I know it's been forever. Life was a little crazy, and this week has been the first time in a month I've even been home to get some writing done. So, this is the glossy version of Chapter 10, and a few things have changed, bits of grammar aside. Please, if you have a spare moment, give this chapter a quick read-through, just to make sure you're current. I had hoped to have Chapter 11 up by Sunday, but it's Friday, and I haven't gotten it to my betas yet because the last scene is giving me itchy feet. That'll make sense later. If my betas are as speedy as they always have been, I feel pretty confidant that I will be able to post Chapter 11 by Monday or Tuesday, and Chapter 12 the next week. Also, this not writing for four weeks thing has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into my time-table for the second story arc in this series, About Tomorrow. I promise, as soon as I have four or five shiny chapters in the can, I'll start publishing it. If you want an alert when About Tomorrow starts to publish, you can put me on author alert, or you can put Turn the Hourglass Over on story alert; I'll post a new 'chapter' announcing the start of AT.
As always, thanks for the reviews so far; it makes my day when I get one! Thanks also to The Imperfectionist for cheering me on, and to AllyPetals, who proved that she remembers more about the characters and story arcs I've outlined for this story than I do. Also, thanks to the great reviews I received this time around. You guys rule, and I hope to keep hearing from you.
"You're gone and I'm haunted."
-A Fine Frenzy
Chapter 10
She was gone.
If he'd still been a vampire; if he'd still had a predator's senses; maybe he could have tracked her. As things stood, she seemed to have vanished at some point between the gym and the library. Buffy was gone, Dawn was trying hard to keep it together, and Spike looked ready to tear the place apart looking for her, but nobody was really doing anything."
"Willow," Angel barked the order with more force than necessary, but it caught the group's attention, "I need you to get on the phone with whoever's been tracking down new Slayers for the Organization. See if anything just popped up. Maybe whatever's responsible moved Buffy before they cloaked her." Willow sat up straighter in her chair, glad to have something to focus on besides the fear.
"Anything that can make a Slayer with as much experience as Buffy disappear into thin air is probably a power player in the underworld. Buffy's too important to be a simple sacrifice or kill, and she's too valuable to waste, so they're going to want something. Xander, I need you to take Dawn back to the house, in case they try to make contact there."
"Bite me," Dawn snapped at him. "I'm not going anywhere until we find Buffy."
"I'm with him on this one, Platelet." Spike tried to convince her in a soothing voice, "Go home with the Cyclops."
"Did you mean that in the lame Greek way, or the very cool leader of the X-Men sort of way?"
"I meant it in the guy with one eye sort of – wait, did you just call Cyclops cool?" Spike snorted, "I'm more of a Deadpool guy, myself."
"And this is me not surprised."
Dawn ignored them, anger making her voice shake. "You guys are always trying to keep me out of things, and I appreciate that you want to keep me innocent, but I'm not. Remember me… fighting the First? I've been in the middle of everything for my entire existence, whether you want to admit it or not."
Angel liked to think that in a less tense situation he would have been more sensitive to Dawn, but his fear for Buffy trumped his concern for her sister, and he couldn't focus on finding her when his focus was pulled toward offering comfort to the younger woman. "Dawn," he ground out, "I will find Buffy, but I can't do it with you here, and I'm not trying to protect you. If I thought I could use you in any way – any way – to get her back, I'd do it."
Dawn glared daggers at Angel, but when she saw that he wasn't going to budge, she stood. "I'm going home to see if whatever took Buffy calls with ransom demands. Xander, you're with me." She stood, and turned on her heel, auburn hair whipping as she left the library.
"Jenn," Tuesday barked the order, "I want you on the horn with every team in Miami. Get them all on this ASAP. Andy-"
"No." Angel growled at the Slayer. "Do not make that phone call. Do not make any phone calls. Nobody outside of this room knows about this."
Tuesday laughed. "Yeah. I'm the senior Slayer here, and I am under no obligation whatsoever to listen to you. Jenn, make that call."
Angel covered the ground between them in two long strides, leaving very little space between them. Tuesday took an involuntary step backward, and felt a table brush up against the back of her thighs. When he spoke, his voice was low, silky, and very, very dangerous, "I'm usually a pretty nice guy, Tuesday, but where Buffy's concerned, there is nothing I won't do to protect her. Unless you want to know exactly how differently things would have gone if I'd fought back in that graveyard, I'd suggest sitting down and being very, very quiet."
"Yeah, what he said, only cooler, and with a jab about your sub-par Slayer skills at the end," Spike said from across the room.
Tuesday swallowed. "You don't intimidate me," she insisted, despite being unnerved by the steely determination in Angel's eyes.
Willow took pity on the girl, knowing that if she bowed to Angel it would crack a spirit that had already taken a severe, if unintentional, blow at his hands. She stood, letting authority ring through her voice when she spoke, "Call off your team. Angel takes the lead on this one."
Tuesday's jaw dropped with a little pop, and her head snapped to her right to stare in shock at the witch. "But-"
"This isn't a discussion, Tuesday, and if it were, the only people of sufficient rank to debate me are the Slayer-General and the Watcher-General." The use of Buffy's and Giles's ranks struck Tuesday deeply. Pulling rank wasn't something that happened often on the Large Hellmouth, and it rankled. She nodded with a clenched jaw that made a muscle stand out in her hollow cheeks. Willow raised an eyebrow, a reminder that the younger Slayer hadn't acknowledged her station. She felt bad about it, but once you've decided to pull rank, you have to follow it through, or you undermine your own authority.
"Yes… Mother," Tuesday acknowledged grimly. She didn't look at Angel again, as she told her team to stand down, but she did perch on the edge of the table and await orders.
