Spike and Fred ran up the stairs to where the scream seemed to be coming from.
Fred's mind was racing.
Who could it be?
Their footsteps were soon all that could be heard in the silence after the scream died off, Fred's heartbeat seeming to fall into rhythm with the foot falls.
'Is it Angel?' Fred wondered as she ran alongside the bleached vamp – she was so preoccupied by the questions that she did not notice nor marvel at the fact that she was keeping up to the superhuman speed of the undead.
Spike barrelled into a closed door on the fifth floor, smashing it down and crashing into the room. He shook the splinters of wood of himself as he scanned the room.
It smelled of blood.
"Look out," he called quickly as he pushed Fred, who had just entered the room, behind him.
A sulking figure crouched in the shadows before darting out the window into the night. Spike raced to the open window but even with his senses could he not see, smell, or sense any clue to where the thing had went.
Damn! Why hadn't he smelled him before?
Fred peered around the bristling vampire to look at the trembling body lying on its side facing away from them. Her eyes closed as she sniffed the air, smelling blood and that smell that could only belong to one being.
"Lorne."
The gentle green demon lay on the floor, moaning in pain, red eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Fred rushed to him and knelt next to the entertainer.
"Lorne?"
His eyes drifted away from the light fixture to gaze at the woman next to him.
"Sugarplum?"
Fred nodded emphatically and smiled, brushing away a tear from her eye.
"Yeah, it's me," she took his hand in hers. "What happened?"
Lorne coughed and frowned.
"He went away… I think he remembered who he was, who I was, but too late now I think…" he looked at her again, or more correctly, at her hair. "Who did that hack job?"
Spike crouched down next to Lorne's feet. He could smell something familiar; it was just hovering at the back of his mind, and enigma that he could not name.