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Vampires. Not the good kind. Three of them. Gathered in front of the sofa, and looking down at her like a pack of hungry lions circling in for the kill. She was the fallen warthog or zebra or whatever the heck lions eat, but even more pathetic because nobody on animal planet ever got caught in their sleep.
She didn't want to scream. Screaming would encourage them. And it would be silly. She'd faced vampires before, staked a few even, and after everything else she'd been through this was nothing to get all wussy-girl about.
Everything seemed to slow down- dramatic movie moment- but her brain was whirring at a hundred miles an hour. Stake magic scream fight kick Angel help run no can't die won't let them get me now kick him in the balls vampires have those magic magic what the hell is that spell...and then she was sneezing from the dust billowing through her nostrils. Vamp dust. And behind it, Spike.
Angel pulled other two away by their collars, then bashed their skulls together with a terrible sounding thunk and squish. She stood up, dizzy and disoriented, as he dusted them, and Spike took her arm.
"There's more," he said. "Lots more. We've gotta go." And that was all the enticement she needed to change her whole perspective on PlethoCorp. She didn't think she'd miss it at all, if they got out alive.
They made their way to the stairs without any further incidents, but Willow could hear them- footsteps clamoring metallically on the levels above them, howls of hunger and fury- and it occurred to her that she might be the only truly desirable source of food left for them in the world. It was a horrible, terrifying thought.
"How many more did you say there were?" she asked as they descended, two and three steps at a time.
"It's like a freaking army," Angel threw over his shoulder. "Came out of nowhere."
She noticed then that Angel's shirt was torn, and he was bleeding from some cuts on his back.
Spike had a swollen lip, and two neat little puncture wounds in his neck. She'd never heard of vampires using each other as food, but they had to be getting fairly desperate.
"They get you?" she asked him, when they'd reached the ground level.
"Huh?"
She pointed to his neck. "They bit you, huh?"
"Oh." He reached up and touched the mark, pretty self-consciously, she thought. Probably embarrassed at having gotten caught. She shouldn't have asked about it. "Y-yeah," he said. "That's what happened."
Then Angel was kicking open the door and they were running through the parking lot, following him without question.
"That one," he said, but she thought she must've been confused about which vehicle he was pointing to. Surely it couldn't be that oversized, decrepit, brown van? The place was full of brand spanking new luxury automobiles. He'd have to be-
"Are you out of your bleeding mind?" Spike demanded, once they'd reached the ugly beast. "This thing is a relic!"
"It's big, and it's got some things we need."
"It's hideous! I'm not driving that. I don't even want to *look* at that."
Willow agreed, but she was starting not to care. She just wanted to get in something and drive the hell away. She kept eyeing the building nervously as they bickered, waiting for vamps to come pouring out, slavering for her blood.
"I've already filled it with supplies," Angel said, and opened the sliding back door for her.
"You picked this thing out on purpose? God, are you fucking daft? It's going to break down before we even get to the-"
"Just get in the goddamn car, boy!" Angel growled, in a tone Willow hadn't heard since the days of Angelus. She cringed, fully expecting Spike to punch Angel, fearing the tussle that would result and the fact that she'd be the only one around to break it up. But there were no punches. Spike ducked his head like a scolded puppy, opened the driver's side door, and began hotwiring the van.
She was too relieved to really wonder about it.
She climbed into the back, and groped around for an overhead light, hoping there weren't any demon hitchhikers sharing the space with her. Once the inside was illuminated she began to see why Angel had chosen it.
It was ugly, yeah, and a 70's relic to be sure, but there was a microwave, small refrigerator, lots of comfy looking bean bag seats, and best of all- an actual bed! Well, okay, a mattress. On the floor. With the skunkiest looking sheets she'd seen since Xander's adolescence. But still. A bed!
There was a lava lamp, and beads, and a big zodiac poster where each sign was represented with a different sexual position. It seemed to glow in the dark. All the various elements combined to give a homey, comfortable feel.
"This is neat!" she called out, mostly for Angel's benefit, but also because it really was pretty cool.
He was sitting in the passenger's seat, staring intently at Spike. There was a big space between them, filled with a box-like divider, and Willow found she could sit down on it fairly comfortably, with her legs drawn up to her chest. There was probably stuff inside it, which excited her for some reason. The whole van seemed to be filled with little boxes and bags and hidden spaces that might be filled with delightful surprises.
"Wonder where the stash is," Spike said, seeming to read her mind. Sort of. Then he finally got the right wires to spark and the engine hummed to life.
"Go!" Angel ordered, and they lurched forward in an attempt at speed.
"Bloody horse and wagon would've been quicker," Spike grumbled, but without much conviction this time. They were moving. They were safe. And soon they were on the road again.
There was still a highway. It hadn't all been swallowed into hell, and it was comfortably familiar. An interstate with lights and dividers and signs. Exits that promised towns chock full of Taco Bells and EconoLodges and Texacos, and Willow watched them pass with longing. She wanted to stop at each and every one and hunt for signs of remaining life, even though she knew there was probably nothing. Except maybe more vampires.
"Hey, you said there was like, an army of vamps back there, right?" she asked, after they'd been driving for a half an hour- which she knew because there was a clock on the dashboard, and it was now ten forty-five.
"Yeah," Angel nodded. "There were a lot of them."
"So, how come you guys didn't sense them coming? I mean, shouldn't you have been able to tell as soon as they were in the building? Do you think maybe they were some kind of mutant, super-vamps that your senses are immune to? What if..."
"They're not super vampires," Angel interrupted her. "We didn't hear them because we were..."
"Sleeping," Spike interjected, and Angel muttered "Fighting" at the same time.