"Andy, Jenn, I need you to both start looking for a demon capable of abducting the Slayer-General," Angel told them. Her title felt strange in his mouth, but he thought they could use a reminder of who was at stake, besides the woman he loved. "Concentrate on something that can incapacitate, silence, or teleport. If it didn't have at least one of those capabilities, I think she would have been able to at least raise an alarm. Graham, you'll supervise the research team.
"Tuesday, I need you to compile a list of demon hang outs and informants. Spike, you're with me. We'll take part of the list, and Tuesday can take the other part of it. Before you try for some sort of retribution, remember what's at stake here."
Angel looked at the group; Willow's face was pale, yet resolute, rage was plain on Tuesday's face, but Andy and Jenn only look determined. Spike's face was a mask of calm, but Angel recognized the fear that lay beneath it, and the cold fury it fed.
"Does everybody understand their parts?" When they all nodded, he smiled grimly. "Good, then, let's get to work."
Xander was a pro at being at a loss for the right thing to do or say when a woman was involved, but he'd never stopped hating the sensation. Dawn had thundered up the stairs to her room, but she hadn't slammed the door, and he didn't know if that meant she needed privacy or if she wanted him to come comfort her.
Somebody really needed to get on to finding the Xander/female Rosetta stone, he decided, settling on following her up the stairs slowly and loudly. He figured at the very least, the warning would give her time to slam the door before his face was in it. He reached the threshold of the still open door, hesitated, then stepped through.
In a rare moment of good judgment, he didn't call out 'Dawnie' to her, but waited for her to speak, sparing him the wrath that her childhood nickname would have earned him. She sat on the bed, with her back turned to him, but from the stiffness of her posture, he knew she hadn't calmed down a bit. "Nobody will ever think of me as anything but a kid, will they?"
Xander ignored her question, instead launching into a rambling monologue. "Did you know I wanted to be a doctor when I was a kid? Straight out of the ideas that make you say, 'what,' I know, but true." Dawn turned toward him just a little, a sign she was listening. "Of course that was before I knew that college wasn't on the Harris budget or that I was pretty bad at school. Still, I spent all this time reading about being a doctor. I kept thinking about how when one of those mysterious Sunnydale 'accidents' caught up to the family, I could save the day, if I was a doctor, you know? Make my dad proud of me.
"Turns out, doctors aren't allowed to treat family members. Some rule about not being able to stay objective, so it wouldn't have really worked out for me. I mean, I guess maybe I could have saved a lot of other people, but that wouldn't have made me feel better about not being able to help a family member after that theoretic catastrophe."
Dawn sniffed, "I totally get the after-school-special lesson here, but it doesn't really apply. I'm not hysterical, and I'm perfectly capable of doing research to help find my sister."
Xander sat gingerly next to her on the bed. "The other big restriction doctors have is that they aren't allowed to be in the operating room with a loved one, even if all they want is to know everything is being done to save them. It puts too much pressure on the surgeon to have a family member looking over his shoulder, makes his focus go poof. It sucks for the person in the waiting room, but it's better in the long run for the one who's hurt.
"You have to stop thinking we look at you and see big eyes, knobby knees, and missing teeth, Dawn."
"What do you see?" she asked, her anger giving way to pain and fear.
"I see a strong, smart, beautiful woman who helps me keep a dozen Slayers and their entourages in line, but makes terrible guacamole."
Dawn scooted next to him, laying her head against his shoulder. Xander put his arms around her, tentatively at first, then pulling her more tightly to him when she didn't resist. "You don't know the guacamole was bad. You didn't eat any."
"And, I have rejoiced several times. I very nearly even thanked Spike for the intervention."
"No, you didn't," Dawn called his bluff, smiling against his chest.
"You're right. I'd rather eat the guacamole," Xander agreed.
Graham studied things. It was a sort of character flaw, really, or so he'd always been told, usually by people who didn't appreciate how little escaped his notice. He never managed to convince anybody that he couldn't help it. His brain just never shut off, though he fervently wished it would do so, at least long enough to let him sleep a solid eight hours a night. His brain always felt like a computer, churning through half a dozen processes at once. One part would be keeping tabs on the conversation, while another was cataloguing the surroundings; and not in a 'that's a nice rug' sort of way. His appraisals tended to run in more of a 'that appears to be a Hurankee conjuring dish with thistle ash' and then a corner of his brain would start compiling a list of spells and evocations that used those ingredients, while another would start cataloguing ways to counter those spells. It was exhausting, and it had always been one of the things that had made him a little different from his peers. Of course, having a father who was an agent for a secret society of paranormal experts and a mother who had been a librarian for that same organization hadn't really helped either.
His mother was retired now, but she still was still the keeper of what she considered an important set of documents: her great-grandmother Sorina's diaries. Sorina was a Potential Slayer in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and one of few that had chronicled her time studying under the Council's tutelage. He'd read the diaries when he was young, and knew that the only reason the Council had let his mother keep them in her possession was because they focused on her torrid affair with her Watcher, Heinrich, as much as her training. The pair had eventually married, but the Council had always frowned upon Watchers consorting with their Slayers.
Judging from the expression on Willow's face, the conversation with the coven was not going well. Her brows were drawn together slightly, and the only time he'd seen that expression was when she'd put her foot in it at the meeting earlier when she dropped that bombshell about nearly ending the world, which still really blew his mind, thank you very much. The Mother- thinking of her simply as Willow was going to take some getting-used to, he was afraid- didn't have any lines on her forehead to indicate that she wore that expression often, so one had to surmise that she was unhappy about what she heard.
