Loose ends.

“Oh crap,” Dawn muttered. “I left the crossbow in the crypt.”

Spike could now sense at least a dozen vampires lurking around them concealed behind bushes and gravestones. He realised that while his thoughts had been concentrated on Riley Finn and his strange behaviour he had managed to let them get surrounded. He desperately tried to think of a way of getting his girls, Harris and the Watcher to safety.

“My Spike’s been a very naughty boy. The little girl has filled you up with her sunshine hasn’t she Spike?” Drusilla swayed as she slowly walked into the open, the bright moonlight glinting off the fancy beadwork on the bodice of her long pale gown. “My bad dog has turned into a watchdog for Sunshine. Miss Edith is quite cross with you.”

“What does Miss Edith say about me then Dru?” Spike edged in front of the others, playing for time as he drew Dawn and Buffy behind him after checking they were remembering to avoid looking at Drusilla’s face.

“Miss Edith told me you didn’t belong to me any more my Spike.” She said sadly. “You’ve been playing in the Sunshine and gone so far away from me I can’t even feel you any more.” Her concentration shifted to Buffy, who had moved back up to Spike’s side, ducking under his right arm and slipping her left arm around his waist inside his coat. Viciously the vampiress snarled, “I get upset when someone steals my toys.”

“You shouldn’t leave your toys lying about if you don’t want someone else to pick them up Drusilla. You didn’t want him any more.” Buffy reached up and brushed her finger across her mark on Spike’s neck. “He’s mine now.”

“Yes.” Declared Dawn as she followed her sister’s example by stepping up to Spike’s left shoulder. She rested her hand on his arm possessively, taking care not to obstruct his hold on the axe. “You abandoned him, he’s ours now. We love him more than you ever did.” She glared at the brunette vampire defiantly, taking care to focus on her mouth rather than her eyes.

Drusilla growled softly and returned her gaze to Spike’s face, smiling seductively. “Does Sunshine make you scream the way I can Spike? Daddy always said you had the prettiest scream, you made the pixies sing.”

Spike winced as his own remembered pain mixed with a surge of Buffy’s shock at his former lover’s words, “She doesn’t like the same sort of games you do Dru, and anyway, she can’t hear the pixies singing. You’re the only one who can hear their songs.” Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Xander slipping a stake out of his pocket and nudged Buffy, inclining his head very slightly towards the young man.

Buffy glanced in the direction he indicated and whispered urgently, “No Xander, we’re surrounded.” Xander let the stake slide back into his pocket and began looking around nervously as one by one the hidden vampires emerged from the shadows to stand menacingly in a loose circle around the group. Spike wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved when he saw that Nathan was one of them as the tall young Aurelian advanced to stand at Drusilla’s side.

“Princess wants a party Spike.” Drusilla danced in a pirouette, her skirt flying out around her. “Do you remember Daddy’s birthday party? Darla’s present made the pixies sing for days. Do you think your Sunshine will make the pixies sing?” She stopped dancing and pouted, “Daddy went away after his party, he went away to Sunshine. She stole Daddy and broke him, now she’s taken you and broken you too.” She glared at Buffy.

“You leave Sunshine alone Dru, she didn’t steal your precious Daddy, that was all Darla’s fault.” Spike hastily tried to distract Drusilla’s attention from his Slayer. “Her birthday present is what caused all the problems. You remember how you said Angelus tasted wrong when he came back to us in China? It was Darla’s birthday present caused that when her people found him and punished him for hurting her. That’s what made him go away, not Sunshine. She only picked him up when he was lost.”

Drusilla’s expression went very sly. “You know your Sunshine loves Daddy don’t you my Spike? She’s only playing with you until she can play with Daddy again. She’ll throw you away when Daddy comes for her… just like I did.” She giggled maniacally, “You’ll always come second to my Angel.”

Spike’s eyes filled with tears as he accepted what she was saying as truth, and he felt total humiliation in front of the people he had so recently come to regard as family and friends. His voice hoarse with pain he admitted. “I know you never really loved me Dru…”

Buffy interrupted, declaring, “You see Drusilla… that’s where you’re just plain wrong.”

