Chapter 15

Everything happened so fast that he didn't have chance to think things trough. His clenched fist met Vin's jaw just as the vampire raised his right hand and displayed a long knife. He could feel how the blow made Vin stagger backwards. Even though the knife couldn't kill him Spike was well aware that a deep cut would still hurt like hell.

"Spike?" he heard Buffy gasp from somewhere in the room, but he wasn't sure from exactly where. There were black spots in front of his eyes, and a sharp pain in his chest. Frowning deeply he slowly looked down at his chest. A black handle stuck out from his body and it was impossible to see where the knife ended and Spike's body began. He could feel how his black T- shirt became damp with blood.

"Spike!" Buffy yelled, now desperate for him to answer.

Suddenly his knees bent from under him and he fell to the floor. He tried to think a clear thought, but it was as if a fog surrounded his mind.

"What-" he murmured, but his lips went numb before he finished the sentence. Not until he lay sprawled on the floor did he realize that he couldn't move at all.

"What the hell have you done to him?" he heard Buffy yell, he couldn't tell for sure whether or not she was still in the same room; her voice sounded muffled, and all he could see was the white ceiling. Vin or the Master might have answered her, but Spike blacked out before he had a chance to hear it.

Drusilla was there; Spike knew it the moment he opened his eyes. She looked just the way she always had, her dark hair hanging loosely around her pale face and she wore a long blood-red gown. The sight of her filled him with wonderment and warmth, but somewhere deep down a voice was screaming at him to get away, screaming that something wasn't the way it should be.

"You're bleeding," she said, her voice sounding as if she was reading a gripping poem. "Pretty little droplets, painting you're skin a wonderful red." Then she sighed unhappily and kneeled beside him. With a long, painted fingernail she caressed the skin around the open wound; round and round, so light that he could barely feel it. A wound? Where had he gotten that?

Spike tried to talk, but she put a cold finger on his lips to quiet him.

"Before, you gave it to me, but now you don't want too." She ignored his desperate protests and went on. "Your borrowed blood is all for her. All hers now, there's no going back. You've already given her all of it, not even a drop left for you. But there was nothing else to do, I always knew that. I could see it the moment I met her - the moment I met you, my William. All the blood spilled, but to what use?" She frowned and stared into the darkness that surrounded them. Suddenly she jumped up and stared down at him in confusion.

"I can't see!" she screamed in anger and fear. "A sign, I see a sign, and another, and another, and another..." She repeated it over and over again, each time fainter and weaker than the one before. "There is so many ways," Drusilla finally whispered. "All of them so different."

Once again she focused all of her attention on Spike, and he found himself just staring at her, not knowing what to say or do. The feeling that this wasn't real grew stronger within him, but he forced himself to ignore it; for with it came a sense of terrible loss.

"Am I dead?" he asked her, and for some reason that possibility didn't scare or unnerve him.

"Always," she whispered, almost seductively. "You've always been dead, even when you were alive. Death is you, and pain. Everywhere there is pain, and most of it is yours. The cats shrieks at the sight of you!"

"What-?" he asked in confusion, but she started to fade away in front of his eyes, and the darkness became even blacker.

"Delicious blood everywhere," was the last thing he heard her say.

They had chained her to the wall, so close to his lifeless body that she could almost touch him. Spike was chained too, even though he had been unconscious for over an hour now. Several times Buffy had tried to get her silent guards to talk to her; to answer some questions on why they were doing this, why they hadn't just killed her, until finally she realized they couldn't, even if they wanted to. The disgusting memory of what was left of one of the vampires' tongues repeatedly played in her head, and she wished she hadn't been so adamant in her pursuit for answers.

The guard seemed to have finally had enough of her questions, for he had leaned down so that his face almost touched hers and slowly opened his mouth and shown her what had been done to him. But what had been worse was the obvious pleasure he'd seemed to get from watching her reaction. When Buffy tried to look away he took a firm grip of her jaw and forced her to look straight at him, and when she shut her eyes he squeezed until she opened them again. It had to have been done recently, because it was not yet completely healed; she'd seen fresh blood in his mouth that she didn't think came from anyone else.

She guessed that the same thing had happened to the other guard, for he had not said a word either. But she really just wanted to forget about it, there had to be a way she and Spike could get out of the mess they were in, she just couldn't figure out what it was yet.

When Spike suddenly groaned on the floor beside her she felt a wave of relief run trough her. Since he'd been cut by Vin's knife he had neither moved nor said a word, not even when one of the guards had dragged him by his feet on the floor to the room in which they were now. Buffy knew that he wasn't dead, at least not dead-dead, but she'd been worried about him. Her whole body had been tense, and she'd constantly wondered if he would suddenly go Poof! and turn into a pile of ashes. Quite frankly that had been one of the main reasons to why she hadn't been able to figure out anything even close to an escape plan; no matter what she'd been trying to concentrate on her mind had wandered back to him.

Spike slowly opened his eyes, squinting them as if the dim lighting hurt him.

"Hi there," Buffy whispered softly, hoping that the guard wouldn't hear it. They didn't even look their way, but that didn't mean they weren't listening.

"Buffy?" he asked weakly. "What are you-. Where are we?" He tried to move, but he had no strength left in his body.

While keeping an eye on the guards, Buffy leaned closer to him until her arm almost touched his.

"In the basement. We were captured," she told him. "Vin had poisoned the knife with something, and as soon as you were unconscious they took us here. I tried to fight back, but-" she paused and got an angry expression on her face. "The Master was too strong. Much stronger than in our dimension, I fought as hard as I could, and I couldn't even make him stagger."

She frowned thoughtfully and stretched out her legs in front of her. "They obviously have something planned for us, but I don't know what. The only thing I'm sure of is that Vin lied to us the entire time. Luckily they seem to need us alive, otherwise they'd killed us a long time ago; they've definitely had their chances. They could come in here right now and we'd have no chance whatsoever to defend ourselves."

She would have continued, but was interrupted by the door opening. In came Vin, and immediately the guards stood up straight and looked down at their feet. Without giving them so much as a glance Vin walked up to Spike and Buffy with a sly grin on his face.

"Good, you're awake," he said, and grinned wider. "I was hoping you would be. Doesn't really matter as long as you're conscious for the ceremony, but it's more fun like this. For me, at least." He put his hand inside his coat pocket and took out a silvery key.

"I'll take of your chains, but don't even think about causing trouble, Slayer. I'll start with Spike here, and my guards will take care of him. If you try anything, anything at all things won't look so good for your little pet vampire." Spike growled dangerously, but Vin took no notice. "They wont kill him, he's too important for us to do that, as I guess you've already figured out, but there's a whole lot of things one can do to a vampire without killing him. A. Lot."

He didn't even wait for Buffy to answer before he motioned for the two vampires to approach and he put the key into the lock to Spike's chains. Seconds later Spike half leaned, half hanged onto one of the guards; he still could barely lift an arm.

"Now, lets all go and get this over with," Vin said and freed Buffy.

A/N: Don't really know what to say other than that I apologize again for the slow updates. Between school, friends and other things in my every day life there's not much room for writing. And the fact that I'd actually finished this story (it just needed some final changes) and then everything on my computer was deleted wasn't a big help. Re-writing the entire thing is a long and slow process, and I can't stop thinking that I want to come up with a new ending... Anyway, that's my big excuse.