Voila: Part 6! It's rather long but I'm sure you won't mind.
I've debating whether to say this or not, but it's bothering me and hopefully I'll feel better once I've said it. This is my twist on this challenge, and so everything I write is part on my personal interpretation of BtVS, because this is fanfiction and it can't not be. So if you don't like this story then just stop reading it and say nothing more, I have nothing against constructive criticism, in fact I beg you to tell me how to make this better but if you have nothing constructive to say please don't say it.
On the other hand I'm extremely grateful for the number of fans I have of this fic for sending me there encouragement, it's definitely making this progress faster… and I'll try and sort out Angelus… he's just escaping me at the moment. Special kudos goes to: kirina,
Oh yes this part contains a little bit of speech borrowed from the episode 'The Initiative' Just because it fitted and I didn't see much point in changing it. Anyway, I was working from a transcript by umm… actually don't speak French so if this makes any sense to anyone credit to who it says credit to: "Scénario: Doug Petrie, Réalisation: James A.Contner, Original English Copyright (c) 1999 Jillian Tatterton Visit the site: . I got it from Psyche anyway.
Weasy
Part Six-
//Now the rain is falling slow, and the nights grow long, and the train, cries out so hauntingly, she is gone//
Giles left the safety of the rooms the Council had provided for him and started to pace the streets of London, the alley the safe house was on led to a small park. It had been beautiful in the day a quiet little village green in the middle of a crowded city, but in the brittle wind and driving rain it felt like the California graveyards. Cold and dark couldn't sum it up in the centre there was nothing but rolling miles of grass there were no streetlights except by the entrances and the occasional sculpted border or lake was a black mark on the horizon. The central gazebo rose like a tomb, reigning over the gardens. The statue of an angel it covered was overgrown with moss and ivy, it's hands which had been raised to the sky in exaltation were now grasping at the air to save the fallen angel from drowning in the earth that threatened to overcome it.
Lost in thought, it took almost five minutes to realise he was not alone there. A feeling he couldn't describe came over him, it was a terrible sense of importance not self-importance but of what was happening around him, and that he was meant to be there, listening in.
"Willow, don't feel bad." The hushed voices where coming from the stone summer houses next to one of the more secluded ponds and the running water made it difficult for Giles to hear. He crept forward and found a hiding place where he could hear and see the clandestine meeting without being seen.
"How can I not?" Willow returned and the man made some scuffling noises moving around to envelop the small female in a hug, but she pushed him away. "The council used me Xander!" she stifled a sob and he couls practically feel the anger building in her, more than that Giles could practically taste the magic building in her veins. This petite woman had power beyond his own, perhaps. No. He couldn't interrupt this event, he had a very strong feeling that if he did things would only got worse.
"The council are the good guys remember? You know that what we're doing is for the best. You saved that Slayer's life! While she's in the Initiative the council can help her shake off the thrall the vampire has on her."
"No! You don't understand. I could see what they were doing to her how much pain they were putting her through, I could feel it. And I locked her in there, I used a masking spell to incarcerate her underground with scitzo scientists… the pain it's overwhelming I wanted to die it hurt so much."
"Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind." Xander replied, he was angry there was none of the kindness there had been in his voice, he took and step back from Willow, into the lee of the summer house, and Giles could barely see him anymore. "Those demons, vampires she was associating with… she's sick… the scientists can help her. Come on Willow, you're the clever one there scientists for a reason!"
"There scientists because they passed some exams! It has nothing to do with anything, they're so cold so cruel. They don't know what they're doing that can't mix magic and science!" She was crying now her voice hitching noisily with very breath and broken sob. "She's bound to a vampire and they're trying to break the bond with science."
"Let them! She can't be tied to a filthy vampire for the rest of her life!"
