Eighteen Days

Author:  Elen

Parts: 11 - 20

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~Part: 11~

Willow's day/night clock was out of whack. She wasn't sure what time it was when she had breakfast, so she ate the contents of half the box of chocolate with a diet Coke and brushed her teeth. Georgia showed up to give her a French manicure, reporting that Harmony was whining about not having a blow drier. Spike told her to brush her hair dry since she had nothing better to do. Now Harmony was trying to organize the minions into supporting her request for beauty supplies and a move to a more interesting and comfortable lair. Preferably in France.

Willow giggled. It sounded exactly like something Harmony would do. Cordelia could be mean, but she wasn't stupid or oblivious like Harmony. "Won't Spike be mad?"

"When I left he was offering to help her pack," Georgia said. "I think even Pete is getting tired of her. He found her in San Diego and couldn't believe his luck-"Georgia shrugged. "She is beautiful, anyone can see that. Too bad she opens her mouth and spoils it."

"One of my boyfriend's friends went out with her when we were still in high school," Willow said. "I think he thought she was kind of putting on a big front. Except she wasn't. I've known her since kindergarten. She's just Harmony."

"She's a little ray of sunshine," Georgia commented.

Willow thought about that and decided that it was an effective vampire put down. "It's interesting how perspective can change the way things sound. Ordinarily I'd think that was a compliment, but vampires, sunshine, they don't go together, so I guess it's not."

Georgia flicked a lock of her long honey blonde hair over her shoulder. "No, that was just good old fashioned sarcasm, sweet pea. Ever heard of a southern put down? It's when you say something nice about someone in a way that manages to be insulting," she explained.

"Where are you from?" Willow asked.

"Savannah," Georgia drawled. "Beautiful city." A tiny ripple of a frown marred her high forehead even as she smiled.

"Is that where you, uh, met Colin?" Willow wondered, examining her fingernails. "That's really pretty," she admired the neat white tips of her fingernails.

"Give me your foot. I'll do your toes too," Georgia offered. "You don't mind do you?"

"Uh-uh. Thanks for the books and stuff. Do you want a chocolate?"

"Maybe later," Georgia said, balancing Willow's foot on her knee. They were sitting on the floor. It was cooler near the ground. The back-up generator did not provide enough juice to keep the air conditioning running. Willow's legs were damp with sweat. "I met Colin at Spoleto, in Charleston," she said, looking thoughtful. "Going on twenty one years," she realized.

Did vampires celebrate anniversaries or birthdays? For that matter, what about the major holidays? "Are you going to do anything?" Willow asked.

Georgia glanced over her shoulder at her, looking puzzled. "Like, have ourselves a big ol' party?" she drawled.

Willow wondered if the innuendo was real or imagined. What was a vampire party like? Her parents had had a twentieth anniversary party last year. It had been a rather stilted cocktail party with a buffet in the dinning room and a lot of their colleagues and a few relatives, and presents. Willow had ordered a copy of the New York Times from their wedding day as a present. Her dad had enjoyed that. "Twenty-one years? You should get good presents," she said. Her Nana Rosenberg had given her parents eight more place settings of china for their twentieth anniversary.

Impressed by that reasoning, Georgia nodded. "Never thought of it that way," she admitted. "We should have ourselves a little anniversary party. A good ol' fashioned night out-with presents," she included Willow's contribution.

Willow craned her head to admire her toes. French manicured toes sounded silly, but they were starting to look good. "Pretty," she commented.

"You need a toe ring and a couple of tattoos," Georgia  told her.

Willow smiled at the idea of coming home with tattoos. "My Dad would love that," she said. "Maybe henna tattoos," she substituted.

"There you go," Georgia nodded. "Wash it off and start all over when you get bored,". She ran her hand over Willow's shin. "Want me to wax your legs?" she asked.

Willow hesitated. "Won't it hurt?"

"A little," Georgia allowed. "Maybe a lot," she said. "We could get some ice to numb your skin." She exchanged the foot she had been working on for the other one. "Sit still. They're still drying," she pointed out as Willow reached for her can of diet Coke. "Tell me about your boyfriend," she invited.

Happy to comply, Willow said, "His name is Oz.  He's a musician."

"How did you meet?" Georgia prompted.

Willow thought back. "Um . . . career day was the first time I talked to him. I saw him around. He was a senior. We started talking," she tilted her head to one side trying to remember the first thing he said to her. Was it canapé?

"He wasn't that interested in computers, he's just smart," she elaborated. "Oh, and he saved me from being shot by the Order of Taraka-they were trying to kill Buffy, and there was a stray shot, but he knocked me down and got shot instead."

The Order of Taraka? Good lord. Buffy? Good grief. The Slayer's name was Buffy. That just beat Jannen Leigh all to hell in the bad name sweepstakes, Georgia decided. When she was Willow's age she had been known as Jannen Leigh Dougherty.

"That tends to make an impression. Why was the Order of Taraka trying to kill the Slayer? Why is the Slayer still alive?" she asked.

"Spike hired them," Willow said, as if that explained everything. "He kind of got his ass kicked when an organ fell on him. It's a long story. But, yeah, it made an impression," she agreed. "Oz isn't like anyone else," literally. "Well, for one thing, he's a werewolf."

"Oh, damn," Georgia muttered. The little half moon swipe she had been applying to Willow's third toe was crooked. "A werewolf, huh? He hasn't bit you or scratched you has he?" she asked worriedly.

"No," Willow sounded shocked. "Oz would never do anything to hurt me," she said. "At least not when he's Oz. When he isn't? Tranquilizer gun," she said matter-of-factly. "He did sort of almost eat me once when he was just getting adjusted to the werewolf thing."

"Hmm," Georgia smiled to herself. "Of course he did. You'd make a yummy snack."

Willow's nose wrinkled, forcefully reminded that she was a food group to Georgia. "Uh, thanks, I think."

Georgia patted her leg. "Don't worry, baby girl. Spike's not going to let anyone nibble on you," Georgia thought he might be saving that for himself. "No more picking fights with the big bad master vampire, sugar. Colin is old and smart. Spike is older and ruthless, and smart," she warned. "He's wound pretty tight. You don't want to be in his path if he really gets pissed off."

"Duh," Willow said. "He's kidnapped me before."

Diverted, Georgia turned to look at her. "No way!"

"Way," Willow was glum. "I thought he was going to kill us. He beat Xander up pretty bad in under thirty seconds of not trying really hard while three sheets to the wind," she looked at Georgia cautiously, wondering if she should say anything more and decided not too. The things that Spike had said that night had been painful, for him, and personal. While she had been the more or less unwilling recipient of his confidences, she still felt the weight of keeping them to herself.

Georgia capped the nail polish bottles and reminded Willow not to move around before leaving the room. "I'll be right back." Willow leaned against the foot of the bed and picked up her book. She had started with Patricia Cornwell and was working her way through the second chapter.

Georgia came back with a waxing kit and an evil smile.

~~~*~~~

The leg waxing had hurt. A lot. Georgia kept telling her not to be a baby about it, but by the time she was done, Willow's eyes were running and her legs were splotchy. She had a cold shower and moisturized within an inch of her life, stealing one of Spike's razor's to shave under her arms before Georgia got any more diabolical ideas about depilation. Georgia was waiting for her with clothes when she came out of the bathroom. She had what looked like a short skirt, but was actually a pair of shorts that looked like a skirt, a mint green tank top, and a pair of black sandals that were a little big, but they fit. After Willow was dressed, Georgia insisted that they go downstairs where it was cooler.

It had to be a form of torture, Willow decided. She had been liberated from the Gideon Bible with fresh reading material and was denied the opportunity to read it in a sweltering, airless room, forced to join the other vampires in the cooler lower level of the motel. She crossed the threshold of the barely remembered lounge. The light in there was low. She spotted Harmony at once, sitting on the bar, eyes closed, with a Walkman on. The minions, as if on cue, their strings pulled by an invisible puppeteer, turned to her with glowing eyes from their positions in the room. A growl erupted from an enormous vampire with a thick black ponytail.

The girl who had stayed in with Willow the night before slapped him on the back of the head. "Knock it off," she said sharply.

"Brown noser," Georgia whispered, and Willow watched as the girl in question looked to Spike for approval.

Not that he noticed. He was studying what appeared to be a hand of cards, lounging in a banquet with Colin and Pete. Georgia nudged Willow along until they were standing by the table where the card game was playing out. She ran an affectionate hand over Colin's bald head. Willow had seen her do this before. She thought it was probably a version of her Dad's habit of pinching her mother's elbow and rolling the loose skin through his fingers, a kind of non-verbal hello.

He looked up at Georgia. Then at Willow. "Playing dress up?" he guessed.

Spike smiled slowly, glancing over at the girl. Red was a vampire Barbie doll. Some vampires had an atavistic grooming instinct. Georgia swung that way, he thought with a smirk.

Colin knew his part. "You're a miracle worker. A few days ago she looked like death warmed over and now she's all . . . adorable, Georgia," he complimented.

"Thank you," Georgia accepted the credit. "She is adorable."

Conflicting emotions played over Willow's face. Discomfort at being scrutinized. Distaste at being objectified. Disbelief and uncertainty at the positive reaction, which she instinctively analyzed for sarcasm. Embarrassment at the pleasure she felt in being admired, even in what she recognized as a crass and non-involved appreciation. All of this ladled on top of her discomfort in being in a room full of vampires with Spike and Georgia as the only people she could rely on to keep her from being turned into a meal. Her stomach churned. She was tired of it. She was tired of being afraid all of the time.

"I think we should have an anniversary party," Georgia told Colin. She grinned at Spike. "With presents," she added pointedly. "And I want to bring our baby girl along."

Spike shrugged. "I don't see why not," he said. It coincided with his plans to move. "Where?"

Spike had a watch set on the address of the house Willow was supposed to be staying in. For seven days it had been dark. No one had picked up the growing pile of newspapers. Now it was occupied according to Pete. He checked it out himself that night, lurking on the roof of the coffee shop until the occupants showed up around three in the morning. Four guys, all young, including one he vaguely recognized from the evening of his nearly fatal encounter with an organ.

Oz. The werewolf. Prowling around San Jose looking for his mate, no doubt. He figured that the Watcher and the Slayer would invest some effort in trying to find him, so he wasn't entirely surprised by this development. He watched as the boy's head snapped up, suddenly alert and wary. Probably catching his scent on the wind. Spike stroked his jaw and considered his options. Four humans versus one vampire? He could take them. The wolf was the only one who was truly dangerous, and even if he knew he was coming, he was just one, and out of phase for his transformation, which made him relatively helpless.

Killing him, however, might bring the Slayer, and he wanted her in Sunnydale, working diligently on the search for the Gem of Amara. They would move. Tonight, he decided. Anyone caught straggling in around sunrise would be left behind.

Georgia pretended to think. "The Temple," she said after a moment.

The Temple was in San Francisco. It was a Greek Revival church built at the turn of the century and sold when a more modern and conventional church was dedicated. It had been turned into a private club by a pair of enterprising vampires. The old sanctuary had been converted into a stage for shows. It was the only public part of the Temple. There were two subterranean levels that were strictly demon.

San Francisco was an hour away, and there were plenty of places that they could run to ground.

"What are we waiting for?" Pete asked. The Temple was well known up and down the coast.

Colin rolled his eyes. "Please!" he snorted. "They have to go shopping and get all tarted up," he frowned at Pete. Stupid American.

Georgia nodded, "And, don't forget, presents? Anniversary presents. Colin and me have been together for twenty-one years," she winked at Colin.

"A party!" Harmony had decided to take off her headset and join the conversation.

Georgia's lip curled and Pete grinned at her. "Can I give you Harmony?" he asked, sotto voce.

"I heard that!" she said, jumping down from the bar and stomping her foot. Willow watched her slink her way over to Pete. "I told you. No three way unless it's boy-boy-girl, or Charlise Theron,"

Wow. Way too much information. With her unerring instinct for sussing out the weakest person in the room, Harmony frowned at Willow. "Why do we have to take her? She's no fun," she insisted.

Willow tended to agree. "That's okay. I don't do tarted up, thanks. You go have fun. I don't want anyone to miss out on my account."

Spike laughed at that. "Right, Red. We'll leave you here, all by yourself, safe as houses. I'll just tuck you up in bed while you read improving literature like a good little girl," he teased.

That little girl crap was wearing on her nerves, but she confined herself to glaring at him. "Geek," she heard Harmony dismiss her.

"Vapid whore," Willow shot back before breaking eye contact with her kidnapper in chief. "I've been kidnapped. I've probably lost any chance of going back to my internship, which was for credit, and I'm way behind on my summer reading list," she said, sounding matter of fact to her own ears. "Yeah, that makes me a geek. What? Am I supposed to be insulted?"

"If you aren't insulted why are you calling me names?" Harmony demanded.

"I am a geek," Willow repeated with weary patience. "I thought we were playing a version of call it  as you see it."

Too subtle for Harm, but not bad overall, Spike decided. Georgia clapped. "Kitten has claws," she said, sounding amused. "What's the point of waxing your legs if you don't do tarted up?"

"Pain?" Willow took a wild stab at it.

Georgia grinned. "Oh, yeah. That was nice," she admitted.

