Spike looked up at the white ceiling and groaned he had woken five minutes ago being prodded and poked by a demon medic – it hadn't been pleasant and now there was no one in his room but him. The vampire strained against his bindings. The pain in his head was gone and he figured that was down to the medic and Wesley, he owed them a thanks.
Right now though his mind was on Buffy and just thinking about her made him strain even more and he sat up pushing with all his strength against the straps that held him across the chest, the waist and the legs, his arms were pinned to his sides. Using all his strength meant he vamped out but he got the job done and the binding around his chest tore so that he could sit completely upright. Then it was just a matter of pulling his hands free and unbuckling the other two bindings.
Spike jumped up off the gurney and landed on the floor he put his hand to his head and it didn't come back with blood. He picked up a shiny metal bedpan and looked at himself in it. There was no wound on his head anymore and he felt good. Ready to get the Slayer back. Somehow.
He grabbed up his duster and shirt that had been removed somewhere down the line and draped over a chair. He pulled the items of clothing on quickly and then left the room.
Spike made his way through Fred's lab and he got a few stares from her science people. He just ignored them and strolled quickly to the elevator. The vampire didn't doubt that Angel was already looking for Buffy but he would go about it using his connections with Wolfram and Hart. Having seen the eyes of the driver Spike was pretty sure that it was a demon and that his demon contacts may be able to help. He took the elevator down to below ground level and walked into Angel's car lot. All the shiny, new, expensive cars were there meaning that Angel had not left the building as he had suspected. Spike climbed into the silver Viper and hot-wired it. He turned and sped out of the car lot and up into the streets of Los Angeles.
Angel could do things his way.
Spike was gonna find Buffy his own way. As he turned sharply around a corner he thought about tonight the way he had just stormed off like a stupid git and left the Slayer to get outnumbered and attacked. If he had run faster, if he had never rowed with her, if he had never tried to take her out...there were a lot of ifs and he couldn't change any of them.
The vampire turned the radio on and cranked it onto a heavy rock station because he couldn't listen to his own moronic thoughts anymore. None of this would help Buffy. He needed to concentrate of the job at hand. He put his foot down harder on the accelerator and turned a corner so sharply he skidded swiftly.
Spike pulled into a side road outside a small house that was pretty much rundown and looked like no one inhabited it. He knew better. He jumped out of the Viper and strolled down the path, knocked frantically at the door over and over until the little window slid open in the center of the door. A small, dark green-eyed face with blue skin peeked out.
"Spike" The little demon hissed "Nice to see you again, how can I –"
"Demon with red eyes that have small white pupils – what are they, where can I find 'em and how do I kill 'em?" Spike interrupted and then gritted his teeth.
The demon looked at him with those green eyes "I know not of any demons who –"
"Don't lie to me!" He pounded his fist on the door.
"There is no such demon!" The small window in the door was slid shut again.
Spike kicked and punched at the door and then he leaned his forehead against it and closed his eyes taking deep, useless breaths. He slammed his fists against the door one more time and then turned abruptly and walked back up the path. He climbed back into the Viper and peeled away from the curb putting pedal to the metal and tearing up the roads. He wasn't about to give up on her. Buffy was tough. Buffy wouldn't get hurt. Buffy was his.
When Buffy had awoken ten minutes earlier to find she was still naked, tied to the ceiling with her feet barely touching the floor in a cage she let out a groan of annoyance. She was half wishing it had all been a terrible dream and that she would be back in England snuggled in her bed in Giles' house. Alas, that was not so and she had a killer pain in her thigh that reminded her of the whole blood letting thing. Except that she didn't exactly let them take her blood.
Katia was still knocked out and Buffy saw a fresh wound on the girl's neck. She had turned away and tried not to think about some vampires drinking a bottle of House Buffy. Instead she spent her time getting some swinging momentum going on her chain and then wrapping her feet around a bar on her cage, she yanked as hard as she could but the cage just rattled and did not give. So then she tried swinging again and then kicking the bars; this made it rattle even more but not enough. The vibrations reverberated up her legs and it shook her bones painfully. She wasn't about to give up just yet – that wasn't what being the Slayer was about. Buffy started swinging a little again and then built up the momentum again putting her legs up in the air and putting all of her weight on her wrists and hands clutching the chains. She looked like she was on some invisible swing and, god, did she wish that she was so that the manacles wouldn't be cutting into her wrists so much and making blood run in a tickling line down her arms. This time she slammed into the bars with all of her strength going into it and the cage door dislodge on its hinges a little. Buffy let out a cry of triumph but she was exhausted and needed to rest so she stopped swinging and gather her strength again.
