4. A Cry for Help
Spike studied the empty space separating
him
and the uniformed humans on the other side of it, wondering if the big
wanker had actually turned off the power like he'd been ordered to do.
It didn't *look* any different.
*Of course it doesn't *look* any different you stupid sod,* he berated
himself a moment later. *It's a big empty space. How different is it
gonna look?*
"You must think I'm a bloody idiot," he remarked aloud to the small
woman, who was giving him a calmly expectant look. "You'd just love to
see me walk right into that bloody thing, and get fried again, wouldn't
you? Not bloody likely, pet."
"All right," she shrugged, holding his gaze with a strangely triumphant
smile, as she stepped slowly toward him, one wide deliberate step
taking her across the invisible barrier, and into his half of the room.
"What now, vampire?"
Spike's eyes widened with surprise -- and then narrowed again over a
slowly spreading smirk, as he lowered his head slightly, his eyes
sparkling with deadly pleasure. "Now," he replied, his voice low and
seductively threatening. "Now, love -- I think *you're* the bloody
idiot."
In one swift motion he was upon her, pushing her back against the wall,
one hand at her chin pushing her head backward to expose her vulnerable
throat, as his game face came to the fore and he leaned in for the
killing bite.
"*No*!" the soldier on the other side of the room cried out, crossing
the barrier behind him and moving swiftly as if to stop him.
But before he could reach them, something completely unexpected
happened.
Something that would change Spike's existence forever.
Before his fangs had so much as grazed her throat, as he was just
beginning to imagine the warm rush of sweet pleasure as he drained the
life from this bint who had thought to hold him prisoner -- a searing,
excruciating pain pierced through his skull, dropping him to his knees
on the floor with a startled cry of anger, confusion, and sheer agony.
He shook his head, scrambling back to his feet with a snarl, not sure
what she had done to him, but determined to make her pay for it. Behind
him, he was vaguely aware of the soldier moving in as if to stop him,
but that did not worry him. He knew that, armed or not, he was far
stronger than the boy, and would take him down as easily as he would
drain his superior.
"Riley, don't!" the woman snapped, and the young man froze, as the
vampire leapt at her throat again.
Spike had time to vaguely wonder why she had stopped the boy -- before
a second explosion of pain ripped through his skull, dropping him to
the floor again with a roar of frustrated anguish.
As the spots of black color began to fade from his vision, he looked up
to see the woman crouched down beside him on the floor, smiling calmly,
waiting for him to recover from whatever they had done to him.
"Before you try to attack me again, and completely destroy yourself,
and we all lose out -- let me explain to you what it is you're feeling,
vampire," she began.
And by this point, Spike was just enough freaked out to wait and hear
what she had to say.
"While you slept, we've implanted a microchip in your brain. It will
send an electrical current through your head, any time you attempt to
harm a human being," she explained, in that same cold, clinical tone of
voice. "For that reason -- it's in your best interest if you *don't*
attempt it. Is that clear?"
Spike just stared up at her in shock, his fuzzy thoughts barely able to
make sense of what she was telling him.
"A -- a *chip*...?"
"In your head," she repeated, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes, which
hardened as she added, "You're completely helpless, unable to defend
yourself, vampire, let alone actually harm me or any of my men. You
haven't got a chance of getting out of here until I see fit to let you
out. Therefore -- it's best if you simply do as you're told."
Even as Spike's mind took in the information, filing away the reference
to "her men", noting that whatever this place was, it was more than
simply a mad scientist and her henchman, he felt his anger rising up in
defiance against her words.
"See -- that's the rub, love," he smirked as he carefully rose to his
feet, watching her as she rose with him, but did not seem in any way
afraid. "I'm not all that good at taking orders."
"I'm beginning to see that," she remarked softly.
He barely caught the almost imperceptible look she cast over his
shoulder at the soldier behind him, and reacted just a moment too late
to avoid the butt of the soldier's rifle in the small of his back.
Still in game face, he fell only for a moment, before snarling in fury
and whirling around, snatching the rifle from the boy's hand hurling it
against the far wall, where it smashed into a dozen pieces on the floor.
The young man's eyes went wide, and his hands went out in front of him
in a defensive stance, as, to his credit, he prepared to fight the
vampire bare-handed if need be.