~~~*~~~

Willow wasn't allowed to play in the sandbox. She stood a foot away, looking down at her feet, her fingers pleating folds into her t-shirt over her tummy. The end of her nose was red. Her hair was braided today, like yesterday. They had tried to put straws in it to make her braids more like Pippi Longstocking from the book Mrs. Gardner read at nap time, but it hadn't worked. She just had braids with straws sticking out of them. A dog barked and she flinched, looking up warily.

"C'mon, Willow," Xander  called. He was building a fence with Popsicle sticks forming the pickets in the sand. He had several take out Chinese containers of various sizes waiting to be filled with sand to form the buildings inside his fort. He looked down at himself. He was full sized in his dream. Willow was five.

"Not supposed to," she reminded him.

It was a stupid rule. Willow wasn't allowed to play in the sandbox. It had something to do with her shoes. She wasn't allowed to take them off either, which was another stupid rule. He could tell that she was thinking about it. Then he smiled. He was the grown up. He could change the rule.

"You can take off your shoes," he told her. "I'm in charge and I say you can."

She looked up from her shoes. They were brown oxfords, the scuff marks on the toes neatly covered with shoe polish. "They are double knotted," she informed him, looking discouraged. He got up and climbed out of the sandbox, kneeling down to pick the laces apart and untie her shoes. The shoes came off, and he felt a moment of fear as it occurred to him to wonder if the reason she had to keep her shoes on had something to do with her feet. Maybe there was something wrong with them that was hidden by the shoes.

She sat down on the side of the sandbox. She was wearing purple jeans printed with flowers. She took her socks off and he was relieved to see that her small feet were normal. She got in the sandbox. For a moment, she stood there, squishing her toes into the sun warmed sand, then she sat down, Indian style, looking very serious. She looked up at him for direction. "What do I do now?" she asked.

"We are building a fort," Xander told her.

She picked up one of the cartons and scooped sand into it, packing it down with the back of her fingers. He watched her play. It was no longer about him building a fort. It was about Willow playing. He would watch her play. He picked up her shoes and started filling them with sand.

She looked up at him. "I'm going to get in trouble," she told him, even though he was the one filling her shoes with sand. She looked sad.

~~~*~~~

He woke up with a start. He had fallen asleep on Giles' couch.

Buffy peered at him. "Hi," she said. She looked sleepy too.

Xander rubbed his face, wishing that he could go back to sleep and finish his dream. He wondered what made him think about Willow and the sandbox rule. He closed his eyes for a moment, yawning. "Had a dream," he  told her.

Buffy scooted down in the couch, propping the book she was reading against her raised thighs. She had her feet on Giles' coffee table. "Good dream or bad dream?"

"We were playing in the sandbox. Me 'n Will. Except she was a little girl." He smiled. "I never could get her in the sandbox."

Buffy's eyebrows rose and her forehead wrinkled. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

Xander shrugged. "Nah. No prophetic dreams here. It was this rule. Willow couldn't play in the sandbox. She couldn't take off her shoes," he knew he wasn't explaining it right. "She wore these shoes . . . like old lady shoes," he said. "She wasn't allowed to take them off, and she couldn't play in the sandbox with them on, because they'd get sand in them, I guess. I don't know what made me think of it."

"But, in your dream, she did play in the sandbox," Buffy concluded.

"Yeah. I was grown up. In charge. I changed the rule." He picked up the book that had fallen to one side. "Do you think she's okay?" he asked. "I keep thinking about how scared she must be."

Buffy tried not to think about that. "Willow's got the kidnapping thing down by now, don't you think?" she tried to joke. "She's been kidnapped by Spike, twice, and once by the Mayor and Faith, and there was demon robot guy," she reminded Xander. "She could give Spike pointers."

Xander got a mental image of Willow offering helpful suggestions on the finer points of kidnapping. They had been in tight spots before. They always managed to figure out a way to get through it. He was going to have to trust in that.

~Part: 12~

Oz spent the afternoon at the Mercury Sun paging through back issues of the paper for the last week and making notes. A murder robbery the day before caught his attention. A gang had knocked over an all-night chain drug store in Milpitas cleaning out the registers and killing the pharmacist, a counter clerk, and three customers, whose throats had all been ripped out. Smelled like a fresh vampire kill to him. Oz checked his map and was stunned to discover how near Milpitas was.

He made himself calm down and get organized. He marked the map in red with the date and kept reading. He had a system, in a manner of speaking. He was looking for assaults that could be vampire attacks. If they were clearly something else, he noted the locations in black. If vampire attack couldn't be ruled out, he made a note in blue, and for those that were highly likely to be vamp attacks, he used red. He worked all afternoon to get back to the day Willow disappeared and decided to work back two more days.

When he got back to Willow's the Dingoes were waiting for him in the living room. "We've had a band meeting," Dan reported, in spokesperson mode.

Oz had been expecting something like this. They had dropped everything so he could go to San Jose to look for Willow, who was still missing. That was his problem. He wasn't leaving without finding her, but the band didn't have anything to do except watch him scurry around and puzzle over his refusal to involve the cops further.

"And, we've made some decisions," Devon carried on. Dan's spokesperson moments tended to be short-lived. Devon never wanted to be the actual spokesperson until the talking began, and then he took over. He couldn't help himself. It was a front man thing.

Oz nodded. He had money saved up for his first semester at UC Sunnydale, and he could tap into that. "Yeah," he said. "You need the van, right?"

Chris frowned at him. "Slow down, dude. We've noticed, over the last year, some pretty weird things that go down around your friends," he said.

"Very weird," Devon agreed. "Your girlfriend is hot in leather," he threw in.

Vamp Willow's appearance at the Bronze had been witnessed by Devon, and Oz had told him that she was having some issues. He also suggested that Devon was a little stoned, so he might have misunderstood what he had seen.

Chris glanced over at Devon. They had all heard about Willow in leather from Devon before. They had also heard Oz mutter something about Devon's periodic overindulgences, which sounded more plausible than the idea of a slinky Willow Rosenberg.

"We've also noticed that weird things happen in Sunnydale," Chris said, in an attempt to get them back on track. "Very weird things," he stressed. "So, this is the deal. We want to help you, but you have to tell us what's really going on."

Oz looked at them. "Okay," he thought about it for a moment. "Vampires are real."

"Oh, man!" Devon smacked his forehead. "Willow is a vampire? Willow Rosenberg? She's so . . . uh . . . cute," he said, thinking that in a rational world vampires and cuteness should probably be mutually exclusive. "Man, nobody is that cute," he realized. "It's like a disguise, huh?"

"No. Willow isn't a vampire. Willow is a witch," Oz corrected.

"A witch?" Dan repeated, sounding skeptical. "Pointy hat? Warts? Or more like Sabrina the Teen Witch with the talking cat and the wacky spells gone wrong?" He looked around. "Hey, it could explain a lot," he pointed out. "Did she, like, make herself disappear?"

"A vampire named Spike took her. Kidnapped her," he clarified. "He's been in Sunnydale before. He used to live in the old burned out factory on the edge of town. You may even have seen him around. Bleached blond guy with a leather coat, British accent."

"Is that librarian guy a vampire too?" Devon wanted to know. "He's British."

"Uh, no," Oz said. That librarian guy? "Devon, we went to the same high school. That's Mr. Giles, the high school librarian," he reminded him. Devon, never having found the library, looked blank. "Right. Moving on. Do you remember the older guy Buffy was dating?" he asked.

"Yeah? He's a vampire?" Devon grinned. "Man . . . that's wild," he said. "And Buffy's like, his girlfriend?"

"Was," Oz confirmed. "They broke up. No future in dating the undead."

"So," Chris was pacing. "Willow's a witch, and vampires are real. And a vampire guy kidnapped her . . . because she's-oh, duh, she's a good witch," he was developing the plot, "and she fights vampires?" Chris said triumphantly. "I mean, come on, this is Willow we are talking about. She's got to be a good witch," he looked to see if Dan and Devon had caught up. "And her buds, that Xander guy and Buffy, they help her out?"

Oz sighed. "Close. Buffy is a-actually the-stress on the singular-Vampire Slayer. She hunts vampires and demons, and Willow and Xander help her," he re-ordered Chris's conclusions. "So does Mr. Giles, the librarian," he explained, "And Angel, Buffy's ex, because he has a soul. Spike and Buffy have had a long history of Buffy mostly kicking his ass without being able to dust him, and long story short, they kind of made a deal that Spike would leave Sunnydale."

Devon nodded, "He's in San Jose? And he runs into Willow, who is Buffy's best friend," he said. "Okay, I'm getting that. He kidnaps Willow," he concluded. "What does he want?"

Oz shrugged, "Some ancient artifact thing that is hidden in Sunnydale. He wants them to find it for him. He's going to trade Willow for it."

"Dude, the cops are never going to go for this," Chris surmised.

Dan looked at Chris. "Moratorium on 'dude.' Officially," he announced.

Chris and Devon exchanged resigned looks.

Oz nodded his agreement with the moratorium announcement. Dude was so over. "It's a problem," he said, returning to the topic of the clash of the criminal justice system with demons and the mystical forces of evil.

"Is that the whole thing?" Dan asked. "You're working with Willow's friends in Sunnydale to get this artifact thing-"

"Or find Spike," Oz interrupted. "He's not well known for sticking to a plan or keeping his word."

Devon looked at the others. "Good enough for me," he  decided. "What can we do?"

Oz took a deep breath. "Well, there is one other thing," he began. He had just outted Buffy, and that wasn't his secret to share. "About me," he began. "You might have noticed that sometimes I can't get together with you guys?"

They looked puzzled. "Well, you know, we all have stuff we have to do, and you've been busy helping your girlfriend and her buds fight vampires," Devon said, reverting to de facto spokesman for the band. "It's cool," he told Oz. "It's not like you are bailing on us without a good reason."

"I'm a werewolf. Three days a month I turn into the wolf at sunset," he said.

"Willow is a witch? Her friend Buffy is a Vampire Slayer? Buffy's ex is a vampire with a soul. You are a werewolf?" Dan ticked it off.

"It's a lot to take in," Oz agreed with his gift for understatement.

He called Giles to report in and told him that he had to let the guys in on the big picture, but that they had agreed to help out and they would be staying in San Jose for now. Angel was more or less in charge of the 'find Spike' sub-mission, so Giles put him on the phone. "What do you have?" Angel asked.

"A lot, actually," Oz told him. "I think there's a nest in the area, and it's organized. San Jose has its share of mystery murders, and they have drug related gangs operating in and around San Jose. The other night a pharmacy was hit, and everyone there was killed. The registers were cleaned out. The pharmacy cages were broken into," Oz said. "Okay . . . could be gangbangers? Except that every one of the victims' throats was ripped out."

"Vampires aren't that interested in drugs as a rule," Angel told him. "You can achieve some of the effects from taking drugs, but-"

"Right. They also stole cigarette cartons and booze, too. Look, people don't kill a store full of people to get a fix. They do it to get drugs to sell, because it is as good as currency," he hypothesized. "The local police are openly speculating that there is a new gang in the area and that the ripping out of throats is a kind of calling card-instead of shooting people in the back of the head."

Angel grunted. "Got it. I'm on board with you now," he said. "You think that Spike is still in the area?"

"Yeah, I do. Last night," he frowned, "I had one of those eyes on the back of my neck feelings. If they are converting drugs into currency, we can ask around in the local clubs. See who the source is for your quality pharmaceuticals," he explained. "Devon looks stoned most of the time, so we've got good cover for that."

~~~*~~~

Rule one in the handbook for kidnap victims. Do not cry while gagged with your head covered by a smelly nylon sack that may have once held gym clothes.

Willow had been roughly shaken into wakefulness by her kidnapper in chief and told she had ten minutes to get dressed and ready to leave. Recalling that Spike interpreted his own ten minute injunction as an expression, she pulled on a pair of jeans over the boxer shorts she was sleeping in and slid her feet into the black sandals Georgia had given her. She stuffed as many of the toiletries that she had collected over the week as she could into one of the many plastic bags that littered one corner of the room she shared with Spike.

When he came back with Georgia and the small, dark haired vampire named Jeanie in tow, she was more or less ready to leave. Georgia had a Polaroid camera. Spike advanced on her. "Pet?" he prompted. "Can't have you screaming your bloody head off," he told her.

Willow gaped at him. Screaming? Why hadn't she thought of that before now? Oh, right. The threat of harm to innocent civilians wandering around. Hello! "Can't we just stick with the normal, try to get help, and people die thing?" she suggested.

"Not this time. But, nice try," he told her. "Don't make me chase you around the room.  I'll win. You'll loose, and it won't be pretty," he warned.

What was he talking about? What was he going to do that was going to warrant running? He fished a roll of duct tape out of his pocket. "Hands," he prompted.

