Chapter 5
Field Time in the Demons Lair
Spike bent down slowly until he was crouching, his heels raised slightly from the ground so the brunt of his weight was placed on his toes. He ran his fingers through the dusty substance he had bent to investigate. Then, looking up and meeting Andrews questioning eyes he said, "They're metal scrapings."
"From what?" Andrew replied quickly.
"From my titanium hip," Spike bantered sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
"You have a fake hip? Why? How'd you get it?"
Spikes mouth dropped open slightly and he stared in disgust at Andrew. "No you dumbass. The metal scrapings are from metal. Note the usage of the word metal."
"Okay, okay. You don't have to be so mean about it," Andrew stated, a bit offended.
"Well if you'd ask an intelligent question next time, you'd be more likely to get an intelligent answer, now wouldn't you?"
"I guess."
"Good. Now, we don't have time to lollygag around. Buffy sent us to investigate this place as possibly being the demon's lair."
"I know that."
"Just makin' sure you're up to speed, mate." Spike stood upright again, and glanced around. His eyes were accustomed to adjusting quickly to the darkness of the night, as most vampire's were. This night, however, it was particularly difficult to see. The moon rose high in the sky, lighting up many places, and those places the light did not reach to were pitch black, and therefore one had to be standing within the darkness in order to see what it was shrouding.
Andrew, noticing Spike's difficulty, dug as quietly as he could through his weapons bag and upon finding the flashlight he was searching for, whipped it out of the bag and flicked it on. "There, that's better," he stated triumphantly.
"Oh sure, how about lettin' the bugger know we're comin'?" Spike said, grabbing the flashlight and quickly extinguishing the light protruding from it.
"I was only trying to help," Andrew said. "Besides, Mr. Giles said that it was good for me to get some field time in, since I'm on my way to becoming a Watcher."
"You'll get your bloody field time as long as you shut the hell up and stop playing laser tag with your damned flashlights."
"Fine," Andrew whispered. "But if you get killed, I'm not going to be the one held respon-" Andrew was silenced by Spike putting a hand over his mouth. When Spike was sure Andrew had taken the hint, he removed his hand and placed a finger to his lips, signaling to the blonde-moment prone man that it was quiet time. Spike took a few light steps forward, while Andrew stayed in place, allowing for Spike to use his super-hearing to track the position of whatever was in the small warehouse with them.
Slowly turning his head, Spike spotted a shadow moving in front of a high window, allowing moonlight to spill into a corner of the warehouse. Whoever the newly arrived company was, they sure did know how to balance on the thin pipes and rafters high above. Spike bent, gathering strength in his lower legs, and then took off into a sprint towards the enemy. Seeing a chance to soar up to face the fiend, Spike launched himself into the air and grabbed hold of a cold water pipe, though Spike took no notice of the temperature for it was not a warm one. Swinging himself higher into the air, he released the pipe from his grasp and landed on an upper rafter.
Spike moved quickly towards the enemy as the thing turned to see where Spike was, whipping its long hair over it's shoulder. Spike jumped three rafters over and ran with all his might to the main beam in the middle of the ceiling to head the thing off. The two met with brute force, knocking them off the rafters and onto the flat roof of the small office in the upper right corner of the building. The roof was extremely rotten and since Spike was on the bottom of the falling heap, he was first to break through the roof, with much pain. The demon shrieked high into the night, and its scream sounded much like that of a young girl. Too much in fact.
By the time the air returned to Spike's lungs, allowing him to exchange bodily gases that helped throughout the years with smoking and catching the proverbial breath that vampires would never again actually breathe, Andrew was already upon the two, shining the very same flashlight Spike had yanked out of his hands only moments before. "Dawn?" Andrew said.
The girl moved off the top of Spike to plop herself on the cold cement floor. "Okay, ow, and secondly ow," she stated, rubbing her butt and shoulder.
"What are you doing here?" Spike managed, lifting himself up to prop his upper body up on his elbows.
"I came to follow you. Make sure you didn't get into any big trouble. You know, like a second lieutenant or something," she said, standing.
"I could've killed you."
"Yea, but I didn't expect you to go all Batman on me and do a flying leap to tackle me to the ground."
"Is it just me, or do you find it disconcerting that Buffy didn't trust us enough by ourselves. I bet you're wearing a wire to aren't you? To make sure we don't conduct any illegal activities. That's my big word of the day, by the way: disconcerting," Andrew said, directing the first part to Spike, the second to Dawn, and the last bit to the both of them. They both shot him a glare. "Right, shutting up. But I demand some respect!"
"And as soon as you stop acting so stupid, you might get some," Dawn said. She looked at Spike. "So I'm guessing you're turning up a big nothing here then?"
"Righto."
"Whoa, Giles Jr."