If he understood Willow's end of the conversation, the coven had been working steadily to pinpoint the location of all the Slayers that were roaming about with super-powers and no idea what they were for. The hope had been that if a Slayer popped up unexpectedly, it might be a lead on Buffy, but it had come to nothing.
Great, he thought to himself, I've been Buffy's Watcher for less than six hours, and she's disappeared without a trace. When Giles finds out about this, I'm well and proper screwed. He's talking about me taking over Marsh's duties upon his retirement, and I can't seem to keep up with just the one Slayer.
Spike hated to admit that the old man still had one of the best intimidation techniques on the planet. He'd learned at Angel's knee, but he'd never had the patience to get into somebody's head the way he had. His own style was to instill fear through pain, which wasn't as useful since he'd gotten a soul. It was part of what made fighting the creepy crawlies so much fun.
He also hated that nothing made his mind stop screaming that his Slayer was gone. He lit a cigarette and snapped his lighter shut with a savage motion as he and Angel strode toward the next place on Tuesday's list. They'd already been to a couple, and they'd done a good job of terrifying the locals, one of them even offering up his first-spawned son if they left, but had gotten nowhere closer to finding Buffy.
Whatever it was, it was operating far enough under the radar that even the disappearance of The Slayer hadn't even made a ripple. They needed a higher class of ugly, Spike decided, and they didn't have access to that sort of influence here in Miami. He should have spent more time playing kitten poker.
"Any plans to quit?" Angel nodded at the cigarette clenched between his teeth. Tensions were still high, but the two had settled into their stride, knowing that letting the panic of Buffy's disappearance shine through even a bit would only keep them from getting the information they needed to find her.
"Not tonight," Spike replied tersely. They turned into a particularly forbidding alleyway, home to the third demon haunt on Tuesday's list. A few steps in, they brushed past a scaled demon who gave them an interested look before he shrugged and let them pass.
"It's times like these I miss having a game face," Angel said confidingly.
Spike shrugged. "You're the one wanted to get all human. I liked being a vampire."
"You didn't have to come with me. In fact, I remember trying pretty hard to convince you to stick around in LA and keep fighting the good fight."
Spike snorted. "Yeah, and watch you walk off into the sunset with the Slayer? Like hell."
"Now you just have a better view," Angel told him with a smirk.
"Seems to me, Peaches, neither one of us are going to make a happily-ever-after with Buffy if we can't find her."
"We'll find her," Angel growled.
"I'll find her, then you'll be left watching me make off with her in the sunset," Spike told him, only half joking.
"Shut up, Spike."
"Hit a nerve, did I?"
"Not really," they stopped in front of a black door, "I just have more important people to talk to."
The inside of the bar was dark and smoky, but not in a neon beer sign and cigarette sort of way. The gloom was almost unnatural, it was so thick, leaving only enough light to show that aside from the dozen stools against the bar, there were no seats. A bored-looking man polished a filthy glass with a dirtier rag. One lone patron, a squat demon that looked like he'd been modeled after a fire hydrant sat at the end of the bar, nursing a beer. When he saw the two men enter the bar, he slid from his stool and began to inch toward the sewer access demon haunts almost always had.
"If I have to come and get you, it's going to hurt," Spike told him helpfully. The demon inched back into his seat, but looked around furtively, as though he were hoping another escape would present itself.
Angel gave the demon a savage smile as he leaned in close, his eyes cold. "We need information, and you look like you might have answers."
"Not me," the demon protested weakly, "nobody tells me anything."
"No, they don't," Angel agreed, his voice soft, dangerous, "but that doesn't stop you from knowing their business, does it? Something's going down in Miami. I want to know what it is."
"Man, there's lots of stuff going down here every minute of the day. You want information like that, you gotta hit the library."
"I don't want to hit the library," Angel told him amiably, resting a hand on his shoulder. "But, I'm perfectly willing to hit you if it makes you talk faster."
"What do you want to know?" The demon asked him, skeptically.
"I want to know who has plans against the Slayers."
"Why? You want in on the action?"
Angel tightened his hand on the demon's shoulder, squeezing it. "I want you to answer my question."
The demon flinched at the vice-like grip. "I don't know any really big thing involving Slayers, man, I swear. Only thing I hear is your run-of-the-mill tough guy talk. You know, couple demons or vamps talking about finding one after they've had a few. Everybody wants to be a Spike, but nobody's crazy as that guy." Spike smirked, until the demon continued, "If, you know, he even exists. Personally, I think he's just an urban legend, like Santa Clause."
"I've been around a long time. Trust me; half of what you've heard about Spike is an exaggeration," Angel told him with a straight face. "Now, tell me something useful."
"About what?" the demon squeaked against the pressure in Angel's hand.
"Is there anybody new and interesting in town?" Spike asked, rolling his eyes when the demon looked to Angel for permission to answer the question.
"There's a warlock making some noise. Demon. Been hiring himself out for jobs. Not making many friends, but he is making a lot of cash, you know?" the demon babbled nervously, eyes shifting toward the door.
"I need a name," Angel told him.
"My name's not really pronounceable in by humans or humanoids with only the one set of vocal chords, you know? I go by Jeremy on this plane."
"Not you, you idiot. The warlock." Angel rolled his eyes and gave him a little shake.
Jeremy squeaked, "Vail! His name is Avun Vail."
Spike and Angel shared a look. "What's the bugger look like?" Spike asked. He pulled a dagger out of the pocket of his duster and used it to clean his fingernails, in a gesture Jeremy found deeply intimidating.
"Red skin, white hair, evil. Kind of stereotypical, you know?"
"Evil in a stringy hair and dark billowy robes sort of way?" He looked up from his hands.
"No, evil in a used car salesman in a polyester suit sort of way. The guy really creeps me out."
"Where can we find him?"
