Buffy’s eyes popped open and she sat up abruptly, blinking as she came out of the dream. Her skin was flushed, damp from sweat, her heart was thumping in her chest, and…well, yes. That was her body tingling. “Good God…”
“I’ll say,” Faith nodded, peering at her.
Buffy jumped, blinking suddenly as her circumstances came rushing back. Faith…White room. Right. She turned to look at her companion and realized Faith had spoken to her. “What?”
Faith glanced at her oddly. “I’m guessing that wasn’t about a potential Slayer in trouble. You were moaning and doin’ all sorts of stuff. The kinda sounds normally reserved for late-night Skinamax.”
The elder Slayer blushed furiously. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she stated, standing up and changing the subject.
“Well…duh,” Faith observed, moving to stand beside her friend. “Your dream involved a way to get out of here?”
Buffy’s head shook. “No. Just renewed my desire to escape evil lawyers and put and end to dead girls, apocalypse and my life sucking on major levels.”
“Ah,” Faith nodded. She patted Buffy on the back. “I’d hate to see what it does when you have a nightmare.”
The blonde Slayer began to prowl the extensive room. “There has to be a way out.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Willow, she called with her mind. She paused a moment, waiting, then Willow? Anyone? Anyone out there with mind-reading capabilities?
“Dammit,” she muttered a moment later.
“Still no mind-mojo, huh?”
“No,” Buffy answered, disgusted. “No walls, no windows, and not really a floor. This is, unfortunately for us, the perfect prison.”
“Don’t know about that,” Faith observed. “At least in mine I got three squares a day. I’m hella starving.”
“I can help with that,” a voice came from behind them and Lilah Morgan appeared from thin air, trays of food in her hands. “It’s no Spago, but I think you’ll like it. We have an excellent in-house chef. Several of them, actually.”
Buffy and Faith both turned in sync, arms crossed over their chests, and glared at her. “You’d better have more than food in your hands, lady,” Faith warned her, “’cause in case you didn’t notice…me, her…Slayers. You…not a Slayer.”
“Threatening me isn’t going to do you any good, Faith,” Lilah told her, amused. “With a snap of my fingers I can have fifty guards in here, beating you down. Now that I would think, will bring back memories…for you at least.”
“What is this place?” Buffy asked, icily.
Lilah perked up. “It’s amazing isn’t it? It’s what we call a ‘pocket room.’ It’s a fraction of the Arashim dimension…a place completely devoid of just about anything but pretty white light. We had the floor put in special so you two weren’t just floating around all willy-nilly.”
“Gee, thanks,” Faith snarked.
“It’s the least we could do for our precious commodities.”
Faith sneered and took a step toward the lawyer. “What are you, our broker?”
Buffy placed a hand on Faith’s arm and after a moment the girl backed down. “What do you want with us?”
“Let’s get introduced, shall we? Faith I’ve met, but Ms. Summers…honestly. This is a pleasure. You’re legendary. I’m Lilah Morgan, Senior Vice President of Wolfram & Hart. And, really, we don’t want anything from you two. No plans to convert you, drain your blood, have you produce little Slayers for the profit of the dark side… Nothing so medieval as that. It’s what you can bring us.”
“We don’t have anything,” Faith told her. “You might have noticed, we’re stuck in this room.”
Lilah smiled at her benignly. “Well…not so much what you can bring us as to who you can bring us.”
Buffy’s brow furrowed. “Who…?” Suddenly she knew. “Angel.”
“And they say blondes are dumb.”
“This is about Angel?” Buffy continued. “Why take us then? If you wanted Angel I’m sure you could have just captured him outright.”
Faith snorted. “I’m not.”
“Well…now, see there’s the problem. There’s this little end of the world ritual we’re going to be performing pretty soon,” Lilah checked her watch, “matter of hours, really, and Angel’s a vital part of it. But he can’t be forced to participate. The possessor of the soul has to be involved of his own free will. It’s quite tricky.”
“Possessor of the soul…” Buffy mused, then stopped suddenly and looked up with a horrified expression on her face. “So that’s why you took Spike. But… If you had him, why did you…” She paused incredulously. “This was never about Spike. It was always about Angel.”
Lilah smiled and glanced at Faith. “Really… she’s making you look slow, honey.”
