Chapter 1.06
Saturday, May 11th, 2002

Willow tapped away on the keyboard. "Somewhere, there's got to be something to say where they are. You can't just swing into town with an army of vamps and not leave some sort of trace."

"But you said yourself there hasn't been a noticeable increase in deaths or missing persons. So either they've got someone in the police department, or rather lots of someones, or they're brown-bagging it," Tara suggested.

"Of course," Willow started typing rapidly again.

"Wha' d' I say?" Tara asked.

"Blood bags. They're not killing people. Least ways not enough for it to be noticeable, so far. So maybe they're using butchers, but somehow I can't see Drusilla living off pig's blood, which leaves hospitals and blood banks." Willow turned toward Tara as she spoke, catching the coffee cup next to her terminal as she did so and knocking it to the floor.

"Oh shoot!" Willow ducked to mop at the mess with a tissue. "Why don't you get us another couple of cups and maybe some muffins? And I guess it's time to admit we'll be here till closing time."

"Sure. It's not like I'm a lot of help with the hacking. Kinda makes me miss Giles and his books."

As soon as Tara headed for the cafe counter, Willow ceased all pretence at working the computer normally. Safely hidden from the other customers by cubicle walls, she used magic to access the records of the local hospitals, clinics and blood banks. Three showed marked increases in their blood usage over the preceding weeks.

Willow frowned. If the evil bloodsucking fiends weren't actually sucking people, were they still evil bloodsucking fiends? She mentally filed that one away with the one about if a tree falls in a forest. She scribbled down the names with seconds to spare before Tara returned with a tray full of snacky goodness. Now all she had to do was backtrack and see if she could find a link between the three. Maybe when Tara visited the ladies?

Dawn dialled the number for Xander and Anya's apartment from memory.

"Anya? Are you there?" she gasped before Xander could get a word in.

"Hey, Dawnie. How's" Everything after the first syllable of Dawn's name was drowned out by Dawn's rapid-fire interruption.

"Xander, I haven't got time. Just shut-up and put Anya on."

"Anya's visiting an old friend." Xander seemed to place undue emphasis on certain words. Dawn was suddenly reminded that it had been decided the previous night that the vengeance demon would use her teleportation skill to apprise Giles in person of the group's suspicions about being under surveillance. "And don't think I won't be telling your sister how you speak to your elders, missy."

"Feel free, if she's around to talk to, but for now just make yourself useful and see if you can find her address book."

"Dawn Summers, put your sister on the phone right now."

"Gee, Xander, she's right next to me, and she hasn't complained. Just find the damned address book and look for a number for where the three of us went last night."

"But you've already got that. At least Fangless has."

"Xander, is there anything else you want to say, or will you fetch the damn book?"

"Dawn?" The weak question had Dawn throwing the receiver to the floor. "Who're you calling?"

"Nobody, just directory assistance," Dawn answered. She grabbed the handset up off the floor. "Look, have a real nice evening. Why not take your girlfriend somewhere..."

There was a flash of light outside the bathroom door, and Dawn shifted to peer round its edge. "Never mind." Dawn returned the handset to its cradle.

"Say, how about I just give you some time on your own to get dressed?" Dawn took the phone back to the main room as she left.

"So what's up?" asked Anya brightly.

"I'm guessing since Buffy just managed to summon a vengeance demon all the way from Tweeddom within a minute of being conscious that whatever it is, it's not good, but..." Her words faded away as Buffy walked into the room wrapped in a towel that barely covered her ass. Other than looking a little pale, she seemed to be none the worse for her ordeal, just royally pissed.

"Anya, nice of you to drop in. How's things? Notice you've got your pendant back."

"Well, I went to see Giles like we talked about at that bar Spike took us to. Where is he, by the way?"

"You tell me," Buffy answered. "I just got the psychic backlash. He got the real deal, so if I'm this ticked off, then I would imagine he'd be lit up like a vengeance beacon."

Anya frowned. "Nope, you're the only real blip against all the background radiation, so to speak."

"You mean Spike's dead?" Dawn asked in an anguished tone.

"Well, yes." Anya answered. "But that's not why I'm not picking him up. I normally hear vampires perfectly well."

Dawn slapped Anya on the arm.

"Ow. What was that for? Buffy, she hit me."

"And you made me think Spike was dead when he wasn't."

"Dawn." Buffy's voice sounded rather like Joyce's 'I'm at the end of my tether, and you don't want to be around if this goes any further' voice. "Okay, Anya.Why can't you feel him? I don't know what happened, but I know he just got hurt bad."

"Well, either he doesn't bear any ill-will toward the person that hurt him. I mean you'd be amazed how often that happens, mostly in relationships though. Battered wives and so on, they get conditioned into thinking they deserve it, so it never occurs to them to blame the person doing the hurting, but that's not the case here. I mean you wouldn't... Anyway, I'd go with the more obvious option." Anya stopped as if the other two shouldn't need her to spell it out.

"Yes?" Buffy asked in a tone of iron a she tried once more to keep a lid on her guilt. Spike might have let her hurt him. That didn't mean he would take it from anyone else.

"He's unconscious or dead, or quite possibly in his case, both. If he's badly hurt, like you say, even vampires pass out now and again. So how did you all get split up in the first place?"

"Long story," Buffy responded. "Think you could pass it on to Clem when you get back to Sunnydale? I get the feeling we're going to be looking for all the help we can get before we're through."

