Chapter Eleven

"Bastard!" Dawn screamed, thrashing in her bonds. "Let me out of here now!" She wrenched her wrists painfully around in the manacles. "You don't know what it's like!" She struggled futilely.

Loki sat by the door, rubbing his eyes. She had been screaming and cursing at him for hours. The withdrawal wasn't even close to its peak yet. He had run out of encouragements and calming statements about two hours ago.

"I don't give a shit about my soul!" she hollered, glaring at him menacingly. "Let me out of here right now or I swear to God I'll get my sister here to tear your head off!" She twisted her fists in the bonds, clenching her jaw as the vicious pain sped down her arms. The nausea and skin crawling was much worse. The chaffing of her flesh was almost a welcome diversion. The room was spinning around her, lazily rocking back and forth. Her skull had tightened until it was constricting her brain to the point where she could barely put coherent sentences together.

Loki sighed, tried and exhausted. Finally, as she called him something only a teenager could think of, he stood, taking a small object from his pocket. "Dawn," he ordered, loudly. "Dawn look at me," he took her chin in his strong hand.

"Fuck you!" She spat, ripping her face away from him to thrash some more. "Let me out of here!"

"Dawn," he said again. "Do your recognize this?" He held up the small glass ball.

Dawn's mind was in a vortex of confusion and hatred. Her eyes focused on the small object. Somewhere, she remembered holding in her fingers.

"This is your quest stone," he explained in slowly and deliberately. "As long as you have it, your quest will continue." He took her jaw firmly between his fingers and pushed his fingertips into her cheeks. She growled as he opened her mouth. He forced the small glass ball between her teeth, ignoring her forced gagging and choking sounds. "Bite down on it," he ordered, and forcibly closed her mouth.

Dawn coughed once, trying to dislodge the thing from below her palate. It's size and shape made it impossible to remove without her hands, effectively gagging her. She shouted something now unintelligible at him, her eyes conveying all the hate she wanted to say, still struggling and twisting in her chains. The sharp pain in her jaw tore all her attention away from her creeping skin and tightening bones. The pounding of her blood in her ears was diminished by the throbbing of her aching jaw, forced open by this foreign object. She lay still, her eyes closed, her teeth bared, the rage in her mind dwindling with no outlet for release. Her breathing slowed and she relaxed her exhausted muscles. Soon unconsciousness took hold of her tortured body again.

Loki sighed and laid back against the wall to get some short rest.

"What do mean he created her?" Tara asked, astounded and confused. "I thought that monks..."

"Are you saying," Giles began equally astounded, but he was cut off by Xander.

"And you were going to keep this from us?" He almost chuckled, but not in humor. "I mean, here we are, doing all this useless research and it was those monks the whole time?" He threw up his hands and closed all the volumes laid out before him, stacking them very deliberately to go retrieve others.

"Yes, er- when exactly were you going to inform us of this little detail?" Giles asked, taking off his glasses to wipe them with a conveniently available handkerchief.

"Wait, wait a minute," Willow cut in, "I thought the monks of Dagon created Dawn. This guy doesn't seem to be the brown robe type."

Buffy sat at the table, under the heat of the inquisition, waiting until they had exhausted themselves with their questions.

Xander reappeared with another volume, slamming it down on the table with all available gusto and irritation. "The Order of Dagon," he read off loudly, then sat down to quietly begin reading.

"Well, this changes everything," Giles said, replacing his spectacles. "Now that we know her creator has recaptured her, we have some motive."

"We do?" Buffy asked, "I was actually kind of relieved to hear he wasn't just some strange Specter who was supposedly out to help."

"Yes, well, under normal circumstances," Giles muttered.

"Wait, hold on," Tara had her hands in the air. "Could somebody please tell me what is going on?"

Giles took a deep breath. "The art of conjuring is not limited to monks of any particular order," he explained. "As Willow's research has shown, he obviously knows quite a bit about the arts in question. What I want to know is what the monks of Dagon could possibly offer him in exchange for his help in concealing the Key."

"Well," Willow said reasonably, "if you were a Specter, what would you want?"

Giles raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "If I were a Specter," he sighed, "well, I'm not sure, actually."

"It's hard to put yourself in the place of a man without a soul, in'it?" Spike said never raising his eyes from the newspaper.

"Well, why don't you enlighten us, then?" Giles said irritated.

"Look, if you're a bloody demon, who hasn't got a soul, then your only priority is to feed, and have loads of fun, am I right?"

