Chapter 1.08
Sunday, May 12th, 2002

Angel, Connor, Gunn and Fred surveyed round Lorne's empty room. "So, no-one has seen Lorne since we left here last night? And the last time he spoke to any of us was when he spoke to me? And he said that he was going to call you straight away, but he didn't?" Gunn confirmed.

"And his bed hasn't been slept in, and Connor says that the reception smells like strange vampires, so they've got him, haven't they?" Fred said what none of them wanted to admit.

"And with him, goes our last link to the powers," Angel added grimly. "They're trying to make sure we can't find them. I don't know who Dru's got working with her, but they know too much about us."

"And if they took Lorne, maybe they took Cordy, too."

"I don't think so. If there had been vampires near her car, either me or Connor would have picked up on it." Angel gave his head a weary shake. "This is something different."

"Not that I want to rain on your parade, but how long had Cordy's car been sitting at the side of the highway when you found it? An hour? Two? With a nice breeze off the ocean the whole time? And they wouldn't need to go near her car. Just overtake her and pull in as if they'd broken down or something. She might not be a mechanic, but she woulda pulled over and offered to call one, especially if it looked like a car full of young girls or something. She could have gone over to see if she could help," Gunn suggested.

"I would have known." Angel's voice brooked no further argument.

"Ho-o-o-kaay! Well, if that concludes that topic of conversation, I guess maybe it's time we went to see what all is happenin' with the party downstairs."

Angel and he presumed Connor could hear sounds of arguing long before they reached the reception.

"Just tell me, Wesley." Buffy's tone bristled with indignation.

"It won't do any good. I had thought to enlist Spike's aid in the matter, but now there's only one person who can do it."

"Yeah, well, I'm not holding my breath, and I am dead, or I was, twice even, so spill,"

"It really ought to be Angel. You may have died, but you aren't dead. If that were the criteria then I wouldn't have needed anyone else in the first place."

"And you think-"

"What ought to be Angel?" the vampire asked as he purposefully made his way downstairs at the head of his remaining people.

Wesley watched the group approach and couldn't restrain the thought that Angel's penance after the whole Darla / Drusilla affair had been short-lived. Even as others suffered the consequences of his actions, Angel forsook the facade of the sinner, who wanted to redeem himself by working for the others.

Wesley's face twisted into a bitter grimace as he tossed a manila folder to the vampire. "I was keeping myself busy whilst I considered my job options."

Angel opened the file, staring at the photographs of Cordelia and her car. "You did your own investigation?"

"Apparently with more success than you. However, the potential source of information could prove equally useful to find Spike, since apparently his location is warded in some manner, which reduces the efficacy of normal location spells." Wesley indicated some spell-casting paraphernalia on the reception floor. "However, I doubt that she would care to give you information on both."

"Em," Fred interrupted. "Now that you all are here, couldn't we try one of these location spell thingies to find Cordy and Lorne, and then ask whoever about Spike?"

"Lorne's missing, too?" Wesley asked.

"That's the green guy? Right?"

Wesley nodded a confirmation to Buffy, and then looked to the Angel Investigations crowd for an explanation. Gunn was the one to respond. "He called me last night. Said he was goin' to get straight on to Angel, but he never did. Connor reckons there were a bunch of vamps here last night, so we figure they took him before he could make the second call."

Buffy looked across at the teenager, only to find him eyeing Clem and Lily with evident distaste. "Can you tell whether Spike was here last night."

Connor shook his head. "Not if he was wearing that same cologne. There were a lot though, and they're all related."

"To each other or to you?" Dawn asked pointedly. It seemed that Buffy wasn't the only one who had been aware of the looks Connor had been sending Clem and Lily's way.

"Both," Angel and his offspring answered simultaneously, even as Lily whispered soothingly in Dawn's ear. "Be still, child. His hatred harms no one so much as it harms himself. A child so full of self-loathing deserves understanding, not anger. He stands at a crossroads. Don't push him toward a wrong path."

