Part III
2:25 AM
Dru abruptly began wailing, dropping to her hands and knees while looking all around her with a look of despair. Concerned, Spike wheeled up to his distressed lover and soothed, "What's wrong, Dru? It can't be that bad."
Dru looked up at him, and the anguish in her eyes masked the madness that usually ruled there. "My Angel, my Angel. . .he's lost to me."
Suppressing a smirk, Spike replied, "What happened? Did the Slayer finally finish him off? I told you that a brassed-off Slayer was not something he wanted to mess with. . .oh well, occupational hazard and all that. What's for dinner?"
Dru grabbed his arm before he could turn away. "No. . .no. . .it's worse than that. His nasty old soul has been called back." Her face turned demonic and she howled in despair, "My Jenny has betrayed me!"
Well, what do you know, thought Spike, that Jenny paid off for me far sooner than I would have thought. A moment's further thought caused him to feel rather ambivalent about the whole thing, and he shook Dru to get her attention. "Pet, we've got a problem, then. Now that Angel has gone soft on us again, he'll tell Buffy about what we did to her friend the Gypsy, and maybe to her buddy the Watcher. She'll show up here with the Boy Scout and a lot of energy to burn off. . .we'd best be elsewhere. . .and I think we'd do well to avoid this Slayer until someone knocks her off-she's just too bloody lucky."
Dru looked up at him and smiled, "My Spike always knows the right thing to do." She looked at the wheelchair and whispered, "But that thing will not hasten our departure, love."
Spike smiled broadly and stood up. "Oh, bugger the chair." He gave it a solid kick, knocking it against the wall and shattering it. Dru's eyes widened, then she smiled, "Oh you naughty boy. . .you were playing possum with me. . .I should have known my Spike couldn't be kept down so long by those nasty Slayers."
"You got that right, love," Spike replied, looking as confident as he ever had. Abruptly, he struck Dru, knocking her to the floor and drawing a bead of blood to the corner of her mouth. She looked up at Spike expectantly, seeing that he had assumed his vampiric face. He snarled at her, "If you ever run around on me again, with anyone, I'll rip your arms off and feed them to dogs. Are we clear, pet?"
Dru licked her lips, visibly savoring the taste of blood, as she got to her feet. "My Spike understands me so well." She moved to his arm, and Spike reverted to his human face and just stood there, quite contented, for a moment before turning to Dru and calmly ordering, "Get the car ready, love. I've got to prepare a welcome for the Slayer and her lapdog."
2:40 AM
Buffy dashed through the open front door of the Rosenburg house: she could hear Angel stopping at the threshold, helpless to enter until invited by the occupant of the property. She looked around the room. No Jenny. . .Willow was there, there was Oz, Xander was standing by the wall, Cordelia (who had arrived just before Buffy left, bitching about the time of night) was sitting on the couch. . .where was Giles? She didn't see any bodies, that was good. She took a moment to calm herself, then asked to the room in general: "Where's Giles?"
There was a long silence, and Buffy had a chance to notice the emotional state of her friends. Willow was quietly sobbing, her head buried in Oz's shoulder: he looked as if he had just been gut-punched. Xander was staring blindly at a wall: she wasn't even sure he knew she had come in. Cordelia had an expression of abject shock and horror on her face, but it was the former May Queen who managed to recover sufficiently to answer Buffy's question: "He's gone, Buffy. They're both gone."
The words made no sense to Buffy at first, and when the true meaning of Cordelia's words struck home, she felt as if she had been stabbed through the heart. Tears came to her eyes, and she involuntarily whispered, "No." With a savage effort, she repressed the growing avalanche of despair that threatened to overwhelm her and quietly asked Cordelia, "What happened?"
Tears in her own eyes, Cordelia explained, "Giles and Miss Calendar finished the ceremony, and we were all putting stuff away. I was carrying a dish full of holy water that Willow had poured, and. . .I tripped. Some of the water got on Miss Calendar's hand, and she screamed. . .then she changed. We turned to Giles, and he had changed too. We all froze. . .but they didn't try to bite us or anything. They walked to the door, and Miss Calendar looked at us and said, 'Tell Buffy I'm calling in my favor. Don't come after us.' Then they left." She sank lower into the couch and put her face into her hands.
Oz, looking up at the end of the story, looked at the Slayer and asked, "Did it work?"
Angel, his face a mask of abject misery, moved into clear view in the doorway and replied quietly, "Yes, it did." He remained where he was, and Buffy was about to ask Willow to invite him in when she heard a hate-filled whisper from behind her: "You bastard."
