Buffy and Spike walked down the deserted sidewalk of Baker Road. It was silent at first, then Buffy gave a groan.
"It's just so stupid! She wouldn't have been kidnapped if it were me!"
Spike rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette. "Pet, if it had been you, that girl would have been disillusioned, raped, and kidnapped before you even got her on the plane."
She stopped and put her hands on her hips, grasping a wooden stake tighter in her right fist. "Are you saying I couldn't have done a simple search-and-rescue mission in Jersey?"
"Right on, love," he commented, taking a long drag.
"I so could. I'd be totally focused. Nothing would have gotten by me. She'd be totally safe if I was doing the searching and the rescuing."
"Then what are you doing now?"
That shut her up for all of thirty seconds. "I…will not dignify that with an answer."
"Thought not. Well, while you're busy not answering me, I can smell her scent all over this door. So I think it's our best bet to try kicking it in, because it's rather locked," Spike observed.
Buffy pouted and raised her foot. With a crash, the door slammed open and they walked forward into the darkness.
………………………
Brynn sat, chained by her wrists to a gilded chair. She had long since given up struggling; her wrists were rubbed raw and her left hand was even bleeding a bit.
The huge room had been empty for more than an hour, with the only light illuminating it being the starlight spilling in. She remembered what had happened in the past hours with a sinking feeling in her stomach.
They had drugged her. As she had been slipping away, she saw her brown-robed captors open a grate in the bathroom floor and ease her down into an old service tunnel of the sewers. Everything was black after that, until she woke up in this room, locked to an expensive chair and dressed in white robes.
She had already taken the time to observe her surroundings. The room she was in was the size of a football field. The walls were painted in strange symbols, but one area to her right glimmered with fresh paint.
The picture described a human figure with another figure behind it pulling a knot of ugly-looking black tendrils out of the human's head. In the next picture was a seven-winged angel, the full moon behind it casting a shadow on the silhouetted celestial being. One legible words was scribbled beneath this last picture.
"Gabriel," she had read.
Now she looked up at the skylight directly above her. A small sliver of the full moon shone down on her face, and she judged it would be another few hours before the moon's arc would bring it right above her.
It'll be so pretty… she thought, slipping back to sleep.
………………………
They were lost. That much was clear. Right after the entrance, the building's endless rooms and tunnels led them steadily down underground, into the labyrinth of passages below the streets of Sunnydale. Buffy eyed Spike, who kept sniffing at intervals to try and pick up the girl's scent.
"Are you sure you can still smell her?" she demanded.
"The nose knows, love. And patience is a virtue," he returned, leading them down a dark hallway.
"Well, we don't have much time to be patient. She's been missing for a whole day. Remember what Giles said: they're gonna use her to bring on the Apocalypse."
"And how many of those have we stopped at the last minute? If I didn't know you better, Buffy, I'd say you were acting a bit off." He gave her a reproachful look and she sighed and leaned against the wall.
"I know, I know. I'm being a total nutcase over this. But it's just that…"
She groaned and sunk to her ankles. "I'm always worried that we'll get their too late, and it really will be the end of the world. I mean…" Buffy stopped.
Spike walked over and picked her up. "You may be right. But until that happens, we're still here. We've got to do the best we can, and right now that means taking our time and making sure we don't miss the right hallway. So let's go."
She nodded and followed him.