She still had bruises on her wrists from the handcuffs, so duct tape constituted an improvement. She gritted her teeth and stuck her hands out in front of her, hoping that this would satisfy him. He raised an eyebrow, but he wrapped her left wrist in duct tape and bound her right wrist to it with two additional turns. It wasn't cutting off her circulation, but her wrists were securely bound. He vamped out and razored through the trailing edge of the duct tape without difficultly.

He tore off a four-inch strip and Willow backed away from him. "Now, wait a minute," she began nervously. "This really isn't necessary," she said, trying to fend him off with her bound hands.

He slapped the tape over her mouth, catching some of her hair in it. He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her over to a chair, forcing her to sit. The hair pulling made her eyes water. Georgia raised a Polaroid camera to frame the picture Spike wanted. Spike peered at Willow. She looked angry and a little teary eyed. He yanked her head to one side and ran his tongue over her carotid artery, smelling fear invading her scent. Much better. Terrified, angry, and teary eyed. He let her go and her head fell forward. Georgia continued taking pictures, handing them to Jeanie.

The bag over head indignity was reserved for the car. She found herself in the back seat of the Desoto sitting stiffly between a pair of the male minions. Spike was driving and the dark haired girl was in the front passenger seat.

Claustrophobia threatened, clawing at her fragile hold on herself. With nothing to distract her but her own growing panic and confused senses, Willow lost track of any real sense of time. They could have been in the car one hour or three. She was pretty sure it was less than three. She was flung over a hard, bony shoulder after she was dragged out of the car when they reached their destination. The bag over her head slipped down to her chin and she shook her head to try to get it off. That earned her a hard smack on her ass.

"Knock it off, Red," Spike growled at her.

She could feel him moving down a long, winding staircase. She registered cooler, damper air, and the sound of a door opening, then closing with a metallic sound. She was unceremoniously dumped on a mattress. She pushed the bag over her head. It was pitch dark, wherever she was. She heard the sound of water dripping somewhere nearby and smelled something dank and familiar in an unpleasant way. Mildew? Dry, dusty, ugh! Crypt. She shuddered. It was a crypt. No crying. Crying made her nose fill and she couldn't breath through her mouth.

Spike was busy giving orders. "Okay, people, fan out. I want a perimeter maintained," he ordered. "We are here until dusk, and then we move, so don't go getting comfortable," he told them.

