Bad Company
Ch 26: All Tied Up And Nowhere To Go
Giles walked to the rhythm of his head throbbing. The throbbing was a drumbeat in the background while he tried to organize his thoughts. As long as Buffy was in the mix, he could formulate no clear plan. She was a mockery of what she had been. Not just in her impersonation of her former self, not just by wearing the same body. She now mimicked fighting for good, saving the world. He was almost completely convinced that calling on her had been necessary and not an inexcusable lapse in judgment.
"We should not have allied ourselves with evil," Kendra said, as if reading his mind.
"Hey!" Cordelia objected because Kendra happened to look in her direction by pure coincidence.
"Not you. Your narcissism does not rise to the level of evil," Kendra absolved Cordelia, who did not look grateful.
"Hey..." Faith objected.
"Not you, either, though you have many, many faults."
Faith didn't care about her faults. She cared that she wasn't the baddest slayer around. She was just faulty like bad wiring. She wondered who she would have to kill to get upgraded to badass. Buffy herself, probably. She looked at the Watcher wondering how much of a problem he was going to be when it came time to reduce his dead slayer to grit.
Cordelia watched Giles too, but with a different concern. He was like one of those stupid boxers who keep climbing into the ring while their brain matter oozes out of their cauliflower ears. And look at Oz, he was snack-sized and carrying an ax. What did he think he was doing? Cordelia didn't have to trace back their motives very far to see where they converged. They had grief burning holes in their pockets. Had to spend it somewhere even if you can't buy anything with grief, just more grief. If it was money, she could point them to the right stores, but end of the world and pent up grief weren't in her area of expertise. Cordelia stopped.
"Wait a minute!" Cordy's words stopped everyone else too. "Are these the last hours I'm going to spend not in Hell?"
"Quiet possibly," Giles told her. He had been about to suggest to her that she should go home. She had obviously arrived at the same conclusion without his aid. He did so admire that girl. If Buffy had been a little more...
"No offense, guys, but I don't want to spend my possibly last hours on earth with you people doing things I am not even remotely qualified to do." What she was eminently qualified to do was wear gorgeous clothes to perfection and put everyone to shame with her blinding beauty and unparalleled sense of style. She would stick to her strengths.
"Even though I look stunning in black, and I have this amazing black number that would knock you dead, I would rather not go to another funeral," she told the group.
Faith rolled her eyes.
Cordelia looked around at the limited selection and decided to leave Kendra in charge.
"OK, Giles already had his head injury for the day. No more concussions for him," Cordelia told Kendra, who listened with utmost seriousness.
Struck by how much this sounded like a mother giving the babysitter her last instructions, Giles waited for Cordelia to give his bedtime as she continued.
"And he's still grieving for Buffy and Willow, maybe Xander, so don't let him do anything crazy or stupid. Remember he is just a weak, weak British guy with decent teeth and no fashion sense and a head as soft as a new born baby's."
"Really, Cordelia," Giles said as Kendra, instead of coming to his defense, gave him a look of grandmotherly concern.
Faith fidgeted, itching to get moving so she could kill something. Cordelia gave them all one last look like they were already dead. Then she left.
"You know how I want to spend my last hours? I ..." Faith started to say as she watched Cordelia go.
Kendra interrupted her before she could go into any lewd and gruesome details.
"I wish to spend my last hours not listening to the sorts of unsavory things you like to do, Faith," Kendra said in her most prim and uptight way.
In retaliation, Faith hung back and sidled over to Oz. She threw an arm over his shoulder.
"Seriously, when the timer runs out and that one goes off" Here Faith indicated Kendra and did an imitation of a bomb going off. "Watch out, man. It's going to be all handcuffs and leather. You'll be aching for a month if she doesn't put you in traction." Faith finished off the friendly warning by framing Kendra's shapely ass with her hands and smirking.
"Faith!" Kendra gasped. She looked like she wasn't breathing so Faith slapped her on the back to get her started again.