"I'd say there were at least twenty vamps here, and neither Dru nor Spike were among them. They're all young, and I couldn't bet on it, but I don't even think any of them were even Dru's. My best guess would be that she turned one, and there's a good chance he or she's still with her, and then this one's turned a few who've turned a few. Beyond the first half-dozen, you've got weak vamps making weaker ones."

Willow pulled a printout from her bag and walked forward to pass it to Angel. "Weak enough to account for this?" Angel looked down at the numbers on the hospital reports. "You're sure these numbers are right?"

Willow gave him a hurt look. "Sorry, it's just if you had twenty or so vamps getting this much human blood... Then we'd have some seriously strong fledglings about."

"But we're not talking about twenty," said Connor. "Because round about the same time they were here, I was having a little discussion of my own. We've got at least forty."

"Either of those two batches mostly women?" Buffy asked.

Connor and Angel both shook their heads.

"Up that to nearer seventy."

"You didn't tell us you'd seen no vamps other than the ones you went after." Gunn's tone with Connor was decidedly antagonistic.

"You weren't in any danger. They were just watching."

"Yeah, just watchin' while you let me lead them right to my people."

"Guys, can we get back to Wesley's file and whatever Fred was saying?" Dawn asked, "Cause the sooner somebody goes and talks to whoever, the sooner we get somebody back."

"A standard location spell won't do any good to find Cordelia. I can't prove it but I believe she's no longer in this plane of existence," Wesley supplied.

"So, I go and talk to this Dinza, and she tells us where Cordy is, and we go get her," Angel replied.

"See. I told you!" Buffy looked at Wesley, seemingly reverting to their earlier argument, even as Wesley rebutted Angel's comment.

"I doubt that you'll find it that simple. Dinza is one of the Elusian mysteries. A demi-goddess of the lost. Only the dead may enter her realm, and those who do, she is often reputed to trap there. And it's doubtful that she'll tell you where anyone is. At best, she'll give you a pointer as to where you should look. However, she's hardly trustworthy, and I'm sure it would amuse her to trap a Champion for the Powers."

"But he has to get Spike back first, not Cordelia," Dawn protested.

Angel fixed his gaze on the teenager. "And why would that be? Spike's a monster. He's done terrible things. Why does he deserve to be rescued more than Cordelia does?"

"He doesn't." Buffy admitted, "but it's the logical thing to do."

Angel obviously didn't manage to connect the dots on his own, but Fred supplied the missing links.

"If Dinza will only help you once, then if you ask about Cordy, and we get her back, that's it. But if you ask about Spike, and we get him back and maybe Lorne's in the same place, then Spike can go to Dinza and ask about Cordy. Of course, it's also possible that if we get Cordy back, she might have a vision about where the others are."

"You want me to trust Spike to get Cordy back?" Angel asked Buffy incredulously.

"And you want me to give up our best hope of finding him for some vapid ex-cheerleader." Buffy stepped forward as she made her reply until she and Angel were almost toe-to-toe.

Angel glowered down at his petite ex. "Cordelia isn't like that any more."

"And Spike isn't some ravening monster either, but that didn't stop you bringing it up," Buffy spat back at him.

"It's hardly in the same league. Cordelia works for the Powers That Be."

"Yeah? And how many apocalypses has she helped prevent? And how often has she stood up to a god to protect one little girl? And if they're so almighty powerful, then they can look after her, can't they?"

Angel had forgotten just how mad Buffy could make him. "The Powers didn't save Doyle and they didn't save you."

"Angel, I didn't want to be saved. I was tired and I had fought long enough. It was better to go then, when it meant something, than to drag it out in some meaningless charade that I was protecting the world when I couldn't even protect my own family. Are you telling me Doyle didn't make a similar choice?"

"By that standard Spike chose to be where he is now. No-one knows what happened to Cordy."

"Fine," the slayer yelled as if Angel wasn't mere inches from her. "But, if we can't find another way to find him, it'll be on your head when I take Lily round every demon bar in LA until we find a vamp that's telling the truth when he says he's prepared to turn me."

"You cannot be telling me that Spike means that much to you."

"Why not? There was a time I would have done it for you. There was a time I would have done anything short of damning the entire world for you, and you didn't even love me enough to stay in the same town.