But it was not necessary, as once again, the moment Spike lunged at
him, the chip in his head went off again, tearing through his brain
with blinding agony. When it passed, Spike found that he was on the
floor, on his knees, drawing in deep, shaking, gasping breaths, his
aching head cradled in both hands.
Staring down at him with hard eyes full of cruel satisfaction, Maggie
Walsh finally finished her statement that his attack had interrupted,
adding quietly, "But you'll learn."
A slight clicking noise brought Spike's weary, aching head up again;
but both the woman and the boy were gone -- and the switch on the wall
operating the invisible wall was back in the "on" position.
************************************
"Bye, baby, bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting..."
Drusilla's low, musical voice lilted as she danced in a slow, eerie
circle around the table where Angelus sat, frowning vaguely at the
piece of paper in front of him, before rubbing out the pencil marks he
had just made, and making them over again.
"...to catch a wicked Slayer's skin..." Her tone changed, became a cross
between a soft wail and a whine, as she finished, more quietly, "...to
wrap my little William in..." The song finished, she fell down on the
floor to her knees, moaning, grieving, "He's gone, he is...they've got
him...and then she'll have him...and he'll never be mine again..."
"Dru, would you drop it?" Angelus snapped without looking up from his
drawing. "We've been over this a dozen times. You said he's lost to us
already, right?"
Drusilla's response was only a soft whimper from between her hands that
now covered her face.
"Then why sit there and whine about it? We've got each other, right?
Forget Spike..."
"I *try* to forget him," she cried, her dark eyes meeting his, full of
anguish and confusion. "But 'e won't let me, Daddy! He's here...in my
head...calling to me...calling... 'e doesn't know he's lost already...little
lost boy, calling for his Mummy...but Mummy can't save you now, little
Willie...no matter how hard you cry...how loud you call..."
After the first few words, her focus was no longer on her sire sitting
at the table, but on some far distant point that only she could see.
She let out a moan as if in terrible pain, before sobbing out again,
"He's calling, calling, won't stop calling me! He wants 'is Mummy..."
"Then why don't you go to him?" Angelus snapped, his impatience evident
in his voice, as he slammed the pencil down on the table and glared up
at her, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Don't be cross with me, Daddy," Dru whimpered, rising gracefully from
her knees to her feet and backing toward the door. "Don't be cross...I'll
go to him, as you said...I'll find him...I'll bring him home again...all will
be right again when he's home again..."
Her words this time held a childlike hope, as opposed to the distant,
knowing tone her voice usually had when she was getting a vision -- and
Angelus had little doubt that she would fail in her task. If the
visions had told her that Spike was already gone, well, most likely he
was dust by now.
And good riddance, as far as Angelus was concerned.
But...if it would get Dru out of his hair for a bit...
"Yes, I'm sure that's right, Dru," he reassured her in a soft, overly
patient voice, forcing a smile despite his irritation. "Go and find
him. I'll call you if I need you, precious...Daddy's busy right now."
"Daddy's busy...busy..." she echoed his words as she headed for the door,
and out into the night, following the desperate call of her childe.
"That's right," Angelus murmured to himself, smiling with wicked
delight at the half-finished drawing on the table. "Daddy's busy."
The drawing was of several busts, forming a rough circle, of the
Slayer's friends and family -- her mother, in the top left-hand corner,
her friends, the two boys, the little redhead, and the cheerleader,
working to the right of Joyce's picture in a circle, until a rough
sketch of the Watcher's face lay directly beneath Joyce's face, drawn
in a troubled mask of fear and concern.
Actually, all of their faces bore expressions of fear, in varying
degrees.
And in the center, broken, tears streaming from her eyes, which were
filled with devastation and defeat, Angelus had drawn the lovely, hated
face of the Slayer herself. Picking up the pencil again, as a cold
smile came over his face, Angelus made a light lead circle around one
of the faces, before tossing the pencil down and rising to his feet,
heading out into the night, in the opposite direction from the way Dru
had gone, finishing softly to himself,
"Daddy's...hunting..."
****************************************
Spike had never, ever had cause to use the bond between himself and his
sire to call out for help -- not like this. Not because he was helpless
to defend himself, and in more pain than he could recall feeling at any
point in his life or unlife. For him, it had always been a point of
pride that *he* was the one to defend *Dru* -- to protect her, to care
for her, almost as if he had been the sire and she the childe
Except -- they both knew who was really in control of their
relationship.
But the intricacies of their relationship was the farthest thing from
his mind at the moment.