"She will be! She doesn't have a choice, if that bond is broken she'll be worse than dead a living corpse, an insane slayer, Xander. Understand this if you refuse to feel for her. If they break than bond her power will be insurmountable, and she'll use it to hurt everyone who ever hurt her. They'll see then, what they've done. If you won't help her, you'll see too." Willow's pathetic sniffling ended abruptly and the tone of the girl's voice distorted out of recognition, it was hollow and empty. Even from Giles distance from the girl he could see the changes in her, her very self seemed to grow darker and yet brighter even against the night behind her. "'The fires will burn around the twisted wrecks of time until the very end, and at that moment the death-bringer will turn away from the saviours and all those that tried to crush the fire within them. Because the soldiers have no weakness they are weak and the fire in the death-bringer died but is roaring, death and life and within it and it will not let them pass over, but they will live in their pain forever. For the end is never nigh, and is always present.'" Giles drew in a sharp breath as the proclamation was over the tiny girl collapsed breathing heavily on the floor of the summer house and the boy drew her close to him, trying to pull her up and help her walk.
"Willow, come on we have to move, they'll be coming now." She didn't respond and the boy shook her harder and cast furtive glances around them. "Willow!" he hissed and she finally grunted a response. Giles let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding as he watched them stumble away into the inky blackness of the night.
Spike was pacing the tight confines of his cell, Buffy was still asleep having just returned from wherever her latest torture session had taken place. He could smell her magic slayer blood wasting on the floor of his cell and it was driving him insane with hunger. When a sachet of blood feel from the ceiling he started at it for fully five minutes before reaching out to touch it. He couldn't quite work out if the bag of B positive in front of him was a hallucination from lack of blood. When the bad didn't pass through his fingers and vanish Spike seized it and vamped out to eat from it.
"Don't drink it. It's drugged." A voice across the hall warned and he looked across to see a gangly vampire seating in the cell next to Buffy's. Throwing the pack down in frustration he turned and glared at the fledging who had spoken to him.
"Uh-huh and who are you mate?" He demanded.
"I'm a rat. I'm a lab rat, just like the others. They're gonna kill us, you know." For a moment Spike saw visions of Drusilla her insane that babble that always made sense afterwards.
"And how are they gonna do that?" Spike question, there was no sense scaring the boy yet, not till he knew all he could.
"They starve you. When you're ready to bite your own arm, they shoot out one of those packets. You drink, and the next thing, you're gone. And that's when they do the experiments."
"And, uh, they are? The government? Nazis? A major cosmetics company?"
"Who cares? All I know is, one minute I'm running from the slayer, And the next thing, I'm here."
"Looks your luck turned for the worse, Slayers your new neighbour." A look of fear crossed the vampires face and then he straightened defiantly. Spike had to give him credit for his balls. But it wasn't getting him anywhere. "She's the master's now, I have to get her out of here, if you help I'll get you out too."
"And if I don't?"
"Angelus'll rip you limb from limb." The vampire made up his mind remarkably quickly.
Spike lay on the floor unconscious, Beside him the sachet of blood was empty. Buffy watched as two lab coated men let down the shield for his cage, they grabbed him by the lapels of his leather coat and it occurred to Buffy through her drug muddled mind that Spike would be very cross if they damaged his coat. The scientists dragged him onto a wheeled hospital bed. They started to pull thick leather straps over him when Spike's hand shot up, and with his eyes still closed he pinned the man in a crushing grip around his throat.
"Sorry, can't stay." Spike quipped before jumping off the gourney. The other man tried to rush him but Spike grabbed his outstretched arm and used his momentum to flip him over and he continues to roll in a broken fall to the ground, Spike jumped after the man. Revelling in the fight and was slammed into one of the electric walls by the man.
The vampire inside paced agitatedly by the entrance to his cell. "Let me out!" He demanded
"Bit busy right now." Spike grunted and threw the man off him and into the other scientist who accidentally stabbed him in the neck with a syringe he had been preparing presumable for Spike. The man gave his friend a surprised look before collapsing to the floor unconscious. The second scientist tried to run away scared but Spike was back before he had a chance, and a second later the man's neck was broken. For a moment it occurred to Buffy she should have felt something after witnessing the death of the scientist but she could feel nothing.
Spike hurriedly pulled everything out of the pockets of the dead man and grabbed the security card from the contents. Jumping up he shoved the key into the lock on the other vampire's door. The door opened with a smooth click and the vampire ran out and hopped impatiently from one foot to another while Spike turned to Buffy's door. Shoving the key into the lock into Buffy's door he reached in the cell to grab her from inside. But his hand was met by the electric force field. Jumping away he took in the alarms that had roared around him.