“This was always about Angel,” Buffy repeated. “Then…why? Why take Spike in the first place?”
“Needed to get you to LA, didn’t we? We could have captured you out right, sure, and sent Angel a ransom note, but there were other things involved. And the whole “damsel in distress, tied to the train-tracks thing” never really did it for me.”
“What other things?” Faith wanted to know.
“This is the part at the end where the villain reveals how they did it, isn’t it?” Lilah grinned. “God, I love being bad. So much more fun than the white-hat way of life.” She sat the trays down on the floor and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, I’ll bite. Spike was backup, in case we couldn’t get Angel to cross over, which…given the fact that his sweetie’s locked up here, shouldn’t be an issue. Rather than go about some elaborate scheme to capture Buffy we figured, get Spike, who we knew you had an unnatural attachment to,” she said to Buffy, “and we’ll get the Slayer to LA…all in one easy step. Getting him, crazy in that basement as he was, was hardly a problem.”
Buffy glared at her. “So you got Spike, which brought me to LA and you knew I’d contact Angel.”
Lilah smirked suggestively. “Boy…and have you contacted him. From what I hear, that is. Good for you kids, although…kind of a bummer at the same time, isn’t it? I mean, you two can’t really get the groove on, can you? I’d imagine Angel’s hotel is the spot for cold showers these days. You wouldn’t want him losing that soul of his…more’s the pity for us.” Lilah leaned in conspiratorially. “That’s kind of what we need to happen,” she whispered with a knowing grin. Buffy shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably as Lilah continued. “Anyway, yeah, that was pretty much the idea. But then you had to go and break out Calamity Jane over here and cause us a few more problems than we’d anticipated. Luckily, we think quickly on our feet.”
“Gee, so sorry about that,” Faith sneered. She turned to Buffy, thoroughly annoyed. “I say we kill her.”
Buffy nodded slowly. “I’m starting to move toward that myself.” She approached Lilah, who, to her credit, backed up a step.
“I wouldn’t,” she warned the girls.
“Why not?” Faith asked sweetly.
“You’ll never get out of here otherwise.”
“I somehow doubt that,” Buffy told her. “You think Angel and our friends haven’t figured this out? They’re probably ready to storm the corporate castle to get to us--and to you.”
“They can’t. We’re the only ones with access to this portal--your only hope of getting out. Angel will come for you, which, of course, is all a part of the plan…and then we’ll have him, and you two… It’s like Christmas around here. Evil Christmas.”
“Like any of us is going to let that happen,” Buffy said coldly.
“I honestly don’t see how you can stop it.”
“There’s something you’re forgetting,” the elder Slayer informed her. “Angel won’t fall for it.”
Lilah smirked. “Which part? The part where we have you two as hostages? Or the part where if he doesn’t comply with our every demand, we’ll kill you? How about the part where we have you in a room he can’t find, much less enter? You’ve been a hostage before…you, your friends…one of you is constantly in the soup and the others are running around merrily rescuing them. You’re Angel’s big love, luv. The one for him, the reason his undead heart even remembers what it was like to beat.”
“You’re wrong about all that,” Faith tried. “Buffy and Angel haven’t been together in a long time. Where you been?”
“Nice try, honey, but that’s the quirk about having world-renowned spy networks. They find out the most interesting tidbits about people. And that vampire? Most definitely not over Ms. Sunnydale U.S.A. Even if he’s sniffing around the pseudo-Slayer, his head, and all his other deliciously made body parts, are completely devoted to her.”
Buffy was fuming. “Wanna know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking you’re probably lying about the guards coming in if we kill you. I’m thinking if you don’t start giving me some answers that I like, I’m going to find out.”
“You won’t,” Lilah countered and jabbed a thumb in Faith’s direction. “She’s the killer, not you.”
Buffy grinned slowly and glanced at Faith as the brunette’s expression steeled. “Oh…wrong answer, Lilah.”
Faith shook her head with mock regret. “First rule of dealing with a convict…or Slayers for that matter…we don’t really like it when you pigeon-hole us like that.”
“Gets her all testy,” Buffy chimed in.
“And since I’ve seen what B’s got to offer these days, I think killing a straight-up whack job like yourself might not be outside the realm of possibility. How you feel about that, B?”