"I have no clue, man." Angel's eyes bored into the demon's pink ones, daring him to not tell him what he wanted to know. "I only met him the one time! But, I gotta pretty good nose, you know? He smelled like a cheap hotel room, and before you go shaking me again, I swear that's all I can tell you."
Angel dropped the demon unceremoniously and turned toward the door. After a second's hesitation, Spike reached into his pocket and pulled out a few notes, setting them on the bar in front of Jeremy. "You come through for us, we make it worth your while. You'd do well to remember that. It's easier than all the shaking around stuff, even if it is less fun." He turned away from the demon's shocked expression and followed his grandsire out the door and into the alleyway.
"Did you just pay that guy for the information we scared out of him?" Angel asked disbelievingly.
"Yeah, well, he was useful, and Wesley would have paid him," Spike defended himself.
"So, now we're giving money to demons in his memory?"
"You'd think a forehead that size would have some brains behind it," Spike told him. "I'm working on building a network of informants here, so we actually know what's going down in this town, Peaches. It's real handy to know who's who and what's what when things like today go down. Since I'm not into the Big Bad these days, I have to take the less expedient and more costly approach, don't I?"
Truthfully, Angel never paid much attention to the effort Wesley had put into establishing and maintaining contacts all over LA, and he never thought about how information came across his desk at Wolfram & Hart, so long as it got there when he needed it. He'd always had decent luck terrifying people into cooperation, and Spike had usually just started cutting off parts until the information he wanted fell out. Even after all the time since Spike came back, Angel reflected, sometimes it was jarring to see the changes in the younger man.
"You think this Avun Vail is related to Cyvus?" Angel asked him.
"Red-skinned warlock comes to town with the same name as one you had slaughtered in LA, and we find out about him the same time Buffy comes up missing? Tell me you weren't thinking of passing that off as a coincidence."
"Not really. Just wanted to make sure you were keeping up."
"I'd say I'm a few steps ahead of you at the moment. Usually am, come to think."
"Keep telling yourself that, Spike. Maybe one of these days, you'll believe it."
Not for the first time, Graham wondered why time spent in a library goes by so much more slowly than the same amount of time anywhere else. Inversely, time spent enjoying a wet t-shirt contest during a Greek holiday went far more quickly than it should. The hours since Angel, Spike, and Tuesday left to try and scare up some information had been tense and, though he hated to admit it, rather unproductive.
Willow was cloistered with Jenn, the witch from Tuesday's team, leafing through tomes of arcane reference looking for anything that might help them find his missing Slayer, but every few moments she glanced at the door. He could sympathize with her nervousness; he'd only been assigned to Buffy for a few hours, and already he felt as though her safety was paramount to anything else, and he wondered if it was the same for all Watchers.
Travers had impressed upon him that he was far too incompetent to be given the care of a Slayer, or even a Potential, leaving him to run errands for the lucky few who were deemed worthy of having a hand in the fight against evil. Now, just over two years later, he was Watcher to the greatest Slayer on record. He hoped his father would be proud when he heard the news.
Of course, it would be handy to know where his Slayer was before he made any sort of announcement, or he would surely face more of his father's gentle disappointment.
"Andy, do you have the text on Djinn rituals?" he asked the surly Watcher, as he surveyed the dry erase board where he'd scribbled every theory he could devise on whatever might have taken the Slayer-General or why.
"No. I'm researching pan-terrestrial Spurin demons," Andy snapped.
"If you're behind on your private reading, would kindly catch up on your own time and look at something on the list?" he motioned to the board.
Andy smiled condescendingly at Graham and held up a dark red leather-bound tome. "The Spurin are capable of both incapacitating a victim and teleportation, but you seemed to have forgotten to put them on the list."
Graham's temper flared, but he pushed it down, "The Spurin aren't on the list because they are petrified during daylight hours, rendering them incapable of movement, let alone absconding with the Slayer-General- you'll find that on page 412 of the book you're holding. If you think you have an idea to add to the list, I'd love to hear it, but since you've just wasted two hours on a theory I was able to dismiss in thirty seconds, I'd appreciate it if you would follow instructions."
Andy looked down at the book with a frown and tossed it onto the heap of books in front of him. "I graduated from Yale," he told Graham, "and I've been a Watcher for over a year. You've been here a few hours, and I think it's time you learned your place."
"Yale?" Graham asked with raised eyebrows. When the other man smirked, he continued, "How quaint. I attended Cambridge. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, though. Branscomb men have attended Cambridge for more generations than I can recall; in fact the last four generations of us have all been a part of the Watcher's Council. My mother's side of the family dates their service to the Council six generations back. I was actually a member of the Council for the last two years of its existence, and was quite lucky to have missed the bus the day of the explosion. I'd venture a guess that about the time you were reading Garfield comics, I was reading Wynton's Treatise on Witchcraft of the 16th Century. It's probably not as much fun as the kitty pictures, but it was expected of me.
"Now, just in case you're as unimpressed by my credentials as I am yours, I'm also happy to report that my 'place' is as Watcher to Buffy Summers, and since my Slayer outranks yours, I think it is absolutely my place to tell you to stop wasting my time."
"Hey, Bookman," Spike said, sweeping into the room ahead of Angel, "You dropped that name. Need me to pick it up for you?"
Willow rose before he could reply. "Did you find anything out?" she asked in a voice that wasn't quite as calm as she would have liked.
"There's a new warlock in town called Avun Vail. Demon. He may be related to a very powerful demon we killed in LA," Angel reported
"That's motive," Willow agreed. "Does he have the mojo to pull it off?"
"I don't know," Angel admitted "but Cyvus could have done it."
"Do we have a lead on his location?" she asked.
