The Downside of Elemental Dieseling

Author: Nickeltaffy

Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah…These characters are Joss's. I don't own them, never did and never will. Thanks for the loan, Joss.

…

Chapter 7

"What? What exactly just happened here?" Spike thought as the sight of Angel and Wes in the elevator finally soaked into his brain.

The doors had already slid closed with a low hiss before Spike could gather himself to move. Still slightly dazed, Spike mechanically moved forward toward the closed elevator doors as Shirley and Taras continued their increasingly animated discussion regarding his mother. Spike put his hands on the cool metal as if to make sure that he had actually seen Angel and Wes a moment before. He turned back to the adults as Shirley lambasted Taras about his mother's poor attempt at childcare that afternoon.

Really, Spike didn't see the problem that Shirley had with the way he had spent his afternoon. It had been quite the enjoyable afternoon with the ladies. Sure, many of them had seen better days, but that didn't mean that they were right pleasant company in their own right. There were drinks, smokes and cards. These ladies seemed to value the pleasing pastimes as much as any self respecting vampire. If the situation had been different, he would have been delighted to invite a few of the ladies to the next round of kitten poker over at Wolfram and Hart. He already had a few favorites among the ladies. Sweet and gentile Dusya seemed to be his biggest fan and thought he could do no wrong. She even turned her head and pretended not to notice when he was stealing sips from her highball cocktail. The earthy and robustly shaped Polina could really tell a good salty joke. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at a particularly outrageous one and betray his feigned childlike innocence. Small and ancient Alla smoked like a stove pipe and always seemed to have a lit cigarette dangling from her fingers. You could tell that she could always be counted on having a light or an extra ciggie. Of course, there was Mamushka whose warm maternal side seemed to make everything all right with the world. Her enticing Russian delicacies were not tasty, but also addictive.

It was about twelve minutes ago that Shirley had breezed into the game room during the last hand. Spike was just setting down Dusya's glass when he looked up and saw Shirley standing there, watching him. The small pleasant smile on her face slid off as she took in the scene in front of her. Before Spike knew what was happening, he found himself the subject of a verbal catfight between the ladies. He heard shrill female voices spewing a lot of Russian words and accompanied by the sound of their bracelets as they clinked as a result of the dramatic gesturing. Although, Shirley did not speak Russian, she seemed to have no problem keeping up her end of the argument. All of sudden there was deadly silence. Spike stood there, his eyes huge as they took in the standoff between Shirley and Mamushka and her Canasta club. In the next instant, Shirley captured Spike's wrist and charged out of the room with him.

Now, here he stood like a bleedin idiot. The last thing he expected see was Angel and Wes in the middle of all that mother tiger drama. It really threw him for a loop for a moment. Somehow, someway, Angel and Wes had managed to get themselves captured. The day was really not turning out how he had hoped it would be.

"Oh great! Now I have to put rescue them on my things to do; as if my day wasn't already full enough. Might as well see if I can pull some info out of the old guy." Spike thought.

"Who's that?" Spike asked, doing his best to keep the innocence in his voice and pointing to the elevator.

"No one." Taras said, dismissing the child's question.

"Are they in trouble?" Spike asked, hoping to get some information on where the men were being taken.

"It does not concern you, child." Taras said with a slight scoff.

"Don't talk to him like that, Taras! It is perfectly appropriate for him to be curious about his environment." Shirley suddenly interjected and pointedly looked at Taras. "I won't have you stunting his natural curiosity."

Doing his best to hide his smirk, Spike began to like Shirley more and more. The old girl had guts! He was glad she was on his side.

"Those men were hired to do a job." Taras stated. "Now be quiet, the adults are talking."

Never caring for being told to be quiet, Spike went over and rapidly pulled on the pocket of Taras' trousers until he got the man's attention again.

"What kind of job? Where are they going?" Spike said, looking intently up at Taras.

"Taras.." Shirley warned, giving Taras a look that bespoke many threats between them.

"I sent them on a special job downstairs." Taras said, yielding to the woman he treasured.

"They look like they got smacked. Were they bad?" Spike stated, pointing at the elevator.

"Too many questions! Shirley, you handle this!" Taras declared as he spun toward Shirley. "I refuse to be grilled by a toddler!"

"Don't yell at her!" Spike yelled as he challenged Taras, kicking him in the shin.

"Youch! Why you.." Taras yelped as he pulled up his leg to cover his injury with his hands. Setting the leg back down, he began to narrow his eyes at the child standing in front of him.

"Taras! He is just a child. He can't control his emotions." Shirley said as she pulled Spike back against her. "I would hope you would set a better example."

Taras' mouth tensed as he looked from Spike to Shirley. Finally, with a low grumble and a hand dismissing the two of them, he turned and limped back to his office.

Shirley pulled Spike away from her and got on her knees in front of Spike. Holding both of his upper arms in her hands, she spoke directly to him while she was looking in his eyes. Spike was surprised to find himself feeling a little chagrined about the whole kicking episode as he looked at Shirley's disappointed face.

"Sonny, violence is not an acceptable behavior. You've earned a time out for kicking Uncle Taras." Shirley calmly decreed. Then standing up, she guided him over to the nearest corner. "I want you to stand here while I go talk to the ladies in the game room. Do not move until I get back."

Spike was rather pleased with himself about the time out. It could not have worked out better! The whole kicking incident got him some unsupervised time alone. Spike stood there for a few moments until he was sure Shirley had gone back to the game room. He leaned back and checked to see if the coast was clear. He spun around and marched over the elevator, checking over his shoulder several times to see if anyone else appeared. He held up his hand to press the call button on the panel when he saw that it was key operated. There was no key there.

"Buggar, they must keep the key on their persons." Spike grumbled. "I guess I'll just have to do this the hard way."