“I’m warming up to the idea pretty rapidly,” Buffy agreed with a nod. The girls stood shoulder to shoulder.
Lilah glanced from one to the other. “Fine. Whatever. You’re both badasses. You’re still badasses stuck in here. As you’ll remain…until I need you.”
“I don’t like that plan,” Buffy told her. “You said this ritual’s happening tonight. When? Where?”
“All in due time.”
“Time’s now,” Faith began, when Lilah backed up another step and smiled.
“’Fraid not. I’ve got a meeting in five minutes…about you, oddly enough. Enjoy the food. Try the penne, I hear it’s excellent.” She closed her eyes and a moment later her body faded into the white nothing.
Buffy and Faith glanced at each other. “Great,” Buffy muttered.
“Quite the plan, isn’t it?”
“Maybe Angel won’t fall for it?”
The brunette offered Buffy a pitiful glance. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m sure he’ll just leave you here, forget about you in a few weeks and move on with his life. He’s done such a good job of that in the last four years. Now me, on the other hand…I leave an impression. No way that big hunk’s going to get over me any time soon.”
Buffy grinned in spite of herself. “I know. He’s going to come for us.”
“And walk right into their trap,” Faith nodded.
“And there’s nothing we can do to warn them.”
“We’ll just have to be ready when someone springs us out of here. Either way it’s not going to go down without some kind of major tussle. I figure we’re going to walk away with the award for best action sequence if they keep us cooped up in here much longer. I’m getting antsy.”
“It won’t be much longer,” Buffy said without much confidence. The situation felt pretty bleak.
They were silent, contemplating the probable events of the next few hours. Faith sighed. “It was a trap, had always been a trap, and we fell right into it. Might as well have had blinders on, especially for both of us to get snagged.”
“Angel has Spike. He’ll make him talk.”
“If he hasn’t killed him already.”
“He wouldn’t--” Buffy began to protest, then stopped off Faith’s look. “He might have,” she conceded.
The girls fell into silence once more as the seconds ticked by. A moment later Faith leaned in and gave Buffy’s shoulder a squeeze. “So, you want that garlic bread?”
*~*~*
Spike was yanked to his feet roughly and dragged down the hall. “Up and attem’” Gunn announced.
“Hey…hey!” Spike protested. “What’s the bloody idea?”
“Time to go, got some girls who need rescuin’.”
“I’m not involved, or don’t you remember my little speech from before?”
Gunn shrugged. “Still not caring. Angel says you go, you go.”
“Following the master, are you, boy?”
“I told you to avoid slang terms in my presence, and that goes for racial innuendo. I have to tell you again, you lose a vitally important body part.”
Spike rolled his eyes but found his feet and walked himself the rest of the way into the hotel lobby. The entire gang had assembled, gripping weapons and shooting glares in his direction as soon as Gunn pulled him into the lobby.
“We know it’s going to be a trap,” Angel was saying as he packed a bag with what appeared to be explosives of some kind. “They’re expecting us, and there’s nothing we can do about that. Leaving Buffy and Faith there to escape on their own isn’t an option. We’re going in hard and we’re going in fast.”
Spike snorted. “This is gonna be Custer’s last stand all over again.”
Angel looked up at that and narrowed his eyes. He glanced up at Gunn. “Gag him.”
“Gladly,” Gunn said approvingly.
Spike immediately began to squirm and pulled himself free of Gunn’s grip. “Hey! Wait!”
Giles produced a long rag and began moving toward the blonde vampire as Angel continued his instruction.
“I said wait a bloody minute!” Spike cried, backing up from the oncoming Watcher.
Angel ignored him, as did the others. “We go in the front door, hard and fast. You know you assignments. Willow?”
The witch looked up at him confidently. “I’m ready.”
Angel nodded. “Let’s go.”
“So that it’s?” Spike asked desperately, dodging Giles. “What about me?”
Angel glared at him as he headed out, grabbing Spike’s arm tightly and yanking him toward the door. “You’re with me,” he growled.
*~*~*
They entered Wolfram and Hart as Angel had instructed, in a flurry of stealthy movement that escalated into panic when the vampire alarms went off. Security guards flocked to them, weapons in hand and the Scoobies were forced to stand, seemingly caught.
