CHAPTER FOUR: JUST ANOTHER MANIC TUESDAY
"Hey Skye!" Jaden said brightly.
She received a sour glare from the slayer.
"Come on Skye, you know we had to say something."
"No you didn't." Skylar said quietly. "You could have been my friend and trusted me when I said I could handle it."
Jaden shrugged slightly. "I'm sorry, we were worried about you. You need to get back to full strength before you go back out there."
"What did you come up with that on your little trip to America?" Skye sneered. "You sound just like her."
"We're worried about you Skye!" Jaden said, desperately trying to make her friend see why they pulled her from active duty.
"Did I ask for you to be?"
"We're your friends!"
Skye snorted and headed out of the kitchen. "Yeah, whatever."
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"Niblet? Dawn?" Spike frantically ran into the en suite, desperately hoping to see Dawn in their giggling at how he had fallen for her trick.
"Spike, she's not here." Angel said quietly.
"How do you know that? You have to help me look for her!"
"Spike!"
That tone had always stopped him in his tracks when he was a fledgling, and, over a century later, it still had the same effect.
"We've got to find out who's taken her and why. And Harry. Try not to worry; she can take care of herself."
"Oh yeah? Remember two months ago when she took care of herself and died? I've gotta find her." Spike panicked.
Angel spun round, grabbed Spike by the neck and slammed him against the wall. "You'll make things worse."
"I have to do something. I'm not like you!" Spike yelled.
"You're not the only one who cares about her." Angel growled, yellow flashing in his eyes for a moment before he let his childe go.
Spike held his gaze for a moment. "Fine. But if anyone lays one ruddy finger on her, then I'll kill 'em."
"Not if I get them first." Angel said, deadly serious. "We better wake the others."
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Ten minutes later, the team had been woken and filled in on what little they knew- that Dawn and Harry had been kidnapped.
Fred was examining the 'crime scene'. She'd taken samples of the blood, despite Angel's assurance that the blood on the pillow was Dawn's and the rest was all Harry's. Now she was taking pictures of every aspect of the room for reasons Spike didn't understand.
"Whoever it was knew enough to break Harry's wand." Fred summarised when she'd finished taking pictures.
Spike turned to look at her. "That's it? After all that you only know that someone broke the brat's wand?"
A slightly hurt look crossed Fred's features. "We know for sure that whoever it was knew about the wizarding world so-"
"That narrows it down to about a million." Angel finished dejectedly.
"I think the first thing we should do is to put some pressure on the English branch." Wes suggested.
"Why?"
"Well isn't it a remarkable coincidence that a hit is commissioned on Dawn and then she's kidnapped in the same twenty four hours. Gunn-"
"On it." The lawyer strode out of the room to bang some British heads together, figuratively speaking, of course.
"Spike and I will…talk to security." Angel offered.
"You and Spike?" Wesley repeated dubiously. "Are you sure that's wise, we are working against the clock after all."
"We'll behave, watcher." Spike promised as he and Angel went to 'talk' to security.
"Are we going to tell the police?" Fred asked.
Wes inwardly winced. "I don't think so. Fred, could you get a team from the lab of trusted workers to comb this place from top to bottom."
"Trusted?" Fred replied sceptically. This was Wolfram and Hart after all.
"Well, as trusted as we can get. I don't think you'll find anything of use, but it's worth a shot. If anyone can do it, you can." He added fondly.
She blushed and nodded. Anything was worth a shot. "What about you?"
"I'm going to recruit some help."
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"I didn't see anything, I swear!"
"Wrong answer." Spike growled as he lunged forward ready to punch the security guard.
Angel stood back and watched grimly.
"No-one came through this door!" The guard tried.
Angel grabbed Spike's arm as he pulled it back to hit the guard again.
"Is there CCTV in that corridor?"
The guard nodded, wiping the blood from his split lip.
"Get it." He ordered and the guard immediately ran off.
"Why did you stop me? He was on the verge of telling us something!" Spike hissed when the guard was out of ear shot.
"You know as well as I do that he wasn't lying when he said he didn't know anything."
"But-"
"Shh, he's coming back."
The guard returned with two tapes. "That one's from nine 'till twelve and the other one's from twelve onwards."
"Thanks. Let's take these to my office to look at them."
Spike bit his tongue to stop the automatic barb that came to him. They didn't have time to argue.
When Angel entered his office, he found the rest of his group was already there- plus two.
"Faith?" "Whelp?" He and Spike said simultaneously.
"Nice to see you too Spike." Xander muttered.
"Nice set up you got yourself here." Faith commented.
"I get by. Did Wes fill you in?"
"B junior and her honey got kidnapped by god knows who and Wesley decided it couldn't wait until after sunrise to call us in." Faith glared at her former watcher.
"I thought we could use the help." Wes said with a shrug. "Did you find out anything from the security guard?"
"No, but we have the tapes from the corridor outside Harry's room." Angel inserted the first tape into the VCR and pressed play.
"It all seems pretty normal." Xander commented.
"Dawn wasn't there yet." Angel muttered as he set the tape to fast forward.
The group sat in silence, all eyes on the tape.
"There." Faith said, but Angel's sharp reflexes had already pressed play as video-Dawn knocked twice on the door.
Spike glared at screen-Harry who had just answered the door a little too undressed for his liking.
