A Short Stop on the Way from Here to There

By Larilyn

Disclaimer –Characters from Angel the Series belong to Joss Whedon, the WB and UPN. I'm just taking them on a little trip. I didn't write In the Flesh, Looking for Love(in all the wrong places) or the Twelve Days of Xmas. If I had, I'd have bought a new computer by now.

Summary – Spike's got an itch to take a trip in his newly re-corporealized body. So Fred takes him home for Christmas.

Spoilers – Through Season Five's Destiny

"Oooh," Fred cooed, "I like him."

The singer that Lorne had wanted Fred and Spike to check out had taken the stage. He was handsome, with wavy brown hair and olive eyes. He wore a red flannel shirt and too-tight jeans with an oversized belt buckle.

Spike scoffed, "Pfft, Fermata demon."

"He's a demon? Is he our mysterious murder suspect?"

"Doubt it. Fermatas are usually harmless, musically inclined. But they tend to hang on to their particular musical style for too long. More than a few classical musicians are Fermatas. Plus, Brian Setzer, Lyle Lovett, Michael Jackson."

"I knew he was a demon."

Spike smiled at his companion, "Michael Jackson?"

"Lyle Lovett."

Spike nodded toward the group of men that had watched Fred so intently, "Our pack of peeping Toms have shifted their attention."

"What are they up to?" Fred wondered aloud.

"Dunno. But I mean to find out. Stay put, love." Spike headed to the bar to speak to the bartender, leaving Fred to enjoy the music.

The musician took his guitar from around his neck and spoke into the microphone with a sexy, husky voice, "I'm goin' to take a quick break folks, but I'll be back."

Fred stretched in her chair and glanced over to the bar to see Spike engrossed in conversation with the bartender. She surveyed the bar and felt a surge of panic wash over her as she realized that half of the group of creepy guys was headed right in her direction just as the jukebox began to play an old classic.

I've spent a lifetime lookin' for you.

Single bars and good time lovers were never true.

"Winifred Burkle?" The head creepy guy asked with a creepy smile.

"Yuh huh?" It came out more a question than an answer.

"I knew it was her," the head creepy guy pseudo-punched the creepy guy to his right.

The creepy guy to his left said, "You probably don't recognize us." He plopped himself down in Spike's chair. "Is that Spike you're with?"

The head creepy guy took another chair opposite Fred, "Of course its Spike, you idiot. Who else would it be?"

The right-hand creepy guy sat down to the right of Fred, "So you and Spike are…?"

Left guy begged, "Please say no. I had my fifty bucks on Wesley."

"Fat chance." Center guy said, "The good bet is on Angel"

Left guy asserted, "Will never happen."

Center guy reminded him, "He rescued her from a hell dimension!"

"Um," Fred asked gently, "Do I know you guys?"

Left guy smacked center guy. "I told you she didn't recognize us."

Right guy explained, "We're from Wolfram and Hart? The accounting department?"

"Oh." Fred brightened, "Oooohh. How are you guys?"

"It's always a good night when we get to see Bryant McKinnon perform. This your first time?"

"Yeah."

"He's great isn't he? We were the ones who told him to send his tape to Lorne."

"Did you know he was a demon?" Fred asked in a stage whisper.

"Of course."

Head guy told the others, "Oh hey, he's coming back on. We'll see you at work, Fred."

Left guy winked at Fred as a left and mouthed, "You and Wesley."

She waved goodbye to the accounting guys.

looking for love in all the wrong places.

Looking for love in too many faces.

Searching their eyes, looking for traces

of what I'm dreaming of.

Spike rushed to her table as soon as he saw them walking away from her. "Are you all right, love? I should never have left you alone. They didn't do anything, did they?"

"No, they were really nice."

"Demons?"

Fred shook her head. "Accountants."

Spike narrowed his eyes. "They definitely bear watching then."

Fred was a little disturbed about one thing. "I think they're betting on my love life."

"Yeah? I got a hundred and fifty on Lorne. Green is your favorite color, right?"

Hoping to find a friend and a lover,

I'll bless the day I discover

another heart, looking for love!

"Hold up mate. We have a few questions for you." Backstage, Spike grabbed the Fermata demon's shoulder and forced him to turn around.

The Fermata demon looked at Spike, then at Fred, then at Spike again. Suddenly, he had punched Spike in the jaw and grabbed Fred, holding her behind him. "Stay behind me miss."

He shook a fist at Spike and declared, "I can take you vampire!"

Spike laughed at the Fermata demon, who was holding his fists up like a boxer. "Relax mate. I wouldn't dream of hurting the bird." He wiped away the drop of blood that had formed in the corner of his mouth and examined it closely.