"All we know is that he's in some sort of cheap motel."
"Well, then, I guess we'll have to track him down the hard way." Willow set her mouth determinedly and strode to her laptop.
"Wouldn't it be faster to do a locator spell?" Jenn asked her, curious.
Willow shook her head. "Trying a locator spell on a demon we have so little information on is tricky, and if he's set wards for himself, it would just tell him we're coming."
Jenn nodded, watching with interest as Willow's fingers flew across the keyboard. "So, you just look to see if any of the hotels have an Avun Vail on their guest register?" she asked.
"Sure, I'll run that search on the off chance this guy's too vain or whatever to use an assumed name, but I don't expect that to pan out. Mostly, the algorithm I'm writing will look for guests that have been checked in for an extended period of time, while simultaneously compiling a list of motels that don't keep their records online. I figure the seedier ones aren't so technologically inclined, and those are the ones we're most likely to find our warlock in," Willow explained.
The Mother, in addition to being the single most powerful Wicca in the world, is a computer hacker who nearly ended the world? Graham thought to himself, I really must read Mr. Giles's diaries at the earliest possible moment.
Two hours later, Willow stood outside of the Palm Tree Resort Motel, which was neither be-palm treed nor resort-y, flanked by Angel and Spike. Two not-entirely human looking beings had just entered room seven, and their wildly gesturing silhouettes seemed to be arguing with somebody already in the room.
"I'd really like to know what's happening in that room." Angel said, intending to try and sneak close enough for his vampiric hearing to let him eavesdrop. Then, he remembered that he didn't have vampiric hearing anymore, and he scowled instead.
Willow responded by waving her hand through the air in front of her and murmuring, "Hoc perspicui." The tobacco-stained draperies that kept them from seeing anything but moving shadows rippled a moment before turning transparent, showing two be-tusked demons and another that matched Avun Vail's description.
"Nice trick, Red." Spike whistled appreciatively. "You ever think about using it to-"
"No," the witch cut him off emphatically. "And for the record, watching people get it on in grungy motels… eww. I mean, maybe someplace with silk sheets and soft lighting, would be…" she trailed off at the shocked expression on Angel's face, "…a shocking abuse of power, and certainly not something I would ever condone."
"Right," Spike told her. "So-"
"Spike, I said 'no.'" Willow interrupted him, glad that the darkness hid most of the redness that was her face.
"I got it. No using magic for purely voyeuristic purposes, unless the room's clean, the girls are hot, and Angel's not around to ruin the mood," Spike listed the conditions on his fingers. "What I was about to ask is 'are we just going to let Vail sneak out the back, or are we going in after him?'"
Angel tore his eyes away from Willow and bit back a curse, as he charged toward the motel alongside Spike. As a team, they lowered their shoulders against the door, bursting through into the stale air of the room. A quick look around showed a messy bed and an ashtray overflowing with half-smoked butts. They bypassed the bathroom counter, which was well-stocked with bottles of Brut, to see Vail escaping through the bathroom window. Spike lunged to catch his foot, but the demon wretched out of his grasp before he could get a good grip. Once he was through, the window shrunk back what appeared to be its normal dimensions; far too small for either Angel or Spike. The two shared a look before tearing back the way they came.
Around the building they went, Spike managing to outrun Angel by a few seconds. He held out little hope that Vail would still be there, and he knew without his vampiric senses, there would be no way to track him. He made the turn around the building a little wide and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. "Well, that's unexpected," he stated unnecessarily, looking from Vail to the little red-haired witch who was holding him suspended upside down with a gelatinous-looking mass to bind him.
Willow ignored him. "Now would be a good time to start talking," she informed the red-skinned demon in a tight voice.
"I'm sorry, is there something I can do for you? I don't think we've met before," Avun asked in a cheerful voice that made her skin crawl. "I can figure out a spell for any situation, guaranteed, but darling, I don't think you need me."
"What the hell have you done with-" Willow began, but Angel interrupted before she could let too much information go.
"Magic. We know you've used it against the Slayers."
Avun's eyes widened, "Now that spell I did for Frothi wasn't specific against Slayers! I mean, it kept them out of his vault, but only because they're human, not because they're Slayers. You can't hold that against me."
"You cast that piece for the Viking?" Spike asked. "That was a nice piece of work. Pity it didn't keep us from killing him."
"You'll excuse me if I don't use that little testimonial in my advertising, won't you?" he asked, still cheerful, until he saw Angel and his eyes began to bulge and roll in terror. "Don't kill me. Please! I can be useful! I'm not like my uncle…" he began to babble.
"You recognize me?" Angel asked, his voice low and deadly, hoping to turn this development to his advantage.
"Of course I recognize you! You were my favorite vampire in the world until right now. I had to wait a long time for somebody to off the old bastard so I could get out of town, and I got out of Big Hell Country the minute I was able." The demon thought for a minute, "So, why are you out to kill me, anyway? Is it because I'm a Vail? The old man do something to make you swear blood vengeance on the whole Clan? I'll bet that's it. Would it buy me fifteen minutes' worth of head start if I pointed out that as the head of the Vail Clan, I could have taken Cyvus's place and been a Lord in LA, but I didn't out of respect for you?"
Angel doubted 'respect' had much to do with Avun's decision. Fear had probably been a bigger motivator, but if he was telling the truth, he didn't know anything about Buffy. He stepped forward, and crouched in front of the demon, so that their heads were on the same level. "No, that does nothing for me. You know what might buy you some time? Information. You go sniff out whatever plans are in the works against the Slayers, report back to me, and I won't kill you." He gave Vail's cheek a few gentle slaps; they were demeaning, not painful.