Spike is mine. Every pound of flesh, every drop of blood in his veins, every thought that passes through his head, every last feeling, every last impulse. It's all mine, and I'm his. You never knew what I would have done for you, so you can't ever hope to comprehend what I would do for my mate."

"Your mate?" Angel almost growled, despite the fact he had been warned that it was on the cards.

"My mate. My lover. My future husband. The man I love. Are we catching on, yet? I could have sworn we covered this last week."

"Spike wasn't your mate last week."

"But we said that we were just waiting for Giles."

"So Giles gave you the all-clear, just like that?"

"Actually, no, but I don't see that it's any of your business."

"It's my business when you come asking for favours, and you're judgement is obviously skewed."

"And your being in love with Cordelia has nothing to do with why you want her back, 'cause you sure don't seem half as bothered about good, old Lorne there," Buffy pointed out.

"Children! This help no one. The vampire must do what to him is right. We must all take the consequences. And if Spike die, then we curse the name of he who betrays the blood."

Angel's jaw dropped, and he stared at Lily in disbelief. "Who is this?"

"Oh, sorry, did we skip the introductions?" Buffy asked in a sarcastic tone of voice. "This is Lily, and her son Clem and Lori. They drove down this morning from Sunnydale to help out getting Spike back. I think, other than that, the only person you don't know is Tara. Anya would have been here, too, but apparently she had some sort of employee / employer dispute that resulted in them taking away her teleportation privileges. You did know that Xander's wife was a vengeance demon, didn't you?" Buffy asked with a sunny smile. She decided that it wasn't really necessary to let Angel know Anya's currently inactive status, so long as he got the point that where Spike was concerned, she wasn't the only person with skewed judgement.

"Did she just threaten to curse me?"

"Only if Spike dies." Buffy said with a smile. "Of course, she'd have to try real hard to top the whole soul thing. But, I'm sure she'd think of something. After all, she probably comes closer to thinking of him as family than you do." It was really so much better having Lily around when you were absolutely on the same side.

"Spike like favourite brother's son," Lily confirmed.

"And did I tell you she's empathic, so all those nasty feelings you're having toward him..." Buffy raised an eyebrow toward Lily, who merely gave a curt nod. "They aren't secret any more.

Why don't you take Wesley's file into the office and read it properly. And while you think things over, think of this...

Stephen, would you be here now with Angel, if Spike hadn't opened his big mouth the night your father died?"

Connor shook his head. "That woman told me that Angelus killed my father, and I would have found a way to get revenge," he stated.

"I think you should be feeling pretty grateful that Spike chose to be so eloquent."

Angel took the file and headed for his office, looking as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Buffy could admit to feeling slightly guilty about pressuring Angel into asking this Dinza about Spike. It was only very slightly though, and she was so going to hug Lily the second they were out of sight of Angel's crowd. Buffy looked over in Lily's direction as the demon, who had called a two hundred and fifty year old vampire a child, held out her hand palm down and jiggled it slightly to show Angel's decision could still go either way.

The two factions sat facing each other, each wanting the return of their own people to take precedence over the other ongoing problems. Tension filled the air and would not dissipate until Angel returned. Lily had apparently picked up on Angel's indecision even up to the time when he left the hotel to make his way through the sewers to Dinza's lair.

Without further information there was little they could do in the way of planning. Tara and Willow had tried another location spell in hopes of finding Lorne but it had proved as futile as the one to find Spike. Now, they, Lily and Wesley were poring over Angel Investigations' meagre library in hopes of finding a spell that worked in a different way. Lori had taken up position at Cordy's PC and was trying to follow up from the hospital leads that Willow had found.

As for the others, all they could do was wait for Angel's return.

Buffy slipped a couple of painkillers from her purse and managed to wash them down with some coke without attracting any attention. The headache had been bad enough on its own. Then, just as it was easing off, the other pains started. Nothing so far had come near to a repeat of the previous evening, but then, so far, Buffy hadn't dared to repeat her experimental meditation, either.

She kept reminding herself that pain was good. Pain meant that he was still alive. She'd put up with a lot more discomfort if it meant that she knew that one thing.