"Sorry did I wake you?" Came Dawn's muffled voice though the speakers.
"No, I always walk about topless and with bed hair." Xander snorted, only to be shushed by Faith.
"What do you want Dawn? 'Cause I'm really not in the mood for another slanging match."
"Neither am I." She raised her eyes to his. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to have a go at you, I was just mad at Angel."
"Nice one poofter. You practically drove her to him!" Angel glared at Spike.
Harry grinned slightly. "I got that." He moved aside and they both went into his room, shutting the door behind them.
Spike growled.
Faith grinned impressed. "Way to go D."
Xander glared at Faith. "You do realise that that's my little sister, don't you?"
"Right." Faith adopted a stern expression. "Bad Dawn making with the naughty. Better?"
"Much. Thank you."
"So," Angel said, drawing their attention back to the matter at hand. "That tells us nothing."
He fast forwarded the tape again. It reached the end without there being anything suspicious so he put in the second one. They weren't more than five minutes in when Fred spoke out.
"Replay that bit."
Angel did so, but saw nothing.
"That's when they were taken."
"What? How did you work that out?"
"Look at the crack under the door. Now, look, you can see a shimmer in the air there, consistent with apperating."
"Huh?"
"When Dawn got her apperating licence, I did some research. The only visual sign of apperating is a slight disturbance in the air, it kinda looks like a shimmer in the air."
"That's great an' all, but huh? What's apperating?" Xander asked confused.
"Teleporting." Angel said absently. He squinted at the video footage, there was only the slightest disturbance- he wouldn't have noticed it if the willowy scientist hadn't pointed it out. "Fred, are you sure?"
"Absolutely. There's two periods of the disturbance- one for the entrance and one for their exit."
"And they're after midnight, right?"
Fred shot Xander a slightly puzzled look. "Yes."
"I knew it, pay up."
As Faith shoved her hand deep into her pocket, Angel said what they were all thinking: "huh?"
"I bet Faith $10 that it would be after midnight when Dawn got in trouble." He said as an explanation. Seeing that the people around him still didn't get it, he tried to explain further. "Okay, if it's after midnight then it's the next day and today is…"
"Tuesday."
"Exactly." Xander smirked.
"What's that, wait, never mind. I don't want to know. Where were we?" Angel said in an attempt to get the meeting back on track.
But Spike had other ideas. "You bet on when Niblet got nabbed? She could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere and you're making money off it? Don't you care?"
Xander glared at him. "Of course I do and you know it. We'll find her Spike, we always do. Summers girls' are tough. Besides, if they were gonna dump her in a ditch then why go to all the trouble of kidnapping her? They want her for something and that gives us time."
"So," Angel interrupted Spike's response in a loud voice, "now we have a time. Next we need a 'who'."
"Who wants Dawn or Harry dead?"
"Well, there must be any number of demons who want to get back at Buff." Xander suggested.
"I don't think so, this is a magical attack."
"So does that means they were probably after Harry? It was his room, and from what I gathered earlier in the summer he has quite a few enemies in the followers of Voldy-wotsit." Xander reasoned, pushing down his anxiety for Dawn as only a seasoned expert of the key's various kidnappings could.
"Voldemort." Angel offered. "And it's possible- we should look into it."
"I knew the little brat was bad news." Spike muttered, but he was ignored.
"Something tells me this is gonna be a tough one- we're gonna need all the help we can get."
"You want me to rile up the slaygals?" Faith offered, slamming her fist into her hand.
"Best wait until we have something concrete for them to start hitting. We could use some help from the Watchers though…and I guess I should call Buffy." Angel visibly winced as he thought about what the petite slayer would do to him when she found out he'd lost her sister.
Spike snorted. "Scared of a little slayer peaches?"
"Definitely- I can think of hundreds of reasons to justify it and the first fifty all start with 'Buffy will hit me with a...'"
Faith smirked. "Lil' B might be okay - Dawnie's meant to be wicked powerful right? Who's to say she's not already back in bed snuggling with her honey?"
Xander groaned, forcing back the bad images that that brought to his head. "Faith…"
"She doesn't have full control of her powers yet." Wesley said quietly. "And if she is being detained by wizards, then they can block her magic. You remember what happened last year."
She nodded, flashing back to the mad dash out of a death eater battle zone with an unconscious and bleeding Dawn slung over her shoulder.
Angel slammed his fist down on the desk. "I'm not going to sit around here and wait for her to be killed. Wes, come on."
Wesley eyed him warily. "Where are we going?"
"To find that shaman guy- Pancreas."
Wesley sighed and rose from his seat, following Angel out of the room. "You mean Pancreal."
Spike nodded. "That better, like, a bit more action. No use sitting on our asses all night. Peaches wait up!"
"I better see if the tests are back from the lab yet." Fred said as she left also.
"And I'll get in touch with come wizards- see if they know anything."
"I'll go with you, phone the watchers council." Faith said as she and Gunn left.
Xander looked around, realising that he was the only one left in the room. "Oh great, I guess that means I'll call Buffy then." He shouted to the empty office. "Cowards!"
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A/N: For anyone interested in BtVS/ HP talk, there is now a forum to go along with the C2 category 'The BtVS/ HP Crossover Zone'. You don't have to be a member of the C2 to use it so drop by and check it out.