Willow picked at the duct tape covering her mouth, getting an edge of it up to grasp between her fingers. The sticky tape pulled on her skin painfully as she tried to separate it. Seeing that she was occupied in a way that would keep her busy and out of the way for a while, Spike went back to supervising their occupation operation. He had a packet of Polaroids to mail, threatening phone calls to make, and he set Colin to work on finding them a new place to call home. His presence in San Francisco wasn't going to go unnoticed for long.

~~~*~~~

"I've got it," Giles exclaimed. The painfully slow task of translating text had fallen largely on his shoulders. Further complicating matters, the text that Dalton had been working from was itself a translation, and it took Giles three days to realize that it was somewhat flawed. He had to work his way through some translation errors, consulting with colleagues as he worked out a few more common translation errors based on some speculation about the original language the text had been translated from.

"Where is it?" Buffy asked, abandoning the book she was reading.

Giles rechecked his calculations and started plotting them on a map. "We need to check this against a few landmarks that are rather cryptically described, but I believe that we are looking at a location roughly fifty feet underground here," he pointed at a spot near a major intersection.

Xander threw his hands up in the air. "Great. That'll be real subtle. No one is going to notice us digging there."

"We'll have to tunnel in," Giles conceded, looking for a copy of his maps of Sunnydale's extensive tunnel system, developed courtesy of the late mayor of Sunnydale and elaborated on by Sunnydale's demon population. "I think we can get within twenty yards of it, and then start digging."

"How long?" Buffy asked.

Giles had thought carefully about what to tell them. He had talked to Luke Holbrook at UC Sunnydale about excavation issues. Using picks and shovels Holbrook had estimated that a safe tunnel could be made without heavy equipment based on the soil and bedrock composition in the area with a team of four moving at approximately two feet per day, which was disheartening to say the least.

"A week under optimal conditions," Giles lied. Based on Holbrook's estimates it was more like a month. He watched Buffy and Xander exchange incredulous looks.

"When Spike was after that cross for Drusilla, he got to send a minion into a crypt," Buffy objected. "This is so not fair. A week? A week is too long."

"We've reached a point where we have to make a decision," Giles announced. He had not been pleased by Oz's unilateral decision to inform his band mates about their activities. It was done, and there was no use regretting it. It did suggest one manner in which they could double their manpower resources.

"What kind of decision?" Xander asked. He was with Buffy. Willow had already been gone over a week. Another week was out of the question.

Giles took off his glasses and started cleaning them. "We need to decide if we are going to continue looking for Spike, or if we are going to abandon that and work towards finding the Gem of Amara. If we can increase our workforce, double it in effect, I think we have a good chance of finding the crypt in a week or less. If we don't . . . it is going to take longer," he paused, his attention fixed on his Slayer.

"Conversely, we could simply abandon the search for the Gem of Amara. There are other issues that we haven't fully considered," he said carefully. "Oz has made some progress in San Jose. If we dedicate ourselves to finding Spike and rescuing Willow, we may be equally successful. Though, the risk to Willow is considerably greater should Spike conclude that we are no longer on task."

Buffy frowned. "Spill. What aren't you saying?"

Giles frowned. "We cannot let Spike have the Gem of Amara, Buffy. What we have learned of the Gem suggests that it would make him invulnerable. Impossible to kill," he elaborated. "Such an advantage in the hands of your mortal enemy is unthinkable."

Buffy stared at him. "You're starting to sound like Wesley."

It was not a compliment. Her former Watcher had ordered her not to trade the Box of Gavroc when the Mayor and Faith took Willow hostage for it. He exemplified everything she had learned to despise about the Watcher's Council before she broke off contact with them.

"I'm having deja vu in a bad way, Giles." Not bringing Willow home was so not an option. "We've been here before, and we found a way. Thanks to Willow," she reminded him. "So, if you are thinking that we aren't going to make a trade if it comes to that, then unthink it."

"Gotta say I'm with Buff on this, G-man," Xander put in. "Willow's priority one. We'll deal with the fall out, because . . . that's what we do. Deal. This is Willow. It's non-negotiable."

Buffy nodded. Since Willow had disappeared, she had spent way too much time deferring to Giles and Angel and worrying about Willow. She was worried about Willow. Being weak wasn't alleviating her worry. She had quit on the Watcher's Council after they had refused to help Angel, and she had averted another apocalypse. Great. That didn't mean that she was done. She was the Slayer because that is what she was, not because the Council made it so.

"Okay," she felt more centered than she had since Angel left Sunnydale the night she had graduated from high school. It was a good feeling.

"This is the plan. Everyone is now on Gem of Amara duty. We call Oz and tell him to get here because we need every able body we can get on this," she said, pacing. "In the meantime, we keep researching. We figure out what the Gem is, exactly what it does, how it works, and work on plans to either take it back or keep it out of Spike's hands," she rapped out. "We play for the endgame. That's the plan."

~Part: 13~

Willow woke up to unrelieved darkness and the feeling of being buried alive. She had had a nightmare that she was trapped in a crypt, and that she couldn't move. Her heart pounded and she felt a scream gathering in her throat. It escaped in a yelp of surprise when she heard Spike say, "Your heart is beating like a fucking drum. You think you could take it down a notch?"

Being startled out of her skin didn't help. It was so dark. She couldn't see anything. "Why is it so dark?" she managed to say, trying to cover her heart with her hands to muffled the sound.

He saw what she was doing and rolled his eyes, one corner of his mouth turning up in an exasperated smile. He lit a candle. "Better?" he asked.

Willow looked around. She was in a crypt. There was blood red marble on the walls and black marble columns with silver leaf capstones. She was open mouthed in astonishment at the small glimpses. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Wow," she breathed. "This is one fancy crypt."

Coming from a girl who actually knew her crypts, Spike thought.  "If there was more light you could see the ceiling. It's painted," he elaborated.

"Really?" she looked impressed. "Like Sistine Chapel painted?"

"It's a copy of 'Les Tres Riches Heures. Twelve vignettes representing the months of the year. The center of which is a representation of a calendar. That's not a copy. That's an interpretation of the arch motif from the original."

'The very rich hours' Willow translated in her head. 'Les Tres Riches Heures'. It sounded familiar. "I should know that," she said, trying to place the reference in her head. She felt thick and tired, and she no longer knew what day it was. The computer made her lazy in a lot of ways. She didn't have to remember things. She just had to remember how to look them up. She didn't have a computer here. She just had herself. She sat up, wrapping her arms around herself. It was cold. After being in the un-air conditioned motel, it was too cold.

"Cold?" he asked.

"Yes."

He shrugged out of his leather coat and dropped it in her lap. Willow picked it up, feeling the soft, broken-in leather in her hands. She settled it around her shoulders and looked up at him curiously. He was looming over her, holding a white candle. It was a particular type of candle, though that eluded her too. Her father used to get them at the hardware store and keep them in a drawer in the small entry from the garage to the house to be used in the event of a storm. Willow had used them last year to illuminate the walk to her parents' house on Halloween, putting them in paper bags that had been cut with various jack o' lantern patterns. That was the Halloween after Spike had hunted them when their costumes changed. Her parents had let her have a party that year, and had looked so surprised at the number of people who came.

It felt a little strange to be wrapped up in his coat. It smelled like him. Leather, and tobacco, and something else that she couldn't name but recognized as a Spike smell. She felt around in an inside pocket and found a wallet. She wondered if he had pictures in it. She continued her surreptitious investigation of the inside pockets and found a pair of handcuffs. She made a face. Her lips were still sore and dry from the duct tape, but at least she didn't have a new set of handcuff bruises.

"Thanks for not using the handcuffs again," she said after a moment.

"Figured your wrists were banged up enough," he admitted, hunkering down in front of her. "As soon as it is safe to move, we'll be out of here. Colin is finding us a new place. Crypt lacks a bit in the way of creature comforts."

"Such as?"

"Television?" he suggested. "And a bathroom, for you," he added, lifting her chin with fingers that bit into her skin. He ran his thumb over the slightly sticky, roughened skin the duct tape had covered and she flinched.

"Please don't," she tried not to cower.

"Don't what, pet?" he asked.

"Don't touch me like that," she said. "It's confusing," she went on, and then gave herself a mental smack. "Les Tres Houres Riche?"

"Les Tres Riche Houres" he corrected, but he didn't let loose of her chin. He could feel her humid breath flutter against his skin. Ah, more conversational sleight of hand?

"What is that?" she asked.

"Part of an illuminated manuscript, a famous example of a book of hours," he said softly. "It's in a museum in France. They have museums in France," he said with a crooked smile, reminding her of her conversation with Harmony the night Harmony had almost killed her.

She felt a bubble of mirth well up. "And shops," she added, her voice cracking.

He let go of her chin and patted his coat, which was on her, so it felt like he was roughly exploring her for a scary moment. He fished something out of a pocket and held it up for her to see. It was a small tin of lip balm. "Want some of this?"

She heaved a relieved sigh. "Yes, please," she let go of the coat, to take it from him. The top slid back under her exploring fingers and she coated the tip of her index finger and started applying it to her lips with a small sound of relief at the soothing sensation. "Where are the others?"

"Colin and Georgia are doing the pretty with the local grand poobahs," Spike surprised her a little by answering.

"San Francisco doesn't have a master. They have what amounts to a council, the heads of the bigger, more powerful vampire clans in the area," he explained. "They are checking in and making it known that we are only visiting, not planning on staying. The others are under guard. If the clans decide they don't want them here," he shrugged. "They won't have to make a hunt out of it."

"Why are we here?"

"Don't particularly want it known that I'm in San Francisco," his fingers traced her jaw. "Or you, mistaken for snack food or a gift. Safer this way. We'll be gone before anyone notices me, or has time to do anything about it," he added with a slight smile. "Gives us an opportunity to have a nice little moment alone. You, me. Candlelit crypt."

She coated her lower lip, frowning. That didn't sound good. His arm settled around her shoulders. She went absolutely still as he combed his fingers through her hair, settling in behind her ear. His finger traced the outer edge of her ear to the earlobe, rubbing it between his index finger and thumb. Oh, boy. This was bad. Don't panic, Rosenberg. He's probably just doing this to unnerve you. Points to Spike. It was completely working, reminding her of the way he had smelled her neck when he kidnapped her the first time.

She had backed him down before, she reminded herself. She shook his hand off, glaring at him. "Okay. Now you are scaring the crap out of me. Happy?" she asked. "Knock it off." He wasn't drunk this time. Was that important? People acted differently when they were drunk. Spike had been all psycho stalker ex-boyfriend with the 'do a love spell, make her crawl' business over Dru, threatening her with a broken bottle, and then he had been weepy and sad, and then just lechy and eeeew. When she called him on it, he had shrugged off the more demon-y impulses and was more or less reasonable in a terrifying way.

"I've thought about you a lot since then," he  admitted, unwittingly echoing her thoughts as he set the candle down on the marble floor.

She had thought about the night in the burnt out factory a lot. She had some bad dreams about it. She also thought about it in the revisionist sense of how she might have improved on her performance. She so lacked Buffy's quippy ease with the snappy comeback. Her best retorts sprang to mind hours after the fact. She had thought through variations that had her wielding a stake, a vial of holy water, or a cool spell that made a ball of light appear that she had read about in a D&D spell book that had been left out while she waited for Oz to wrap up band practice. Somehow, she couldn't imagine Spike wringing his hands about his actions, unless he had some issues about not getting around to killing them.

"Leaving survivors must make you feel out of sorts," Willow said tartly.

He laughed at that. "Oh, I don't know about that," he played with her hair. "Wasn't just thinking about killing you," his voice teased.

"Torture, then killing," Willow nodded. "Right. An off night for you?"

"I thought about you," he grinned at her efforts to distract him. "You were wearing a lilac sweater with a little pink number underneath it, and you smelled delicious. I remember that," he said reminiscently.

"It was probably Xander," she almost enjoyed the opportunity to needle him. "He was the one who was bleeding."

He remembered what she was wearing that night? It was months ago. She barely remembered what she was wearing and she had almost died in it.

"I'm not telling him. He'd have nightmares for the rest of his life." she said.
 
 

He tugged on her hair, hard enough to make her frown at him reprovingly. "More hair pulling?" she asked.

He wound the lock of her hair around his finger. "I like your hair," he said. "At night, under a streetlight, it's the color of blood," his tone was caressing. "Pet . . ."

"You're ruining this for me," she told him abruptly. "The only thing I've ever liked about you was that you were loyal to how you felt about Drusilla. This is just . . . icky," her lip curled. "You're no better than . . . Larry," she said with a hint of loathing that was checked as she remembered that Larry was dead.

Poor Larry. Once he came out of the closet, he was really nice, she recalled.

"He's dead now, since the Mayor kind of ate him during graduation, so I guess that wasn't very nice," she admitted, moving her hands in the air in a gesture of impatience. "Off topic, but still, you know, the whole lech-y demon guy is . . . beneath you, isn't it? Especially with me. I'm so not the kind of girl vamps go for."

That surprised him. The conviction in her voice. The idea that she liked anything at all about him was a little off-putting. Willow Rosenberg liked something about him? Christ on a crutch, she was an idiot. He wasn't exactly proud of the ass he had made out of himself over Dru. Was she inferring that he was some less soulful version of the Great Poof, or just delivering a version of insecurity about herself? That was ludicrous. Granted, he had seen her looking better now and again, but she was a pretty girl, any idiot could see that.

"You have got to be kidding," he said, distracted from the game of seducing her.

"What? About Larry? The Mayor really did eat him," she confirmed. "He turned into a-no, wait. You don't know Larry. You don't care about that," she told herself.

"Dru? What happened?" she asked, sensing that she had a chance to get him on the ropes. "You were going to go get her back," she reminded him. "Did you just give up?" there was a wealth of scorn in that.

"No!" he glared at her. "I didn't give up. I did get her back."

It wasn't the same. They were not the same together. There was too much between them that couldn't be washed away in blood, though they had tried. In Mexico Dru had caught up with the bloody Chaos demon again. Same song, second verse, and he was bloody tired of it.

"You can't make someone love you," he said roughly. "That's all I ever wanted. Love, and a little fucking loyalty. Is that too much to ask for? I planned my whole un-life around that ungrateful bitch, and she couldn't plan past her breakfast around anything but her damned dolls," he said bitterly.

'Great. Good job. Piss him off some more, why don't you,' Willow thought, wincing at the rage in his voice.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't have any right to pry into . . . your personal stuff. You were scaring me, so I-" Why was she apologizing? He had been touching her in an all too personal way.

"You don't even like me," she said slowly. "You've told me that if I wasn't useful, you'd kill me. So, what's with the nice, cuddling vampire act all of a sudden?" she demanded. "It's a joke, isn't it? Like, later on, when you are hanging out with the other vampires, it will be, 'you won't believe she fell for this' won't it?" she accused.

He frowned at her. "What the hell are you ranting about?"

She snapped the tin of lip balm shut, squeezing it in her hand. "Just stop it, okay? I'm not falling for it. You may be bored, or whatever, but I'm just the kidnapee here. I'm not some kind of ninny that thinks you're misunderstood or romantic. You're dangerous and scary and evil, and you want me like you want your next meal," she scoffed.

"Dru's crazy? What's your excuse, mister?" she was working up a pretty good mad. "So, no cuddles and smoochies. We are keeping this on a strictly kidnapper to kidnapee basis."

"You duct taped my mouth shut," she reminded him. "Hello! What's the encore? You beat me half to death and expect me to have a crush on you? Candlelit crypt?" she rolled her eyes. "I may date a musician, and make out in the back of a van that smells kind of . . . yucky, but I've got standards," she exclaimed indignantly.

"Worked with Dru," he pointed out, amused. His lips twitched. "A van, huh?"

"I'm not Drusilla," she muttered. She refrained from pointing out that the torture route didn't exactly take. "An Econoline," she added with relish. No cushy, comfortable family van, but a real, honest to goodness metal floor, bare bones van, suitable for packing band equipment, band mates, or making out.

"No, you aren't," he agreed. "Okay," he sounded grudging. "Maybe I am playing with you a bit," he turned toward her. "No television, nothing better to do. I'm bored. You tend to be amusing when you're all riled up about something," he noted.

'Sheesh. Blame it all on me,' Willow thought.

"The fear is nice," he added, watching her grimace. He bumped her shoulder, "I like you. Told you that, already. I like you," he reminded her.

"Right, and you'll still like me while you drain me dry," she shot back. "Wow. I feel all warm inside. Does this mean that you're going to leave presents on my doorstep for Valentine's Day?"

'I'll just bet you are warm inside,' Spike thought, but he kept that to himself. "So, Red," he drawled. "Kidnapper to kidnappee, you really don't have choices here," he told her. "I am evil. I don't care if I hurt you-"he chuckled. "Well, that isn't entirely true. I might enjoy hurting you. You're more or less at my mercy," he dragged it out. "So, if I wanted to . . . kiss you. There's not a lot you could do about it."

Her nose wrinkled. "You want to kiss me? Why?"

"Pass the time," he said, grinning.

She looked confused. He was teasing her? Was that it? He was just teasing her? If he wasn't just teasing her, he was right. There wasn't a thing she could do about it.

"It's your funeral," she said, stalling. "Bad things tend to happen after kissing me," she  explained. "Take Xander, for example. He got a concussion and Cordelia broke up with him. Not good."

"Your wolf boy seems to have survived," he noted. "You have kissed him? Right?" he goaded.

"That's different," she  exclaimed. "We're in love," she said softly, looking down at her hands.

"Ah . . ." Spike rolled his eyes. She was a Hallmark greeting card of treacled sentiment. "In love." What did she know about love?

"In love . . . or in a lot of like," she admitted slowly, frowning. "I've never really been in love before. I thought I was in love. I love Xander. He's my best friend, so when we got older, and . . . I thought it was like being in love. But, it wasn't. Just because you feel jealous, or you want to kiss someone, doesn't mean you are in love. It's confusing, but I think with Oz it really is being in love. He's not very emote-y, but I think, maybe he loves me."

"Your wolf is looking for you," he told her, moving closer. "Cheer up, Red. He won't find you," Spike said. "But, he's trying. That's something, isn't it?"

She sat up straighter. "Really?"

"Really. Don't be ridiculous. You didn't think he wouldn't look for you, did you?"

"I didn't know."

Oz was looking for her. That was a nice feeling. Except that if Spike knew he was looking for her, then that meant he was in danger.

"Is that why we moved so fast? You didn't do anything to him?" she was alarmed. "You didn't, did you? Because if you did . . . I'll . . . figure out some way to make you pay," she said, her voice surprisingly low and fierce.

He laughed. "I didn't do anything to your wolf, Red, and don't make empty threats," he advised. "It makes you sound weak."

"It isn't an empty threat," she muttered. "I'd figure out something. You do it all the time."

She meant it. If she survived, someday she might even be able to back it up. "No, I don't," he said. "I've just got a helluva lot more time to make good on my threats."

~Part: 14~

“Hello, Joyce.”

Sometimes it was hard to remember that Angel was as old as he was. He had a way of ducking his head when he addressed her, like now, standing on the threshold of the front door, hovering there, uncertain of his welcome, that made him seem younger.

He had come back to Sunnydale to help find Willow, she reminded herself. “Hi, Angel. Please come in,” she invited. “Buffy is in the kitchen. We are making dinner.”

“Thank you,” he said.

It was probably a vampire thing, but he never took his welcome into her home for granted, and there was a certain relentless charm in his acknowledgement. Poor Buffy. She never stood a chance against this amazing creature.

He followed her back to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe, preferring to hang back and watch. Buffy was cutting things for a salad, using the sharp knife she wielded with dexterity and speed. She had a remote look on her face. The task required no concentration, so she was off in a land of contemplation, removed to the part of her brain that broke down facts into a series of moves. Willow and Giles had similar skills, but they were more related to chess, full of if and then speculations. Buffy’s mind was clear of speculation, remaining firmly in the here and now of action that she could take.

To Angel, watching her, unnoticed for the moment, she personified a clarity so pure that it made him ache inside with longing and a tiny amount of resentment. Too be that young and that sure of himself . . . when he was her age and mortal, he had been a mess. With the soul to guide him, it had still taken eighty years, some conscious quaking backsliding, and a benign demon to give him a purpose in the world. Buffy had had all that bestowed upon her. The purpose, at least. The rest of it, the restraint she had learned over the years, came from the remarkable support cast assembled around her that kept her grounded.

She looked up from the tomato she was slicing and returned to the kitchen with a smile that acknowledged that she had been lost in thought. “Hi,” she said softly.

He nodded, gesturing to the cutting board. “Can I help with anything?”

Joyce gestured to the refrigerator. “I was going to have a glass of wine,” she said. “Would you mind opening the bottle? Buffy tends to pulverize the cork.”

He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Riesling that was chilling next to a quart of milk. Joyce handed him the corkscrew and went to get glasses. “Angel?” She held up a second wine glass.

“Yes, thanks,” he said, gently extracting the wine cork.

Buffy rolled her eyes at him. “Eddie Haskell,” she hissed at him with a smirk.

It took him a minute to sort through two centuries of cultural references to figure out that he had been called a suck up. He couldn’t help it. Joyce brought it out in him. She had this way about her that made him want her approval. Hell, even Spike responded to it, he thought, recalling the night he had found him in the Summers’ kitchen having a cup of hot chocolate with Buffy’s mother. Drunk off his ass and seething with rage at them because Dru had left him with an opportunity for unholy vengeance staring him in the face, and he had, according to Joyce, done nothing more than unburden himself to her about his breakup with Dru and ask for marshmallows for his cocoa.

He had the impression that Joyce found Spike charming in a child-like way that seemed massively out of proportion to reality, except that he knew Spike, maybe better than anyone else, and there was a kernel of truth to that conclusion. When he wasn’t being the swaggering bad ass that Angelus had taught him to be, Spike’s impulses were dictated by mischief, curiosity, an underappreciated and undisciplined intellect, and a craving for acceptance that made him truly dangerous. He tended to go off the rails in a big way in the face of rejection, and nothing made him crazier than being on the outs with Dru.

Unlike Giles, he had no doubt whatsoever that Spike and Dru were no longer together. The fact that Willow had been alive to speak to Giles underscored the point. If Spike’s impulse control was poor, Dru’s was nonexistent. If she was with Spike, Willow wouldn’t have lasted seventy-two hours, and Spike wouldn’t have done anything to stop Dru. What Princess wanted, Princess got, and damn the consequences.

“Don’t bother to ask me if I want a glass of wine,” Buffy sniffed, bringing him back to the moment.

Joyce smiled, “I wasn’t going to.”

Dinner was a stir-fry dish vegetarian dish with the salad and freshly baked multigrain bread that smelled wonderful. Bakery scents had changed very little over the centuries since he was human, and they still held the implications of comfort and warmth in his sense memory. They stayed in the kitchen for dinner, with Buffy and Joyce eating at the breakfast bar while he worked his way through a second glass of wine.

“Eventually Shelia and Ira have to be told about Willow being missing,” Joyce said.

Buffy snorted. “Why? They don’t appear to notice minor things like that,” she said.

“Buffy,” Joyce’s tone was scolding. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what it is like to be a parent.”

Buffy looked across the breakfast bar at her mother. “Okay. What should we tell them? Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg, your daughter has been kidnapped by vampires. They don’t want money, so don’t bother to mortgage the house. They want an ancient artifact that may or may not exist. Oh, and even if we find it, they are completely untrustworthy . . .” she raised her eyebrows.

“You made a deal with Spike before,” Joyce reminded her, distracted by the implications of untrustworthiness. That couldn’t be good. “He kept his end of it, didn’t he?”

“This is different,” Angel asserted. “Buffy’s right. He can’t be trusted. The last time was different, because he had to follow through to get what he wanted. This time, getting what he wants is part of the big picture. Spike doesn’t want the Gem of Amara because it's rare or a neat trinket. He wants it because it will give him an edge over any other vampire, any demon, any Slayer.”

“And he knows that we know that,” Buffy added, the awkward phrasing making her frown.

Angel felt a smile coming on. “We’re very knowledgeable people,” he said, almost playfully.

Joyce glanced up, realizing that he was paraphrasing a quote from The Lion in Winter. She smiled at that. “What if they call?” she asked, getting back on topic.

Buffy frowned. She knew Angel and Giles had debated the pros and cons of getting the police more involved. The San Jose police hadn’t been very concerned about Willow going missing. Giles thought kidnapping would bring in the FBI, but again, what could they contribute? It wasn’t like they would share what they found out or understand how to deal with Spike.

“We lie?” Buffy said weakly. She winced, warding her mother off with her hands. “I know, I know, Mom. Bad answer,” she said.

“They have a right to know what is going on with their daughter, Buffy,” Joyce said.