Willow released the spell, and Avun toppled unceremoniously to the ground. He jumped to his feet more spryly than seemed possible for his bulk, and began to edge past Angel, into the alley behind them. When he was past the tall man, he broke into a trot.
"Oh, and Vail?" Angel called over his shoulder, bringing the demon to a halt. "You cast that vampire sanctuary spell again without my express consent, and I will kill you." This time, he let the demon escape in a lumbering run.
"Somebody just made an enemy," Spike observed, watching the demon's progression.
"He was already an enemy, now he's just afraid enough to be cooperative," Angel countered.
"He'll be a thorn in your side until you end him or he ends you," Spike said, certainly. "Jeremy, on the other hand is going to be a top notch informant. Admit it, Peaches. I'm better at this than you are."
Angel glared at Spike. "I don't care whose informant is better, as long as one of them tells us how to find Buffy."
Willow broke into the conversation before the two men could come to blows, and wondered how Buffy managed to put up with both of them. She'd only been at it for a few hours, and she was already pooped. "I don't think either of them is going to be much help tonight. Let's go back to the headquarters, and see if Graham's had any luck."
Angel and Spike exchanged a grim look, and fell into line behind the diminutive witch. It felt alien to pin their hopes on an inexperienced Watcher and a Slayer team that would just as soon stake the both of them and be done with it, but it was all they had. Not for the first time, the two men wished they still had their old strengths and the old crew to help them figure things out. They fell into step behind the witch, and held tightly to the hope that better news awaited them in the library.
The restaurant was dimly lit and cozy, but that wasn't the reason Xander chose it. He'd decided that what Dawn really needed was comfort food, and this place was famous for it. Watching the flickering light from their table's hurricane lamp dancing across her face while she ate a plate of meatloaf was just an added bonus.
She hadn't mentioned Buffy after their conversation earlier. She fallen asleep in his arms, and he'd watched her, wanting to protect her from all the pain in the world more than he'd ever wanted anything in his entire life. This wasn't the time, he knew, but as soon as they found Buffy… Well, he wasn't sure what would happen, but if he was very lucky, it would involve lips and hand-holding, and not having an unfortunate staking accident at the hands of the Slayer.
"You want dessert?" he asked her when the waitress took their plates away. They were half full, but now just didn't seem like the time for doggy bags.
Dawn shook her head. "Not really, but if we split a brownie, we can put off going back to HQ for a few more minutes."
"Dawn, you don't have to go back for the pre-patrol meeting. Nobody will think less of you, partially because they have no idea what's going on. We'll tell them you have the 'flu, or something."
She shrugged, making circles on the table with her water glass, "I'd know, and eventually I'd blab to Buffy. If, you know, she gets back. And telling the sister who jumped off a tower to save you that you couldn't pull it together long enough to make it to a meeting is some serious shame."
Xander covered her hand with his own, catching her eyes with his when she looked up in surprise. "Dawnie, you have to stop comparing yourself to Buffy. It isn't fair to either of you."
"World-saving superhero, world-ending blob of energy… At least I have way better hair."
Xander ignored the joke, though he did actually agree with that point. "If Buffy knew how hard it was for you when she was gone, she'd tell you that you're the stronger of the two herself."
"No, she'd tell you I'm mercurial and prone to overreaction. There's a subtle difference."
Xander continued, as if she hadn't fired the self-depreciating comment, "There was the evil hell goddess trying to use you to destroy the world thing – which by the way takes 'no means no' to a cosmic level – and there was the dead sister thing, and the living with a sexbot designed to look like said dead sister while pretending that your dead sister wasn't dead."
"Would you please stop saying dead and sister in the same sentence? I'm a little sensitive right now."
"The point is you had way more on your plate than any fourteen year old should have to think about. Kids are supposed to be sheltered from that sort of thing until they're at least twenty."
She gave him a puzzled look, "I didn't do anything special, Xander, except get out of bed in the morning, and I might not have if that would have been an option."
"That's the point. Just losing Buffy nearly felled the rest of us, and not one of us could say with any degree of certainty that we wouldn't have curled up and died if we'd had to deal with what you went through, but you did it, and you didn't come out the other side all Rosemary's Baby."
Dawn looked at him from beneath her lashes, a blush creeping across her chin. "No, I just went nuclear on my ripped-out-of-heaven sister a few times, nearly got taken away by social services, and turned into a kleptomaniac. No big."
"Yeah, but you were a teenager. You might have done that anyway. At least you never went to juvie."
"True, which is especially useful since I never had the chance to learn if I'd retained any of my special key-like door opening properties. I could have really had fun, then. Besides, I'm still a teenager, so there's always hope," she told him with a grin.."
"Yeah," Xander was excited words were still coming out of his mouth when Dawn was smiling like that, and that they were funny ones, "but you're a teenager of the legal variety, which means it's only a technicality. Welcome to the wonderful world of being an adult, where nothing will really change except the picture on your driver's license."
"And speaking of going places, we'd probably better get to the meeting before they decide it's like college and you get to leave if the teacher is more than fifteen minutes late." Dawn rolled her eyes. She had memories of Kendra, and she'd read enough of the Watcher Journals to know that previous Slayers had treated their sacred duty as if it were, well, sacred. The new brood seemed to be infected with Buffy's irreverence.
"Is that really a rule?" Xander asked her, curious, as always about college life.
"Nope, foul rumor. My western civ professor blew a gasket once when he came in late and most of the class was gone. It was pretty ugly." She scrunched her nose at the memory.
"Nest full of vampires ugly?"
"Sure, if the vampires threw chalk at you and had the power to make you have to repeat their class."