Buffy turned, reflexively prepared to chastise Xander for inappropriate timing before realizing that it wasn't Xander who had spoken. . .it was Willow, who had leapt to her feet and was charging to the startled vampire with pure rage on her face. "Damn you, you killed them both! Monster! Monster!" She flailed away at him, and Angel, who could have restrained her effortlessly, stood there unresisting as she struck him repeatedly, totally out of control.
Buffy was totally frozen. She would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she was feeling more than a few of the emotions that Willow was taking out on Angel. She knew that both Giles and Jenny had been mentor figures to her as well as friends-it wasn't surprising that she was taking it hardest of all of them. But she could hurt herself in this state, and right now the last thing she could tolerate was another of her friends being hurt. She was considering how to deal with it when someone else intervened.
"Willow, stop it. He didn't do it."
Everyone in the room turned to Xander, who had spoken. Willow had a look of utter disbelief as she looked at her oldest friend and snarled, "How can you say that, you of all people? You've always hated him, and now you're defending him, after he killed Giles and Mi-Jenny?" She sank to the ground, crying harder than she had been, and Oz quickly moved over to her, staring daggers at Angel, who seemed confused at the identity of his defender.
Xander walked over to the doorway, looking at Willow with naked concern before turning to Angel with a grim expression on his face. "Look, we've had this conversation before. You know I don't like you. . .I'm sure I never will. Maybe it wasn't fair before, what with you having saved our lives and all, but the bottom line is-you're a vampire, and I'm never going to be okay with that, especially after this whole losing your soul and two of our best friends getting murdered thing." Angel looked away in deep shame, and Xander continued, "But the fact is, when your soul isn't doing a vanishing act, you're one of the good guys, as much as I hate to admit it. If you had been in the driver's seat, this wouldn't have happened, and while I think Buffy might want to take it to heart as to her future dating practices-" he turned to his friend and saw her glower briefly before her own shame became visible, "--right now we need you. We just lost two of our team to the bad guys, and things are looking rather grim right now. Maybe after this whole thing is over, I'm going to feel like kicking your ass into a sunlit meadow. But right now, we need you." He walked up and put his hand on the vampire's shoulder. "How about it?"
Buffy was shocked. Who was this guy and what had he done with Xander? She walked over to Willow and put her arm around the sobbing redhead. "Willow," she whispered, "I really need you right now, and we need him." She moved around so that she could look into Willow's tear-reddened eyes and asked, "Can we do this?"
With a strength that made Buffy admire her shy friend more than she ever had, Willow got to her feet, wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at Angel, who was sadly looking at her. "Angel, please come in." She turned and went over to the couch where Cordelia was, leaning back with an utterly drained look on her face.
Buffy knew that the only way that she was going to be able to avoid sinking into useless despair was to keep working. She pinched her brow and asked the universe in general, "What were they after? Why did they help to restore Angel's soul?" She frowned and turned to Angel, "Wait a minute. . .didn't you tell me that Angelus had told Jenny to break Giles' neck?"
Angel frowned and replied, "Yes. He wanted to hurt you badly, but leave Jenny in a position to do further harm from a hidden position. Not a great planner, Angelus." He frowned and continued, "Angelus would have been very angry if he had known she turned Giles without his permission. . .he would have killed her for it. She must have known that." He turned to Buffy and it hit him suddenly: "They were planning on getting out of town all along! They hoped that you would be too distracted by my return to interfere. . .perhaps they even hoped that you would feel some sense of gratitude, and not follow them."
Buffy's face was grim as she replied, "Then they were sadly mistaken. My promise wasn't made to a demon, it was made to Jenny, and I know she wouldn't want a vampire with her face causing terror in the world. I certainly know Giles would have felt that way." She got to her feet and started for the door. "Come on, let's find them and get it over with." The anguish that had been with her since she had heard the news threatened to overwhelm her, but she ruthlessly forced it down.
Angel stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "Wait. . .I think I have a better idea." The Slayer looked at her former lover and snapped, "What? Damn it, it's going to be hard enough to do this without having to agonize over it!"
Angel smiled: the expression was so out of place in the current situation that everyone noticed and stared at the newly re-ensouled vampire. He elaborated, "If Willow will assist, I think we can make the best out of a bad situation here."
Willow slowly got to her feet and walked up to Angel: she almost sounded like her old self as she replied quietly, "I'll do whatever it takes to help, Angel."