What she needed to do now was figure out a way to snap the chains or break the hooks that were fixed into the ceiling to keep her upright. She knew that the chains were unbreakable so that was pretty much a no go but if she could pull the fixtures out of the ceiling then she would at least be free enough to knock the cage door off it's hinges. The chains would be heavy to drag along but she would manage just fine, anything was better then where she was now.
Buffy was pretty sure that Angel and Co would be looking for her by now but she couldn't be sure. There was no telling if they had even found out she was gone. Or cared. Spike. Spike had been running to help her – had he been hurt? Was he okay? She suddenly and irrationally started to pull on the chains as if her sheer desperation to see if he was okay was enough to break the bindings. She let out a grunt of frustration and then went limp in the chains, bowed her head, felt her blood running all the way down her arms from her cuts. This was useless.
The Slayer had no idea how long she had been sedated this time and for all she knew it had been days. She was alone now, Katia was still out and all she had was her own panic and stupid escape plans to think about. She ran through countless scenarios on how she would get out of here but none of them were even remotely plausible. One of them even involved the US Airforce crashing in through the ceiling and hovering over in a plane – soldiers would climb down, set her free and then whisk her up into the plane.
Buffy knew that if she stayed here for as long as Katia had been here she would be well and truly crazy.
The door to the room opened again after sounds of several locks being pulled back and Mr. Black stepped into the room this time unaccompanied. He now carried the black case and set it down on the floor. Buffy had closed her eyes and was pretending to still be out cold.
"I know you are awake. You made a lot of noise," Mr. Black said as he opened the case.
She opened her eyes "What's your deal, Black? I get that you might want a taste of me and the others but why sell it to other vamps?"
He stood with two new needles like last time one empty and one full "It's best if you don't fight it. I know it's in your nature but it'll hurt less if you just do not struggle"
Buffy watched him "Thanks for the advice but I think I'll just struggle anyway"
"Your choice" Mr. Black shrugged indifferently.
He pulled the door of the cage open and Buffy prayed he would not notice it was a little loose on his hinges but he didn't and she let out a breath of relief. He stepped inside and she kept her eyes on him as intently as he kept his eyes on hers.
"You're a vampire" She stated looking at him "Don't you ever feel just a little tempted to kill the girls you bring in here? It's in your nature"
Mr. Black wasn't exactly a talker unlike his colleague Mr. Gray and he ignored he like a pro, which she found mildly annoying. Talk was the only weapon she had with her in this little slice of hell and he was taking that away as well.
"How long do the girls last? Prolonged blood loss without a lot of time to recover" Buffy tried to back away unsuccessfully "Must take a lot of effort to track down Slayers and catch 'em"
Again he was ignoring her and she had to lash out her legs at him just because she wouldn't let him just walk up to her and take her blood. Mr. Black tried to grab her leg but she was fast and the drugs had almost completely worn off. She caught him in the side of his head with one foot and he fell into the bars of the cage, stunned. He fell to the floor and hit his head against a bar dropping the needle full of tranquilizer. Buffy swung backwards and lashed out at him but Mr. Black rolled underneath her legs and jumped up behind her. As she swung backward he grabbed her around the waist tight so that she felt a couple of her ribs break.
Buffy winced but wouldn't show any pain "Vampires. Always with the grabbing"
Mr. Black continued to ignore her and stuck the needle into her neck. Buffy hissed and he withdrew her blood then let go of her and rolled back underneath her legs picking up the tranquilizer needle as he jumped back to his feet in front of her. There was blood running down her neck but she still tried to take another swipe at him. He retaliated by sticking the needle into he ankle and plunging the liquid into her.
Buffy fell back down and looked at him "You have got to be kidding me. Again?"
"It's nothing personal, Slayer" Mr. Black opened her cage door and stepped out locking it.
"Like hell it isn't" She sighed and tried to get rid of the feeling of having the vampire pressed up against her and breaking her ribs.
If breaking her ribs and stealing her blood was his idea of nothing personal she hated to think what he would be like with someone who had actually done something to him. She looked into those ice blue eyes as her eyelids started to get heavier and heavier. If they kept drugging her up like this she was in big trouble – she would have more tranquilizers in her blood stream then actual blood.
"I hope you know that when I get out of here I'm gonna kill you" Buffy managed to get out.
"I know" Mr. Black said quietly.
She closed her eyes.
Angel looked at Harmony with a stern and unyielding expression on his face as she tapped on the keyboard of her computer. The blond vampire kept glancing up nervously at her boss and his expression didn't change. She finally accessed the right files and looked up sighing in relief.
