Chapter Three
They stopped the bus on the outskirts of the area in which Wolfram and Hart’s London branch was situated, choosing to walk to the building complex in small inconspicuous groups. Thanks to Willow, the rather large vehicle full of heavily armed girls and women appeared to be a small Volkswagon bus containing a laughing group of preschoolers. As the girls emerged, the glamour began to fade and they became small groups of chattering teenaged girls. They paused at various shops and food places as they slowly working their way in the direction of the imposing office building housing Evil’s favorite law firm. Willow waved her hand, replacing the small bus glamour with one that made it virtually invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there.
Spike and Faith slipped away to circle the block, quickly identifying the isolated building Lilly had mentioned. To the casual eye, it appeared to be empty; signs warning of construction areas and building debris were scattered around the outside. However, the glimpse they caught of an armed guard at the only entrance not boarded up was a dead give away.
“I think we have to assume that there are wards of some sort, too,” she whispered. “We’d better bring Willow with us when we come back.”
Spike nodded in agreement, fighting the urge to plunge in, fists and non-existent fangs to the fore. They slipped away and hurried back to the others, now gathered in small groups in front of various shops and restaurants. Separating, they moved from group to group, explaining in whispers what the plan was going to be. Spike took Xander aside and asked quietly, “Did you bring it?”
Xander nodded and patted a bag hanging off his tool belt. “Yep. Just say when and we’re good to go.”
“Not till we have Buffy out of there and safely away.”
“Check. Rescue Buffster, then make it all go boom. Sounds like a plan.”
Spike hand-picked a small group of slayers to accompany him and Faith when they broke into the building where they assumed Buffy was being held. Noticing Julie’s disappointed face, he took her aside.
“Need you to lead the diversionary squad, pet,” he said kindly. “Got to have someone with good sense and some leadership qualities to keep the girls on task.”
She nodded, standing up straighter. “Okay, Spike. You just tell me when it’s time to go.”
“That’s my girl,” he said with an encouraging smile. “Remember, you job is just to keep the guards occupied and draw them out. Don’t do anything foolish.”
Without further discussion, Julie took a contingent of slayers and walked towards the front door of the building.
“Remember,” she hissed, “we’re just a diversion, so nobody take any stupid chances. If you get a chance to slay some customers, all well and good, but mostly we just want to bring the troops running.”
One of the girls raised her hand. “What if they’re all human?”
“If it’s evil, it’s evil,” Julie said evenly. “And if it’s trying to shoot you, you shoot back.”
In addition to their usual assortment of stakes, knives and swords, some of the girls with firearms experience were assigned to hang back with Giles and deter anyone trying to shoot the attacking slayers. The girls who were going into the main building had been given Kevlar body armor and there was much teasing about how fat they all looked with the extra layer under their usual tee shirts; however, Giles was much more comfortable about sending his charges into a building guarded by armed humans than he would have been if he hadn’t had the armor to give them. He silently thanked Riley Finn and his demon-fighting unit for sharing some of their more basic technology with the Council.
They waited until Willow, Spike, Faith and Xander had taken another small contingent of slayers around to the back of the complex; then, with a “Let’s go, girls”, Julie led her group up to and through the broad glass doors at the front of the building. As soon as they crossed the threshold -- to the dismay of an inattentive guard who was quickly brushed out of the way -- alarms began sounding and employees and clients began seeking safety. The receptionist took one look at the armed girls fanning out across the lobby and dove under her desk.
Those few customers who chose to fight the slayers or to count on W & H to keep them safe, were soon dusty memories, while the slightly smarter demons quickly escaped to the lower levels of the building and the tunnels leading to safety. As the expected guards came flooding into the area, weapons cocked and ready, Giles nodded at his girls and they began firing. While the slayers were doing their best to avoid fatal shots, choosing to shoot legs or arms, the old watcher methodically identified the leaders and picked them off with an expertise that would have surprised the younger Scoobies who’d known him only as a mild-mannered librarian with a knack for bladed weapons and magic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hearing the alarms, Spike’s much smaller group in the rear spread out in order to get as close as they could before engaging anyone. As expected, the building was not only warded against location spells, but against entrance by anyone not wearing a W & H badge. Willow walked up confidently, confusing the guard with her cheerful “Hi, there” as she tested the strength of the wards. Giving him a pleasant smile, she said softly, “Not good enough, sweetie.”
