Hello all! Thanks for all the lovely reviews. A couple of you have asked me when Buffy will turn up. She's going to make her appearance in chapter four - I'm still just setting the stage, so to speak. For those who are interested, the pairings are as follows: S/B, X/Anya, W/Fred (Coz I wanna!) And yes, Spike will eventually be running around in the flesh again!

PART 3

Spike watched with studied disinterest as the 'fang gang' huddled at the other end of Angel's office. He really couldn't see what all the fuss was all about. It was Anya, for pity's sake. Sure, she might be a bit on the blunt side sometimes, but it hardly made her the harbinger of the apocalypse or something. The way that Angel's lot were carrying on, you'd swear she had sprouted horns and a tail.

"I still think we should get out of here while the goings good," Anya whispered, leaning in from the next chair. "They've obviously gone over to the dark side. I mean, just look at them, acting all shifty and mysterious over there. I say we slip out the nearest exit and make for the next train out of here.

Spike rolled his eyes. "Relax, luv, Peaches was always like this. Likes the image of being dark and mysterious, probably has just rubbed off on the rest of them."

"He didn't always work for Wolfram and Hart, though. Even D'Hoffryn stays away from them, he actually put them on his 'Do Not Touch' list."

"I've already gone over this with you, pet. Angel is in charge here now, so there's nothing to worry about," he whispered back, his eyes never leaving the heated argument going on at far end of the conference table. What the hell were they up to?

Anya turned and looked at him disbelievingly. "What? Has that soul of yours suddenly erased your ability to think? Don't you dare tell me that you actually believe that Angel is in charge of this hellhole just because his name is tacked on the office door."

"What do you mean by that?" Spike said, dragging his eyes away from across the room.

"It's in the walls, Spike," Anya explained impatiently. "This building is alive, evil incarnate - and still running the show, no matter what you believe."

"Yeah, sure," he huffed disbelievingly. "Somehow I think somebody would have noticed that by now."

"If you don't believe me, ask them about the 'white room'," she insisted. " Go on, ask them now."

"What the bleeding hell is the 'white room'?" he asked.

"It's where its mind is housed," she explained hurriedly. "Nothing happens in this place without its say so first."

"But it's different now," Spike protested uneasily.

"Wake up and smell the apocalypse, Spike," she told him severely. "I say we hightail it out of here and go and find Buffy."

"Apocalypse," Spike sat bolt right up in his chair, bloody hell, how could he have forgotten about that nitwit in the library.

"Spike...Spike... are you okay? You're not having another seizure, are you?" asked Anya anxiously, noticing the expression on his face. "If it's what I said about an apocalypse, I was only talking hypothetically..."

Spike didn't hear her, however. He was already halfway across the room. "Time's up, Peaches. You and I have to have a little natter.

"In a moment Spike," Angel snapped, too immersed in his conversation with Wesley to notice the expression on Spikes face.

"No, not in a bleeding moment, now," Spike said through gritted teeth, the muscles in his jaw line working overtime.

"This better be good," Angel said irritably as he rose from the table.

Spike caught his eye and looked at him meaningfully.

"Oh... yes... why don't you and I step into my office over here and... and...look at that... file I was talking about."

Spike spotted the raised eyebrow on Wesley's face from the corner of his eye. Peaches really had to work on his cloak and dagger routine... it was bloody pathetic, even by his standards. Giving a worried looking Anya a reassuring look, Spike stepped into the other room before Angel closed the door behind them.

"What did you see?" Angel said, getting straight to the point.

"Watcher type in the library, summoning demons between the stacks," Spike replied, leaning against the desk. "Something about the day approaching for it's 'true return' and there being a sacrifice kept in the building for the special occasion."

"That's all we need," muttered Angel.

"Oy, that reminds me, what's all this hue and cry about Anya," Spike asked. "Seems pretty straight forward to me, dead yesterday, alive today. It's not as if something like this hasn't happened before, it's practically an annual occurrence 'round these parts."

"Wesley thinks there may be a prophecy involved," Angel said. "Something about resurrections and the lunar calendar."

Spike smirked. "You better tie her down before you tell her, then," he advised. "She isn't very happy, to begin with, about being in a building that has the Wolfram and Hart logo over the front door."

"I would have thought that Anya would be pretty laissez faire about the whole thing," Angel commented. "She always seemed to be pretty comfortable rubbing shoulders with her old fraternity... or is that sorority?"

"Apparently, Wolfram and Hart are an exception to the rule, she keeps going on about this place being a pit of evil and all that - something about a 'white room'?" Spikes heart sank as he saw Angel flinch. "So I'm guessing, from the look on you face, that she may have a point."

"What exactly did she say?" Angel evaded.

"Oh, you know, the usual, the office block is alive, the white room is the control centre - sounds like a bloody Stephen King novel, if you ask me," Spike said watchfully.

"Anya said the building was alive?" asked Angel curiously. "How so."

"Don't bleeding ask me mate," shrugged Spike. "That's all the detail she went into, we can call her in here, if you want?"