"Come on, you can't actually croak from embarrassment no matter how much you want to. Loosen up."
"I will not!"
"Kablooey!"
Willow was smiling smugly as she and Dru came into the room where Angel and Spike were kneeling, tied up. Spike straightened as much as he could and tried to catch Dru's eye.
"Magic ropes, love? What? Good old-fashioned chains not good enough? What's happened to you, Dru. You used to be a traditionalist," Spike scolded in a mellow, 'I don't really mind being tied up if it's by you' voice. But Dru only gave him a wan look.
While Dru administered the silent treatment, Willow leaned on Spike, stretching him and his ropes to their limit.
"See what happens when you pretend to be disabled just to get the good parking space," Willow told him.
"A parking ticket?" Spike ventured a guess.
"You know, I hate to see a wheelchair going to waste," Willow said. It was a suggestion for a fitting punishment for Drus benefit, a threat to Spike, and to Angel, it was a prospect for a hearty laugh.
"It's not going to waste, is it, as my pet over there broke the sodding wheelchair over my head," Spike reminded them, before anyone could come up with creative ways of putting him back in it.
"She hated to see it going to waste," Willow spoke on behalf of Dru.
Rather than wait to see if Spike would drive Willow to some welcome violence, Angel got right to the point.
"You girls have been so industrious of late." There was accusation in the fatherly praise that told Willow and Dru that he knew about their recent creative mixology project.
"Girl power, what can I say." Willow tried to deflect with flippancy. Angel wouldn't let her.
"You figured out the Hour of Might potion." There was almost admiration in his voice.
Dru practically melted. Willow gave Drusilla the stink-eye for basking in Angel's attention. It wasn't that Dru was admitting to anything. She was hardly even listening to what was being said. She just enjoyed the way Angel was looking at her, also she was happy not to be puking and there was the prospect of upcoming torture. At the moment, it was mostly the way Angelus was eyeing her. It was a sneering, possessive look. She dreamily wondered what he would do to her if he could. If it wasn't for the promise of an apocalypse, she would loose him and find out.
"Hour of Power, much like Angel's knackers, is a myth," Spike said as he watched Dru appraisingly. But even as he was nay-saying, he knew that Angel was right and not a total weenie.
Though Willow's eyes went large with schoolgirlish innocence, this time no one was fooled. She and Dru acted like two brain-damaged kittens, but Angelus didn't keep Drusilla around because he liked to listen to her blather. And this new "spank me" Willow packaging still contained a working brain, it seemed.
"You hulked out on vampire steroids, love?" Spike tried to guilt Dru.
"You boys grew lazy. You left the fields fallow too long. You left the fruit to rot, and the branches grew heavy..."
Listening to her farmerly complaint, Spike decided that Drusilla had drained one too many ruddy-cheeked farm boys back in the day. She looked at him, sadly, with her arms still reaching up like two bare branches.
"I wanted to drown in a flood of pain and you wouldn't even get up out of the chair, Spikey," Dru said this part with a mournful, acid edge to her voice.
"You dropped the ball. We picked it up," Willow summed up preserving the theme of balls and who had them.
"And speaking of balls. Yours will wither to nothing, you cheater," Spike warned Willow. "Just look at Angel here. Like two raisins that rolled under the fridge. And the Olympic committee will hear about this."
"And where did yours bounce off to?" Angel asked, sick of Spike trying to emasculate him every time he opened his big mouth.
"We've been cooking. Boil and bubble, toil and trouble," Dru said as her hands weaved a pattern through the air. Really, no one could blame the boys for underestimating these two. At any given time of night, Dru's intelligence ranged from lonely wind blowing through a vacant lot to a laser fine and sharp enough to cut diamonds. Right now it was windy on the vacant lot. Willow picked up the slack.
"That's right, Dru. But it was less making a roast for Sunday dinner and more tapping a keg." She decided to skip over 'and then we puked it up like two frat guys after a drinking contest'.