He nodded and continued, "Buffy and I will have to find them first, then we can implement the plan. The best thing about it is, there will be a certain measure of justice in the whole thing."
Buffy was puzzled by the cryptic nature of his final comment. "What, do you mean for the two vampires?"
Angel shook his head and explained laconically: "For Angelus."
3:20 AM
He finished packing the things that would come in handy on the trip ahead: weapons, holy water in case others of their kind decided to interfere with their flight, and all of the cash that Giles had stashed in the apartment-he had never fully trusted banks. Next to him, he could see that she was carrying the small bag that she had taken from Jenny's apartment. He shook his head in amusement: who would have thought, a woman who knew how to travel light? He turned to her and said, "Time to go, love." They walked out of the front door of the apartment, not bothering to close it. As they walked outside, they both saw the flickering light on the horizon: the factory was burning. She chuckled and commented, "It seems that Dru has prophesized the need to leave town abruptly." They laughed and continued down the sidewalk towards Giles' car-
"Leaving town so suddenly? You know, you ought to at least pick up your cleaning deposits. . .that can be some serious money."
The vampires whirled. Buffy and Angel stood twenty feet in front of them: she was the one who had spoken. Her expression was grim, with a touch of smugness that didn't fit somehow. Angel's face was visibly pained, but determined. The vampire that had been Jenny Calendar snarled at Buffy, "Damn you! I gave you your lover back! Why can't you let us leave in peace?"
Buffy, unmoved, replied, "Sorry, not in the job description. Not to mention the people whose bodies you've stolen wouldn't want me to."
"So what now?" The Giles vampire seemed resigned to his fate: the knowledge contained in the Watcher's memories surely told him that the two of them had no chance in battle against Buffy and Angel. "What will it be? Staking? Beheading? Leaving us staked out to wait for the sunrise?"
Buffy smiled coldly and replied, "We've come up with a plan that works for us." With that, Buffy and Angel brought out the tranquilizer guns that they had concealed behind their backs and fired simultaneously. The two vampires cried out in shock, then crumpled bonelessly to the sidewalk. Buffy and Angel looked at each other grimly, then picked up the inert bodies and carried them towards the school.
As always, comments are welcome and desired.
2:25 AM
Dru abruptly began wailing, dropping to her hands and knees while looking all around her with a look of despair. Concerned, Spike wheeled up to his distressed lover and soothed, "What's wrong, Dru? It can't be that bad."
Dru looked up at him, and the anguish in her eyes masked the madness that usually ruled there. "My Angel, my Angel. . .he's lost to me."
Suppressing a smirk, Spike replied, "What happened? Did the Slayer finally finish him off? I told you that a brassed-off Slayer was not something he wanted to mess with. . .oh well, occupational hazard and all that. What's for dinner?"
Dru grabbed his arm before he could turn away. "No. . .no. . .it's worse than that. His nasty old soul has been called back." Her face turned demonic and she howled in despair, "My Jenny has betrayed me!"
Well, what do you know, thought Spike, that Jenny paid off for me far sooner than I would have thought. A moment's further thought caused him to feel rather ambivalent about the whole thing, and he shook Dru to get her attention. "Pet, we've got a problem, then. Now that Angel has gone soft on us again, he'll tell Buffy about what we did to her friend the Gypsy, and maybe to her buddy the Watcher. She'll show up here with the Boy Scout and a lot of energy to burn off. . .we'd best be elsewhere. . .and I think we'd do well to avoid this Slayer until someone knocks her off-she's just too bloody lucky."
Dru looked up at him and smiled, "My Spike always knows the right thing to do." She looked at the wheelchair and whispered, "But that thing will not hasten our departure, love."
Spike smiled broadly and stood up. "Oh, bugger the chair." He gave it a solid kick, knocking it against the wall and shattering it. Dru's eyes widened, then she smiled, "Oh you naughty boy. . .you were playing possum with me. . .I should have known my Spike couldn't be kept down so long by those nasty Slayers."
"You got that right, love," Spike replied, looking as confident as he ever had. Abruptly, he struck Dru, knocking her to the floor and drawing a bead of blood to the corner of her mouth. She looked up at Spike expectantly, seeing that he had assumed his vampiric face. He snarled at her, "If you ever run around on me again, with anyone, I'll rip your arms off and feed them to dogs. Are we clear, pet?"