~~~*~~~

Willow tried to explain about how the bag over her head made her feel, to no avail. Spike didn’t look even remotely interested. They were on the move again, only this time it was a much shorter trip and the destination was what appeared to be an abandoned office building. She was handcuffed to a metal chair covered with dark green naugahyde—Spike, the thoughtful kidnapper, left the duct tape on her wrist before snapping the cuff loosely around her wrist. She was provided with a bag of tacos and a soda. After days of packaged food, it was nice to eat something lukewarm.

Harmony came in and threw herself down on the couch, glaring at her before she picked up an old issue of Vogue. “This sucks,” she pouted.

Willow gave her a brief, incredulous look. The suckage was all on her part. She frowned at the thought, which didn’t come out right in her head. Her stomach churned a little at Harmony’s presence and she wondered if contact with vampires wasn’t giving her a bit of Buffy’s slayer sense. Then she remembered that Harmony had always made her feel this way. On the other hand, it could have come from the tacos. She rolled her eyes, forbearing comment.

Harmony saw it and glared at her. “I saw that.”

Willow’s gaze shot to the door. Where were the terrifying vamps when you needed them?

Harmony saw that too. She made a sound of disgust. “They are talking,” she spat with loathing. “I’m not needed. I’m not good enough to be in on the talking stuff. No one really talks to me.”

Willow sipped her soda. It was Coke. The syrupy texture and the sugary aftertaste made her feel a little sick. She never drank sodas with sugar in them. She grimaced at the taste.

Harmony flipped another page. “Georgia’s always hanging out with you,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. It was the same thing with Cordy. You look all innocent and nice, but I know what you are really like. You just do it to make people like you,” she sneered. “We were best friends before you and Buffy came along and ruined everything.”

“Don’t forget about Xander,” Willow put in. She wasn’t taking the rap for Cordy. Their hate-hate relationship had advanced to acceptance and casual dislike. Xander was the one who had effectively separated Cordy from her in-crowd reign of teen terror.

Harmony’s lip curled. “Xander Harris. Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

Willow’s eyes filled. She missed Xander so bad it hurt. She wadded up the paper wrappers in her lap.

“This place sucks,” Harmony went on. “We’re the undead, you know? Like, we can have anything we want. Take anything,” she snapped her fingers, “and where are we? Are we someplace really cool that all my friends would be green with envy over? No. In fact, if they could see me now, they would laugh at me. Me! Hanging out with Willow Rosenberg in a . . . icky place that humans don’t even want to hang out in. What did I ever do to deserve this?” her voice trembled a little.

Willow frowned, looking down. She didn’t like Harmony, and that was more or less the well reinforced habit of a lifetime, and she also didn’t think Harmony as she was now would get it, but the truth was that she didn’t deserve what had happened to her. No one did.

“I’m really sorry,” Willow began. “About you being dead, that is,” it was a surprisingly awkward admission.

Harmony looked suspicious. She sniffed. “You didn’t even know that I was dead,” she accused. “No one noticed?” her china blue eyes were filling with tears.

Willow wondered if there was a way to excuse that lapse. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I guess we all thought that you had gone off for the summer to someplace . . .”

“Fabulous?” Harmony supplied hopefully. “I guess that’s alright. I really was going to go to France.”

“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “Cordy went to Los Angeles,” she told her.

Harmony looked over at her. “Really?”

Willow nodded. “She wants to be an actress.”

Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t just saying that? I figured that she would, like, go to college and hang out with you guys and not even bother with Rush Week.”

Willow snorted rudely. “Yeah, right. Cordy, stay in Sunnydale, with us. I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “She thought we were losers.”

“You are losers,” Harmony told her, but the snipping was merely habit. She was starting to feel better. “At least I’m not spending the summer in Sunnydale, hanging out at the Bronze.”

“Cause that would suck,” Willow muttered, thinking that it sounded like exactly where she wanted to be.

Harmony’s lips pursed. “Yeah . . . though, I guess I had some good times there,” she said slowly. “But, now, its so high school.”

Willow unwrapped another taco. Now that they were going to college, assuming that she was going to college rather than continue being kidnapped into the fall semester, would the Bronze just be a former high school hang out? Would they find a new campus hang out? Oz played enough gigs around UC—Sunnydale that she had an idea that campus life would offer its own attractions, but she wasn’t sure if Xander would feel welcome hanging out with them on campus.

She frowned at the somewhat soggy taco. “What were you going to do . . . you know, before you were—uh, before you . . .”

“Became a vampire?” Harmony eyed her suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I was just curious. We wrote all that stuff for the yearbook around Christmas, and I wonder how much it has changed already,” she said. “Like, I was going to go away for college, but I changed my mind. I’m going to go to UC—Sunnydale,” she elaborated.

Harmony thought about that for a moment. She really hadn’t had a plan per se. Her parents had insisted that she had to go to college, and she had narrowed her choice down to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing. The application required submission of ten illustrations of various types of clothing, which seemed kind of stupid to Harmony. If she knew how to design clothing, then why go to college in the first place? Her parents had kept asking if she had finished the application, which she hadn’t, so in a way, the whole being dead thing had worked out for her.

“I was going to go to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing,” she told Willow, since she might have done that.

That made sense to Willow. Whether you liked her or not you really couldn’t fault her taste in clothing. Harmony was very blend-y. Even now that she was a vampire, she hadn’t gone all leather, which was pretty clichéd. Willow nodded, “I can see that,” she said. “Fashion design, that is. You’d be good at that.”

Harmony leveled a semi-skeptical look at her. “I thought so,” she agreed. “I mean, I have ideas, about clothes, and shoes, and handbags.”

“People have to have clothes,” Willow pointed out, turning her head sideways to take a bite out of her taco. It was kind of drippy, but managing the taco and a napkin while handcuffed was beyond her.

Harmony picked up one of the napkins and stuck it in Willow’s chair tethered hand. The two girls exchanged a wary look. “Thanks,” Willow said, blotting her hand on the napkin.

“You're welcome,” Harmony sounded slightly less begrudging.

“So, what kind of ideas do you have about handbags?” Willow asked. “I’m a roomy, toss it over my shoulder sort of gal, but I’ve noticed that every purse I’ve ever had is missing something. Like, you have the little zipper compartment, which is a must, but it’s never big enough for all of your little things, so you’ve got stuff in the bottom all the time—like keys? Or they have the clippy thing inside the zipper for your keys and—“

“You break your nails trying to get the keys off!” Harmony finished. “I hate that!”

“Me, too,” Willow nodded.

“Magnet,” Harmony said. “Or, you know those leashes that you can get where you press a button and make the leash longer or shorter?”

“That would work,” Willow agreed.

Willow finished the taco and decided that she had had enough to eat. Harmony was preoccupied with her page turning exercise with Vogue, so Willow wiped her mouth off and decided to give the unlocking of the handcuff exercise another shot.

She cast a cautious glance at Harmony, and was satisfied that Harmony wasn’t paying any attention to her. The chair Spike had handcuffed her to was pretty roomy. She adjusted her position until she was sitting more or less Indian style. It was a comfortable position that she could relax into, and relaxation was bound to improve her concentration. She made herself work on relaxing her hands. She had noticed that lately she had a tendency to clench her fists, a sure sign of tension. She rested her arms on the armrests of the chair and rotated her wrists a couple of times to work out the tension.

The next step in her exercise was to work on her breathing. Steady, deep, even breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She let her eyes drift shut. Sometimes it helped her get her focus.

“Are you praying?” Harmony asked.

She opened her eyes. “Uh-huh,” she went with it.

“You are praying after you ate?” Harmony raised an eyebrow.

Willow blinked at the imitation Spike expression. “I’m Jewish,” she  explained.

Harmony looked embarrassed. “Oh . . . Jewish. Sorry,” she made a ‘carry on’ gesture.

“Thanks,” Willow said, trying not to laugh. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“So, are you going to like, pray in . . . . Hebrew?” Harmony interrupted.

Willow frowned, opening her eyes again. Hebrew, Latin, Swahili, ancient Sumerian, what were the chances that Harmony would know the difference? “No,” she said slowly, “but, my lips might move a little,” she conceded.

“Oh . . .” Harmony gave her one of her patented ‘you are so odd’ looks and shrugged.

Willow took another deep, cleansing breath, rolling her shoulders. Nothing to it. Just like floating a pencil, only slightly different and more difficult with the lack of visualization and . . . assuming that she got the handcuff off, then what? What was she going to do?  She was inside an interior room of a building that she had not seen. There were vampires in the building, and their precise location was not known. Harmony was sitting less than two yards away from her, and while not so bright, would probably get that there was a problem with her simply getting up and strolling off.

Crap. She had no plan. She could go with trying to unlock the handcuff and taking it as a sign of divine providence governing the rest of her escape attempt.

Her shoulders slumped. That wasn’t a plan.

“All done?” Harmony asked, reading the slumping posture.

Willow sighed. “Yeah.”

“No ‘amen’?”

Willow stared at her for a moment. “No,” she shook her head.

Harmony nodded. “You need to go to the bathroom or anything?” she asked, holding up the key to the handcuffs, “Cause Spike said I could let you go to the bathroom if you had to.”

Willow stared at the key dangling from Harmony’s fingertip. Spike knew that Harmony had the key, which meant that at least on some level he was already thinking about the possibility of her being un-handcuffed and free to move around. “Just for the bathroom, but not to eat?” she observed. “What? Was I going to stun you with a taco missile and then make a break for it?”

Harmony stared back at her. And here she was thinking that Spike didn’t like her very much. She glanced down at her pink cashmere twin set with its triple row of pale pink sequins at the hem, spared the awful fate of being decorated with thrown food. Cheap thrown food, at that. When she looked up, she was in game face. “Mess up my clothes and you are so going to be dead,” she warned.

Willow rolled her eyes at that injunction. She held up her wrist rattling her handcuff. “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind, please,” Harmony retorted, with the stress on the ‘please’.

She was just so irritating, and childish, and infuriating, and smug, and—Willow gritted her teeth. “Please?”

Harmony twirled the key on its small chain around her index finger, pretending to give the matter consideration. “I suppose so,” she agreed with a smirk, standing up to walk over to Willow’s chair to unlock the handcuff.

The bathroom was a two stall bathroom with a handicapped stall and no toilet paper. Suspecting something like that, Willow had kept a few of the unused napkins from lunch. Harmony followed her in and sat on the countertop while Willow went into the handicapped stall. With the door shut and latched behind her she took the time to take her jeans off to remove the bunched up sleep shorts that she had pulled her jeans up over when Spike told her to get ready to leave. After she used the bathroom, she gave her attention to the handcuffs, examining the locking mechanism as much as she could.

She heard the bathroom door open and jumped when a hand slammed into the door to her stall. “I’ll be right out,” she called.

Georgia laughed at the squeaky, startled sound of her voice. “Just messing with you, kitten,” she said. “You want to go shopping with us?”

Buttoning her jeans and flushing the toilet, Willow slid back the latch, giving the toilet an alarmed look as it made a weird noise.

“Air in the line,” Georgia told her. “The water’s been turned off for a while. We won’t be here long.”

“Shopping?” Willow repeated.

“We’re going out tonight,” Georgia reminded her. “Now, Spike says that I’m supposed to tell you that shop keepers and shoppers stay off the menu as long as you don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. It goes against everything I believe in to shop retail, but I have my orders.”

~Part: 15~

Willow had lost track of all that she had had to drink. Tart, tangy cranberry juice with vodka. Yummy shots of something chocolate that made her forehead feel slightly numb. It was all good. The alcohol took the edge off the pure terror. She was in a fear free zone, and the absence of fear after so many days of being on the edge made her feel like she was unfettered, floating in the unreality that was a demon bar in San Francisco.