"Sure. I'll even make sure Xander helps, if he can."

"Xander help Spike? Neither of them would forgive me if I even suggested it."

"He'll still do it if I threaten to cut him off," Anya said.

"Anya," Buffy gave the vengeance demon a quizzical look. "We are just talking figuratively here, aren't we? Not Bobbitville?"

"It's no fun if he doesn't scream."

"Now, Dru, you can make him scream all you want later. First, though, we let the nice doctors play with him and take away the baby fishes. Remember?"

"Couldn't I make him scream, just a little, first and take away the fishes once he comes home again?"

"No, Dru. We need to get the operation taken care of today, before anyone begins to join the dots. You'll be up in the mountains training your puppy before they link us to the hospitals."

"What about the Angel-beast? Can I make him scream instead?"

"You can make him scream all you want. But first we're going to take away all the people he cares about. Remember? We'll make him pay for how he hurt you. Now, pass the phone to Jennifer."

A period of silence followed. "Dru. Be a good girl now. You won't have to wait long,"

Dru grudgingly passed the phone to one of the other vamps.

"Hey," the newcomer acknowledged.

"How's he doing?" Lonesome asked.

"The bleeding's stopped, but so far he's not really healing. Other than that, he's hooked up to a couple of morphine drips that would keep an elephant down. He won't be causing any problems. We'll be at the clinic in about ten minutes. After that, it's down to the quacks."

"Good. The sooner he's up and running and back to playing nursemaid for mommy dearest, the sooner the rest of us get some peace and quiet. I'll call Fairfield and let them know you're coming in."

"You think they're really up to this?"

"If they can give a guy an evil hand, they can take a chip out of a vampire, and if they can't, then they're just walking dead men, and not in the good way. Speak to you later."

"Gee, if I'd known how long the ride was going to be, I'd have visited the little boys' room before I left."

"We can always land if you really want, but we'd have to cuff you to a couple of the guys first," Scheherazade answered, raising her voice only slightly to make herself heard over the noise of the rather swish helicopter. .

"You sure you don't want to supervise yourself?"

"Intriguing as the suggestion is, my daddy always taught me to at least get a decent dinner from a guy before I feel up his dick."

"So where are we headed?" Lorne asked his captor.

"My place. One of them."

"And we're headed there because... "

"We're headed there because it's in the middle of nowhere. You need a proper four-wheel drive or a chopper to get in or out, and you could walk till your Gucci loafers came to pieces and never meet anyone, living or dead, human or demon that doesn't work for me."

"Something tells me you ain't exactly new to this lifestyle?"

"Well, sure, baby. Doesn't take a brain-surgeon to figure that out. Or did you think I got turned for my looks?" She flashed a wicked and not unattractive smile. "You think our boy picked his people up off the street. Hell, no. He picked them out of his Rolodex. The best and the brightest. The ones with money and connections. The ones who own the companies who own the hospitals. The ones who own the slaughter houses. The ones who already have enough money to live the sort of life you would want to have for eternity. What's the point in being poor forever?"

"It works for some people. And your boy? What does he get?"

"Once this business is over... a straight ten percent cut. Not a bad deal for eternal life."

"I take it he's collecting quite a few commissions."

"Sure is. Nobody's going to come take no farm from him."

"And where do I fit in?" Lorne asked.

"The way I see it, you don't. You've got some 'gift' we don't want the 'good guys' to use, but if you don't co-operate, it really works out a lot easier to kill you than to keep you.

Lucky for you, someone finds the world a bit more interesting with you in it."

"What do you mean, suspended? I was your employee of the month for seventy-three years in a row, and Halfrek only won out on the numbers with that whole flu pandemic thing. It's not like she was really creative or anything..."

"Anyanka, you just teleported ten thousand miles in one day, and not a wish to show for it."

"Is it my fault that Buffy won't say any of the things she's thinking out loud?"

"Once, you would have loosened her tongue and had no qualms about how you did it. I fear you have outlived your usefulness to me, Anyanka." D' Hoffryn gave a melodramatic sigh.

"Well, you could at least have let me teleport home before you canned me."

"And what would be the fun in that? I am evil you know."

With a flash of light, the horned demon disappeared, leaving Anya alone with her rapidly cooling, happy hour collection only special pizza and her similarly quickly melting tub of lemon cheesecake Haagen Dazs. That was when there was the first ominous flash of lightning, swiftly followed by a crash of thunder. Then, it started to rain so hard she was almost looking round to see if she could see Noah.

In seconds the pizza box was so wet it began to fall to pieces, and she was forced to drop it into the next convenient bin. Anya's hair and clothes were plastered to her body, but her spirit was far from drowned. Still clutching her tub of ice-cream, she yelled her defiance, oblivious to the strange looks of passers-by. "Alright, you evil, blue fairy, you. I get the message. You made me into a "real" girl. I get wet when it rains, and I can't teleport. Big deal! I get friends that care about me and a husband who loves me even if I don't take home his favourite pizza and I do say embarrassing stuff sometimes. And when was the last time anyone gave you an orgasm you blue, bearded, horny freak?"

Okay, I think it's now officially safe to say that the cat is completely out of the bag regarding the identity of Dru's toyboy. You can look forward to the appearance of a character called Lori somewhere in the next couple of chapters. I'm trying to work out who she'll be even as I'm sitting typing this.