Anya nodded. "Yes. If by fun you mean have lots and lots-"

"I think that's what he means," Xander cut her off, looking up from his text.

"Right," Spike continued. "But if you're not a demon. If you're, say, some poor sod who's had his soul surgically removed by, oh, I don't know, a Werlech demon, then your priorities aren't quite the same, are they?"

"I suppose not," Giles admitted.

"Course they're not. Your major priority would be gettin' your soul back." He folded his newspaper crisply, then proceeded to concentrate on the next page. "Am I right?"

"So Logan-" Willow began, "Loki, whatever his name is, went to the monks of Dagon, why? How could they help him find his soul?"

Giles and Buffy exchanged a perfectly symmetrical, knowing glance. "The Key," they said in unison.

Willow and Tara exchanged a glance as well. Anya's eyes shifted over Xander as he read silently. "I see," she said loudly and purposefully. "It all makes sense to me now..." Xander did not so much as look up.

"So that would mean..." Buffy pondered, ignoring the vengeance demon, "that the monks would be willing to allow Loki access to the Key, in payment for his help with Glory," she frowned. "And now he has her."

"I- is he going to kill her?" Willow asked, worriedly. "Like in a whole... bloodletting kind of way?"

"I don't think so," Xander spoke up. He held his finger to the page and looked up, a small grin on his face. "We've got precedent."

Dawn's ear rested on the broad rough wood of the post. Her eyes were closed, her face frozen in a look of distant pain.

Loki stroked her hair lovingly. There were moments when he saw his daughter in her face. Of course she looked just like Hanna, but they were not the same person. But there were moments, treasured, precious moments throughout these last years when he had seen flashes of his daughter's laughter, his daughter's wry smile. He blinked away tears as his hand smoothed away a stray lock of brown hair, barely touching this girl's head.

He had sworn to himself, when he made her, not to grow attached to her. He was not to have any contact with her while Glory was after the Key, as he knew her identity. Now Glory was gone and the monks were ever more lax with their rules. Of course, he had no intention of telling her who he was, what she was to him. That would throw all kinds of complications into this. It was best that he remain just her guide. His hand jumped back as she moved her head slightly.

Dawn moaned softly as consciousness grabbed hold of her again. She blinked up at him, unable speak with the ball in her mouth, but revealing no hatred in her eyes. Loki reached down and tugged the gag free. He gently placed it in her hand and closed her fingers around it. He felt her squeeze.

"Loki," she said hoarsely, her breath now quivering and uncertain, "I want to die." Her words were soft as a whisper and her eyes begged him even more than her tone. "I can't do it," she mouthed, closing her eyes again, knowing he would neither release her, nor kill her. Her stomach felt like it was consuming itself. Her gut writhed and strangled itself. Her throat was tight and sore. Her lips and tongue stung from having been exposed to air while the ball was in her mouth. Her muscles trembled, no energy left for thrashing or twisting. Her skin was boiling and churning, covering her bones which felt like they had been replaced by serrated saw blades. And the room; the room spun around and around, screaming its brightness and darkness at her until her eyes throbbed with pain.

Loki wiped a tear as it rolled from the corner of her eye down to the top of her ear. "You're doing great," he whispered, blinking away the sting in his own eyes. "It's almost over."

"Here it is," Xander indicated the paragraph. "See, a few hundred years ago, the monks of Dagon had to conceal the Key from an uber-powerful demon, just like they did from Glory. They created a member of their own order from scratch, pretty much, and had him wander around with them, altering everyone's memories so that none of them knew who it was. Safer, they thought."

"Pretty clever," Willow acknowledged. "Wonder why they didn't do that this time?"

"Well, as it turns out," Xander went on, "the demon figured out what had happened and killed pretty much half the monks. Since none of them, except one who ended up being eaten, knew who was the Key, they all fled and decided to scrap the plan."

"Quitters," Spike muttered, as he read the paper yet listened in on story-time.

"So they devised a way of extracting the entity, that was the Key itself, from the guy who hosted it." Xander read ahead a little bit. "Here we go. They came up with a way to do this de-Keying that wouldn't kill them all."

"What was this method?" Giles asked, trying to tilt his head to read the text Xander had facing him.

"It involved some kind of sacred water. Apparently when the avatar of the Key touched it, the Key was removed, passing into the water."

"And what happened to the host?" Buffy asked quickly.

"Uh..." Xander's finger sped along he page. "Ah, here it- oh."

"Oh?" Buffy repeated. "Oh isn't good. Oh is bad."