Just the notion of getting out of the series of stale, depressing, dusty motels, crypt and abandoned office building had made her feel giddy and reckless.

She had gone shopping with Harmony and Georgia at a mall after dusk. Georgia got nostalgic over the presence of a Talbots, though trailing in her wake, Willow had a hard time reconciling the notion of Georgia dressed in preppy southern day or evening wear. Harmony found a pink tafetta dress on the sale rack. An hour later, Willow was cheering her former mortal enemy’s shopping instinct, fast and deadly, swooping in on the taffeta in less than twenty minutes, Harmony knew exactly what she wanted. She could size up an entire shoe department in less than ninety seconds with a sweeping look. It was impressive.

The mall was closing when Georgia was finally satisfied with her selections and Willow found herself changing into a dress in the Nordstrom’s dressing room, tags and security buttons removed.

Thoughts of a suicidally daring escape tingling in her head as they sped down the highway. She hadn’t been quite desperate enough to do more than think of throwing herself outside of the Desoto doing eighty down the highway. Apparently just thinking it had been evident enough that before they reached the first ramp, slowing to a less death defying speed, Spike had hooked his arm firmly around her neck and dragged her to the center of the front seat.

He had kept her tethered to his side since they had entered the city. “Misbehave, and you will pick my next meal, pet,” he warned her in that special way he had when he was threatening to kill people.

She tried to resist the threat with logic. He was going to kill someone anyway, but seven vampires backed him up and the description of Prague from the Watcher’s Diary was fresh in her mind. She and Buffy had stolen the Watcher’s Diaries to find more information about Angel in more innocent days. The knowledge that Giles had tried to protect them from was a two edged sword.

Inside the club, she did not need to be told to stay close to Spike. She expected something like Willy’s—not that she had ever been there, but she had heard Willy’s described by Buffy and Xander. Floors sticky with God knows what, the reek of blood and cheap alcohol, dimly lit with cheesy décor. Evil went for low rent banality in Sunnydale.

The Temple reminded her of parts of the mansion on Crawford Street that she had seen. Impressive architecture and spare luxury furnishings. Aesthetically pleasing until you noticed the odd note that was a pair of manacles on a short chain dangling from a ring bolted into the wall that was emphatically not a decorating eccentricity. Only at the Crawford Street mansion it was an odd note. At the Temple, it was a fully developed decorating theme. The flagstone floors were appropriately dungeon-y, and even in the dim light, Willow picked up enough of the wall hanging theme to think of an Applebee's done up for the S&M crowd.

It was mostly vampires, she deduced as a banquette and several tables between the banquette and the dance floor were appropriated for their use. She could almost pretend she was at the Bronze on Friday night. Spike avoided the banquette, choosing to sit on one of the bar stools. He kept her standing by putting his hand on the back of her neck and keeping her next to him. Her first drink, courtesy of Georgia, came in a shot glass and tasted of chocolate.

The corners of Spike’s lips turned up as she sipped it, like it was sherry, instead of tossing it back. Georgia had done her up in a pretty little slip dress. She had pulled Willow’s hair up into a twist in the back that was maintained with a couple of strategically placed hairpins. One long lock of hair had been left to swing free, curving around her face. A dusting of pale green eye shadow played up the color of her eyes, and a sparing use of eyeliner, at the corners, emphasized the almond shape. No blush. Her pallor wasn’t vampiric, and because of that it was too exotic to spoil with artificial color. She was wearing lipstick that was close to her natural lip color.

After she nursed her way through a third shot, she had started to lean against his thigh and he no longer had to keep his hand on her to remind her to stay put. “Friday night,” she said over the music. “No live band. No vampire bands?” she guessed.

Even drunk, or getting there, she was the little social anthropologist. If she had any idea how much the center of attention she was, she would have been terrified.

“There are a few,” he told her. “There’s a great swing band that plays in a club in New Orleans.” He didn’t bother to mention that entertainment in vampire clubs tended to run to more exotic acts than music.

Her eyes lit up as she recognized the song cued up. “This is a great song,” she said. She sang along with the Bosstone’s ‘Someday I Suppose’

“There was a place
And the name of the place escapes me
When I can't remember
It irritates me
Could be I can't remember
Could be I choose to not,
Let's move the song along
And try to find the plot”

A small, amused smile played on her lips.

“There was a girl and I don't know her name either
She gave me love and I swore I'd never leave her
If I did I'd come back someday and find her”

Her eyebrows lifted in a pantomime of skepticism as she sang along. She threw in a shrug, grinning, and followed along with the lyric.

“Maybe I will I should write down a reminder”

And shouted the next line with the singer. She had had all of three drinks, and she was loosening up to a surprising degree. Spike watched as eleven days of fear and tension went on holiday.

“One day! One day who knows
Someday I suppose”

Georgia joined them, drawn by the minor spectacle of Willow enthusiastically singing. She waved a waiter over with another round of drinks, draping her arm around Willow’s shoulders and singing with her.

“There was a verse that I was gonna write I haven't yet
But there's still a chance I might An open book
That I still want to close I'll find the time
Someday I suppose A place and time,
I wanna be and spend a storyline
That's happy in the end Plans are made
with promises so certainly uncertain
I can't wait to set things straight
before they close the curtain”

The next chorus was joined by a few more voices, and toasts to the song.

“One day! One day who knows
Someday I suppose”

Following Georgia’s example, Willow tossed back the shot she was given, feeling a little silly when she realized that the little chocolate drinks weren’t sipped the way she had sipped the others.

“The more I sort things out
The more it gets distorted
I sort of think I'm better off just leaving it unsorted
The more I try to change it's course
the more off course it goes
Of course I'll reach my destination someday I suppose
Sort it out,
Get distorted
One day who knows
Hide behind,
Someday I suppose”

The alcohol hit her system with a vengeance, and she felt almost dizzy in a pleasant, warm sort of way. Dimly, she realized that she was kind of petting Spike’s thigh, and she made herself stop, frowning at him for being attached to her armrest. It was his fault, after all, that she wasn’t sitting in her own seat and not leaning against him.
Georgia insisted that she dance to burn off the alcohol she had consumed. Dancing was good. Willow liked to dance.

The music changed to the Clash, ‘Rock the Casbah’. Georgia was swaying sinuously. It reminded Willow of Buffy’s sexy dance with Xander when she had been trying to get Angel’s attention. She backed up to give her more room and bumped into Harmony who was dancing with someone other than Pete who snapped into game face and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Hors d’oevres,” he growled. Before she could scream or defend herself, Spike was there.

“Back the fuck off, mate,” he growled right back.

She was released so promptly that she almost fell, and Spike’s arm around her waist caught her. He spun her around towards Georgia, who caught her. Hands on her hips, never really breaking her own rhythm as she guided Willow’s body. Then there was someone behind her, his hands on her body, joining Georgia’s. She knew that it was Spike, even as he moved closer, bringing her closer to Georgia. She felt a pang—of something that could not be jealousy—as they shared an open mouthed kiss with her sandwiched between them.

She knew she looked good. The dress Georgia had picked out for her was a sea foam green slip dress, sparkly with beadwork. The thin straps meant she had to wear it without a bra, which made her uncomfortably aware of the silky material of the dress. She never went without a bra, though she didn’t need the support so much. The fitted fabric of a bra kept her clothes from rubbing against her sensitive nipples, a problem that could have been solved by more fitted clothing, but then her nipples would be more visible, and that had always made her feel too exposed. She remembered being teased about her small breasts and protruding nipples in middle school when she had finally started developing.

Georgia’s purchases—or acquisitions—had included a pair of lacy panties that matched her dress, stockings that made her aware of the bare expanse of her upper thighs above the grippy lace banding at the top of the stockings, and a pair of low healed fabric pumps. She was wearing a choker made out of stretchy velvet with pale green and gold glass beads. When she had seen herself, all dressed up, with her hair pulled up in a sleek French twist, one long lock left free to curl at the end under her chin, she had been surprised and strangely gratified at how grown up and pretty she looked.

If only she had had Georgia to help her get ready for prom, she thought wistfully. Her last minute upswept hairdo for prom had looked messy and made her face look round, but she had fussed so much with the last minute changes to her prom look that it was too late to do anything else but pose stiffly for the pictures that her father had taken of her with Oz before they left. Her parents had made a point of being home for her prom night, and she worried that they were disappointed with her for picking out a dress that was low cut after she had been trusted to buy a prom dress on her own.

Georgia was beautiful. She looked like a fashion model, tall and thin. She was wearing a black dress that looked like it had been poured on and she had a long strand of pearls, wound once against her throat, the length left to hang down nearly to her waist. As Georgia and Spike kissed, it occurred to Willow to wonder where Colin was. Did vampires get jealous? Spike did. She remembered how furious he was about Dru and her cheating.

Georgia caught the trailing lock of hair from Willow’s temple and let it slide through her fingers as if to include her in the kissing. Her gray eyes shone as she tore her mouth free from Spike. “So pretty,” she purred. “Isn’t she pretty, Spike?”

Pandering? Spike turned his attention to the girl. Her eyes were huge, pupils blown. He could smell the alcohol on her breath and in the sweat that made her skin look dewy under the club lights. He found himself unable to resist sampling a mouthful of her warm, damp, slightly salty shoulder, running his tongue under one of the thin straps anchoring her dress. A little bit of fang and he could have easily rent the strap.

To Willow’s shock, Georgia kissed her. It was totally unexpected. The first touch of another woman’s lips against hers was a revelation. Her lips were so soft. Sticky with lipstick, flavored by lemons and whiskey. At the same time, Spike was kissing her shoulder, mouthing her skin in a way that sent sensations rippling down her chest, his cool tongue stroking her skin. Shock and sensory overload held her as much as the press of bodies. She felt one of Georgia’s stocking clad legs between her own, and a slight friction of nylon. Her head fell back under the pressure of the kiss as Georgia’s tongue invaded her mouth and she felt Spike’s hard shoulder behind her head as someone’s hands rode up, under her breasts.

By the time the song finished, she was breathless and trembling. Georgia stroked her face. Confused tears filled her eyes as the danger she was in reached her. With a small smile, Georgia took her hand and led her off the dance floor. That was good. She needed to put some space between herself and the two vampires. Maybe get a drink. Something cold. Ice water. Her whole body tingled like she had been dipped in something cold. Spike said something to a passing waiter as they wove through tables off the dance floor.

The opening piano chords of The English Beat’s ‘I Confess’ felt like they were playing in the pit of her stomach. The croon of Dave Wakeling’s voice burrowed in her brain. “Just out of spite, I confess I've ruined three lives. Now don't sleep so tight. Because I didn't care till I found out that one of them was mine,” he sang.

Oz had introduced her to bands like The English Beat. Like a connoisseur, he had pointed out the complexities of so many instruments combining, picking out the ska and jazz influences. The words reached her. The story in the song that wasn’t quite complete that teased her brain. Georgia was leading her into a small room, away from the main floor of the club, with Spike behind her, leaving her no escape.

“Night after night time after time.
Done too much of both types of whining.
Still wasn't right fight after fight
Till "Get out of my life get away from me get away from that gun"

This was a really bad idea, she thought, turning back to the dance floor, and running into Spike who was right behind her. “Um . . . The English Beat. And your English,” she added helpfully. “We should dance, right?”

He laughed. “Sure, kitten,” he said, dancing her through the door, kicking it closed behind him.

The sounds of the music were muted as a door behind her was closed and a drink, another drink in a slim column of a shot glass, was placed in her hand. Georgia pushed the drink to her lips. “Drink up,” she invited, playing with the lock of Willow’s hair that was left free to swing against her jaw.

She wanted to resist. Her hands were resting on Spike’s chest, holding him off the tiniest bit. His hands were on her waist, keeping her close. She looked around the room, stalling. It was little more than an alcove, the walls hung with heavy drapes that fostered intimacy in the space. The floor was covered with thick, hand carved rugs and pillows in jewel toned colors and luxurious velvets, silk, shiny taffeta. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, almost low enough for her to reach, black, with branches like an elegant spider web holding candles that flickered and glowed in the gloom.

"No it's not a joke it's cards on the table time
Yes I could have phoned
I could have wrote”

Willow was almost surprised to hear her own voice joining the singer’s as she finished the verse with him. Not really dancing, just swaying slightly without much coordination inside of the narrowing universe encompassed by Spike’s hands on her waist.

”But how to break the news without breaking your heart
Being dead don't hurt,
No only dying
Cards on the table time,
Sometimes it's right to say goodnight."

“You should have been there,” Georgia said, watching her. The only music Harmony knew was atrocious bubble gum pop, boy bands, and Brittany Spears. Willow was obviously familiar with The English Beat. Georgia had started un-living in the late seventies and had spent countless nights in CDBG’s in New York as the punk, ska, and new wave bands played the venue, a whole new world laid before her enhanced senses. She had been parted from an all too ordinary existence living paycheck to paycheck without skills, haunted by hunger for more than a hand to mouth existence.