"Wolfram and Hart did not send any S.W.A.T teams out themselves, boss" Harmony informed.
He grunted "And what about loaning? Do they loan security to anybody?"
She looked back down on her computer for a few moments "Woah. Yeah. A lot of people"
"Give me a list of people, companies that had any of our security teams last night" Angel demanded.
Harmony nodded and gave him a beaming smile before clicking a few times on the computer and then printing out a piece of paper from the printer which he grabbed up and then turned on his heel and left.
Gunn looked at Harmony "Run a check on Spike. He took Angel's Viper and hasn't been back – it's daylight he could be in trouble"
"Not that Angel would care," Harmony said then quickly added "Or me" Before doing, reluctantly, as he asked.
Angel took the elevator down to his car lot and walked over to the space where his Viper had once been, he growled at the thought of Spike stealing it again. He took the next car and swung out of the car lot fast. He was glad for the black tinted windows in the car that allowed him to drive around in sunlight and also, by default, allowed Spike to do so when he stole one of Angel's cars.
He looked down at the list and was a little surprised and relieved to see that there was only three names on the list. He looked at the address of the first one.
At the same time Spike was sitting in a side road in the Viper smoking and rubbing his head where he had once had a gunshot wound. This was getting him nowhere. No one he spoke to seemed to have heard of any demon's with red and white eyes – it was unheard of. He found that a little hard to believe considering the number of species of demons out there. Maybe the guy had been a one of a kind.
Still every time Spike replayed seeing those eyes in his mind he found them familiar as if he had seen them somewhere before and it had been recently. He slapped his head and cursed himself because if only he wasn't so thick he would know where he had seen those eyes before. Having a bullet lodged in his brain probably wasn't helping his memory either, the demon medic had assured him it would not be permanently damaging and that everything should be normal in a few hours. That had been almost twelve hours ago. It was mid-afternoon but the sunlight was still bright and he hadn't found a damn trace of his Slayer.
Spike turned on the car and pulled into the road driving around slowly and hoping it would come to him where he had seen those eyes before. Where? Where?
"Think, you idiot, think" He cursed to himself taking a hit from his cigarette and rounding a corner.
Buffy's life may depend on it.
Angel rushed to his car and jumped in shutting the door behind him and hissing as billows of smoke rose from him. He scowled and started the car up again. The first address had been a bust. They were obviously nothing to do with a plot to take Buffy.
Angel pulled his cell phone out and called Wesley to see if there had been any developments on the van. He assured him he was narrowing the search down but it could be a while. Angel hung up in anger and then pulled away from the car back up the road. He looked down at the second address. Time to move on.
Spike thought back on the night before with Buffy. It had started so well, she had looked amazing as usual and it reminded him of all he had been missing out on. She was right he didn't belong in Los Angeles, not if she wasn't there. He remembered the first club dancing with the Slayer was something he had not seen coming. It had felt so right to hold her in his arms and he had felt what he always felt when Buffy was close by – exhilaration, full of adrenaline and a little scared. Him dying had definitely not dampened his feeling for her. He was as much in love with her as he had been since he had first thought of her in that way, more so actually. Without a soul he had still been capable of loving her but with one he had been capable of loving her in a way that he had not been able to before. With a soul he understood her, the human side of her a lot better than he had done before.
Then he chuckled to himself as he remembered them going to the second club where two stupid gits had tried it on with her and she had kicked them both in the balls. Spike had laughed even more when two members of staff came to ask Buffy if she was all right. Spike laughed now at the memory and then stopped abruptly.
The two male members of staff had been wearing red contact lenses with white pinpricks!
They weren't demons they were just wearing contact lenses. He remembered now that the club had been a theme club and that they wore the contact lenses to look scary. It had been called Blood Red and Buffy had rolled her eyes as he had taken her there. It was a mock-horror club and they had been involved in taking Buffy. It all made sense now. Clients of Wolfram and Hart must have owned the club and when the Slayer had turned up there they decided they wanted her for some reason. So they had used a Wolfram and Hart security team plus a member of staff to drive to kidnap Buffy as she came out of the club. What Spike found strange was why a nightclub needed a Slayer. However if they were clients of Wolfram and Hart then the owners weren't probably human or good.
Spike took a moment to remember where the club was and then did an abrupt one eighty and sped down the road in the opposite direction finally he was getting somewhere.