"Moments like this, I don't miss the college experience at all." The two moved to leave the table, and noticed their still joined hands. Dawn moved to pull her hand away, but Xander held onto it firmly, both of them blushing furiously. Xander swallowed with an audible gulp before he could talk, "So, uh, you ready?"
A hundred pithy, snarky, sarcastic, and funny replies flashed through Dawn's head, but she settled for the pure, simple, truth. "I was waiting for you."
In a perfect world, the Slayer pre-patrol meeting would have been uneventful, but as the world had demonstrated time and time again, it was not perfect, so naturally, there was chaos when Xander and Dawn arrived. The teams seemed to be separated into two camps that were shouting at one another from opposite sides of an invisible line. A few of the slayers looked like they might ignore the division in favor of some hands-on debating.
Xander sighed inwardly at the sight, his hopes for an easy night evaporating in an estrogen-fuelled puff of smoke, though this was the first time one of their shouting matches had made it into his ready-room, and he couldn't help but wonder what it was about. Once Dawn had entered the room, he pulled the door closed behind them with enough force to shock the girls into silence, though they didn't quite stop glowering at one another. The two of them made their way to the podium from which they usually conducted their business, and began sorting through the files.
"We have a full night ahead of us, and we're a team short, so listen up," Xander began, sliding into his routine, while the Slayers had the grace to look abashedly at one another. He went over business from the night before, making sure to give a detailed account of the raid on the nest that Jasmine and Buffy had staged the night before, making sure to give Jada, the witch, credit for her part in the fight. The two blushed deeply at the recognition, but seemed excited by the enthusiastic applause that Xander was glad to see from everybody in the room. Whatever the argument had been about, it hadn't been enough to cause a permanent rift between them.
"Now that we've covered last night's rounds in full, I'll open the floor for any current reports, but before I do, I want each of you to know that if I ever enter this room to see you going all 'roid-rage on one another, we'll be exploring the exciting world of disciplinary suspensions. Without pay. Do I make myself clear?"
The Slayers assembled all agreed, and he sat down so that the teams working on new cases could explain them to the room. Once he was settled in, he chanced a look at Dawn out of the corner of his eye, and was gratified to see her looking at him proudly. He smiled and sat up a little straighter, then looked to the picture of a suspected victim that Simone was passing around.
When he saw the picture of the little girl with the pale blond ringlets and blue eyes, he shot to his feet with an exclamation, "When?"
Simone jumped, and the beads on the end of her braids make a clicking sound. "I was going through some police files that I probably shouldn't have bribed my way into looking through earlier today, and found this case. The circumstances were really odd, so I made a copy to bring here. I thought maybe somebody had heard something. Is something wrong, Boss?" she asked him, concern etched across her pretty, dark face.
"That little girl belongs to a friend of mine. He's definitely not a player in the dark side of town, and if Gracie's been taken, we probably don't have much time to find her. See me after the meeting, with everything you have on the case. Who's next?" he asked, determined to get through the meeting as quickly as possible.
After several more Slayers spoke, the meeting broke up, and Xander was disheartened to find that Simone didn't have any information other than what she'd already shared. "It was a good catch," he complimented her, "finding that one before it hit the papers. I'll handle the interview; you keep working on the Grossman case, like we'd planned. When I have something to pass along, I'll give it to whatever team is between cases."
When she left, and Dawn and Xander were alone, she pulled him into her arms without a word, pulling his head down to her shoulder. "You okay?" she asked him softly.
"Yeah, but I need to get over there as soon as I can," he told her. "Will you be ok without me?"
"Sure," she shrugged, "I'll just head home and catch up on my reading."
"Fiction, or hell books?" He asked, straightening.
"Who has time to read recreationally? I'm trying to get through the Slime section of The Modern Demon Compedium, but I mostly want to hurl every time I open the book. It might be the scratch and sniff pictures that don't actually need to be scratched to smell bad."
"Clothespins work nicely," he advised her, smiling over his shoulder as he turned to the door.
"I'll keep that in mind," she grinned back as he closed it behind him. Still smiling, Dawn shuffled through her paperwork, organizing everything that needed to be filed. She was just finishing when the she heard the door click softly. "Forget something?"
"No, ma'am," the voice was a soft and feminine drawl. Dawn looked up, surprised to see a young Watcher looking at her nervously, her hands tangled in her dark hair.
"Francine," Dawn greeted her by name, "is everything ok?"
"I don't know," she said, quietly. "I was listening to the scanner, and there was something about a woman who's been beaten." Francine's sentences had the tendency to go up at the end, making them sound like questions. "She's alive, barely, but the thing that caught my attention was that they have no idea what she was beaten with. I thought it could, maybe, be something they don't know about."
"It's always better to check it out if you aren't sure. Did you happen to hear her location? I'll find somebody to go have a look." Dawn smiled reassuringly at the girl.
"I wrote everything I heard down," she handed Dawn a piece of paper that held what must have been a word for word transcription of the chatter, before hurrying out of the room, back to the safety of her office.
Dawn looked down at the page, and her blood ran cold. Unsure if she should pray the woman was or wasn't her sister, she ran to the library as fast as she could, the paper clenched in her hand.
Willow snapped her phone shut, a grim expression on her face. "That was Dawn."
Spike interrupted her before she could continue, "Who's got the Slayer?"
Willow looked at him, and the fear in her eyes brought him up short. "Maybe nobody. A call came through at headquarters. They've found a woman who could be Buffy, but the details are pretty sketchy." The last thing she wanted was to get their hopes up.
"Why do they think it's her?" Angel asked, his voice dark.
"The height, weight, and rough age are the same, and she has blond hair. Other than that… She's been beaten beyond recognition. The police can't figure out what did the beating, and it caught the attention of a Watcher, who passed it along to Dawn."
