Spike paced angrily back and forth on the cold cement
floor in the
warehouse. Willow was to have met him across from the
bus terminal. He'd
waited an hour; she hadn't shown. He'd gone by her house;
it was dark
and deserted. That had been two hours ago, and still
there'd been no
sign of her. The streets were suspiciously void of the
slayer. They'd
taken her; he knew it. What he didn't know was *where*
they'd taken her.
He'd sent half a dozen of his minions out to scour the
town. The first
to return with no information had been staked with a
nail-embedded plank
by his furious master. As the others had returned with
the same lack of
news, he'd realized it wouldn't be wise to kill all the
messengers.
Spike brought his foot up under the low, well-worn table
in front of him
and sent it flying against the far wall. It clattered
to the ground in
splinters.
"Damn it, Willow! Where are you?" he growled.
***
Voices fizzled through Willow's brain like static from
a poorly-tuned
radio. She moaned softly at the sharp pain in her jaw
as her eyes
fluttered open and slowly focused. She was lying on an
unfamiliar bed.
Buffy was standing over her, with Angel directly behind
her.
"What--" Willow's voice was little more than a whisper.
"Shhh," Buffy put a hand on her shoulder. "Lie still.
I'm sorry, Willow.
I didn't want to do this, but you left me no choice."
Willow attempted to bring her right arm down to her side,
only to
discover it had been securely manacled to a very sturdy
bedpost.
"Buffy, what the hell is going on?" Willow's eyes were
filled with
confusion.
"I'm sorry," Buffy repeated. "You don't know how sorry.
I can't let you
go back to him."
Spike, the name ricocheted through Willow's mind. Ignoring
the ache in
her jaw, she pushed herself up to a sitting position.
"Let me go! Damn it, you have no right!"
"Our friendship gives me the right," Buffy said.
"Like hell it does! We don't have a friendship, not any
longer. Get this
damn thing off of me!" she rattled at the metal cuff
around her wrist.
"Willow," Angel moved to sit on the edge of the bed. "We're
not going to
let you go. Not until you come to your senses. We can't
hand you over to
Spike."
Tears of frustration glimmered in Willow's eyes. She looked
frantically
around the room, "Where am I?"
"Someplace where Spike won't find you," Angel answered.
She brought up her left hand, the fingers curled into
claws, and struck
out at the vampire's face. He caught her wrist in a steely
grip and
pulled her into a hard embrace.
"What's happened to you?" Angel said in anguish.
Willow struggled in his arms, "Get the hell away from
me! There's
nothing wrong with me. You two are fucking obsessed!
Let me out of
here!"
Angel rose and looked down at the seething girl, "No.
You're going to
stay put until this is over, which really shouldn't take
too long."
He took Buffy's hand, and they walked toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Willow demanded.
"After Spike," Buffy answered.
She and Angel walked out the door and closed and locked it behind them.
"Buffy!" Willow shrieked into the empty room.
***
"The slayer and Angel are on the streets," the minion's
voice spoke from
behind Spike.
His master turned to him, "From which direction?"
"They were first spotted over on South Hill Terrace."
"That road leads out of town," Spike stated.
The young vampire nodded, "It runs past the old train
depot. Used to be
a good screwing station, but no one goes out there anymore."
Spike smiled, "Get the boys out on the streets. Tell them
I want this
town turned red. We'll show the slayer and her pussy-whipped
boyfriend a
little slice of hell. I want them so distracted they
don't have time to
piss. Move."
The young demon literally jumped in his haste to carry
out Spike's
orders.
"Hold on, baby," Spike spoke to the shadows. "I'm coming."
End.