Dru licked her lips, visibly savoring the taste of blood, as she got to her feet. "My Spike understands me so well." She moved to his arm, and Spike reverted to his human face and just stood there, quite contented, for a moment before turning to Dru and calmly ordering, "Get the car ready, love. I've got to prepare a welcome for the Slayer and her lapdog."
2:40 AM
Buffy dashed through the open front door of the Rosenburg house: she could hear Angel stopping at the threshold, helpless to enter until invited by the occupant of the property. She looked around the room. No Jenny. . .Willow was there, there was Oz, Xander was standing by the wall, Cordelia (who had arrived just before Buffy left, bitching about the time of night) was sitting on the couch. . .where was Giles? She didn't see any bodies, that was good. She took a moment to calm herself, then asked to the room in general: "Where's Giles?"
There was a long silence, and Buffy had a chance to notice the emotional state of her friends. Willow was quietly sobbing, her head buried in Oz's shoulder: he looked as if he had just been gut-punched. Xander was staring blindly at a wall: she wasn't even sure he knew she had come in. Cordelia had an expression of abject shock and horror on her face, but it was the former May Queen who managed to recover sufficiently to answer Buffy's question: "He's gone, Buffy. They're both gone."
The words made no sense to Buffy at first, and when the true meaning of Cordelia's words struck home, she felt as if she had been stabbed through the heart. Tears came to her eyes, and she involuntarily whispered, "No." With a savage effort, she repressed the growing avalanche of despair that threatened to overwhelm her and quietly asked Cordelia, "What happened?"
Tears in her own eyes, Cordelia explained, "Giles and Miss Calendar finished the ceremony, and we were all putting stuff away. I was carrying a dish full of holy water that Willow had poured, and. . .I tripped. Some of the water got on Miss Calendar's hand, and she screamed. . .then she changed. We turned to Giles, and he had changed too. We all froze. . .but they didn't try to bite us or anything. They walked to the door, and Miss Calendar looked at us and said, 'Tell Buffy I'm calling in my favor. Don't come after us.' Then they left." She sank lower into the couch and put her face into her hands.
Oz, looking up at the end of the story, looked at the Slayer and asked, "Did it work?"
Angel, his face a mask of abject misery, moved into clear view in the doorway and replied quietly, "Yes, it did." He remained where he was, and Buffy was about to ask Willow to invite him in when she heard a hate-filled whisper from behind her: "You bastard."
Buffy turned, reflexively prepared to chastise Xander for inappropriate timing before realizing that it wasn't Xander who had spoken. . .it was Willow, who had leapt to her feet and was charging to the startled vampire with pure rage on her face. "Damn you, you killed them both! Monster! Monster!" She flailed away at him, and Angel, who could have restrained her effortlessly, stood there unresisting as she struck him repeatedly, totally out of control.
Buffy was totally frozen. She would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she was feeling more than a few of the emotions that Willow was taking out on Angel. She knew that both Giles and Jenny had been mentor figures to her as well as friends-it wasn't surprising that she was taking it hardest of all of them. But she could hurt herself in this state, and right now the last thing she could tolerate was another of her friends being hurt. She was considering how to deal with it when someone else intervened.
"Willow, stop it. He didn't do it."
Everyone in the room turned to Xander, who had spoken. Willow had a look of utter disbelief as she looked at her oldest friend and snarled, "How can you say that, you of all people? You've always hated him, and now you're defending him, after he killed Giles and Mi-Jenny?" She sank to the ground, crying harder than she had been, and Oz quickly moved over to her, staring daggers at Angel, who seemed confused at the identity of his defender.
Xander walked over to the doorway, looking at Willow with naked concern before turning to Angel with a grim expression on his face. "Look, we've had this conversation before. You know I don't like you. . .I'm sure I never will. Maybe it wasn't fair before, what with you having saved our lives and all, but the bottom line is-you're a vampire, and I'm never going to be okay with that, especially after this whole losing your soul and two of our best friends getting murdered thing." Angel looked away in deep shame, and Xander continued, "But the fact is, when your soul isn't doing a vanishing act, you're one of the good guys, as much as I hate to admit it. If you had been in the driver's seat, this wouldn't have happened, and while I think Buffy might want to take it to heart as to her future dating practices-" he turned to his friend and saw her glower briefly before her own shame became visible, "--right now we need you. We just lost two of our team to the bad guys, and things are looking rather grim right now. Maybe after this whole thing is over, I'm going to feel like kicking your ass into a sunlit meadow. But right now, we need you." He walked up and put his hand on the vampire's shoulder. "How about it?"