"It says here the host 'returned to that from which he was brought forth,'" Xander licked his lips silently and avoided eye contact with the Slayer.

Giles compulsively removed his glasses, intent on cleaning them again, but hesitated and merely rubbed the back of his wrist into his eye. He was at a loss for words.

"Guys, look at this," Willow had returned to her computer. "I've been looking at all reports coinciding with Loki's movements throughout the underground," she said, staring at the screen. "Apparently Loki has a particular monster on conjure-speed-dial."

Buffy stared at the translated headline from an Estonian newspaper.

Seven Ton Spider Wreaks Havoc in Small Community.

The article went on to suggest that the spider's freakishly large size was due to its origin near a poorly managed nuclear power plant. It included, however a relatively clear black and white photo of the creature, connecting the dots in everyone's mind. The creature was eventually killed by a militia armed with RPG's, but not before it had impaled several Estonians with its massive mandibles.

"This just gets better and better," Anya said, tense interest on her face.

"Loki made that thing we killed the other night?" Xander frowned.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Giles held up his hands.

"Oh, yes, let's," Spike put in irritably. "Just this once, let's jump to conclusions." He jumped to his feet to emphasize, throwing his folded paper down on the counter he had been sitting on. "You people are the densest lot I've ever had the misfortune of being associated with." He indicated the computer sharply. "It's not bloody rocket science," he snapped. "He made her, he wanted her, he found her, he took her and none of you did a damn thing about it."

"Why did he make the spider?" Tara asked. "It nearly killed her. He couldn't have wanted that," she frowned, turning to Will, "could he?"

"Course he did!" Spike burst, "would bit have gone looking for him if she hadn't seen the other side?"

"Spike's right," Buffy said slowly.

"As usual," Spike muttered under his breath.

"He's been planning this," the realization dawned on the Slayer, forcing her to sit down again. "Ever since... since when? Since he created her?"

"Most likely," Giles nodded. "If his goal is to acquire the Key, he would have designed all of this when he created Dawn."

"Then there's nothing we can do," Buffy said, her voice devoid of any emotion. She had closed off her feelings. She remembered clearly what had happened when Dawn had been abducted by Glory. She had shut down, become a useless burden to her friends as they searched relentlessly. She stared, blankly at the wall. She blinked, shrinking in on herself. She had failed again. Angel was wrong. It wasn't that she couldn't save her every time; she couldn't ever save her.

"Wait," Xander said quickly, getting a sense of the lethal lethargy that was settling down on the room like a thick mud. "It says here that these monks established a hideaway in the steps of a mighty mountain range. There's no mention of any other location they might be," he said hopefully. "So they might be there," he concluded.

"What mountains are these?" Giles said, his voice lacking any trace of hope.

"The--- Himalayas," Xander said reasonably. "But it says that the monks who performed the extraction some odd hundreds of years ago came here to do it."

"Loki might have taken her there to perform the ritual," Willow suggested, looking at Buffy worriedly as she stared blankly at the wall.

"Even if that's true, we have no way of-" she began, then a thought flashed behind her eyes. She jumped to her feet, making a beeline for the Magic Box telephone. "Will, you and Tara get to work on a locator spell, I need to know where to land the helicopter," she said hastily, punching in the numbers.

Xander frowned. "What helicopt-"

"Hello?" Buffy said intently into the telephone receiver. "Rico's Flower Shop? Yes, I need you to tell Agent Finn that I need a helicopter here tonight. Here? Sunnydale... California. Yes. No, Finn is his last name. Thanks."

Dawn awoke with more inner peace than she had ever recalled feeling. The bliss of the fix now seemed hollow and dirty. She realized that she was in fact laying on her side on a mat on the stone floor. She took a deep breath, her face etched with the lines of exhaustion and anguish, but softened again by rest.

"Congratulations," Loki smiled down at her. "You passed."

"That was a test?" Dawn asked, sitting up, stretching her bones, which now felt proportionately right.

"A test of endurance," he nodded.

"How could I have passed?" She asked sullenly. "I wanted to die. You heard me."

"But look," he indicated her hand. It was still tightly grasping the small glass ball that had been placed there. "You never let go of your quest," he smiled as she examined the small decoration. "Even in darkest despair."

She looked up at him and his smile lessened, she looked so much like Hanna...

"Thank you," she said, her face showing the shadow of sincere gratitude. "Thank you," she repeated, closing her fingers around the glass object.

Loki sighed, straightening up. "Rest for the rest of the day. I promise, no more tests until tomorrow."