Spike panicked. You never told Drusilla she was wrong… never. In an attempt to divert her fury from his Slayer he quickly asked, “You want to have a party, poodle?” He gently squeezed Buffy’s shoulder, trying to make her understand she should be quiet. Then he rested the axe on the ground, propping the handle against his leg. He dipped his hand in his jeans pocket, took out the ring box and dropped it into Dawn’s jacket pocket. He whispered, “Keep it safe Niblet.” Then he grasped the axe again and stepped forward reaching his right hand out towards Drusilla. “Let’s go and have a party then Dru. I’ll make the pixies sing real sweet for you. We don’t need all these other people do we? The best parties were always with just you and me.”

Spike flinched as he felt a strong pulse of hurt and anger through his Bond with Buffy, then relaxed again when within a second he felt an even more powerful flood of gratitude and pride. After a moment’s doubt she had understood what he was trying to do.

Unfortunately not everyone had her advantage. Xander’s voice broke the anxious silence as he threw his arms in the air and angrily asked of nobody in particular, “Why am I not surprised? Off he goes to have a party with his loony tunes girlfriend, leaving us all to the mercy of her minions.”

Giles gave Spike a very pleasant surprise when he quietly responded to the young man’s accusation with an impatient, “Oh do be quiet Xander. Please try not to be more of an idiot than you absolutely have to.”

Spike was still standing with his hand stretched out, contemplating Drusilla’s thoughtful expression as he waited for her reaction to his gesture. She seemed to be lost in a trance, swaying slightly as she frowned down at his hand. Abruptly his attention was attracted to a movement at one side. He glanced over to see Nathan reaching slowly out to place his arm around the female vampire’s waist.

He spoke softly, deliberately meeting Spike’s eyes. “Drusilla my princess, if we’re going to give a party, shouldn’t we have prepared the mansion? We should have decorated with balloons and streamers and flowers. There should be cake and presents too. Why don’t we go and get that organised now? We can have a lovely party tomorrow.”

Drusilla seemed to shake herself out of her daze. Dreamily she said, “Nathan my sweet boy, what a lovely idea.” She started walking away with him, but after a few paces she turned back and waving her hand imperiously at her minions she ordered sharply, “Bring my Spike and his Sunshine!” As Nathan led her away past the mausoleum she looked up into his eyes and added conversationally, “They shall have no cake if the pixies don’t sing.”

Realising that his tactic had misfired, Spike spun around and sprang into action against the minions. “Now Harris!” he cried, hoping that the young man was alert enough to use that stake in his pocket effectively.

Spike threw himself at the closest minion to him who was trying to grab him, and swung his axe cleanly separating his head from his body, then turned to find his next opponent. Seeing a tall skinny vampire twisting Giles’ wrist until he was forced to drop his stake he yelled, “Rupert, Duck!” and sent the axe spinning through the air. When the suddenly headless vampire burst into dust all over Giles’ head and back and the Watcher was able to retrieve his stake, Spike patted his pockets to find a new weapon. He muttered “Oh… bugger it.” when he remembered that he had lost his own stakes earlier and hadn’t thought to replace them from his weapons chest in the crypt.

Taken by surprise in his moment of distraction he found himself grabbed from behind. Snarling in frustration he vamped out and sank his fangs into the minion’s arm as it was wrapped around his chest. His anger at himself for failing to be prepared gave him a burst of extra strength, and by hauling his wailing opponent’s body around in front of him he was able to tear into his neck. He grimaced in disgust as he sucked at the stale tasteless blood before ripping the head from the weakened vampire, then he whirled to get his bearings and see how the fight was progressing.

He saw Giles and Xander standing back to back with a wary Dawn between them, each wielding a stake as they tried to fend off the four minions surrounding them. Buffy was dancing among the rest of their attackers, kicking and punching and occasionally managing to sink her stake into a vampire that was a little too slow to get out of her way. Spike smiled as he appreciated her graceful moves for a moment. He realised that she had the advantage over them in that Drusilla had ordered her capture rather than her death. He then turned to help the besieged group, hoping to be able to free them to escape so he could turn his attention to helping his Slayer. He landed a powerful kick on the back of the knee of the minion attacking Xander, knocking him off balance so the young man could stake him, then leapt to land on the back of the minion menacing Dawn in preparation for twisting its head off. He was just getting a good grip when something hit him very hard on the back of the head and everything went black.


******


Spike came to in a world of pain. Waves of agony pulsed through his head and his arms were stretched high above his head making them feel as if they were being wrenched out of their sockets. He opened his eyes to see where he was and found it to be a pointless exercise, his face was covered with a dark cloth. To his relief there was just enough light filtering through to let him know he wasn’t blind so he closed his eyes again and concentrated his other senses to gather as much information as he could about his surroundings.