As Angel pulled up to the curb of the club Blood Red his eyes widened as he saw Spike pull up at the exact same time next to him in his Viper. The other vampire didn't seem to notice him as he jumped out of the car in the searing sunlight and pulled his duster over his head running toward the entrance of the club. Angel growled and jumped out too pulling his own jacket over his head. He ran into Spike and knocked them both into the darkened alley next to the club where they were shielded from directed sunlight.
Spike was knocked to the floor and he whipped his head up to face him bearing fangs and hissing. He flipped himself up on to his feet and punched Angel. Angel staggered backward but caught Spike's fist as he tried to hit him again. He lifted his foot up and kicked Spike in the abdomen making him stumbled backward into the brick wall hard. The blond started to come at him again after a second.
Angel put his hands up "Spike! We're both here for the same thing – to help Buffy. As much as I don't want to admit this, we're stronger allied in this"
Spike stopped and morphed faces back to human "Screw that. She's in there and I'm goin' in!" He tried to storm past him but Angel shoved him back.
"Don't you understand? That club has heavy security and they aren't just gonna let us walk in there and take her, we have no idea what is inside those doors"
"A bloody night club you ninny!" Spike growled "And the reason they have so much sodding security is because your law firm gave it to them. Just take the security team back and then I'll do the rest"
"Really not gonna happen, Spike" Angel narrowed his eyes "The easiest way to get in there insuring ours and Buffy's safety is to go in as an inside job. Kicking and punching will only get us so far before we get a pointy wooden thing shoved through our hearts"
The other vampire threw his hands up "Maybe you would but I am not afraid of a few idiots in army gear. You want to wait around here and let them do god knows what to Buffy, fine but I wont be a part of it" Again he tried to get past him.
When Angel tried to stop him again Spike lay into him; he landed two swift hard punches to the vampires gut and then spun around with a roundhouse kick that knocked the dark-haired vampire to his knees. Once there Spike aimed a kick at his face but Angel deflected the blow and grabbed Spike's foot, pushed him backward on it and Spike ended up falling hard on his back. Angel leapt up and onto Spike punching him hard around the face. He stopped and grabbed him around the neck looking down into his vampire face with his own.
"Listen to me you stupid idiot, if we rush in there we are gonna get Buffy killed!" Angel hissed "We need a strategy. We need plans of the layout of the building. We need a plan"
"You need some balls!" Spike spat.
Angel grabbed his head and slammed it down against the pavement knocking him out sharply and painfully. He grunted and climbed off of Spike then grabbed him up and threw him over his shoulder. He carried the prone vampire to the Viper, which he liked better, and threw him in the back seat as the sun sizzled him. Angel shut the door and then jumped into the driver side shutting it behind him and hissing at the small burns he had gotten.
Angel looked at Blood Red and thought about Buffy inside being held against her will, which wasn't an easy thing to do to any Slayer but especially her. For a moment he wanted to take the same approach as Spike and storm in her but he couldn't risk her like that. He would be no use to her as a pile of dust either so strategy was key. Still, a small animalistic, primal part of him wanted to rip those doors off their hinges and tear the place down whilst rescuing the girl. Not that Buffy ever needed rescuing.
Spike still lay knocked out cold in the back seat and Angel hesitated only a moment more before starting up the engine and reversing out of the place, he turned and drove back to base-camp. It was one of the hardest decisions he had ever made. Still, he was pretty sure Buffy would understand his reasoning...then again they had not seen eye to eye on most things lately. Angel tried not to think about it to hard because if he did he knew he would turn back there and end up doing something supremely stupid like trying to break in there and getting killed.
Buffy would get through this; she was the strongest person he knew both physically and emotionally. She may even break out herself not needing their help at all it wasn't like she hadn't surprised him like that before. She was constantly surprising him and that was part of what he loved about her. Even with her mad at him for accepting the Wolfram and Hart deal she was still beautiful and she was still perfect and she was still his, as far as he was concerned. So, she had gone out with Spike, so what? She had just found out he was back from the dead and he did help her save the world so, Angel kind of understood it...even if it was Spike and he couldn't really comprehend the thing between William the Bloody and his Slayer. That's what she was; his.
So, yeah he was ninety-five percent sure Buffy would deal.
If he knew her as well as he knew he did then Buffy was in there right now about to come up with some master plan to kick ass and get the hell out of that place.
A/N: More to follow soon. This chapter is kind of bitty (from several different character perspectives) but I promise it should start to flow better soon. Keep the feedback coming I do love it so. Thanks to all the guys who've already reviewed – rubberband11 (you really ARE hooked) BeautifulAli, blondigirl and scruffybunny. Keep Reading.