Angel and Spike shared a long look. It was bad enough to think that Buffy might have been incapacitated, but neither could imagine something capable of beating Buffy that badly. "Let's go," Angel said tersely, and Spike nodded, falling in behind the older man.
Willow led them through the streets, and ten long minutes later, the three of them found the woman in an alley. Angel exchanged quiet words with the police officers, explaining that they were looking for a friend of theirs, and they let the three of them closer, hoping they'd be able to identify the woman.
She was a mass of bruises and cuts, each delivered with surgical precision to inflict damage without killing. After a quick look, Willow shook her head to signify that she couldn't tell anything, and turned away with tears in her eyes. Spike reached out gently, and pushed back a swollen eyelid with his thumb, revealing an unseeing brown eye. He stood, and breathed a sigh of relief that Angel shared.
"It's not her," Angel said softly to the Willow, and she sagged with relief.
"It didn't feel like Buffy, but I'm not sure if somebody beaten into a coma…" she trailed off, then continued, "would really still feel the same. Any ideas what did this to her?"
"Could be any number of nasties, I'm sad to say." Spike told her as they stepped back to let the paramedics work. "Probably wasn't human, damage like that. Whatever it was, it knew how to have a real good time." Willow and Angel looked at him in horror. "I didn't say it was my idea of a good time. Anymore." Spike defended himself, "And don't give me that pious look Peaches, was a time you would have made the same slip of the tongue."
Angel didn't bother refuting Spike's claim; everybody would have known he was lying, anyway. "Willow, you should stay with her. She may wake up after they get her to the hospital…"
The red-haired witch nodded. "We'll need to know what did this to her, especially if it isn't human. She turned back to the girl, reaching out to take her hand, and trying to funnel some of her own energy into the nearly-lifeless form.
"We'll head back to headquarters, and tell everybody what we saw here. It could be a coincidence that a woman matching Buffy's description was beaten nearly to death the same night that she goes missing, but there's a possibility this is connected to Buffy, and the information might help Graham figure out what we're up against," Angel decided.
Willow nodded her agreement. "I'll call if her condition changes. Let me know if you learn anything. And, Angel?" He raised his eyebrows, "Don't be too hard on Dawn. She was there for the Pre-patrol meeting when she heard about this." The paramedics chose that moment to move the girl, sparing Angel from thinking up an answer. The truth was he hadn't even had time to think about Dawn's involvement.
He walked away from the scene without a word, trusting Spike to fall in step beside him. Only a block later, both men stopped dead in their tracks. Spike recovered first, sprinting toward the form sitting in a bus stop beneath a bright street lamp. Her knees were drawn up in front of her, arms wrapped tightly around her legs, and her eyes stared, unseeingly ahead.
The shock of finding Buffy, especially in such an unlikely place, dissipated, and Angel chased Spike to the woman they both loved. When he reached them, Spike was already on his knees before the Slayer, speaking soothingly to her, and brushing her tangled and blood-spattered hair back behind her ear. He was reminded of the night she came back, when she seemed unable to make sense of the world in front of her. Finally, she tore her gaze away from the space in front of her, as if she'd only just noticed she wasn't alone.
"Spike?" she sounded bewildered and afraid.
"Yeah, love, it's me. You hurt?" he asked, looking her over and cataloguing the bruises and scratches that were already healing. She held up her hands, where her knuckles were torn and oozing blood, and Spike laughed humorlessly, "You give 'em a fight, then, pet? We were worried about you."
"Buffy, where were you?" Angel asked, his voice pleading her to tell him where to go and who to kill.
She looked at him blankly, "Were? I… don't know."
Without another word, Angel swept Buffy into his arms, and began to carry her back to the house. Spike trotted alongside, calling Willow, Xander, and Dawn in turn to give them the good news. They were all ecstatic, but Spike was more reserved. She was back, but long years of treading the darkness told him that all was not yet well on the Hellmouth.
Buffy fell asleep against Angel's chest after only a few minutes, and as the blocks rolled past, his energy began to fade.
"I could take her, if you're starting to feel your age, Peaches." Spike offered with a smirk, but Angel ignored him, though his pace slowed with every step. "There's no shame in admitting your weakness, mate," Spike continued to antagonize the older man.
Finally, only a few blocks from home, Angel began to worry that he might drop the Slayer, or fall, causing her more injury. He handed her to Spike, who flashed his cockiest grin. "What?" Angel asked, irritated and out of breath.
"You look like a mess. You're winded, pale, and a bit ripe. I, on the other hand, am fresh as a daisy," he told his grandsire with glee.
Angel narrowed his eyes. "You did this on purpose."
Spike snorted. "You didn't stop to think that I let you sweep the girl up like the big hero out of generosity, did you?"
"You think this is going to earn you points?"
"She wakes up when I gently lay her in her bed, and sees me all handsome and caring, while you look like death warmed over? Can't hurt, can it? Of course, you could hope she doesn't wake up and duck into the shower straight away."
Angel gritted his teeth. "You're a creep, Spike. You really are."
"Oh, just admit you're jealous you didn't think of it first." Spike laughed.
"You have me there. But Spike?" Angel's eyes met his, "I will get you back for this."
"'Bout bloody time. I was getting tired of playing nice, Peaches." Spike practically skipped ahead; the Slayer was in his arms, he was winning in the never-ending tug-of-war between him and Angel… As far as he was concerned, the evening had taken an unexpected turn for the better.
Angel watched him, a smile spreading across his face that the blond man couldn't see. He knew that the reprieve was temporary, but it was nice to feel like things were almost back to normal.
Thanks again for reading (again), and if you were to feel like clicking the link below and leaving a review, I'd be much obliged.