Well, that was odd. There was definitely something they weren't telling her, which made her a little bit nervous. If it was something bad, and they were trying to protect her, that couldn't be good. Secrets seemed like a really terrible idea in their situation.
But Willow didn't want to push it. Not right then. It was so nice to be in a moving vehicle again, to be sitting and yet making progress in some way, she was almost afraid to ruin her mood with too many questions.
Spike sighed and flipped on the radio, probably to distract her, which was fine, except there was nothing but static. He turned the dial pointlessly back and forth, sighed again and shut it off.
"Hey, maybe there's some tapes," Willow offered. "Seems like the kinda guy who'd own a groovy van like this would want some tunes for it, don't you think?"
"Horrid tunes, I've no doubt," Spike said. Which was probably true, but it couldn't hurt to look. She told Angel to pop open the glove box, and sure enough there were some tapes shoved in there, along with several wads of paper, two empty cigarette boxes, and a shiny silver flask which Spike seemed to register with an almost preternatural sixth sense.
"Any liquor left in there?" he asked hopefully.
"No," Angel said, without bothering to check.
"What are the tapes?" Willow asked, before they could start arguing about it.
Angel read the titles aloud. "Doobie Brothers, Billy Joel, Foreigner, Styx, Cheap Trick..."
"Mother of Christ," Spike groaned. "Foreigner? That's the saddest collection of crap I've ever heard."
"It is pretty scary," Willow concurred. But it was music, and it might be nice to hear some music. Even if it was stuff her dad would've liked. Twenty years ago.
"What's wrong with Billy Joel?" Angel asked.
"Nothing, if you're like, fifty," Willow giggled.
"I'm considerably older than that," Angel reminded her, and stuck in the tape.
"Sorry..." It was so hard to remember they were both hundreds of years old. They looked like college students. Weird college students, but still.
She winced when the music started playing, and couldn't help but giggle again. It wasn't even good Billy Joel. It was that terrible one from the 80's about cars and Sheryl Tiegs or whoever.
Spike made gagging noises over "Tell Her About It", and she found she couldn't stop laughing. It was just so insane and awful and funny. And it was good to see Spike back to his snarky old self again. Since they'd left the woods he'd been seeming less and less insane every minute, and since they'd left PlethoCorp he was almost sounding like the Spike she used to know. The Spike before the soul, but, like, nicer. She wasn't as worried about him anymore. He didn't seem hopeless.
"Well, Piano Man is a great song..." Angel said eventually, and this brought on another wave of giggles.
They listened to the whole record, and it was fun. Almost normal. Almost like the fantasy road trip she'd been pretending they were on, back in the beginning. She was almost able to forget that it was nothing but a daydream.
When the tape was over, Spike reached into the glove box for another, and she realized she was completely exhausted again. Time to try the sleeping thing, then possibly the eating thing. Angel said there were supplies, and she assumed that meant food.
She told them both goodnight, and crawled back to the bed. It felt amazing- soft and warm and completely bed-like. She drifted off easily to the sound of Spike singing along with Cheap Trick.
When she woke up this time there was another vampire looking at her, but it was a good one- Angel.
He was sitting on the floor next to the mattress, watching her sleep it seemed, which could've been creepy, but wasn't.
There was still music playing. Apparently she'd dozed through all of Cheap Trick and they'd moved on to the Doobie Brothers.
"Good rest?" Angel asked her. She nodded enthusiastically.
"Yeah, it was great. This is great. Weird, but great."
"How're you doing, Willow? You holding up okay?"
"Oh, yeah, just peachy. Nice and rested and fed and all that good stuff."
"No, no I mean...I know this is all really..."
"Terrible?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Really really terrible."
She didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to talk about it or hear about it or anything else that might make her really *feel* it again. She was floating along on a semi-comfortable wave of numbness and auto-responsiveness, and trying to get a handle on her mental state enough to explain it to Angel seemed like a shortcut to insanity.
"I'm okay," she said. "You know, reasonably okay, for the circumstances."
"You sure?" he asked. "It's okay if you're not."
Then he reached out to touch her arm- comforting, but he must've seen something in her expression that revealed how desperately she needed more because he pulled her quickly into a tight embrace. His arms were warm and heavy around her, and his chest was solid and strong, and it just felt so incredibly...incredible to be held again. It was overwhelming. She hadn't realized how badly she'd missed such a simple thing as hugging someone.
She clutched the front of his shirt into her fists and bit her lip to keep from sobbing in pathetic joy and miserable despair. He ran his hands up and down her back over and over, and whispered in her ear, "It's gonna be okay. Not gonna let anything hurt you. It's all gonna be okay."
Soon his hands were in her hair, stroking and twisting, and her face was pressed against his neck, and she realized it was going on a little longer than a normal hug. But that was okay, wasn't it? Didn't she need more than a normal hug? Hadn't she earned the right to sit here, nestled in someone's arms for as long as she darn well wanted?
He smelled good, up close like this. For some reason she'd always imagined vampires as either foul-smelling or completely odorless. She'd never noticed any particular aroma coming from Spike or Angel, so she figured they were the odorless kind, but Angel's neck smelled like something. Something familiar and musky and nice.
She wanted to kiss him, she realized suddenly, and that was when Spike yelled back to let them know they were coming up on an exit for a hospital.
"Maybe we should stop," he suggested. "Might be some useful supplies."
Angel slowly disentangled himself from her and nodded. "Good thinking, Spike. Let's go."
He touched her face gently, gave her a smile, then disappeared up to the front with Spike, leaving her alone and entirely confused.
She didn't have much time to think about it though, because soon they were out of the van again, and thrown into another strange, disorienting environment.