Buffy was shocked. Who was this guy and what had he done with Xander? She walked over to Willow and put her arm around the sobbing redhead. "Willow," she whispered, "I really need you right now, and we need him." She moved around so that she could look into Willow's tear-reddened eyes and asked, "Can we do this?"
With a strength that made Buffy admire her shy friend more than she ever had, Willow got to her feet, wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at Angel, who was sadly looking at her. "Angel, please come in." She turned and went over to the couch where Cordelia was, leaning back with an utterly drained look on her face.
Buffy knew that the only way that she was going to be able to avoid sinking into useless despair was to keep working. She pinched her brow and asked the universe in general, "What were they after? Why did they help to restore Angel's soul?" She frowned and turned to Angel, "Wait a minute. . .didn't you tell me that Angelus had told Jenny to break Giles' neck?"
Angel frowned and replied, "Yes. He wanted to hurt you badly, but leave Jenny in a position to do further harm from a hidden position. Not a great planner, Angelus." He frowned and continued, "Angelus would have been very angry if he had known she turned Giles without his permission. . .he would have killed her for it. She must have known that." He turned to Buffy and it hit him suddenly: "They were planning on getting out of town all along! They hoped that you would be too distracted by my return to interfere. . .perhaps they even hoped that you would feel some sense of gratitude, and not follow them."
Buffy's face was grim as she replied, "Then they were sadly mistaken. My promise wasn't made to a demon, it was made to Jenny, and I know she wouldn't want a vampire with her face causing terror in the world. I certainly know Giles would have felt that way." She got to her feet and started for the door. "Come on, let's find them and get it over with." The anguish that had been with her since she had heard the news threatened to overwhelm her, but she ruthlessly forced it down.
Angel stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "Wait. . .I think I have a better idea." The Slayer looked at her former lover and snapped, "What? Damn it, it's going to be hard enough to do this without having to agonize over it!"
Angel smiled: the expression was so out of place in the current situation that everyone noticed and stared at the newly re-ensouled vampire. He elaborated, "If Willow will assist, I think we can make the best out of a bad situation here."
Willow slowly got to her feet and walked up to Angel: she almost sounded like her old self as she replied quietly, "I'll do whatever it takes to help, Angel."
He nodded and continued, "Buffy and I will have to find them first, then we can implement the plan. The best thing about it is, there will be a certain measure of justice in the whole thing."
Buffy was puzzled by the cryptic nature of his final comment. "What, do you mean for the two vampires?"
Angel shook his head and explained laconically: "For Angelus."
3:20 AM
He finished packing the things that would come in handy on the trip ahead: weapons, holy water in case others of their kind decided to interfere with their flight, and all of the cash that Giles had stashed in the apartment-he had never fully trusted banks. Next to him, he could see that she was carrying the small bag that she had taken from Jenny's apartment. He shook his head in amusement: who would have thought, a woman who knew how to travel light? He turned to her and said, "Time to go, love." They walked out of the front door of the apartment, not bothering to close it. As they walked outside, they both saw the flickering light on the horizon: the factory was burning. She chuckled and commented, "It seems that Dru has prophesized the need to leave town abruptly." They laughed and continued down the sidewalk towards Giles' car-
"Leaving town so suddenly? You know, you ought to at least pick up your cleaning deposits. . .that can be some serious money."
The vampires whirled. Buffy and Angel stood twenty feet in front of them: she was the one who had spoken. Her expression was grim, with a touch of smugness that didn't fit somehow. Angel's face was visibly pained, but determined. The vampire that had been Jenny Calendar snarled at Buffy, "Damn you! I gave you your lover back! Why can't you let us leave in peace?"
Buffy, unmoved, replied, "Sorry, not in the job description. Not to mention the people whose bodies you've stolen wouldn't want me to."
"So what now?" The Giles vampire seemed resigned to his fate: the knowledge contained in the Watcher's memories surely told him that the two of them had no chance in battle against Buffy and Angel. "What will it be? Staking? Beheading? Leaving us staked out to wait for the sunrise?"
Buffy smiled coldly and replied, "We've come up with a plan that works for us." With that, Buffy and Angel brought out the tranquilizer guns that they had concealed behind their backs and fired simultaneously. The two vampires cried out in shock, then crumpled bonelessly to the sidewalk. Buffy and Angel looked at each other grimly, then picked up the inert bodies and carried them towards the school.
As always, comments are welcome and desired.