He focussed his hearing first. He could tell from the stillness of the air around him that he was indoors. He was able to make out a faint murmuring some distance away to his right and above him, but whoever was speaking was being so quiet he couldn’t recognise the voice or pick out any words. There were no other signs of life to be heard, not even any traffic noise from outside. He was used to the quiet in his crypt but there he had at least always had the faint background noise of the breeze in the trees, the occasional passing car and the odd birdcall or rustling of a small animal scuttling between the gravestones. Here there was nothing but that faint voice. It made him vaguely uneasy and he had the distinct feeling that he should be able to deduce something from the almost dead silence, but his head was hurting too much to allow him to think clearly.

His nose went into action next as he flared his nostrils and took in a deep breath, holding it long enough to analyse the scents it carried. Drusilla was nearby, or had been very recently. Nathan was close by too, and there were traces of several other strange vampires. From what Nathan had deliberately let slip earlier he realised he had to be in the old mansion on Crawford Street, but he didn’t recognise the slightly sour musty scent of the room he was in. This meant it wasn’t on the ground floor where he had spent all his time during his previous stay while confined to the despised wheelchair. He had been in all of those rooms at one time or another and although it had been about four years he never forgot a scent.

He tried to move next. The dull clanking of heavy chains above him let him know he was suspended in manacles. He gasped as his wrists burned in fresh agony and his shoulders scraped against cold hard stone, which told him that his duster and shirts had been removed and that he was chained to a wall. He flexed his legs and was able to take some of his weight off his straining arms, but he had to teeter on bare tiptoe which would soon strain his leg muscles, so he would then be forced to choose between greater pain in his arms or his legs. Upon moving his legs he noticed his jeans were also gone. He was naked. He shivered at the realisation and suddenly felt even more vulnerable. He was grateful his legs weren’t fettered however, although even a tentative effort at pulling at the manacles let him know that it wouldn’t have been necessary. The chains were either extra strong, chosen for the express purpose of holding a vampire or Slayer, or they had been bespelled somehow.

He tried to gauge the time, but with no light or outdoor sounds to guide him all he could tell was that it was almost certainly shortly after daybreak, as he felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to sleep. He had been unconscious for several hours then. He decided somebody must have hit him very hard!

Remembering being hit on the head brought back the memory of the confused fight during which he had been captured, and he immediately began to worry about Buffy, Dawn, Giles and Xander. Had they managed to escape safely? Had any of them been hurt?

Finally he thought to check the emotions coming to him from Buffy via the Bond. He realised that although he could sense that the link to his Mate was still there, he couldn’t make out any specific emotions. She seemed to be drifting… which made him realise that she must be asleep.

Spike waited, hoping that Buffy would wake up and give him a clue as to her mood to help him work out what had happened to the others. When there was no change for some time he got increasingly impatient and finally decided to make his captors aware that he had regained consciousness.

“Oy!” He yelled at full volume. “You out there! Getting a bit bored here. Somebody gonna tell me what the hell’s goin’ on?”

Several hours later Spike was fervently wishing that just for once he’d managed to keep his big mouth shut.

His Sire had come to him and removed the rough canvas bag that had effectively blindfolded him. Spike took in his dimly lit windowless surroundings and came to the conclusion he must be in the basement of the old mansion. He hadn’t realised there was one. He searched the bare room for a means of escape. He found no doors, no possible exit but the steep stone staircase in the far right corner down which he had heard Drusilla approaching.

She had begun with gentle persuasive words. She’d addressed him as her ‘Sweet William’ as she always had when she was in one of her more needy girlish moods and wanted to be pampered, or she had a whim for a special treat she expected him to provide. She’d innocently suggested he should destroy his ‘Sunshine’ who was corrupting him with her light. Then he should come home to her, his Dark Princess who lived in the night where they belonged together.

When Spike had reminded her that even if he had wanted to hurt his Sunshine he couldn’t because of the chip in his head, (no way was he going to let her know it no longer worked on Buffy) she had shrugged the information off. “Silly boy, you’ll just need to slash and bash. My new baby will be waking up soon and she’ll see to the tinkertoy for you. It won’t be playing with you much longer.”

