Taken By the Night
Part Fourteen

Warning: Angelus is VERY angry now ‘cause Buffy’s M.I.A., so …he acts on his grief and boy you would not want to be in Riley’s shoes now, so all lighthearted fellows be prepared. * SPOILER ALERT: major character death, dark fic and general NC17 violence *

Chapter XIV “twin flames”
Part III “the Rage”
February 16th Los Angeles, CA

“Where the hell are they?”

He was running.

Not walking fast, not passing by, plainly running to get to the dungeons of W&H. His eyes were red—not yellow—and just to ease the job of torture, he had already removed his jacket and tie and even unbuttoned his cuffs—all this while he was still running.

Theoretically, he was all set to get busy with Harmony and Riley.

“Room 4, Master,” whispered the witch. Willow hadn’t dared to even talk loudly to him. He was very irritated and he could lash out on all of them.

“Get me throngs, scalpel, spoons…and the ball and chain.” Willow could tell he was going to go ‘medieval/psycho medical’ on them.

She would’ve loved to help—if he would have let her.

“Yes, Master, and…we have Faith in the Medical area, in case you wanted to know where she is.” Angelus looked around before answering. Then he took Willow by the neck and smashed her against a wall simultaneously sinking his fangs into her neck and sucking her quickly.

His actions had been completely unexpected.

And almost too swift to register.

“How is she?” Willow found a faint pleasure on it, but it had been a rapid drain, done only to replenish his own body rather than a sire bite.

“She has… a broken neck and they say… she will never awake from the coma.” Willow was stammering and Angelus saw it and leaned into her earlobe and whispered.

“Who’s ‘they’, Will?”

Willow cringed a bit at the unstable Elder that was whispering into her ear with her blood still spilling from his chin, but still managed to answer him.

“Winifred Burke and her assistants …they are the ones treating the other slayer.” Angelus sniffed Willow up and down her arms and intentionally paused to settle his nose right in the last place where Buffy had last touched her best friend.

Gripping that arm with killer might into his fist a second later.

Willow stood motionless until he looked down at her with predator threat written all over his face.

She shivered and…

He smiled wickedly and then sank his entire set of teeth into her forearm ripping the piece out in a single bite. In an all too very Mike Tyson gesture of rage.

And then he just spat it aside.

“We’ll talk to her later” Willow didn’t have time to react, a few seconds after her whole arm stung and the blood was flowing unto the white carpet beneath her heels. Through the gash she could see the bone and the tendons swelling into mindless pain.

“Sire, please stop…” Willow whispered brokenly as Angelus gripped her arm again.

“SHUSH, Will. The cuckoo is standing by cradle and… he wants to make it rock. Would you like to fall with the cradle too?” He let go of her roughly and walked into room number 4. The Witch thanked God very silently that she hadn’t had anything to do with Buffy’s disappearance as she crutched her sore arm to her chest.

“WELL. WELL. WELL. Look what we have here…a brainless slut and a GI Joe. Whom should I hurt first…Hmm, I think I’m feeling Musical…Will, hand me the throngs.” Angelus leaned closer to Harmony and sniffed her around. She had been hanged with manacles to the roof and her body was suspended by her wrists.

“Sire, I swear to you I don’t know where she went! I had nothing to do with this. Faith just told me to be stupid!” And that came naturally to Harmony. But that simply didn’t concern Angelus anymore. He was out for the fun of the kill.

“You are removing all the fun, Harm. Anyway, I had to discipline you someday, and this day seems as good as any.” Angelus started by ripping Harmony’s shirt of her body, followed closely by her pants, leaving her in her underwear. As he swung the ball and chain experimentally against the wall behind her, the spikes incrusted in the iron ball had left marks in the stucco wall and the vampire seemed pleased of it.

Harmony shivered at the thought of those Spikes slashing her ivory skin. “Please don’t, I will never say anything to her again! I swear it!” pleaded Harmony before Angelus could start lashing out.

“Don’t beg, Harm. It’s really pathetic. Now be a good girl and cry for the Scourage.”

Harmony cringed and moaned as Angelus struck her in the back with the ball and chain until her smashed shoulder blades showed through the torn skin, alongside the blood and the gashes of hanging tissue.

“I really don’t know where she is! Please stop!”

But he didn’t stop. He just did not believe her.

She had to know something.

And he had to find her.

He did it several times until he was satisfied with the design imprinted unto her skin. But Harmony had continued nagging and saying the same thing over and over again… and he was getting bored of it.

“That’s right, Harm. You probably don’t really know where she is, and I’m bored. Willow, get back here! I’m tired of this bitch and her whining!” He cut out her tongue to fix the problem.

Harmony actually did not know where Faith was, because nobody did.

“And also because you have been such a bad puppy we’ll do you a fix up. Say ‘AAAHHH’!” He placed his hands down her throat and to the side so he could easily keep it open while he removed each of Harmony’s teeth with Willow’s assistance.

“You are becoming incoherent, Harm. You should save those babbles for later. You still got pokers and cigarettes coming, Spike does them greatly, doesn’t he Red?” Willow nodded and continued defanguing Harmony.