"Sorry Buffy, I'll back." Spike told her before he ran after the other vampire. They run down the hall and quickly ran under the closing security door. When they ran into the next room they were met by an entourage of commando soldiers.
"New plan! We split up. You go that way" Spike shoved the vampire into the commandos and fled down the other corridor whipping around the complex's corridor's lead by instinct only.
The next day Giles sat in Travers' office, drinking a cup of tea and idly discussed the British weather. Buffy had once asked him why only British people discussed the weather and he told her that only British people *had* weather. That certainly wasn't true, the last week since Buffy had gone missing had thrown a mountain of extreme weather at California, it was though nature itself missed her presence.
"Giles. You could at least pretend you are listening." Travers reprimanded him, and although Giles had been relived of his duties to the man the year before he still felt guilty for behaving improperly, irrational though it was. Inside him Ripper growled to be released and teach Quentin respect for the way he was intensifying his pain. But if the stifling bureaucracy of the Council was the only way to find Buffy that was the path he would take.
"Sorry." He mumbled. "Perhaps we could start a location spell for Buffy?"
"Of course." Quentin eyed him for a moment as though he was going to say more then changed his mind. Pressing an intercom button on his desk he spoke into a handset. "Please send the shaman through, Margaret." He leaned back in his chair and a robbed figure came into the room. The shaman's sex was disguised under the thick lengths of robe but the figure seemed to be too small to be a man. The shaman said nothing just nodded to Quentin before moving over to the round table in the centre of the room. Giles had risen when the Shaman came into the room and Travers did so now, drawing the blinds across the thick office windows in the room. Now that the blinds were closed and the room was cloaked in darkness the shaman pulled down their hood. And Giles was startled to realise it was the woman he'd seen the night before. She looked young, probably still in her late teens, and a screen of dark red hair framed her delicate face. Despite her youth she seemed unnerved by the task demanded of her and pulled out the ingredients required for a location spell and began to set it up without being asked.
Two vials were pulled from the small collection she had set up to her right. She held one in her right hand, it contained red sand, and the one in her left hand contained black sand. She whispered something under her breath and the corks stopping the vials eases themselves out and graceful settled with the rest of the ingredients. Willow used the vials to simultaneous pour the sand out into the table in a circle, her right hand travelled clockwise and her left anti-clockwise, until there was two perfect circles on the table. She put the vials down, and the corks automatically floated up to stopper them. She picked up another vial, this time filled with white sand. With this she drew six vertical lines in the circle, all the same height and width. That vial was put away in turn. The only item left to her right was a single leather pouch and she tipped the contents into the palm of her hand. The sand that sat in her palm was much finer than that she had used before but was a mix of the same three primal colours: red, black and white. Willow stood still for a moment chanting a mantra under her breath and the magic that he had seen flow in her the day before same over her again turning her hair a fraction darker again. Giles watched with bated breath as she blew the sand out of the palm of her hand and onto the circle in front of her, her eyes snapping open as she did so. She looked Giles straight in the eye as she did so and he saw the recognition there. She lowered her eyes, as though in shame, Giles followed her eyes and saw that the sand had scattered randomly over the circle. The spell had failed.
"I'm sorry." Willow spoke for the first time and gathering her things before practically ran from the room.
"She's young." Quentin intoned breaking Giles from his reverie, "perhaps if I got an older Shaman to do the spell we could-"
"No." Giles replied, surprising himself, as much as Quentin. "She did the spell perfectly. If it didn't work then her location is being hidden by magic or she is dead."
"Then we can't help you." Travers replied coolly.
"No. I will return to America and continue to search for her there, I've had some inspiration whilst I was in England, I have an idea of where to look." Giles turned and picking up his coat left to go to America. He didn't call Travers on his involvement with Buffy's kidnap, that he knew the spell wouldn't work and that even more importantly he knew where they had taken her. The confrontation could wait until he had found Buffy alive and then? Then Ripper would come out to play.