She had traced his face with feather-light touches that had drifted to his neck and chest, then down across his abdomen and on lower still, her eyes demurely downcast in feigned modesty. However, any pleasure the supposedly seductive gestures might have brought him was totally cancelled out by the distressingly disjointed ramblings coming from her pouting lips.

Either Spike was very out of practice with deciphering his Sire’s unique cryptic language or she was being more than usually vague, because other than her obvious desire to see him separated from the Slayer he was unable to make sense of a single thing she said. Even her precious Miss Edith’s pronouncements failed to resolve into any meaningful intelligence, other than the fact that in some way she was unable to feel his presence. This was an assertion that struck him as rather odd considering she currently had her long graceful fingers trailing all over his naked body.

His cautious questions received no rational answers. His suggestion that she should unchain him prompted a petulant hiss and a shift from her gentle fluttering touches to the sting of her razor sharp fingernails, which left spider webs of blood trails over his skin. She lapped at the crimson trickles with her flicking tongue and Spike resigned himself to the inevitable reaction of his body to what had always been one of the most erotic of the blood games they had indulged in. It took quite a while for it to register with him that the provocative play that in the past had always aroused him to the point of desperation was now having a very different effect. He was instead becoming irritated and more than a little bored.

When Drusilla finally accepted that her seduction tactics were failing, Spike was forcibly reminded that although she customarily gave the impression of being a weak and child-like woman, his Sire was in fact a powerful Master Vampire in her own right. When her carefully cultivated talons proved ineffective her next weapon of choice was her fangs.

When her face shifted her first target was his neck. She lunged for Buffy’s mark. Strangely however, each time she attempted to bite over the silvery raised scar she retreated with an angry snarl without coming into contact with his skin. She muttered sulkily about nasty magic stinging her and keeping her from her William. Eventually in her frustration she changed her target to her own Sire’s mark on the other side of Spike’s neck and tore viciously at his flesh, sucking messily. After drinking deeply she drew away from him without cleaning or sealing the wound, his blood smearing her insanely grinning face and dribbling down her chin and dripping onto her gown.

Seeing Spike’s grimace of pain and disgust she stuck her tongue out at him childishly and lunged for his chest to bite over a nipple. He was determined not to give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream. He had an unusually high pain threshold, even for a vampire, and physical pain was a frequent visitor that he generally treated with disdain.

Over the following half an hour or so, between snatches of irrational muttering, Drusilla proceeded to leave jagged bleeding wounds in various random places on his body, finally managing to force a desperate whimper from him when she taunted him by targeting his groin. To his intense relief her fangs just missed his genitals and sank into the soft flesh in the hollow between his belly and leg, and then dropped to his inner thigh, each time leaving a jagged open wound and blood flowing down his leg.

Spike decided enough was enough and protested angrily. “You know Dru, the Slayer’s going to be coming to get me before too long. You really don’t want to face this Slayer when she’s brassed off, you won’t stand a chance!”

Drusilla backed off slightly and whispered mischievously, “‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly…” Then she danced away from him softly chanting the nursery rhyme to herself, apparently completely forgetting his presence.

The reason that he was still undead suddenly became clear to Spike. His Sire was using him as bait in an attempt to capture Buffy. He tried to figure out a way to communicate this to his Mate through the Bond. After a few minutes he had to admit to himself that while the ability to transmit emotions to each other made their relationship wonderfully intimate, it was really bloody useless when urgent information needed to be communicated.

As time ticked by he slowly became aware that not only was the increasing pain he was suffering sapping his energy, the progressive blood loss from Drusilla’s bites was steadily weakening him. Somehow he was going to have to find a way to feed to have any chance of healing sufficiently to get himself out of this mess. Glancing down at his torn and bloody chest he saw that the scratches from her talons were already healed over, and although the earliest of her bites were still gaping wounds they were no longer bleeding. His vampire healing would appear to be working much faster than normal. Was this another advantage of the Mating Bond? If he was now benefiting from a combination of vampire healing and Slayer healing was Buffy enjoying the same gift? If so that would be a very welcome development.

Before he was aware that she had crossed the room back to him Drusilla roughly grasped him by an arm and hip and flipped him around to face the wall. With the thick chains twisted above him his feet were raised completely off the floor, forcing Spike to give a grunt of pain as even more pressure was put on his burning wrists and shoulders, and his bloody chest hips and knees crashed into the bare stonework. With an evil snigger she called him a naughty boy who needed to be punished, sank her fangs briefly into one of his buttocks, then walked away again.