Fred rushed to Spike's side and helped him to his feet. "Are you okay? You're bleeding."

"I'm all right, pet."

"I'm not." The Fermata demon wrinkled his brow. "I'm confused."

"Take a whiff. Smell anything funny about me?"

"A soul? How is that possible?"

"I'm the one asking the questions here, mate. Got a name?"

"Bryant McKinnon."

Spike growled with annoyance, "Your real name?"

"Bryant Giuseppi Verdi Amadeus Rufus Alfonso Montague McKinnon."

Spike rolled his eyes. "Fermatas."

Fred took over the questioning. "Have you noticed anything strange around here? Anybody acting peculiarly?"

"Around here? Try everybody."

Fred's cell phone took the inopportune moment to ring. "Hello? Officer Ross? Oh this signal's horrible. I'll go outside."

Fred took about two steps before Spike stopped her. "I'll go. Don't want you out there alone. Stay with Wolfgang here."

Fred watched Spike leave and then turned to Bryant McKinnon. "So, Lyle Lovett, huh?"

McKinnon smiled at her and then nodded at someone behind her. "Hey Beck. You off for the night?"

The bartender came into Fred's view. "Yeah. Trish finally relieved me." With disgust he added, "Women."

McKinnon laughed, "Can't live with 'em, can't write a good country song without 'em."

The bartender did not look amused. "Yeah. Whatever." He turned his steely blue eyes on Fred. "Your boyfriend leave?"

"Oh," Fred stammered to explain, "Spike's not my boyfriend. He stepped out to take a call."

The bartender smiled at Fred in a way that made her suddenly uncomfortable. "Great." He pulled a stun gun out of his pocket and hit the Fermata demon with it. As he stalked toward Fred, he chatted amiably, "I've never taken a girl when there was a witness around. But you are just too delectable to resist." Fred took off running toward the exit, toward Spike. The bartender grabbed her from behind and spun her around. With a firm, painful grip, he grabbed her chin with his hand. "I can see the future in your eyes."

Fred gulped, "How romantic?"

Then she felt a sting in her side and everything went black.

Spike walked back into the back of the bar, "Hey Fred, that was our good deputy. Says that the ME found stun gun burns on the last victim. Now what kind of demon uses a stun gun?"

Spike stopped talking when he realized he was well past the place where he had left his companion. "Fred?"

Spike turned to look behind him. He had walked right past the Fermata demon.

Feeling an indescribable rise of panic, he went to McKinnon's side and began shaking him. "Mate? Wake up. Where's Fred?"

The Fermata demon answered, "Uggghhhhh," and held his aching head.

Spike gave him a harder shake, "Where's Fred?"

"I don't….what happened?"

"That's my question. Where's Fred?"

"She was right here… we were talking…"

"You and Fred?"

McKinnon's eyes widened with a sudden memory. "And Beck."

"The bartender? Son of a…" Spike hauled the Fermata demon to his feet. "We have to find her."

"Ow," Fred attempted to raise her hand up to cradle her aching head. She pulled futilely at the restraints that bound her to a chair. "Hey…" she complained to the empty room as she came to, "where am I?"

Fred blinked a few times, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the all-pervasive darkness.

Several long minutes passed before the small amount of light allowed her to see her surroundings. Her chair rested on packed dirt. Not fresh-smelling fertile soil but hard, lifeless clay. The room was small, maybe eight feet square. A large spider crawled up Fred's arm, tickling her with its light legs, but bound so tightly, she could not shake it off.

"Oh Lordy, I'm in trouble," she muttered to herself. "Where are you Spike?"

About the only movement that Fred could make was to hop around with the chair strapped to her. Scooting the chair to the door was her best chance to escape. With frustrating slowness, she inched her way to the door. Once there she reached for the door handle, but her arms were bound so tightly to her sides that she couldn't reach. She tried kicking, but her legs were strapped to the legs off the chair and she could only move them a precious few inches. Her next thought was to pound the back of her chair into the door by pushing off with her feet.

First, she had to turn around. As soon as this task was accomplished, Fred wished that it wasn't. On the wall opposite the door were three glass pickle jars, each containing what Fred assumed were the missing entrails of the murder victims.

"Oh, I am so screwed."

Darling, darling, darling, watch out if I see you

'Cause if you say hello

It'll mean you wanna see me in the flesh

Spike, with the Fermata demon at his side, drove ninety miles an hour on the back road to the bartender's home. Spike accelerated the Viper, even as he took a hairpin turn on a dirt road.

McKinnon, the Fermata demon, held on for dear life.

"I leave the girl in your protection for five seconds…"

"Hey," McKinnon protested, "We Fermatas aren't exactly the bodyguard type. Most of our supernatural skills involve music, not muscle power."