He had tried to stop them when they had come to take him from the room
where he had first awoken to find himself. He had fought, struggled --
and only managed to make the chip go off several times in the process,
further incapacitating himself, and making it easier for them to move
him from that room, to another down the hall.
Of course, these young human men were much stronger than they should
have been, too. Even without harming them, Spike knew that he should
have been able to get away from them; but somehow, they seemed nearly
as strong as vampires themselves, possessing nowhere near the weak
level of strength Spike was used to seeing in ordinary humans.
When he had seen the operating table in the center of the room,
complete with leather restraints that he was fairly certain were not
hospital issue, he had renewed his efforts to escape, knowing
immediately that at all costs, he could not let them get him tied down
to that table. In his efforts at escape, he had managed to nearly knock
one of the men holding him unconscious.
And then the chip had knocked *him* unconscious.
When he had awakened -- it was too late to think about escaping. He had
already been strapped tightly down to the table, his arms and legs each
restrained at three different points, and with straps across his
stomach, chest, and forehead as well. He tried to voice his protest,
only to find that he had been gagged, his mouth stuffed with what felt
like soft, white gauze, held in by some sort of contraption of leather
and wires wrapped around his head, that held his jaw firmly shut.
"Hello, vampire."
The woman's voice was suddenly next to his ear, though he could not so
much as turn his head to see her, and Spike felt a growl of anger and
frustrated fear rising up in his throat. He wanted to scream at her
that his name was *Spike*, damn it, and what the bloody hell did they
think they were playing at? But he couldn't move, couldn't make a sound.
The last time he had felt so helpless -- well, it had been a *very*
long time.
"I don't believe we were formally introduced before," the woman went
on, a slight smirk audible in her voice. "I am Maggie Walsh...and I will
be overseeing the various procedures on our schedule for you today. I'm
afraid we'll have to go without knowing your name, since you've already
been -- prepared -- for the procedures. But then -- your *name* is
hardly of any interest to us."
Her words were hardly comforting, and he tried again, uselessly, to
break the bonds that held him, but apparently they had been designed
with supernatural strength in mind; they did not budge.
"We may have a few questions for you as the procedures go along," Walsh
continued in a calm, careless sort of voice. "So obviously we'll try to
restrict them to those that require only a yes or no answer. And you
will find that it will definitely be in your best interest to
cooperate. Do you understand?"
Spike rolled his eyes in the direction of her voice, though she
remained just outside his range of vision, then looked pointedly down
in the direction of his own restrained right hand, and raised a single
finger in a gesture that spoke more loudly than any words he could have
spoken.
He highly doubted that she would have understood his usual British
version of the gesture, and he wanted to be very sure she knew exactly
what he thought of the whole thing.
Walsh sighed wearily, picking up a small vial in her hand from a table
arrayed with various surgical supplies, and other items of a more
mysterious nature.
"Fine, then. Have it your way," she remarked. "You'll soon wish you
hadn't."
Spike could not see what she was doing, was not aware at all of what
was about to happen, until he felt his right hand pressed down against
the table beneath him, strapped to it tightly with an additional
leather strap, the offending finger excepted. When one of her
white-coated assistants had finished that task, Maggie Walsh quickly
pushed the vial onto his middle finger, until said finger formed a
tight cork, holding the fluid in the vial inside, against his skin.
The fluid was holy water.
As Spike struggled desperately to free his trapped finger from the
searing, acidic liquid, a strangled, frantic cry rose in his throat,
muffled by the gag.
"Now, you see," Maggie said in a tone of false regret, moving to stand
near his head again, "If you'd only been more cooperative, I could have
simply asked you, 'Is it true what they say about holy water and
vampires? Can a vampire be reduced to dust with only the use of holy
water? Can holy water be used to completely remove an appendage? And
you could have answered, and I wouldn't have had to do this to you."
Spike's struggles against his bonds became swiftly weaker, as the pain
began to steal his strength, his control -- his consciousness -- and
she smiled as she turned her attention back to the bubbles of steam and
fluid seeping out around the top of the tiny bottle on his finger.
"Of course," she amended with a shrug. "I might have wanted to see it
for myself anyway. It's incredibly fascinating to see." She smirked as
she finally removed the bottle, just before Spike would have passed out
from the pain, setting it aside slowly, patiently, and turning back to
him with a sadistic smile, as she added,
"And just think, vampire -- we're just getting started."