Colin had changed all that. Georgia knew that he had been a little bored when he had turned her, finding in her something young and curious, and eager to see the world and make it all new again for him. On the twenty-second anniversary of her death, she fully appreciated that as she looked at something young and curious, and she felt a little grateful to Colin for picking her without all of this girl’s obvious advantages. She was smart, and it was obvious that she had been brought up right.

There was a discreet tap on the door and the waiter Spike had waylaid came in, laying out a champagne bucket and tall flutes on a sideboard. A platter with crackers, cheese, and fruit around a silver bowl filled with crushed ice, a shallow dish of caviar nestled in the ice was placed beside the champagne bucket. He released her to supervise the operation and Willow found herself laughing, reminded of her own ridiculous attempt to seduce Oz, only she had filled her parents' ice bucket with two chilling bottles of soda. Hot tears slid down her cheeks and she tossed back the shot in her hand, feeling sick inside.

“You’re smearing your mascara,” Georgia said, wiping the tears off Willow’s face with her fingertips. “Your eyes are so pretty.”

Oz said things like that, and it had meant so much to her that he thought it.

Georgia took the shot glass from her nerveless hand. After her stomach stopped churning, the fresh infusion of alcohol began to seep into her. She was starting to feel numb again. Almost sleepy. She flinched at the sound, like a shot, of the champagne bottle being uncorked. Georgia went to set the shot glass down on the sideboard. Willow made herself concentrate on the muted sounds of the song playing. She stumbled a little, having lost track of the song while Georgia had been touching her face.

“Out like a light,
Another boy who's given up trying,
Blinded by fright,
He screams my life's not open,
Please get out,”

Then her favorite part. She sang it with a certain amount of angry satisfaction, “I know I'm shouting, I like to shout.”

Georgia and Spike exchange glances. “I know what I want for my present,” she told Spike.

He raised an eyebrow at that. “No sharing with Colin?” he made it a question. There would be no sharing with Colin, that wasn’t in question, but whether Georgia was interested in doing this without Colin was.

She grinned. “That’s his present to me,” she said wickedly.

Spike nodded, filling a fluted glass, frothed to the rim. Georgia dipped her index finger into the caviar scooping a taste on her fingernail. She brought it to her lips and grimaced at the saltiness.

“It's not a joke it's cards on the table time
It's not a joke it's cards on the table time
I could have phoned
I could have wrote
But how to break the news without breaking your heart
Being dead don't hurt,
No only dying
Cards on the table time,
Sometimes it's right to say goodnight."

She had a good voice. That was not that surprising. Her speaking voice was nice, soft, resonant, and a little throaty. Knew all the words to a song that hadn’t even been a hit on this side of the water twenty years ago. Her eyes were half closed. Spike knew she was a little more than drunk. She was drunk, frightened, and lost. Poor little girl. Georgia came up behind her, sliding her arm around Willow’s waist, her lissome figure swaying to the music, which was much less muted to their hearing. She was placing little kisses on the back of her neck.

”Always searching for paradise,
I'll admit that I'm good as blind
Darling I confess yes I've ruined three lives
And didn't care till I found out that one of them was mine.”

She knew it was Georgia kissing her from the moistness of her lips. Would she have lipstick prints there from the wicked, blood red slash of color on Georgia’s mouth? She felt the zipper down the back of her dress parting and squeezed her eyes shut. She kept singing, pretending this was not happening. There wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.

”I confess
I deserve some type of punishment
I confess
If it's all the same to you I'll stay indifferent.”

The weight of the beading made the front of the dress sag as one thin strap was lifted off her shoulder and eased down to lay tensionless on her upper arm. She felt a cold hand slip inside, between the dress and her skin, drifting over her ribs as Georgia swayed against her like they were dancing.

Her voice cracked. “I confess I confess I confess . . .”

The other strap was released. The arm that had been loosely wrapped around her waist was gone and Willow’s arms came up to hold the dress to her in a futile attempt to shield her nakedness. The song was almost over and it hadn’t saved her from the awareness of what was happening to her. Georgia’s hand cupped her breast, her fingers finding her nipple. She made a purring sound, and Willow felt a sense of shame because she knew Georgia was reacting to the fact that the nipple she was pinching lightly was already hard.

She felt the beading on the dress scraping her hands as the garment was tugged out of her grasp, sliding down her waist. It fit loosely, and she had liked that. When Buffy had talked her into ‘come as you aren’t’ for Halloween, the tight, skin baring crop top and skirt had made her feel too exposed to enjoy the overall effect of the outfit. The loose fit of the sparkly dress made her feel pretty. It was so loose that there was nothing to catch on as it slid to her waist, the straps catching on in the crook of her elbows.

She tried not to look down at herself, half naked, but both of her breasts were being cupped and she got a glimpse of her small breasts in pale, long fingered hands tipped with scarlet fingernails as Georgia pinched and lightly tugged on her shamefully hard nipples.

“Oh, stop that,” she scolded herself.

Georgia nibbled on her earlobe, laughing softly at the fretful sound of her voice. “No,” she said, thinking Willow was talking to her. “You’re skin is so soft and warm,” she told her, rolling her peaked nipples between thumb and forefinger.

Duh. Willow mentally smacked herself. Instead of scolding her body for reacting, or trying not to react, she ought to be trying to free herself from this embrace. Was she going to go down with a whimper like a ninny, or at least put up a fight—that she couldn’t possibly win—but that would at least afford her the satisfaction of knowing that she had fought. That she hadn’t just allowed herself to drink too much, be dressed up and used.

Spike saw down to the second when Willow decided to put up a fight. Right now she was more scared of what Georgia was doing to her than she was of being hurt. She moved her foot to get her bearings, and then raised it, swiftly, probably with some idea of bringing it down hard on Georgia’s toes. Only Georgia was faster, snaking her leg around the leg bearing Willow’s weight, and pulling it out from under her. She lost her hold on the dress and her balance all at the same time, going down in a clumsy fall with the dress falling below her hips and tangling in her legs. She half sat up, reaching for the dress to pull it back up, but Georgia leaned over her, pushing her back with one hand loosely gripping her throat as she shook her head at Willow. “No,” she said firmly.

Spike swallowed a mouthful of champagne. “Remember your lessons, pet,” he admonished coolly. “You hit, you get hit back.”

She was breathing hard, feeling panic set in as Georgia loomed over her. The pearls Georgia was wearing swung free, glowing coldly. She didn’t look mad. She looked like she would enjoy whatever she was planning to do whether Willow fought or not. Spike sounded unconcerned. So far, he had been her bulwark between the harm that the other vampires represented. No one had touched her, or abused her, if you didn’t count Harmony’s lame attempts to insult her. He wasn’t going to stop Georgia, she realized. In fact, he was probably going to watch whatever Georgia planned to do to her.

That made her furious, burning off some of the drunken stupor. Okay. Her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but she wasn’t going to tamely submit to some vampire version of seduction. Unfortunately, Georgia was a lot stronger than she looked. Willow’s attempt to sweep her legs out from under her was blocked when Georgia simply straddled her hips, her fingers tightening warningly on Willow’s throat. She just looked amused.

Spike dropped a fat strawberry into an unclaimed champagne flute, refilling his own glass, before he strolled over to where Willow was unsuccessfully trying to dislodge Georgia. Splashes of pale pink mottled her skin from her exertions. The trailing end of Georgia’s long pearl necklace caught on the tip of one crisply erect pinkish brown nipple. He handed Georgia the champagne flute with the strawberry resting in the bottom and she took it as he stretched out on the floor, arranging a fat pillow under his armpit to support his weight. He toasted her silently, appreciating the picture they made, the sweetly flushed, distraught, half naked girl, and the tall blond goddess controlling her effortlessly. Dru would have spoiled the fun. She would have drawn blood by now, or used her uncannily effective gift for thrall to take all the fight out of the girl.

Georgia sipped the champagne. Every furious heave of Willow’s hip rocked her soft abdomen against her already wet cunt with just enough pressure to tease. She considered holding the girl’s wrists down and kneeling over her, legs spread in an open invitation for Spike to mount her from behind and fuck her with Willow under her. Her gaze drifted from Willow to the deceptively relaxed vampire watching them. He was in his usual costume of red shirt, unbuttoned, over a black t-shirt, and jeans. He had taken off his boots and was barefooted. She smiled at the telling stress of the denim over his crotch. It would be more fun to tease him.

She caught the strawberry from the bottom of the glass between her lips.  She almost tossed the empty glass aside, but at the last minute she changed her mind and upended the flute, letting the last few drops of champagne the glass held drip on Willow’s bare chest, watching her small, firm breasts bounce as she squirmed delightfully. Spike took the flute from her, not wanting to distract her from her little game.

She sucked on the strawberry, pressing the fruit between her tongue and upper palate until the flavor was squeezed out of the berry and into the recesses of her mouth. She swallowed it automatically. Some vampires ate for the sheer pleasure of having food in their mouth. Georgia was not one of them. Food had never quite tasted the same to her after she was turned, and the strawberry was a pale imitation of the berries she remembered from visits to Florida when she was a child, sun ripened, warm strawberries, small and dark red, tart, sweet, and full of juices running down her throat. Only blood tasted that good. Her eyes flashed gold. She wanted to bury her fangs in the girl’s throat, drink her one mouthful at a time. The pulse beating under her fingers called to her.

Spike saw the change coming. “No biting,” he warned.

Georgia heard him. Old and powerful, his will compressed into two words, forcing her to heed him. The girl heard him too. The warning made her eyes get wide, as it occurred to her that Georgia wanted to bite her. Fear flooded her scent.

Georgia took her hand off her throat, leaning forward, capturing her wrists when Willow put her arms up to fend her off. She pinned them effortless to the rug beneath them and nibbled on the girl’s jaw line following it to her ear as she turned her head sharply to the left. The lingering flavor of the strawberry went well with the taste of her skin. “I’m going to kiss every pretty inch of you, sugar,” Georgia whispered.

Willow didn’t know what to feel. With Georgia’s weight across her hips and her hands on her wrists, she was maddeningly aware of how helpless she was. Her ears and neck had always been sensitive, and now they seemed more so. Her skin was hot with exertion and Georgia’s lips and tongue were too cool to ignore, and what she was doing felt . . . it just felt. The coolness of the pearl necklace rolling against her skin brought up gooseflesh.

She wasn’t even sure when Georgia had stopped holding her wrists down until she was touching her breasts with feather light strokes of her fingertips. Now that her hands were free she tried to get her elbows under her to try to worm her way out from under the woman. Georgia shifted positions, no longer straddling her, no, she had shifted around until she was lying between Willow’s legs, her abdomen pressing against the juncture of her thighs where her dress had been forgotten. Then Spike was behind her, slowly dismantling her French twist, his hand in her hair, tugging her head back so that more of her waist rested on her elbows, effectively trapping her in that position.

He said that he wanted to kiss her, and she had hoped it was a joke. He took her lower lip between his, sucking on it as Georgia brought her lips to one nipple, taking it into her mouth. The sensation of two equally cool mouths working on her sensitive lips and nipple made her close her eyes. Her head was spinning.

Spike’s tongue invaded her mouth, teasing her with fleeting caresses as he explored the inside of her mouth and Georgia nibbled and sucked on her nipples, moving from one to the other almost at random. His hand snaked down and his fingers tugged on a nipple wet from Georgia’s mouth as she nibbled on its mate. The weight between her legs lifted, and to her horror she felt it as a loss, moaning into Spike’s mouth.

Georgia tugged her wrinkled dress down over her hips and Willow felt her sliding her shoes off. She was very ticklish. The few times she had had sex with Oz, he had inadvertently distracted her from her pleasant state of arousal by accidentally tickling her. Her flinches always made him stop to reassure her. She woke up from her daze and turned her head sharply to escape Spike’s all too effective assault on her mouth.

She couldn’t escape his gaze. Blue eyes, heavy lidded, nearly slumberous with arousal bore into hers. “This is going to happen, pet,” he told her, his fingers gripping her jaw, holding her face. “No choice, in that,” he informed her without a shred of remorse. “If you fight, I’ll hold you down,” he smiled.

Georgia’s thumbs hooked the lacy sides of her panties, easing them down over her hips. Willow felt the slight scratchiness of the rug on her tender bottom as Georgia pulled her panties down. She grimaced at the sensation and at the humiliating position she was in, loosely restrained by the physical presence of the two vampires, pinned like a butterfly by Spike’s cool stare and the intimidating knowledge that he was holding himself in check, not actually hurting her, but more than willing to if she made an issue of it.

She gritted her teeth as Georgia pushed her legs apart, tensing. She felt her hands on the insides of her thighs, silky and cold over the stockings and then on her bare upper thighs, pushing her legs further apart. Spike’s hand moved over her abdomen as Georgia kissed the inside of her thigh, rolling one stocking down to lick the skin beneath the irritating band of elastic that had held the stocking up. His fingers tightened in her hair, dragging her attention back to him as he licked and sucked on her kiss swollen lips. She felt his fingers drift through the soft curls between her legs and tried to close them. Georgia laughed, holding her legs apart easily.