As she retreated up the stairs Spike heard his Sire talking to herself again and for the first time since he had regained consciousness he began to wonder if his long unlife was about to end here after all. He had always thought he would go out in a fair fight, fists and fangs against a more powerful adversary. In the past his fantasy final battle had always featured a Slayer. More recently his thoughts tended towards a pack of mighty demons, or even another God, with his own golden Slayer fighting at his side.

The idea of being ended in such an ignominious manner, chained up and tortured by his own Sire and former lover no less, was just too humiliating to contemplate. She had been murmuring about Miss Edith. The bloody doll had apparently been whispering to her about whips. Just as the vampiress moved out of range Spike clearly heard the words ‘Holy Water’. He gulped when he recalled the way she had toyed with Angel while they had been waiting for the right time for the ritual to cure her weakness. He started to deeply dread her return.

The respite from new pain however gave Spike the chance to try to relax. His head sagged to one side to rest against his upper arm and he tried to ignore his various injuries and sleep. He knew he had to preserve as much strength as he could for what was to come. It was while he was drifting in and out of a light doze that he was abruptly jerked fully awake by a powerful wave of relief through the Bond. Buffy had woken up and now she knew he was alive.

Spike tried to transmit reassurance back to her, but he must have failed miserably as the next emotions he felt from her were fear and desperation. After a few agonising minutes during which Spike was certain his Mate was crying her mood took a drastic shift and he became aware of her cold fury and fierce determination. He smiled to himself when he realised that his lovely Slayer would be coming for him soon, and he resolved to participate fully in his own rescue.

Unfortunately Spike hadn’t quite figured out how he was going to manage this when Drusilla returned. After dropping something on the floor at the foot of the stairs she flipped him back around to face her and held up a large bottle of clear liquid to show him. Cryptically she told him, “I’m going to burn that nasty little girl’s light right out of you my Spike, then I’ll be able to feel you again.”

She carefully removed the cork from the bottle and by fisting one hand in his hair she wrenched his head to one side. She raised the bottle and trickled the Holy Water over Buffy’s mark. Spike instantly forgot his resolution not to let her hear him scream.

If he had thought he was in pain before, now he thought he was dying. The burning began at his neck and travelled down across his chest and stomach fizzing deep into several bite wounds on the way, before flowing down his legs. As he screamed and screamed he desperately tried to angle his body to keep the smoking agony from reaching the sensitive flesh of his genitals. Forced to acknowledge failure he gratefully sank once more into unconsciousness.


******


Spike was floating in darkness. He felt cold, although his arms and the entire front of his body were on fire, which he recognised was peculiar. He was trying to remember where he was when the sounds of a fight began to impinge upon his senses. He felt most put out that someone was having a good brawl close by and hadn’t invited him. He heard people yelling and the clashing of weapons and was dimly aware of feeling a pure focussed rage.

The darkness reclaimed him for a while then the sound of movement nearby disturbed him, something heavy was being dragged across the floor. He was so worried and afraid. He felt the sting of salt water dripping on his chest and realised he was crying. Why was he so scared? And why on earth was he crying? The Big Bad didn’t get so frightened he cried. Something very strange was going on. If only he could remember where he was…


******


Spike was shocked to full awareness when somebody emptied a bucket of cold water over his head. He shivered and instinctively tried to duck away from the water and a ragged groan was forced from his lips as he crashed into a very hard surface and his abused body made itself felt. He opened his eyes and saw a grey stone wall inches in front of his face. Oh bugger, that’s where he was.

“Wakey waaakey!” Drusilla sang, then she chided him, “Naughty Spike, the pixies can’t sing while you’re sleeping.” She roughly grabbed his dripping hair to twist his head around to face her and hissed angrily into his ear, “The little girl came to find you, but the sneaky fly didn’t get caught in the web. Miss Edith is beginning to get really upset now.” Releasing him with a brutal shove that cracked his forehead against the wall she continued, whining childishly, “I tried to burn her out of you, but her light is still in there, pushing me out. Daddy said I should make a playmate so I made you to be my knight, to be with me forever. You’re mine you bad boy, you’re only supposed to play with me!” She stamped her foot like a toddler in a tantrum, but after a few seconds her manner changed completely and in a calculating tone she calmly instructed him, “If the Sunshine won’t come to me, you’ll have to go and destroy her. If we make the pixies sing loud enough you’ll kill her and come back to your Princess… won’t you my William, my knight?”

