkies in cyber space.
Luckily my wonderful beta Jill sent it again and this time it got where it was supposed to be going.
Please review and let me know what you think.
The slayer of course, knew exactly where Angel had kept his restraints, so after a short search she secured her mate to the bed and sat back to wait.


Fifteen minutes later, Buffy was startled to find herself back in control and sharing a strange room with a very familiar vampire.

She had vague memories of the fight with Faith and even foggier ones of knocking both Willow and Spike out. After that, things were more than a bit hazy.

Looking around the room, she had a weird sense of the familiar, while at the same time she was sure she’d never been here before.


Lost in trying to remember how and why she had chosen the place she now found herself in, she didn’t see the vampire wake up. Eyes swinging back to the bed, she was startled to see him sitting up and staring at her, the expression on his face carefully blank.

Buffy felt her heart rate accelerate. What the heck was she supposed to say? She had knocked him out and vamp napped him. There wasn’t exactly a Hallmark card for that.

Eying him closely she stood and moved towards the bed. When he instantly flinched back she felt her heart clench in her chest.

Oh my God what have I done? He already hated me and now I’ve made things worse.


Averting her eyes Buffy searched franticly for the key to the restraints. When she didn’t find it in any of her pockets she started to search the room, doing her best to avoid the vampire’s gaze as she did so.



Spike heard her heart rate pick up, and when she moved towards him he couldn’t help his demons involuntary recoil.

Seconds later, he smelt her tears and caught a glimpse of her devastated expression as she moved away.

Studying her warily, he quickly realized she was searching for something and that she didn’t seem to be having much luck finding it.


Spike, not known for his ability to keep his thoughts to himself, acted in typical Spike fashion.

“Slayer, mind telling me what the bloody hell you think you’re doing?”

When she started but refused to meet his eyes, he found himself suddenly furious.



“Fuck!” he cursed, his tone scathing. “You always were a bitch Summers but even for you this is a new low. What, you couldn’t stand the thought of me not being your bloody lap dog anymore so you bring me here to do… what?”


He rattled the restraints pulling at them uselessly, his anger and confusion growing with each moment of her continued silence.


“Let me out of these you cold-hearted bitch! You’ve soddin well taken everything else away from me, what more do you want? I bloody died for you, what the fuck else do I have to do to be free of you?” he roared in frustration.


When he got no response other than her instant cessation of movement, his tone changed, his voice becoming low and mocking.

“C’mon slayer what’s the matter? The Immortal not doing it for you, is that it?” He asked snidely. “Want a little rough an’ tumble with the big bad… one las’ go for old times sake?”

His voice dropped into a knowing purr as he ran his eyes over her body.

“Might be interesting to see if you’re more than a one trick pony these days slayer, see if he taught you anything, what do ya say pet. Wanna Fuck?”



Buffy was torn by his words, finding herself in the strange position of being both simultaneously hurt beyond belief and hornier that she’d ever been in her life.

The things he’d called her, his obvious loathing and the blatant insinuation that she was a bad lover, hurting her in a way that made her want to both run from him and kill him at the same time.

Her body however, had other ideas, his voice stirring memories of the way only he could make her feel.


Undecided, she turned and faced him, her slayer side urging her to give in to the invitation she could see in his eyes. The Buffy part, the part that knew he no longer loved her, was horrified by the almost primal urges she could feel flowing through her body.

She wanted him with everything she was, everything she had. She wanted to throw herself at him and demand that he give in to her, and it was taking every ounce of her control not to give in to her own rampaging desire.

**********



Willow was angry. No scratch that, she had gone way past angry and was now edging towards homicidal. When Dawn had finished filling her in on hers and Buffy’s recent revelations, Willow’s first reaction had been scarily similar to Dawn…only with magic.


It was the wary look on Angel’s face when he’d returned after securing Andrew that clued her in on the return of the whole black eyed thing. Well that and Dawn’s nervous babbling about black really not being Willow’s best color, even as she hid behind an equally wary Faith.

Glancing down at her hair Willow registered the black streaks that had made their sudden, but not unexpected appearance and quickly pulled the magic back before it could spiral out of control.


“Oops! Sorry about that” she mumbled with a sheepish grin. “Major anger and tiredness do not a happy witch make” she offered apologetically.


Willing the last of the dark magic back to the place she kept it caged, Willow closed her eyes and took deep even breaths. Opening them moments later she addressed the still nervous trio.