He tried wedging his fingers in between the doors of the elevator, but he did not have enough strength to pry them open. Giving up climbing down the elevator shaft, his eyes darted around the penthouse as he looked for another exit. It was still daylight outside, so that eliminated climbing down the outside of the building. He had to figure out some way to get down to the lower floors without bursting into flames. That's when his eyes lit upon a corner of large air conditioning vent that was partially hidden by the ghastly decor. Sliding in between two statues and wiggling behind the sofa, he managed to arrive in front of the vent. Luckily it was one of the vents that was attached by a swinging latch, so all he had to do was pull the latch open. Once the vent was open, he saw ductwork extending out into the innards of the building. It was not overly large, so his new smaller person could just fit in the duct. Spike climbed into the duct and pulled the vent closed.

He marched on his hands and knees along the duct work. The light from the room becoming smaller and smaller behind him as he traveled further and further into the building. He could hear Shirley call out his name faintly as he began to hear the rush of the HVAC system become louder and louder. He was coming up to a particularly dark area when he heard Shirley's voice scream out his name in terror. It so spooked him that he turned his head as he was moving his hands forward. The next thing he knew was that he was falling head first down a vertical air duct that ran through the building.

….

Back at Wolfram and Hart, Fred had spent several hours compiling the data regarding the Quavolchan stone. She had input all the readings from her early tests on the stone into her computer and was reviewing the findings. She made several attempts to identify the unique power readings that had come off the stones in her initial tests. The computer made a buzzing sound as each of her theories on tracing the unique power signature came back as failure. Fred sat there, staring at her computer with her head in her hands.

"What am I not seeing?" she asked, as she pulled her hair back from her face.

She pulled the long sheets of power read outs in front of her again. She half heartedly made several marks on the readouts. She quickly closed the readouts with a sound of frustration. She got up from her chair and began to pace in her office as she went over the facts in her head. She had plenty of data on the power in the stone, but she had no data of the power in Spike. If only, she had left Knox to deal with that emergency while she examined Spike yesterday, she thought, mentally kicking herself. She desperately needed a DNA sample of his since his encounter with the stone. It would make it much easier to track the energy signature in his person.

Let's see. His cup from yesterday's meeting would have been already washed by now. What else would have a sample of his DNA since yesterday? Spike was a smoker, if she could get her hands on one of his used cigarette butts…but Wolfram and Hart was a non-smoking building.

"Rats! I thought I had something there. Okay, yesterday, what was Spike doing in the building?" She asked to the room.

Then her eyes lit up, looking up over her head, she smiled as she saw the numerous pencils sticking in the ceiling. Fred pulled her chair out of the way. It was way too short to give her access to the pencils. Making a small grunting noise, she wrestled her two drawer metal filing cabinet toward the center of the area behind her desk. Climbing on top, it took her a moment to gain her balance as she bent over at the waist as the thin metal shifted under her feet. Once she had regained her balance, she turned the top of her body to look up at the pencils as she carefully straightened up. The pencils were about three inches above her head when she stood up straight. Studying each pencil, she moved her eyes slowly over the lot.

"Come on, oral fixation!" Fred breathed, looking for the tell tale sign of teeth marks on a pencil Knowing Spike was a smoker, she would have bet dollars to donuts that one of the pencils made it into his mouth. He had been stuck in the building for a number of hours yesterday and was probably itching for a cigarette while he was waiting for her.

"Aha! Gotcha!" Fred exclaimed as her fingers carefully closed around the end of a pencil with definite teeth marks.

…

Angel and Wes had been tied back to back in two chairs in the basement of Taras' building. The concrete walls and floor were cold and clean like a surgeon's office or a slaughter house; neither concept giving happy thoughts to the current occupants. Taras' men seemed to be particularly adroit at tying the men in such a way with heavy rope that they were unable to move. After making sure that both men were secure, Tara's men went back to the elevator to go back upstairs. Angel and Wes were alone in the basement. Both men had not yet fully recovered from their treatment in the penthouse. Angel was still fighting the sensation of the stun gun, while Wes was gingerly moving his neck to see how badly he was hurt.

"Angel? Are you okay?" Wes whispered, leaning his head back to hear.

"Yeah. Just trying to shake this thing off, then I'll see about getting us free." Angel muttered, as he blinked his eyes. "How are you?"

"Just dandy, other than the large bruise the size of Maine I can feel forming on the side of my neck. At least, he missed my collarbone." Wes responded, exasperatedly.

Both men strained at the ropes that tied them to the chairs and to each other. After a few minutes of straining, it became apparent that they were going to have little success at freeing themselves.

"It seems we're stuck here." Angel said, after giving the ropes one final pull.

"So, it would appear." Wes confirmed. Then turning his head slightly toward Angel. "Well, at least we found Spike, albeit a pint size version."

"You're right. That stone's power went off again like Lorne said it would." Angel sighed and asked anxiously. "He seemed alright, didn't he?"

"We're just lucky that he didn't give us away." Wes stated with relief. He then added. "He may not even know who we are. Remember, he was having memory problems."

"You're right. He was having trouble with his memory, yesterday. Poor little fella." Angel sympathized. "He must have been pretty scared when they found him."

"It seems the lady of the house has him pretty well in hand." Wes mused as he thought of Spike under the control of the rather extravagantly dressed woman he saw.

All of a sudden there was a sound of a sizeable thump coming from the large HVAC system on the far side of the basement. Both men did their best to look over where the sound came from, but hearing nothing further, went back to their conversation.

"She's quite formidable! You didn't see her when she came up on the elevator. I wouldn't want to cross her." Angel said, making a sound of whew at the end of the last sentence. Then he added with a slight chuckle. "By the way, did you see what Spike was wearing?"