45 minutes later…

“She’s completely toothless, Sire.”

Angelus paused to inspect their work and when he was satisfied he handed Willow the lash and ushered her into delivering punishment. “A dozen would do. Break her kneecaps after that. That would be enough for Miss Cacophony there. Lets hope she has learned her lesson.”

As the witch got busy with her work, Angelus had taken the scalpel and come menacingly close to Riley’s face.

The first sound of the whip against the blonde’s flesh had awakened Riley to a terrifying reality.

And he was internally afraid for his own luck, but he had promised himself he’d be strong for Faith. He thought she would come to save him…eventually, because she really loved him.

At least that’s what he thought.

“I’ll give one chance to tell me where Buffy is and then I’ll kill you quickly. If you don’t spill… well, let’s just say you don’t want to know about that. So where is my wife?” For the previous hours Riley had been hanging like a regular prisoner but Angelus had decided to do a sitting torture with him.

“I would never tell you anything freak! You are nothing but a monster and Faith is going to put a stake through your heart very soon!”

Angelus decided he wanted to start with the hands, he had always enjoyed the sight of nails piercing white skin.

“Fine. Let's get started then, Mr. Finn” Angelus took another chair and sat in front of Riley with a hammer and iron nails on a side table.

He almost looked like a doctor then.

“Left or right Mr. Finn?” Riley did not answer so Angelus decided to start with the left.

The hand of the heart and the emotions.

As the iron piece broke the thin phalange connected to the middle finger Riley screamed. The nail went right through his hand and into the wood, effectively immobilizing the entire hand. As the second, much thicker, nail went through the wrist, he actually cursed the vampire. This time the blood was flowing like a steady rivulet unto the ground.

But when the hammer smashed deliberately and repeatedly against all the fingers he cried, not like a man, but like a wounded animal, repeatedly asking him to stop.

“Bummer. I thought I could make you last a bit longer without crying. Tsk, tsk. It’s not very manly to cry, Mr. Finn. I suppose you just don’t need to have these.” The vampire gripped the man’s testicules with his hand and squeezed until they felt squashed, almost burst thoroughly.

“Stop!” Riley was ready to talk then.

But Angelus wasn’t ready to bulge.

“But I’m having so much fun!” Angelus took the gardening scissors and proceeded to cut the pants off from the soldier.

Riley was more than alarmed then. He was petrified of the metal blade slowly ascending though the cargo pants up his legs…towards his balls.

“I think you really shouldn’t reproduce, Mister Finn, so let’s make sure you don’t…” The vampire arrived at the underwear and ripped it off, leaving Riley naked below the waist.

With the other hand, Riley tried to break free and save his body but Angelus was quicker.

“I really don’t know where she is!”

But Angelus would not believe him.

And then Riley knew pain, in a brand new form. The throbbing of his genitals so bad as to make him wish his heart would stop even if just for a second.

“There you go. Now you won’t worry about any pesky offspring. Nice ah?” Riley shuddered as his balls disappeared into a bowl. He was then in such pain that he had lost speech, the blood was seeping slowly but he felt it soaking the chair he was sitting in. Riley decided he wanted to speak the truth then.

“OH! You want to say a few words, let’s hear it, Buffy is…”

As Riley said nothing Angelus proceeded to his next torture, …nail removing.

“She said she…hated you and …that she was going to be free from this”

Angelus smirked and grabbed a small rounded knife.

“Of course she did. Now I noticed your hands look rather feminine. I suggest removing the nails, what do you think?”

He screamed and protested but Angelus slowly cut of the small nails until only the pink swollen skin underneath the nail remained.

“And finally this little piggy is going to …TELL ME WHERE THE HELL DID YOU PUT MY WIFE?! AND WHY CAN’T I TALK TO HER?!”

Riley was now sweating and panting, barely awake, the pain so intense he thought he would push the knife though his own neck and be done with it, if Angelus would have let him.

Problem was he really didn’t know where Faith had gone. It was a secret even to him, a secret that he was sure would cost him his life very soon.

3 hours later…

“I don’t know where Faith Went! I swear.”

Angelus was stunned, Riley had endured a great deal, and he was finally opening but… he was truly irrational by then.

“I know where Faith is Finn. I wanna know where is Buffy? Christ, is that too difficult to understand?!” Angelus pushed the pokers as deep into the bone as he could and still Riley kept saying the same.

“Find Faith and …you’ll find her.”

Angelus lost his patience and smashed his fist into Riley’s face breaking his nose in yet another spot.

“Tell me where she is, you goddamn idiot! I don’t want to kill you… I ONLY WANT TO KNOW WHERE SHE IS!” and Riley said another pointless thing about Faith and finally Angelus stopped.

He would simply listen to him no more.

“Then die!” Angelus covered his body with gasoline and set him on fire.

Clearly another outburst of his rage.

He repeated the process with Harmony and that also ended in fire.

Towards the end of the day he left the dungeons and went upstairs to his office, his cellphone had been beeping all day long without his knowledge.

+++ “Who was that?” Willow had been the only one brave enough to remain with the master after he had clearly lost his mind.