"And your excuse for not recognizing that Beck was a demon?"

"He's not a demon."

"Come again?" Spike asked as he forced the wheel around.

Ooh warm and soft in the flesh

After the deafening sound of the tires squealing their protest had died, McKinnon asked, "Did you sense anything demonic about that guy?"

"Well….no," Spike admitted.

"If Beck is a demon than I'm Britney Spears."

"What does he want with Fred?" Spike sighed.

"Humans can be evil too, you know. Its part and parcel of my existence. No evil, no tragedy. No tragedy, no music. Some of the most haunting melodies in history have been inspired by…" Spike threw McKinnon a dirty look. "I'm shutting up now."

Ooh close and hot in the flesh

"I will not cry," Fred told herself. Over and over she repeated, "I will not cry. I will not cry."

She twisted her hands in the ropes until they bled. She banged her chair against the door until her head pounded. She stared at the jars on the shelves until her eyes watered and all the time she chanted, "I will not cry."

The jarring sound of a key in the lock shocked her from her mantra. "Spike?" she shrieked,

"Spike, I'm here!"

She knew that it wouldn't be Spike coming through that door. It had been too much to hope for. But Fred was a hopeful person and when Beck came strolling into her prison, Fred tried her damnedest to be too darned cute to cut up.

"Oh, hey," Fred stammered, "Hi there."

He walked by Fred like she was an inanimate object.

"So…um, haruspicy huh?" Fred tried to remember every safety tip she had ever heard on Oprah. Rule number three? Make your captor think of you as a person. "That's really fascinating. I'm a scientist myself. Anatomy isn't really my thing but I've got the basics down. The knee bone's connected to the femur and all that. I'm a physicist. My name's Fred. Winifred, actually. But everybody calls me Fred."

Beck went on about his business, pulling a black canvas bag off of the jar-filled shelves and emptying its contents onto a small wooden table.

"Those are really sharp knives," Fred muttered, "I should probably tell you, I had my appendix out when I was twelve. Does that make a difference? You don't use it as, I don't know, a pointer or something, do you? I wouldn't want to ruin your little…project…because I'm missing some important parts. So you can let me go if you want. I won't be at all offended."

Without a glance in her direction, Beck walked out of the room, clicking the lock into place.

Fred began again, "I will not cry. I will not cry."

Spike kicked the tire of the Viper and bellowed, "Damn it!"

The Fermata demon cringed a little. Spike's ire overwhelming. "You sure this is the place?"

"Its Beck's house," Bryant McKinnon acknowledged. "I brought him his paycheck once when he had the flu."

Spike narrowed his eyes at the demon and pointed an accusing finger at him. "If Fred dies, I'm going to kill you."

"What did I do?"

"You let a human kidnap her. A human." Spike unleashed another kick to the tire.

"You just won't let it go, will you?"

"Not until I find the girl."

McKinnon's interest was peaked, "Is she your girlfriend? I could write a great country song about that. A human and a vampire, in love. One a child of darkness, the other can only bloom in the night. Wait, that's a mixed metaphor…nice lyric though."

Spike was growing annoyed. "She is not my girlfriend, she's my friend. And I will do anything, anything, to get her back safe and sound."

The Fermata demon, who was leaning against Beck's cabin asked, "Does that include breaking and entering?" He nonchalantly broke the window with his elbow.

Spike smiled, "Now you're acting like my kind of demon."

McKinnon reached through the broken window and unlocked the door. With a flourish he opened it for Spike.

Spike took a few steps in and wrinkled his nose with disgust, "Must be the maid's day off."

Dirty dishes were piled in the kitchenette sink. There were seven or eight bags of trash in the living area that had never made it to the curb for pickup. About a dozen flies circled the filth.

McKinnon peeked into the one bedroom. "Oh…kay, that's interesting."

Spike looked in as well. The bedroom was pristine. "You could bounce a quarter off of that bed. Hospital corners and everything. What do you think? This bloke a schizo?"

"You're thinking of multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenics hear voices but they don't have split personalities." Spike shot McKinnon a look. "What? You got a problem with a demon having an education?"

"No problem," Spike said, taking a few steps into the room.

"Wait," the Fermata called out. "You hear that?"

Spike stopped and looked around. "Hear what?"

"There's a basement under the bedroom." McKinnon walked back and forth through the bedroom doorway. "There isn't one under the rest of the house."

"You sure?" Spike asked.

"Fermatas notice these things," McKinnon explained. "Our footsteps are definitely a different timbre in the bedroom. There's space under the floor."

"So we look for a trapdoor," Spike said, dropping to his hands and knees and looking under the bed.