“And into the lion’s den,” Wesley whispered.
“Took you longer than I expected,” Lilah called from the top of the sprawling staircase. She began to descend slowly. “You’re getting slow in your old age,” she said to Angel.
“Where are they?” he growled in response.
“They’re safe,” she smiled as she approached him. “She’s pretty, your Slayer. A little smaller than I’d imagined a Slayer would be, but hey…that’s the trend these days.”
“She’d kick your ass, given the opportunity.”
“I’m sure she would. We’ve made sure that won’t happen.”
Dawn gasped from her place behind them. “What does that mean?”
“They’re alive,” he told her without turning around. “I’d know it is she wasn’t.”
Lilah’s lips pursed. “Oh, that’s so romantic, coming from a cold -blooded killer. And, in your case, the cold-blooded is literal, isn’t it? Funny,” she grinned. “I’d never thought of that before.”
“Make this easy on yourself, Lilah, give them up and we’ll be on our way,” Angel offered. “I won’t ask again.”
“No, I expect you won’t. But sorry, here at Wolfram & Hart, we rarely make deals with vampires.”
“It’s not a deal,” Giles growled, clenching the saber in his hand. “Produce the Slayers, or die here. That’s the choice.”
Lilah’s eyes rolled heavenward as she pretended to consider. “Um…no. But thanks. And note that I did say rarely do we make deals with vampires. I didn’t say never.”
Angel’s eyes flickered. “There’s no deal. Buffy and Faith, for your life, and the life of anyone else that might get in our way.”
“Empty threats,” she dismissed him. “I’m authorized to exchange the Slayers.”
“For who?” Wesley asked.
“We still need to perform the ritual, to raise Gy-ra.”
“Spike’s not going to play along this time, are you, Spike?” Angel asked, shaking the blonde vampire violently.
On this matter, Spike was inclined to agree. “Had enough of you bloody bitch,” he snapped. “Give’em back the Slayers, don’t give ‘em back. I don’t particularly care. But keep me out of it or I’ll tear you apart myself.”
The guards hitched forward a step at that until Lilah raised her hand to stop them. “Boys, boys. We can settle this civilly, can’t we? We’re all grownups…some of us by generations. The deal is this, Angel…you, for them.”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“Don’t be dense,” she chastised. “Your person, for theirs. The ritual still needs to be performed, and it takes a vampire with a soul to perform it.”
He smirked. “You know? I like my offer better. Now, get me Buffy, and Faith, and do it quickly, or I’m going to tap Willow on the shoulder here and she’s going to show you what a pissed off witch can accomplish in a place just teeming with magical energy.”
Lilah glanced at the red head, who smiled girlishly and waved.
“Try one spell and the guards will take you all out so quickly you won’t know what happened.”
Angel considered the offer, then turned to Willow. In silent agreement her eyes closed and suddenly the wind picked up.
“I warned you,” Lilah frowned. “Guards!”
The security guards moved to apprehend Willow and the others when they suddenly stopped in mid-stride. Panic reached their eyes but they didn’t move, nor did they cry out. They couldn’t.
Willow had frozen in place anyone not in the rescue party. She stood in the middle of the room, a slight wind blowing her hair around as her eyes blackened, chanting under her breath. The stilled Wolfram and Hart staffers had fear in their eyes as each member of the Scoobies passed them in the lobby on their way inside.
“I tried to tell you,” Angel sing-songed to Lilah as she stared at him. Though her eyes couldn’t move, he could sense the anger inside her being. He smirked and moved past her.
“This will only hold them for so long,” he reminded his crew, tugging Spike alongside. “Do your best,” he whispered to Willow, who gave him a curt nod as she continued to concentrate.
“Upstairs,” he directed a moment later, slapping at the “up” button for the elevators. “Pile in.”
Cramped as it was the group managed to get inside, save for Xander, Fred and Cordelia, who remained with Willow to protect her when the spell lost its power. Angel stood before the button panel, Spike wincing at the pain from Angel’s hand around his upper arm, and stared at the buttons.
“Open sesame,” he whispered, and punched in a series of buttons before hitting one large one at the bottom. It began to glow and the elevator began to move when suddenly everything around them faded.