“Giles. He wanted to tell us Faith had gone rogue and killed Wesley. She even tried to kill him, but she couldn’t. He said he was still in the hospital.” Angelus knew Faith had lost her reason long before that, but he still felt no need to talk to her about Buffy’s whereabouts.

“And what about Adam?” Angelus removed his stained clothes and changed into a clean ones before returning.

“They need you to go there. Something about a spell strong enough to kill radioactivity” Willow frowned but she knew Spike would be expecting her soon, and so would Oz. He had stayed in Sunnydale to help them get rid of the Initiative.

She missed him desperately. In the midst of the tragedy, love seemed a most strong force in the lacking.

“What about Buffy? We need to find her.”

Angelus sighed and walked over to the desk where his mate usually worked at.

“I think she is either very ill, unconscious or …dead. It’s been hours since she broke the link and all I can feel is a sensation of dread, like…emptiness. I can’t find her Will, and it’s tearing me apart.” He fingered the pen she had used that day and the last report she had been working on was still in the desk.

“We’ll find her. I swear we will. Whould I go to Sunnydale now?”

He nodded and walked out of the room behind her. It was very obvious to Willow how upset Angelus really was.

At the other side of the hall was the conference room. Now that it was nighttime he could walk in without being burned.

“Remind me to get this fixed soon.” And then a terribly alarming thought occurred to him.

Buffy, the last thought she had had. This place, she had been watching as Willow tried to kill her, and then how she had thrown herself into the thin air.

And the fall, the endless fall, and then just the darkness.

Those memories had to be Faith’s.

And that gave him a clue.

“Did Faith fall through that window?” Willow nodded and suddenly what Riley had said of finding Buffy through Faith made a lot of sense.

“Willow, Is it possible to exchange bodies with somebody?” Willow looked at him strangely before answering.

“Yes, through a spell. They use a Cautra and that swifts the souls, kinda like that movie called Freaky Friday…it’s easily reversed—if you have a cautra—why?” Angelus walked to the window again and concentrated on the last acts Buffy had done—so not like herself—and it just clicked. Faith had exchanged bodies with Buffy. Which meant Faith was walking around with his unborn child inside her and Buffy was lying in the medical area with a broken neck and serious coma.

“I need to talk to Faith.” ‘Dire’ had a whole new meaning for Angelus again.

“That would be kind of difficult, Sire. She is still unconscious.” And he was running again. If Faith died Buffy would never get her body back again, and he would lose her…and their baby.

“Just take me there Will”

+++

Sometimes people have moments that seem unreal.

Sometimes they wonder if they are dreaming.

Because surely reality could not be as they were seeing it.

Sometimes we come across something we just can’t explain or even process, but we learn to cope… and abide.

Because we just have to live the lives as we are meant.

No matter how strange they are.

Angelus was having one of those days.

“She is awakening now.” The woman in the bed was not his beloved, and yet when she opened her eyes he saw exactly what she was seeing, felt exactly was she was feeling, knew exactly what she had lived before.

In other words, the women in the bed was his mate.

“Mo croí.” My love, said the girl through dry parched lips, her eyes a curious brown hidden in the cuts and bruises that marked her skin, but the look in them was one that was purely Buffy’s.

And she moaned. Her body was suffering and her soul was nearly dead. She just couldn’t believe what was going on inside her.

“Shush. It will be alright, Faith. Just tell us where Buffy is.”

Buffy looked at Willow and then at Angelus. She hadn’t been dreaming. She really was in Faith’s body!

“I’m not who you think I am.” Angelus brushed a stray lock of hair out of Faith’s forehead and she leaned into his hand, kissing it as it passed by her lips.

A gesture so poignantly Buffy’s that even Willow noticed the all silent Angelus and the weird soundless exchange among the vampire and the slayer.

I’m so sorry Sire, I should’ve known she meant trouble…

Don’t blame this on yourself Buffy. It wasn’t your fault. She killed Wesley and she would have killed you too…

What about our baby. She knows about it and she could try to get rid of it.

We’ll find her, love. You just have to stay alive…

I want to die, I can’t live like this…

Don’t give up on me, Buffy. We have too much to live for, don’t you dare!

It’s so hard to breathe…

“Willow, I need you to do two things for me. One is a cautra, to revert the soul swift between Buffy and Faith, and the other is a spell to find the way to kill Adam. Both of them as soon as you can.” Willow and Fred gasped before Faith’s body started to collapse again.

“She is having another crisis. We need to stop the internal bleeding. I need your permission to perform major surgery.” Angelus shrugged and looked at Fred in the eye before speaking.

“I need you to keep this body alive no matter what, you understand that?” Fred nodded and then she pushed him out of the way and started performing resuscitation. She was now determined to save the girl no matter what.

+++

“Sire, Lorne just called.”

“What did he said?”

“He left you a message.”

“What does it say?” “ ’She is in Japan’ just that, and he also said it was very important to tell you that as soon as possible.”

“Great, Thanks, Cordy. Tell Doyle to ready the Jet to go to Japan.”

“Yes, Sir.”