Her distracting presence had allowed Spike to get close enough to hit the man before he could draw his gun. While Willow closed her eyes and concentrated on the magical barriers, sending a portion of her power out to dispel them, Spike glanced down at the man and shrugged.
“Sorry about that, mate. I guess those signs about it being a hardhat area were right.”
With a loud “pop”, the wards evaporated and the slayers broke through the building’s other entrances, confronting the few easily-subdued minor demons and staff inside. The few guards who had been left in the building’s lobby quickly succumbed to Spike and Faith’s single-minded search for Buffy.
In another show of her growing power, Willow put her hands against the head of one frightened employee and quickly learned what they needed to know.
“Buffy’s on the third floor.”
The shrieking alarms had penetrated to the derelict building, but with no sign of attack and no knowledge of who or what had set them off, there was some confusion about how to react. The small medical staff on Buffy’s floor milled around in their office area, casting worried glances at the locked door behind which their charge was hidden.
Secreted in her room, Buffy was immediately on the alert, a broad smile going across her face for the first time since she’d been kidnapped. She had no doubt what the alarms were about, and quickly moved to participate in her own rescue.
Ignoring the unwieldy extra weight she was carrying, she went into slayer mode, reaching for the potential weapons that she’d identified weeks before but had hesitated to use without knowing for sure if she could get out and away without risking her baby. She picked up a metal tray, dumping the contents onto the floor and hefting it experimentally. Sorting through the instruments now on the floor, she slipped a forgotten pair of medical scissors into the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
Quickly grabbing her boots from the small closet and sliding them on, Buffy waited behind the door for the inevitable arrival of her least favorite employee. The wait wasn’t long; the door swung open, and she heard him speaking to someone over his shoulder.
“I’ll keep the bitch quiet, don’t worry. One zap to her demon spawn and she’ll do whatever she’s tol--”
The heavy thunk as the metal tray embedded itself in his windpipe was almost as satisfying as the way he fell forward, lying immobile on the floor and trying to drag air through his ruined trachea.
“Oops?” Buffy said, taking the taser from his limp hand. “My bad. I forgot to do what I was told.” She didn’t think he would be getting up again, based on the color his face was turning and the way the air was barely whistling through his windpipe, but she tasered him anyway. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just in case,” she assured him, smothering a guilty twinge and reminding herself that he had, multiple times, applied that same device to the body containing her baby.
Buffy peered around the open door to find the two nurses who regularly poked and prodded her body cowering behind a large desk. Doing her best to appear intimidating as she waddled towards them, Buffy hissed, “You’re going to show me the way out of here, or I’m going to…”
The man who had originally kidnapped her burst into the room, leveling a very serious-looking gun at her stomach.
“You’re going to stay right here until we take care of whoever has been stupid enough to attempt a rescue,” he said, gesturing with the pistol for her to back up into her room.
“I guess that would be me,” came a familiar drawl from the doorway. Faith stood, leaning against the jamb, one of his men dangling from one hand, the man’s gun held lightly, but firmly in her other. “How’s it goin’, B? Man, are you getting fat!”
“If I wasn’t so glad to see you, I’d resent that remark,” Buffy said, smiling brightly. “But I’m going to let it go.” Her face fell again. “Where’s…?”
“Relax. The proud papa is doing manly things with Xander.”
“Manly things?”
“Yeah, I think they’re planning to blow something up. You know how they are – boys and their toys…”
“As entertaining as this is, ladies…” The frowning man interrupted their banter. He raised his gun again and aimed at Buffy. “Say ‘good-bye’, Slayer.”
The clang of the bullet as it hit the tray Buffy had yanked in front of her stomach, was still echoing when Spike’s outraged roar announced his arrival. The larger man was bringing the gun around, but had no time to fire it before Spike kicked it out of his hand. With a shrug, he stepped towards Spike, confident of his own ability to handle someone so much smaller than himself.
He threw one worried glance at Buffy and Faith, but relaxed when they sat down on the desk with interested looks on their faces. Arms crossed, Faith said conversationally, “So, what do you think? A quick broken neck or a serious beat-down?”
Buffy pretended to consider. “Well, if Xander’s really getting ready to blow up the building, I guess he’s going to have to go for the broken neck.”