Spike struggled to find the energy to answer. Hoarsely he gasped, “Nothing you can do to me will make me kill her Dru. You just don’t get it. She actually loves me. I’ll never understand why, and I’ll never stop being surprised by the fact, but that powerful beautiful woman loves me. Nobody has ever loved me, not since my lovely mum. I could never hurt her.” He panted, desperate to find the strength to explain, “I understand it now, you never loved me, you only ever needed me to look after you until you could be with bloody Angelus again. Do you expect me to destroy such a pure golden beauty just to go back to being your soddin’ slave?” He coughed painfully, then running on pure willpower alone he firmly declared, “Never gonna happen babe, I’d rather be dust in the wind.”

His meagre supply of strength exhausted, Spike slumped against the wall and waited to see what his Sire had in store for him next. He wasn’t left in suspense for long.

“Remember Kiev, my Spike?” The deceptively innocent question Drusilla asked as she stood close behind him sent a chill of dread down Spike’s spine. “Daddy got so cross with us… he made such pretty pictures on us…”

Spike had a few seconds to recall an icy cellar in a big country house full of death… before the cruel whip whistled through the air and laid down a pattern of pure fire across his shoulder blades. Gradually his shrill howls faded to exhausted grunts as the conflagration spread down his back and across his buttocks and thighs. His senses became so overloaded his entire body faded into throbbing anguish and the darkness threatened to overtake him once more.

He was vaguely aware of Drusilla’s petulant ramblings about pixies who wouldn’t finish their songs. Then he felt her at his shoulder, her tongue teasing the stinging welts the cat o’ nine tails had inflicted. Her eager voice panted in his ear. “You need to eat something, my Spike. You must keep your strength up to keep the pixies singing. Your Sunshine left a present for you. Be a good boy and eat it all up and mummy will be pleased with her bad boy and stop the little knick-knacks from lying to you.” Her footsteps faded into the distance as she went back upstairs, and Spike gave up the struggle against blessed oblivion.


******


Slowly becoming aware through the all-enveloping darkness that there was a strong vampire rather too close for comfort, Spike instinctively vamped out, tensed up ready for a fight and snarled a warning. A soft voice spoke from a few feet behind him. “Sshh Master Spike, it’s Nathan. Quiet now, I’m trying to help.”

Spike considered for a moment and realised that under the circumstances he should be grateful for all the help he could get. He decided he might as well trust the young Aurelian and allowed his anxious demon to subside as he relaxed. He then felt gentle hands turning him around to face the room. He hissed as his raw and bloody shoulders and buttocks brushed against the stone wall as the chains unwound and allowed his feet to make contact with the floor. He heard a shocked “Ooooh!” in a sharp intake of breath as he struggled to take some of his weight on his unsteady legs to ease the unbearable strain on his arms and shoulders.

Making a tremendous effort Spike opened his eyes. A frowning pair of warm brown eyes gazed straight back at him. “I’m so sorry… I had no idea… I can’t get you down from there Master Spike, she’s got the only key. She gave orders that nobody was to come down here until now.” The dark haired young vampire appeared to be exhibiting genuine sympathy. “She’s sleeping now, but she told me I had to make sure you ate something. You have to feed to heal.” Nathan stood back a bit and indicated a figure, bound hand and foot with rope, slumped on the floor against the opposite wall. He shrugged, “I know your chip will be a problem but… I don’t know what you want to do but she said if you wouldn’t eat him she’d throw him to the minions.”

Spike turned his head slightly to focus on the bound human with a huge bruise covering half his face whose wide terrified eyes were staring back at him, and promptly broke into helpless wheezing laughter. After a few seconds he coughed and grimaced in pain as he gasped and tried to recover his composure enough to speak. “Oh that’s just priceless, made my day that has,” He croaked. “Last time she brought me take-out it was a bloody puppy, now she’s brought me a whelp!” He gestured with his head, “Get his gag off, let him share the joke.”

Nathan looked between Spike and the person on the floor and shrugged, “Well if you’re sure…” He crossed the room and crouched to remove the length of duct tape over the young man’s mouth. After whimpering as the adhesive detached from his skin and then coughing and spitting for a few moments Xander Harris gasped hoarsely, “Holy schmoley Bleachboy, what has she done to you?”

TBC