"I'm impressed," Angel lied. "The Hour of Might potion was lost centuries back. Most vampires started to think it never existed."
"Like you did," Willow jumped in.
"I didn't need it." His claim lost a little bit of its credibility coming from a kneeling position as it did.
"Sure about that?" Willow tilted her head and didn't even bother to pointedly look at the ropes tying his wrists to his ankles to his neck.
"For an hour you are unbeatable. Then what?" Angel asked her. He might have been kneeling but he showed no signs of discomfort or defeat.
"You're looking at it," Willow spat out. Though Angel might not have the attitude of a prisoner, he was tied up at her feet all the same.
"I love to tie up Daddy," was Drusilla's airheaded explanation for treason.
Despite being uncomfortably tied up and no one saying a thing about loving to tie him up, Spike ego was significantly less crushed than it had been. He even felt a little pleased with himself knowing that the girls had not beaten them fair and square.
"Guess that means Angel's not limp as a wet noodle. Not a total wanker then. Not a sniveling, snotty, thumb sucking, drooling, diaper soiling ..."
"No, but you are!" Angel snapped like a kindergartener to put an end to Spike's stream of ego destroying invectives.
While they chatted, the prisoner was carried in. All eyes were on the garbage bag bundle as it was deposited next to Spike by the biggest minion they had. Everyone squinted at the bundle which didn't look quiet right. Willow ripped down the garbage bags to reveal principal Snyder's terrified, unattractive, balding head.
"What have you girls done? This old watcher is looking right peaked. Lost so much of his hair. Must have been some rough handling. Why, his own mother wouldn't recognize him."
Everyone was ignoring Spike's babbling. While Snyder sat there, glassy eyed and trembling, Willow was the center of attention.
"Willow, dear?" Drusilla asked in an unmistakable tone of motherly reproach and disappointment.
Didnt you two learn anything from the man with the frying pan? This is your brain on drugs. Spike shook his head in sad dismay.
Willow hurriedly left the room to the sound of Spike calling her a brainless ninny.
"Has anyone seen that garbage vamp?" Willow sweetly asked the minions she encountered in the mansion hallways. The garbage vamp was not among them. "I want to congratulate him on a job well done and recommend him for a promotion," Willow promised.
Several minions pointed down the hall where the hefty henchman could be seen running away as fast as his bulk would let him. He had the built and the brain capacity of a garbage obsessed water buffalo. He couldn't really be blamed for the mix up. What little brains he had were taken up by garbage concerns not the ability to tell people apart. Willow didn't care about his limitations. She raced after him.
"Hey there, garbage vamp. Come on. Let's talk trash, let's talk garbage. Tell me how you feel about incinerators?" Willow said cheerily as she caught up to him. Willow landed hard on his back and he went down on one knee for a second. He stood up and Willow spilled off him. If this had been a little while ago, she would have demolished him. Now, she kicked him to no effect. What he lacked in speed he made up for in complete imperviousness. If he hadn't run himself into a dead end, Willow might have just tired herself out trying to get his attention. But he was trapped and doused and set on fire before he could put his size to use. Willow watched him burn then ran back before Dru could free anyone.
Willow got back looking a little dusty and a lot worse for wear, smelling of lighter fluid and smoke. She was smiling a tight smile of hollow triumph.
"So you finally figured out what you have there is not the high school librarian. That is the high school principal. It can be a little confusing," Angel explained to her, but she wouldn't look at him.
"If we wanted to get out of detention, this would be swell," Spike said.
"What's this, Spikester? You still have some hair left." Willow smiled into his unwillingly upturned face. She mussed his hair before pulling on it. Dragging his head forward against the rope, she tipped him over.
"Leave the hair alone, you pyro." Spike was on his side again and trying to shift his head away from her matchbook.