“Oh, baby, we are going to make you feel so good,” she said as Spike’s fingers parted her.

“No,” she moaned, eyes closing, humiliation closing her throat as the touch of his cool fingers brought home the fact that she was wet. She could feel it spreading with his touch, his fingers stroking her open like a flower, circling the slick gulf of her vagina, moving upward in a long stroke to the sensitive bundle of nerves jutting out slightly. His tongue swept inside her mouth as he rubbed her clitoris.

“Pretty, pretty kitty,” Georgia breathed. “With her sweet, pretty pussy.”

Willow stopped breathing as Georgia’s tongue swiped over her from anus to clit, dueling with Spike’s fingers. He pinched her clit, and Georgia’s tongue flicked over it. The sensations made her gasp and Spike released her lips to let her breathe. Spike’s fingers left her, and Georgia moaned, seizing Willow’s clitoris with her lips, tugging on it, sucking. Spike ran his hand through Georgia’s long hair, tugging on it to get her attention. She lifted her head and smiled at him, her lips shiny with the girl’s juices. She levered herself forward, her hands on the inside of Willow’s thighs. Spike met her halfway, tasting Willow on her generous lips, a little residual warmth and the sweet honeyed taste of her wet cunt on Georgia’s lips and tongue combining deliciously with fruit, whiskey, and champagne. Delicious.

The pearls from Georgia’s necklace brushed against Willow’s cunt. He found them there when his hand returned to explore her while he kissed Georgia. He eased one finger into her, feeling her involuntary movements as she felt his finger penetrating her. With his other hand still in Willow’s hair, he drew her up until she was half sitting, so Georgia could kiss her. His finger moved in and out of her roughly, enjoying how tight and hot she felt wetly gripping a single finger. He hooked the trailing end of the pearl necklace with his thumb, rubbing the smooth, round pearls over her clitoris. Georgia stopped kissing her to watch what he was doing, making an approving sound as he started pushing the pearls into Willow.

Willow was slow to realize what he was doing. Georgia was kissing her way down her abdomen, as Spike eased her back down on her back. When it reached her that he was finger fucking her with Georgia’s necklace wrapped around his finger, the idea bloomed in her head and she bucked against his hand, fruitlessly, still held down firmly by Georgia who was now tethered to her by the slack in the necklace. A pillow was shoved under her hips just before Georgia’s tongue slid over her clit again, and Willow arched her back moaning at the tormenting feel of the pearls shifting inside of her as Georgia sucked on her clitoris.

Spike yanked his shirts over his head, standing up to unbuckle his belt and take off his pants. For a moment, he stood over them. Willow’s fingers were digging into the rug on either side of her hips, her eyes tightly closed, her face contorted in the throes of passion. Soft, desperate moans wept from her throat. Georgia no longer had any reason to hold her legs apart, and her hands were on the girl’s breasts, plucking at her hard little nipples as she writhed under Georgia’s mouth. When she started to come, Georgia tugged on the necklace, and Willow’s back arched like a tightly strung bow, her legs shaking with the force of the orgasm Georgia was literally tugging out of her. Her voice broke on a long, mewling whimper of pleasure.

Looking up at Spike, Georgia licked her lips and afforded herself one last lingering lick, tasting Willow’s fresh climax. “Who do you want to fuck first?” she asked him, sure that he wanted the girl first.

“Her,” he said. “Get undressed,” he added as she moved from her post between Willow’s legs.

Coming down from her stunning orgasm, Willow heard them, and her heart slammed in her chest. She still could not believe that she had had an orgasm. What was wrong with her? A girl, a vampire girl had gone down on her and she had come harder than she ever had in her entire life. It meant something, didn’t it? She had never thought about having sex with another girl before. She hadn’t been thinking about having sex with Georgia because this wasn’t sex. This was . . . rape. Rape wasn’t about sex. It was about power and control and humiliation. It was not sex. But it made her come.

Too late, she tried to roll away and pull her legs together, but Spike was kneeling between her legs, and he just brought her back to her former position, pushing down on her hips, angled steeply from the pillow under her.

Georgia moved to one side to get a better view. She unwound the pearls from her neck, dropping them on the floor and kicked off her shoes. She paused before tugging the stretchy, supple knit dress over her head to admire the two naked bodies before her. Willow was almost as pale as a vampire, but with freckles sprinkled over her milky skin and a flush of color. Her auburn hair was fanned out around her head, damp with sweat. Spike’s hands were moving from her hips over her long, lean torso to her small, perfect breasts. They had tasted so sweet with the champagne.

He wasn’t as big as Colin. Actually, he wasn’t as tall as she was in heels, but Georgia knew that they would be almost perfectly matched. He was all lean muscle and intriguing angles. Naked, she strolled over to the sideboard, pouring another glass of champagne. She watched a kneeling Spike grasp his cock, his hips jerking as he thrust into his hand. Willow was pushing back, looking panic stricken and overwhelmed. Poor baby. She was trembling, and tears stood in her eyes. The look on her face was forlorn and full of the depths of her betrayal. She had, without meaning to, gotten used to thinking of them protecting her.

Georgia walked back over to them. “My turn,” Georgia told him, after all it was her party, and she had had the girl and was less interested in her at this point. She handed Spike the champagne flute she was carrying and pushed him back into the only chair in the room with a predatory gleam in her eyes.

He had left Willow in a sweaty, boneless heap on the floor and she had rolled over on her side, hugging her knees to her chest, probably crying soundless tears of mortification at her winning performance on her back. He toasted the smooth expanse of said back, rubbed raw from rolling on a rug. As fucking with your enemy’s head experiences went, Red was top shelf. He felt pleasantly buzzed with lust.

She was probably comforting herself with the notion that this was a one-time, never to be forgotten, object lesson in the dangers of drinking and playing with the immoral undead. She would be wrong. He had every intention of improving on Georgia’s performance with lots of variations. What better way to while away his idle hours until the Slayer made the trade?

Georgia knelt in front of him, and he obligingly opened his legs to make room for her. Her lipstick was mostly gone, and he grinned at her, admiring her mouth, well aware of where this was going. She wanted to play. “Miss me?” he teased.

Her fuller breasts pressed into the inside of his legs. She grinned. “We should have gotten a video camera,” she told him. “You’ll look good together,” she elaborated, her fingers cupping his balls. His cock twitched.

He took a deep, completely unnecessary breath as Georgia took his cock into her cool mouth, hungrily licking pre-cum from his shaft. He leaned back, sipping his champagne, stroking Georgia’s bobbing head, and watching the girl. He saw her stiffening up as the unmistakable sounds of the blow job Georgia was administering reached her. If anything she curled up more tightly into herself, as if she could hide from what was happening.

Sensing that he was distracted, Georgia scraped the underside of his cock with her teeth and his hand tightened in her hair momentarily as he growled at her, and then purred as her tongue laved his abused flesh. Almost casually, he used his fingernail to open a small wound near the base of his cock and she whimpered lustfully, taking more of him into her mouth to reach the blood that smeared his cock. It wasn’t hardly anything, just a taste, but—she moaned as the rich, coppery tang hit her tongue, trying hard to control her true face, feeling her fangs elongate fractionally. Male vampires were notoriously sensitive about having their cocks sucked by a vampire with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, though it was one kink Georgia had seen indulged in. Line of Aurelius. Blood of the line of Aurelius, she thought wildly. At that moment, she would have done anything for him for giving her such an intimate gift of blood.

No need though. He wasn’t a domineering prick like some masters she had heard of, accepting sex and blood as tribute without giving anything back but abuse. He was much more generous than that, and soon he was pulling her up into his lap, kissing her mouth and throat as she positioned herself over his cock, his thumb stroking and pinching her clit as she rode him hungrily.

Willow buried her head in her arms, vainly trying to block out the sounds of Spike and Georgia having sex. Oh, God. She had had sex with both of them, in this room, one watching the other as they . . . had her. She had a flash of memory, holding Spike off with her foolish ‘there will be no having, of any kind, with me,’ and she had been so proud of herself for backing him off like that. As if that would have stopped him. She had been so stupid. How could she have been so stupid? Her fisted hands struck her head, at too close a distance to hurt, but it got her attention, and her heart sped up.

They weren’t paying any attention to her, from the sounds of it. She opened her eyes and saw her dress, crumpled in a heap on the floor. Moving carefully, she uncoiled herself and made herself reach for the dress, pulling it on with hands that shook so badly that the zipper seemed beyond her and for a moment she was blinded with tears of frustration at how useless she was. Her only thought was to get out of the room, get as far away as she could from what had happened here. Outside. She had paid attention to where she was most of the night, hyperaware of her surroundings. She was in a city. A big, crowded city, full of people, and police, and phones. Oh, God. Phones. She had to get to a phone to tell Giles where she was, because they would come, they would come get her.

She looked for her panties and shoes, and mentally slapped herself. Underwear would have been nice. She could feel the sticky fluids from oral sex on the insides of her thighs, but this was for her life. She could not afford to hesitate. She needed to go and go fast before they noticed that she wasn’t lying on the floor in post debauchery shock like the besmirched heroine in a cheap novel. Get a grip, Rosenberg, she told herself, resolve face snapping into place without an appropriate audience to appreciate it. Inwardly she wondered where that had been before she had started rolling around on the floor with Georgia and Spike.

With what she prayed was noiseless stealth and speed she stole to the door and threw caution to the winds, jerking it open and shooting through the space. She had just enough presence of mind to thumb lock the plate button, hoping that it would lock the door, before she pulled the door shut behind her and started walking as fast as she could for the nearest exit, her heart pounding so hard that she was sure everyone would hear it. She got no more than ten feet before her resolve slipped a notch and she ran, silently damning the panic that would draw attention to her. Someone was bound to notice the human that had slipped her vampire leash.

Spike had seen her moving out of the corner of his eye and had tensed. She retrieved the dress and was struggling to get back into it—complete waste of time, since he planned on having it off when he was less occupied, but no need to tell her that. She was shaking so badly that it was a wonder she didn’t fall down. Georgia demanded his attention, leaning in for a brutal kiss. She used her fingernail to open a wicked gash above her breast, and at the scent of blood, his game face slammed into place. He didn’t bite her—she belonged to Colin by her own preference, and he respected that, but he wasn’t going to turn down such a pretty offer and he nuzzled and sucked on the oozing wound, the little girl forgotten for the moment as Georgia’s movements became increasingly urgent.

Distantly he registered the door opening and closing in rapid succession, but blood was under his lips, and he was so close. He opened his eyes as Georgia started keening, grinding herself down on his cock. He gripped her hips, giving back as good as he got. ‘Why couldn’t he go for a hot little number like Georgia?’ he thought ruefully, feeling his balls tighten. A fun, smart, sane, leggy blonde who sucked cock with all the enthusiastic efficiency of a Whitehall prostitute and shagged like a Goddess. He really was an idiot.

He came with a hoarse shout and like the team player she was, Georgia followed him right over the edge.

Unable to believe that no one had stopped her, Willow scrambled up the cold marble steps, winding a turn and a half. She hesitated only a second. Freedom was on the other side of two demon types and a black door that Spike had pushed her through only a few hours before. Okay, there was an alley to get through with God knows what lying in wait, but it was only a half block to the street. She had no money. These were problems with solutions, and she had gotten this far.

The two demon bouncers turned to stare at her, obviously surprised to see her unaccompanied. There had been some kind of conversation at the door when they came in about the inadvisability of bringing a human into the lower level club. Something casual had been said by one of the bouncers to the effect that they would not guarantee her safety. She hurtled up the last step. Panic she had in abundance, so she went with it. “They’re killing each other,” she blurted out, pointing down the stairs.

Almost expecting something like this, the bouncers started towards the stairs with thoughts of property damage and pandemonium. Before they thought about stopping the girl, she was out the door, and not really their concern in the first place. The blond vampire who had brought her in could deal with her, providing that whomever he had provoked hadn’t already dusted him.

Spike’s eyes snapped open at the unnatural quiet. He had gotten used to hearing Willow’s heart beat, and it was gone. Belatedly, he remembered hearing the door open and shut. “God damn it,” he swore. “I’ll beat her feet until they bleed for this. Teach her to run away,” he snarled as Georgia scrambled off him. He grabbed his pants and pulled them on swiftly, then his boots. Forget the shirt. She had a helluva head start. Stupid, stupid bitch. Wandering around alone in a demon bar full of vampires. Even the stupidest fledge would smell them on her and tread warily with her, but she didn’t know that, did she? She just lost her head over doing something she sure as hell had enjoyed and ran.

He reached the door and found it locked. Disbelief. He thought she was stupid? He took a half step back and kicked the door in, moderately grateful that he had stopped long enough to put on his boots. Points for locking them in, he thought grimly as a few vampires and demons wisely made an opening for the half naked, enraged vampire in game face stalking across the club trailed by a disheveled blond smoothing her dress down and hopping from one foot to the other as she put her shoes on.

A youthful looking vampire with brown hair gallantly offered his arm as she struggled into her shoes and she shot him an appreciative if distra