The man facing Spike was not a coward, but he’d never considered the idea that Spike might not be just another human working for the opposite side. When his first blow was easily avoided and Spike buried his fist in his stomach, he began to realize his mistake. Gritting out the words between his clenched teeth, Spike began to take out the anger that had been simmering ever since they’d received the video.
“Take my family away, would you? Knock my wife out and throw her around like dirty laundry? Try to shoot her! My Buffy? You were going to kill her?”
Long after the man had stopped moving, Spike was still beating on him, stopping only when Faith and Buffy grabbed his arms.
“We need to go,” Buffy said. “I think you made your point.”
“And, anyway, I think he’s dead,” Faith added with no trace of recrimination. “Do you know the way out of here?” she added as they moved towards the hallway.
Buffy shook her head. “No. I‘ve been in that room ever since I woke up. But we know it has to be down, right?”
The hall turned out to have the normal exit signs over the fire stairs, and they ran towards one of the signs as quickly as they could with a nine-months pregnant woman.
“Argh!” Buffy yelled, her face wrinkling up in disgust.
“What? What’s wrong?” Spike stopped immediately, his eyes searching her frantically for a wound.
“I just peed in my pants,” she said, glaring at him as though it was his fault. “That’s what’s wrong. Turns out running with a heavy weight resting on your bladder isn’t a very good idea.”
“I’ll buy you new pants,” he said, giving a snickering Faith a warning shake of his head. “We’ve got to keep running. Sooner or later these gits are going to realize that the slayers out front aren’t there for anything but excitement.”
With a resigned sigh, Buffy resumed her rolling gait, holding her bouncing stomach with both hands as she stumbled down the hallway. They burst into the stairwell and ran smack into a small group of guards just cresting the flight of stairs. Spike and Faith never hesitated, knocking the first two men back into the ones behind, and following the cursing pile down the stairs. Buffy held the railing and stepped lightly behind them, pausing to kick the jaw of a more agile guard who had managed to grab the railing as he fell.
She gave a satisfied huff as she stepped over the unconscious man, intent on following the bodies that Spike and Faith were leaving in their wake. When she heard the door open behind her, Buffy whirled to find a snarling demon and one of the burly nurses. The nurse was holding a syringe, and advanced on Buffy as the demon leapt down the stairs shouting, “I’ll hold her, get it ready!”
Buffy struggled to maintain her balance without the banister, needing both hands to grab the attacking demon and toss him over her head. She yelped at the way the action pulled on her belly muscles, but was able to grab the railing again before losing her balance and tumbling after. The nurse stood a few steps above the panting slayer, uncertain now of her ability to get close enough to get the shot in. Buffy solved the dilemma for her, moving surprisingly quickly and closing the distance between them before the woman could react. Buffy wrapped her hand around the much larger woman’s wrist and smiled as she slowly turned the needle around. Ignoring the nurse’s whimper, she drove the needle into her chest and pushed the plunger home.
“Night, night!” she quipped, turning around and hurrying after Spike and Faith, just finishing up their decimation of a group of Wolfram and Hart’s finest. As she caught up with the other two slayers, her foot tangled in the shirt of one of the downed men and she toppled forward with a muffled scream. Before she could fall more than a few inches, Spike had her in his arms, lowering her safely to the landing.
“Hey,” he said softly, brushing her hair back. “Didn’t come all this way to have you kill yourself fallin’ down the stairs.”
“Sorry?” she responded, leaning into his hand. What might have become a tender moment was interrupted by Faith’s, “Save the ‘my hero’ crap for later, will you? We need to get out of here before the man in my life sends it sky-high.”
They resumed their retreat, Spike now holding tightly to Buffy’s hand and watching her every step. Reaching the bottom floor without further obstruction, they headed for the door. Faith whistled for the few slayers still searching for W & H guards or demons to beat up and they all joined Willow outside. Spike stayed with Buffy until he spotted the bus, now illegally parked on the street visible at the end of an alley. He squeezed her hand, then pointed at the bus.
“Off with you now,” he said, gesturing to the slayers to surround her.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back. Have to see a carpenter about some C-4…”
“Don’t blow yourself up,” she shouted as the slayers tugged her away. “I just want to go home.”
“And I just want to level this place,” he said, his face suddenly much harder. “Go get on the bus. I’ll be right there.”
Once he was sure that she was complying, Spike jogged back towards the building and Xander.