"What good is he?" Dru asked. She didn't mean Spike. Dru had ignored Spike and Willow's shenanigans. She was staring at Snyder who was silently praying with his eyes screwed shut. Really, he was the most comfortable of the prisoners tied up as he was like a sausage. It wasn't fair, thought Spike as he got semi-vertical again.
"We can still torture him," Willow said since she was a silver lining kind of gal and always up for a little torture.
"Just in case he happens to know about ancient demonic rituals? Maybe heard something around the water cooler?" Spike asked.
"Holy water eye drops, Spike?" Willow offered tugging at an eyelid.
"We can't even use him as a hostage," Angel griped.
"Who's we. Didn't you hear? This establishment is under new management," Willow reminded him shrilly.
But Angel was noticing how displeased Drusilla was with this kidnapping fiasco.
Willow didn't miss Angels look or Dru's. She pulled Dru away from Angel and into the big room to talk. Acathla stood there as if in reproach. Willow pointed to him.
"That is ours. All ours. Just ours. Not Angel's." The sales pitch cued to the level of a small, easily distracted child didn't sway Dru. She might have been insulted even. But Willow was desperate to remind Dru that her slice of birthday cake was bigger if Angel wasn't invited to the party. Drusilla wasn't listening. She plastered herself to Acathla, snuggling him sadly.
"Our baby sleeps and I so want to play with him. I'll ask Daddy to wake him for me." Dru moved off as if to go back to their prisoners. Willow grabbed her wrist and gave it a hard, join wrenching tug. When Dru turned, Willow tried a soft-eyed, cajoling look.
"I can do it. We know we need blood. I say we cut everything that bleeds until..."
Willow felt her wrist being cut.
"I once adored blood. I think I'd like a taste of yours now." Drusilla's nails sliced back and forth across Willow's wrist as Willow held on to her. Willow didn't even flinch. She raised her arm to offer her shredded wrist to Drusilla. She watched the blood slide across and around her wrist, two streams meeting like a bracelet. As the blood drops hit the floor, Willow decided to do a simple experiment. She pulled her arm away from Drusilla's open mouth and walked up to Acathla. She stared at him as if he might speak to her. As if he might say, "Go ahead." Maybe give her a gold star. As if with an approving nod of his big, ugly head, he might confirm her hypothesis, which with very moment felt more and more like an epiphany.
Willow chanted then cut herself again where she had just started to heal. She reached for the sword handle embedded in Acathla. Before any of her blood hit the sword, Dru sneaked up behind her. Dru's twig thin arms encircled Willow's waist. Swinging her around like they were dancing, Dru pulled her away from Acathla and the sword.
"My blood, my blood," Willow gasped, looking a little wild, like a feverish, excited child. Drusilla knew she had hit on the answer. The air hummed with the rightness of it. She liked her Willow very much just then.
"Listen to you. Shhh," Drusilla said. She licked up Willow's arm where blood had slithered to the elbow. At the source, the wound was already closing. Dru's eyes went from Willow to the statue.
"I have blood too." Dru let go of Willow and stroked the inside of her own arm where the veins stood out black against the bone pale flesh. She stuck a nail in and blood flowed down her arm. "I want a turn."
Willow's eyes sparkled at the prospect of blood, of unleashed power and pain. But she didn't take Dru seriously.
"You just watch," she said nuzzling Dru and holding her back at the same time. But Dru pulled away.
"I want to open the world to darkness! With my blood!" Dru told her.
"My blood!" Willow vamped out. Drusilla vamped out too.
With a merciless, downward shove, Drusilla brought Willow's head onto the floor. She heard her scull crack and sighed with satisfaction.
Willow coiled and kicked her away. But she couldn't stand up yet. Her head was swimming. Drusilla approached her and readied for a kick. Willow caught her foot and stopped faking dizziness. She toppled Dru to the ground and slammed her own body on top of her. The painful contact between the bodies and the floor made both Drusilla and Willow smile. Willow held Dru down. Dru struggled, assuring that Willow's firm grip would turn cruel.