"Don't ever say that, ever again," Spike said, shivering a bit. "I'm guessin' Buffy wants us to round back out to her place?"
"You're guessin' right."
"Wouldn't it have been easier to just send us with a cell-phone that we could put on vibrate or something?" Andrew offered.
"Thought about it, but then that would take all the fun out of it for me." Dawn said
"Oh, didn't you know? You weren't supposed to have any fun," Andrew shot back. Dawn smacked him in the back of the head. "Ow," he whined.
"Oh yea. Definitely got the strength and might of the Watcher down already. The respect should be comin' right up," Spike mocked. Dawn giggled a bit, and then they all set off for the base camp apartment.
Arriving at the apartment, Dawn opened the door and let herself in, the other two following closely behind. Spike went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a can of….soda? "Hey, who drank all the beer?"
"No one. I threw it away," Giles said, entering the living room from the hallway. "I refuse to have that detestable beverage in my refrigerator. The remains of the last can went down the drain a few minutes ago."
"Damn you," was all Spike said. He tossed the soda back into the frige and walked over to plop down on the couch. "So where's the head hancho?" he said.
"Oh, she's out with the Immortal," Andrew blirted, receiving a piercing look from both Dawn and Giles. "Oh, right forgot we weren't supposed to…." he trailed off at the end of the sentence. "I'll just be…there," he said, walking over to the door and leaving the apartment.
"Bloody hell! You mean she's still dating that ponce?" Spike asked, utterly disgusted and surprised both at the same time.
The door swung open and Buffy entered, pulling the so called 'ponce' behind her, hand in hand. She turned and noticed them all staring at her in the awkward silent kind of we've-been-talking-about-you way. "Okay, let's not ever let me come into a place greeted like that again," she said, immediately noticing Spike's hard glare towards the Immortal.
"Not that I'm tryin' to be a bugger, well maybe I am, but I refuse to in the same place, room, country, etc., as that ponce. So, if you'll excuse me, I've got to find an apartment somewhere in Antarctica and get their now," Spike said, standing.
The Immortal eyed him. He eyebrows raised a bit, clearly surprised by Spike's statement. His short brown hair had originally been combed to the right, or so it looked like, before the wind had tossed it about. He was rather good looking, and just a bit taller than Spike was, and just as muscular. "Well I'm sorry you feel that way William. I had thought that we put our past agressions behind us when we did business in Rome earlier this year, but I suppose I thought wrong."
"Damn right you did," Spike said. "I'll never put the stuff that happened between us over the years behind me, and neither will Angel."
"It seems that is the one thing you can agree on. Correct me if I'm wrong," the Immortal started, taking his coat off and shutting the door. He hung his coat up and turned around to continue, "but I thought you and Angel had agreed that the both of you were past your little tryst over Buffy, and that you would, how should I put this?, that you would let her choose whom she wants to be with and let her be happy? As if she couldn't," he said, smiling at Buffy and kissing her on the cheek. She pulled away and looked at the both of them.
"We don't have time for bitter bantering about things that happened in the past. In case you hadn't noticed, we're fighting a serious demon here, a demon that wants to kinda wipe us off the planet, if you get my drift. So put your first grade fight away and get over yourselves." She turned to Spike. "He's here to help Spike, so deal with it," she said. She caught the Immortal smirking as she did and turned to him. "The same goes for you. Now sit," she pointed to the couch. Spike walked over and sat on one end, and the Immortal sat on the other, with Dawn inbetween them. "Where's Andrew?"
"He went back to his own apartment," Giles said.
"Whatever. Spike, did you find anything?"
"Yea, I found your little trooper you sent to watch me," he said flatly.
"Oh. Well, then at least we've narrowed the list down to two places. The Waterfront Hotel, and the abandoned pub down on 43rd."
"Buffy, it is possible that this thing doesn't have a lair," Giles stated. "If he is able to travel between deminsions, then it is quite possible that is lair isn't even on this plane. It could be anywhere."
"If that's the case, we'll just have to make with the magic's until we find it. Until then, everyone regroup and we'll meet here in the morning. Giles and I will be on research duty."
Spike stood, moving his leather trench coat to the left so it wouldn't brush against the Immortal, and walked over to the door. He didn't turn and say goodbye to anyone, just opened the door and walked out. Sauntering down the hall, he ran into Andrew who was returning from the snack machine in the lobby. Spike said nothing, just stared straight ahead, focused on the end of the hall.
"I've got gummy worms if you want some," Andrew offered as Spike passed. Spike said nothing. Andrew turned and mumbled something to himself, entering his apartment as Spike continued down the hall. He need to let off some steam.
A/N: Up next comes the Spike getting insight part that I mentioned in the last author's notes. I didn't really have it thought out that well, so I wrote this chapter to lead up to it. Hope you enjoyed it. And the advice comes from someone you probably won't guess. Any guesses?