“Are we ready?”
“Yep.” Xander flipped open his phone and hit a number. As soon as Giles answered, he said, “We’re good to go. Have you got everybody?”
The Head Watcher assured him that everyone, including Lilly, who had been spirited out of the building by one of the slayers, was on the bus and waiting for Xander and Spike.
“Where’d you put it?” Spike looked around eagerly, but saw nothing.
“It’s tucked into doorjambs and in between the buildings. I didn’t have time to get much upstairs, but if we do enough damage down here, it should bring the whole building down without touching anything else in the neighborhood.”
“Let’s do it, then,” Spike said. “Can I push the button?”
“I made one for you.” Xander handed Spike a detonator and held up his own device. “You get this side of the building, I’ll do the tunnel.”
“Yours is bigger than mine,” Spike pouted.
“And don’t you forget it, buddy.” As he jogged away, Xander’s laughter drifted back. “Count to thirty, push your button and get the hell out. I’ll see you at the bus.”
Spike waiting until Xander had disappeared down the alley, then began his count. He plunged the detonator button home, disappointed when nothing happened until Xander ran by him shouting, “Get out of there, you idiot!”
Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Spike put on a burst of speed and caught up with Xander just as a deep rumble behind them indicated that the charges set around the building were taking effect. As dust began to billow up from the bottom of the building and it began to settle into the ground, the two men threw themselves onto the already moving bus. Willow quickly threw up a cloaking spell and the bus sped away from the area, invisible to any watching cameras or any bystanders whose attention was not on the growing cloud of dust and debris.
The two men sat up quickly and looked back, hoping to admire their handiwork, but there was nothing to be seen but a cloud of dust from which emitted an increasingly loud roar. They looked at the dust cloud, then high-fived each other with matching satisfied grins.
“I can put ‘em up, and I can take ‘em down,” Xander said proudly.
“That you can, Harris.”
“Looks like all those years in the construction biz paid off.”
Faith’s voice reminded them that there were others present and they quickly tried to appear less like naughty schoolboys and more like seriously dangerous adult men.
“I think it worked fairly well, don’t you, Spike?”
“Yes, Xander. It was good work. A job well done.”
They held straight faces for a minute, hanging on to the back of Faith’s seat as the bus rocketed away from the area towards which emergency vehicles were streaming; but when Faith rolled her eyes at them, they collapsed into very unmanly giggles.
Which were quickly interrupted by Buffy’s soft, “Spike?”
His shame in having forgotten her for even a few seconds had him apologizing abjectly as he kissed her face and hands, reassuring himself that she was really there and apparently unhurt.
“Did they hurt you, love? Did they try to hurt the baby? I’m so sorry it took me so long to get here. You know I never stopped --“
“I know you didn’t,” she soothed him. “And, no, I don’t think they hurt the baby. I had to quit trying to get away because I was worried about what the drugs and too many zaps with that taser might do to it, but as soon as I stopped fighting, they stopped doing stuff that might harm the baby. I think they wanted it to be born healthy.”
“What do you think their plans were?” Willow’s voice broke in and Buffy reached up to hug her briefly.
“I think the idea was to keep Spike as worried as possible for as long as possible. I heard the nurses talking once when they thought I was too drugged out to understand them, and I think they were planning to take me somewhere else after the baby was born.” She gave Spike an anxious smile. “I think they were talking about another country, but I’m not sure.”
“Did you know they were making that video they sent us?”
She nodded, her face ashamed.
“I did. I tried to make it look like I was okay, but when they threatened the baby…”
“You did the right thing, B. You stayed alive and hung on to Spike or Buffy Jr until the cavalry arrived. I’d a done the same thing.”
“You would not,” Buffy scoffed. “You’d have made them pay for every drop of blood they took out of you.”
“Not if I had something that important to keep safe,” Faith said wistfully, her hand caressing her own flat stomach. “I’d do what I needed to do.”
Spike hadn’t missed the wistful tone in her voice and he shot a glance at Xander to see him staring at Faith with his mouth agape. Spike’s snicker took Xander’s eyes off his girlfriend long enough to catch the raised eyebrow and smirk on the other man’s face. Without responding, he turned his eyes back to Faith to find that she’d changed the subject and was busy explaining to Buffy what had been going on during the weeks she’d been gone.
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