“It’s okay guys, I’m good. Just a little stressed from the whole ‘someone put a spell on all of us’ thing”.


Meeting Angel’s troubled expression with her own she asked him to tell her what he remembered of his interactions with them over the last year.

By the time he’d finished telling them about his and Spike’s trip to Rome, Willow was giving herself even odds on who would kill Andrew first.

Dawn looked like she was about to explode and Faith surprisingly enough didn’t look too far behind her.


Goddess! All this time she’d thought Buffy was just getting carried away with the whole ‘normal’ no more Chosen One thing, and instead she’d been living in Florida with Dawn, both of them totally unaware of the fact that they had been under a spell for months.

And the Immortal, instead of being Buffy’s boyfriend was one of the co conspirators in Wolfram and Hart’s plans to bring on god knew what.

She needed to think, to plan… to kick some ass! The whole Wolfram and Hart involvement deal had tilted her world in a way she hadn’t expected.

How and who? That was the first thing she intended finding out.

Willow wasn’t vain. She knew she had power. After all, she’d nearly destroyed the world once and managed to empower thousands of slayers the world over. Nevertheless, the fact that someone had cast a spell on her that she’d failed to sense for well over six months, never mind altering her memories, had her wigging beyond the… well whatever was beyond wigging.

How the hell didn’t I sense anything? I spoke to Andrew in person more than a dozen times and I never even got a glimmer of what he was up too.

She chewed at her lip, brow creased in worry as she went over every interaction she could ever remember having with the traitorous watcher wannabe.

No matter how she looked at it, she still couldn’t remember anything seeming out of the norm, and that was a definite worry.

Whoever had supplied the original spell had a scary amount of power and had gone to dangerous lengths to make sure that they were all kept apart. And though Andrew had provided them with names and the objective of the spell, he, according to what he’d spilled to Dawn, had no real knowledge of why they had gone to such an extreme amount of trouble to keep one slayer and her friends away from the LA crew.


Sure, there had been the battle, but it was hardly ‘The Apocalypse’. No, there had to be more behind it than wanting Angel and crew fighting alone.

Then there was the Buffy and Spike thing. What the hell was up with that?

She’d got the definite impression that Dawn knew more than she was telling, and Faith was taking Spike’s abduction far more calmly than she would have expected.

A day ago Willow would have put money on the fact that Spike and Faith were a whole lot more than just friendly, but now observing Faith out of the corner of her eye it seemed to Willow that she was concerned, but not in a jealous possessivey kind of way.

And Buffy going all primal on them? Well it isn’t like that hasn’t happened before, she thought flippantly.

It was just that this time, Buffy’s focus seemed to be on the bleach blonde vamp that had died in the Hellmouth… Oh God! Of course…

Buffy had no idea he was back… and since the whole Immortal thing is obviously a load of whoee then it isn’t a stretch to think that Buffy might have moved on way less than anyone but Dawn knew.


Her eyes flickered nervously between Faith and Angel her mind churning into overdrive.

Okay Willow, first things first. Get rid of Angel so you can talk to Faith and Dawn without him listening in, and then once you know what’s the what, you can do a locater spell to find Buffy.


Thinking quickly she turned to face the glowering vampire.

“Angel I know it’s a lot to ask”, she ventured, her expression apologetic, “and I hate to be a bother but it looks like I’m gonna need some stuff for a location spell after all…and since I’m all out… and seeing that you know LA way better than me…”


Her expression pleading, she deliberately trailed off as she met the dark haired vampires bemused frown.



Angel sighed heavily. “Sure why not, write what you need down, I think I can persuade a demon I know to open a little early.”

Catching the witch’s eye, he gave her a meaningful look. “Hour and a half be long enough, or do you need me to pick up donuts as well?”



Willow flushed guiltily. “Ah… um … tha-that sounds fine Angel” she managed with a weak grin.

“Sorry,” she apologized, her gaze deliberately seeking Dawn’s “I just think Dawn might open up a little more if you’re not…well… here.”


Her eyes meeting Dawn’s quizzical look, Willow prayed that Dawn would catch on and not make her job any harder than it needed to be.



Dawn, though unable to hear the low-pitched conversation, was not slow to pick up Willow’s less than subtle stare. She immediately ducked her head and employed her best kicked puppy look.