McKinnon went for the closet and began ripping it apart. "I've got it!"

Spike went to his side. Sure enough, the Fermata demon had found a trap door and opened it. Rickety stairs led down to darkness.

"You think your friend is down there?"

"Only one way to find out," Spike said as he took a few steps down into the inky black basement.

"I can't see anything down here," McKinnon complained at the bottom of the stairs.

Spike reached up and pulled on the string that turned on the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. "Vampire vision," he bragged. Then he looked at the relics that filled the dungeon-like room.

"Magic supplies…" McKinnon said, "Slush powder, magician's wax, fanning powder…"

"But no Fred." Spike picked up a photograph, "This must be Beck in his younger days." The bartender/magician was wearing a black cloak and top hat. Spike read from a poster that hung behind the man. "The great Mellini."

"Let me see that," McKinnon took the picture from Spike. "Wait a minute, this was taken at the bar. It must have been a magic club before it became a honky-tonk."

"If it was a magic club once," Spike reasoned, "Then it had to have had trap doors."

"That would explain how Beck got Fred out past you."

"She's still at the bloody bar."

"Almost…there…" Fred wrenched her hand free from the ropes. "Thank you Lord."

She made quick work of the rest of the knots. She stood and stretched and then paced the room, searching, "Weapon. I need a weapon."

The knives were the obvious choice, but the blades were only about an inch and a half long and Fred didn't want to have to get that close to him.

She hefted one of the jars and felt compelled to apologize to the remains of the victim inside.

"Hope you don't mind being used as a club. But then you might consider it some kind of cosmic justice."

Fred stood behind the door and waited. She didn't have to wait long.

Beck moved quickly when he saw the empty chair and Fred only got a glancing blow with the jar.

Still, it was enough that Fred made it out of her prison and got a head start on Beck.

She quickly realized that they were in an underground structure. She sprinted down the tunnel with Beck close at her heels.

"Come back here, bitch!" he screamed.

Fred could feel him gaining on her. When he tackled her from behind, she screamed bloody murder. Beck flipped her over and with a closed fist he hit Fred in the face. While she was stunned, Beck ripped the bottom part of her shirt open, revealing the vulnerable expanse of her belly.

Fred had one advantage. He could not hold both of her arms and wield the knife he had pulled out of his back pocket. As hard as she could, she drove the heel of her hand into Beck's nose.

While he howled in pain, Fred scrambled away. Then she heard the most beautiful sound: Spike, calling her name. She ran toward him. As soon as she was in his arms, the floodgates opened.

"Hold that thought, love." Spike murmured into her hair. "I've got some business with our man, Beck."

He passed Fred to McKinnon and asked, "You think you can keep her safe this time, mate?"

Spike didn't wait for a response before he stalked purposefully down the tunnel.

Fred took the Styrofoam cup full of steaming coffee from Spike and inhaled the aroma. She waited in the back of the ambulance for the paramedic to release her. He had already treated her wrists and her various other cuts and scrapes. Fred was anxious to get back on the road.

Her folks were waiting for her.

Fred and Spike watched as Beck was loaded into the sheriff's car.

"What kind of demon was he?" Fred asked Spike.

"He was human."

"Human? Not supernatural, paranormal? Not controlled by demonic forces?"

Spike shrugged, "Nope."

"So he was just a nut that wanted to cut me up for fun?"

"Yup."

Fred let out a little whimper.

"Whaddya say we blow this town, love? It's lost its appeal."

"I would have to agree with you on that."

"Don't go yet," a friendly face peeked into the ambulance. McKinnon, the Fermata demon handed Fred a small package. "Merry Christmas. Its not much. Just a little something to remember me by. It'll give you something to listen to on the road."

"Thanks," Fred smiled and examined the track listing on McKinnon's CD. "I'll be sure that Lorne gets this."

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Nothing a little fruitcake won't cure."

Mom and Pop Burkle had laid out one hell of a Christmas dinner, including armadillo blood for Spike. The Burkles sang carols over their eggnog. Spike dozed off in an armchair around the eighth verse of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

When he awoke, the room was darkened and Fred was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the couch.

"Hey love."

"Hey." Fred nodded toward the illuminated Christmas tree and asked, "Isn't it beautiful, Spike?"

"Lovely. Why are you sitting here alone in the dark?"

"I'm not alone. You're here."

Fred patted the spot on the couch next to her and Spike went to her side and sat down while Fred explained, "Its just something that I like to do. Its peaceful, watching the lights."

Fred shifted her position on the couch so she could lean against Spike. He put an arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

"Merry Christmas, Spike."

"Merry Christmas, Fred."

"Thanks for saving me," she said quietly.

He whispered back, "You were worth saving."

End