"No... we'll leave that 'til we sort out what is happening with your 'watcher type' in the library," said Angel, thoughtfully.

"Right then," Spike declared, jumping onto the balls of his feet. "Who do we hit?"

"We," enquired Angel with amusement. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Oh, yeah," Spike muttered, deflating on the spot. "Okay then, you hit them. I'll do a running commentary from the sides."

"What else is new," snorted Angel as he reopened the office door. "Come on then, lets root our summoner of doom and 'convince' him to turn over a new leaf."

"What's going on," said Wesley and Anya simultaneously as they walked through the door.

"You're little friend in the library from earlier on is up to something," explained Spike as he headed for the outer door.

"Who? Albert? He's harmless," Wesley replied, surprise written all over his face.

"But that thing he summoned earlier on isn't," Spike told him smugly.

"Summoned, Albert summoned something?" Wesley said disbelievingly. "I didn't think he had it in him."

"We'll debate that later, " Angel announced. "For now, I want to make sure that he isn't about to bring this building down about our ears.

"Actually," Anya piped up. "That wouldn't be such a bad idea. The world would be a better place as far as I'm concerned.

"Listen Anya," Angel said impatiently. "I know you have your reservations, but things have changed around here."

"The only thing that's changed around here, is you," Anya replied heatedly. "Listen to me when I say this, Angel. Don't try to take this building on, better people have tried and failed. Oh sure, they think they're winning at first, but one day they wake up and realise that they have become what they were supposed to oppose. That's how it does it, it doesn't leap out at you and say 'hey, here I am, I'm the big bad', it lets you do all the work. It pushes and prods you until you reach the stage that you begin to think like it, even begin to understand it, and only then does it pounce! This building doesn't get its kicks from killing its enemies, it much prefers to turn them."

Spike saw from the look in Angel's eyes that he knew exactly what she was talking about. With a shudder, he remembered what Dru had told him a few years back about Angel setting her and Darla on fire.

"She may have a point, Angel," Fred piped up. "And its not as if you haven't suspected something along that lines already."

"That maybe so, but I think we should deal with one thing at a time for the moment, and the first thing on my list is Albert," declared Angel as he swept from the room.

Giving Anya an apologetic look, the others trooped after him, leaving only Spike and Anya in the room. "You coming," he asked her, looking longingly after them.

"No thank you," she snorted. "I think I'll stay put, if it's all the same to you. You go on ahead."

Looking at her uncertainly, Spike held a short inner debate about whether or not he should stay, but the lure of some serious ass kicking won out in the end. "Are you sure you will be okay here, you won't go running off, will you?"

"I'll be right here when you get back," she reassured him. "Now run along and watch the violence like a good little vampire."

Spikes eyes narrowed a little as he heard the tone of her voice but decided to let it passes, she'd had a rough day, after all. Later on, looking back, he realised that he should have known what she was up to, but you know what they say about hindsight having twenty - twenty vision.

No sooner had he passed through the wall, than Anya was on the phone asking for an outside line. "Hello operator, I'd like to make a collect call to Britain... yes, the number is 221 5453 6778... this is Anya Jenkins calling for Rupert Giles...

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Meanwhile, oblivious to Anya's conversation with the other side of the pond, Spike was busy cooling his heels off in the library. As fights go, it was a bleeding sorry affair... one flash of Angel's fang and Albert was spilling the beans left, right and centre. Spike was actually beginning to feel sorry for the poor blighter - until he produced the book, that is.

"What is it?" Angel asked when Wesley whistled as he read the title.

"It's the book of Aelemus," Wesley explained. "He's supposed to be the ruler of the second circle of hell, a rather nasty little demi-god, if memory serves me right."

Spike saw red. "A HELL GOD, let me at him! I'm gonna tear him apart limb from limb..."

"Ahem..."

Spike turned and glared at Fred. "You've got something to say?"

Fred gestured at his transparent hands.

Spike grinned nastily. "I mightn't be able to hit him, but I could still possess him - just think of all the damage I could do while I took his body around for a test drive..." Spike added, his face becoming dreamy as he drifted off mid-sentence.

"You've been thinking about that possibility for quite a while, haven't you," observed Angel.

"Well, what can I say, idle hands and all that," said Spike with a shrug. "Now, where was I..."

"No, no, I'll tell you everything," screeched Albert as he wriggled in Angel's grasp. "Just don't let him near me."

"Obliging little fellow, isn't he?" Wesley said with a grin.

"You can say that again," drawled Gunn.

"Where is the sacrifice?" demanded Angel, lifting Albert off the ground by his lapels.

"There... he's right there," stuttered Albert as he tried to raise his hands to point.

Reluctantly, Angel dropped him. "Where?"

"It's him," Albert said in a small voice. "The souled vampire, the other one, that is," he said, gesturing at Spike.

"Who, me?"

And then, because that sort of thing always seemed to happen when they had better things to do, the building began to shake.

TBC…