Watching Angel out of the corner of her eye she waited to see if he was going to call Willow on her obvious manipulation and start asking questions that neither of them were prepared to answer.

Angel, undoubtedly knew there was more to the situation than met the eye, Dawn just hoped that he’d leave it alone long enough for her and Willow to talk about what she and Buffy were really doing here in LA.


Somehow, she didn’t think the fact that Buffy had come to his town to find the man she loved would go down all that well with him, especially considering that Spike was the man, or rather, the vampire in question.



Moments later, Angel after one last brooding glare in Dawn’s direction and a curt nod of acknowledgment to Willow, turned and stomped out.


Muttering under his breath about women in general Angel started to head in the direction of the magic shop he’d mentioned, before suddenly changing his mind.


The powers that be owed him some answers and since Willow and the others seemed less than willing to furnish them, he figured that a trip to the post office might just be in order.


It never ceased to amaze him just how lacking in trust the Scoobie’s were when it came to him. Okay, so what if he had been working for a formerly evil law firm… and yes, there was the fact that his soul was maybe not as stay fast as they would have liked, that didn’t mean he wasn’t on the same side anymore, he thought petulantly. They knew that his intentions had been pure and that he had been working to bring down Wolfram and Hart, but they still didn’t trust him enough to include him.


Willow had sent him off to get him out of the way so they could talk and that just made him… well he was hurt to tell the truth, not to mention pissed off. Spike was back five minutes and everybody was all accepting (and in some cases snugly) but he, the original vamp with a soul, was left out in the cold again.


Well he would just have to get his information from elsewhere and when he was the one that found out who was behind the whole thing then maybe he would handle it on his own he thought, a darker than usual scowl settling on his features.


He smiled grimly as he thought of how good it was going to feel when he was the one that rescued his grandchilde from yet another slayer.

Especially after Buffy realized that she’d been under a spell.

He still didn’t have the faintest idea how Buffy taking Spike fitted in to the whole deal, but he was sure it was somehow related to the spell that Andrew had told him about.

T
he boy had been more than a little vocal on their trip to the basement. Angel had barely growled at him and Andrew had practically wet his pants. In the fifteen minutes, it took for Angel to secure him in the cage they had last used to contain Angelus and return to the others in the lobby, Andrew had told him all about Buffy’s latest visit and the fight between her and Faith.


Admittedly, after Andrew told him about Buffy knocking Spike out and taking him, it took all his years of practiced self-discipline to go back upstairs and appear clueless. It was only Andrew’s confession of Illona and the Immortal being behind a plan to keep the two groups apart that had him putting a lid on his rage.


If Wolfram and Hart were behind the whole thing, then it was up to him to find out the truth.

It was clear that he was the real target and Spike’s kidnapping just a distraction to keep him from learning the truth about what Wolfram and Hart really wanted.


Buffy was obviously still under the Immortal’s control and Wolfram and Hart thought that he would be too distracted by hers and Spike’s disappearance to worry about anything until they were found.


Angel wasn’t worried in the least, it had been a year and Spike was well and truly over his stupid Buffy fixation, especially after Rome.

Of course, he might have been a little more concerned if Faith and his grandchilde hadn’t spent the last day or two holed up in a room together.

Spike’s mark on the dark slayer’s neck only confirmed what Angel had known from the moment he’d smelt his grandchilde all over Buffy that last night in Sunnydale.

It was obviously just another form of Spike’s slayer obsession that had drawn him to Buffy, that and the fact that Angel was her one true love, was obviously the only reason he’d been so persistent.


Angel snorted. Spike always did covet my women, Buffy being mine and a slayer must have been irresistible to the masochistic idiot. Still, now that Spike and Faith were an item Buffy would see that he, Angel, was the only vampire that truly loved her.


Maybe after he fixed this mess and found the two of them, he should sit Buffy down and discuss her cookie dough speech, and while he was feeling generous, he would make sure that Spike and Buffy sorted out their misunderstandings.

Spike may be a pain in his ass but he was still family and he and Buffy would undoubtedly run into each other from time to time, especially now that Buffy had come all the way to LA to be with Angel.


Mouth curving into something that closely resembled a smile Angel turned his thoughts to the questions he would ask the oracles.

It never occurred to him that Andrew might not have told him everything, just as it didn’t enter his mind that Buffy could have come to Los Angeles for someone other than him.


Of course, two oracles one former seer and an hour could make all the difference.





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