"You drive me mad," Dru said.
"Is that even possible?"
Drusilla laughed with insane delight. Willow shut her up mid laugh with a kiss full of sharp teeth.
Unexpectedly, neither Faith nor Kendra charged in with stake and sword raised. Puzzled by this, Giles and Oz crowded into the doorway of the large room where Drusilla and Willow moaned and writhed under the statue of Acathla.
"I must say, I was not expecting this," Giles said, averting his eyes.
"What? Vampire babes in flagrante delicto? Happens all the time," Faith informed him. Everyone looked at Faith and her word usage.
"What? I knew this guy once..."
"You must stop right there," Kendra warned her. "All her stories start that way," Kendra complained to Oz.
"I don't doubt it," Oz said, but without judgment.
He was staring at the vampire makeout scene. It was a sad day indeed when a guy couldn't even enjoy the sight of his vamped girlfriend's lesbian makeout session. Giles pulled him away.
"You two go rescue the hated authority figure," Kendra told the guys. Then she and Faith turned their attention to the goth porn scene.
"Oz, I don't suppose you could smell him out? Snyder," Giles whispered. Getting him to focus on something besides Willow was no easy task.
Oz shook his head. Behind them the slayers practiced some vimpirus interruptus.
Giles pulled Oz further away. They moved on, cautiously.
"No offense to the rescue party, but save Snyder is clearly not a high priority mission," Oz observed. Maybe it was a complaint. It was hard to tell.
"We are two perfectly capable individuals."
"Giles, you are good for two things - research and concussions. And I'll need a ladder if we meet the vamp who carried off Snyder."
Giles didn't disagree. He just walked on with purpose. At the same time he kept his mind off that purpose because a mission to save Snyder just made him want to sit down.
Seeing Kendra hesitate at the door, as if from a sense of decorum, Faith elbowed her.
"Let's jump right in," she urged.
"Faith, we are not here to join a vampire orgy," Kendra whispered with indignation.
"I was thinking," Faith finished the sentence by motioning with the stake in a staking motion. "And you were thinking...?"
"The vary same thing," Kendra said defensively.
"Right. You take the crazy one."
"There are two crazy ones," Kendra pointed out.
"The redhead is mine," Faith said, giving in to an instinctive hatred of Willow.
As the slayers entered, the vampires disengaged from each other.
"None of your evil trickery," Kendra warned Drusilla as they circled each other.
"I have nothing up my sleeve, deary," she said as she showed Kendra her claws.
Buffy arrived to find two vampires and two slayers fighting it out. She resisted the urge to join the fracas, instead she inched along the wall unnoticed. Briefly she hid behind Acathla. Seeing an opening, she kicked the sword right out of Kendra's hand. It spun in the air twice before Buffy snagged it. She swiped the air to clear a path out. Then she ran.
"Who's the favorite now? That's right! The one and only, the original, accept no substitutes!" Buffy shouted as she ran away waving the sword in the air.
With two vampires to deal with, Kendra and Faith couldnt give chase, no matter how much they wanted to.
"Hey, Angel!" Buffy yelled down the hall while she held the sword high. "I found something sharp to play with!"
She was surprised to find Angel tied up along with Spike. Snyder was there too.
"Fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of ... Hi, principal Snyder! And you two guys." Buffy twirled the sword and smiled at Snyder. Sitting still and small, mostly swaddled in garbage bags, Snyder watched the sword and said nothing.
"Look at you guys." Using the sword to point, she said, "Eeny meeny miny moe, catch a tiger by the toe and he squealed wee wee wee all the way home."
"It doesn't go like that, you bloody ditz," Spike objected probably because he wasn't chosen for immediate freeing.
"You're correcting her now?" Angel hissed at him.
"Oh, right. Deepest apologies. Free us, please," Spike said to Buffy, with very little sincerity.
"Oh this eeny meeny miny moe isn't to see who goes free." Buffy smiled meanly at each of them in turn.
to be continued