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Dawn walked slowly down the stairs into the lobby, looking for signs of human life. She'd sat on the couch with Spike in silence until he suddenly jumped up, announcing that he could hear her stomach rumbling. He'd ordered her to go find some dinner and call home, then bolted for the stairs, running his hands through his already-deranged hair and muttering something about not enough fags in this whole city...

There were times when Dawn was suddenly reminded that she was the sanest person within shouting distance. It was sort of disturbing.

The lobby was empty, but the door to Angel's office was slightly opened, so Dawn walked over and peeked in. Angel was sitting at the desk, staring fixedly at its blank surface. Dawn didn't move or make a sound, but he startled suddenly and looked up at her. "Dawn. Cordelia went out to get Chinese. She said she didn't need to ask you what you wanted, but you could call her..."

"No, it's fine. We were talking earlier about how you can't get decent take-out in Sunnydale." Angel blinked, and nodded, and Dawn frowned. "I guess that's not a problem for vamps, is it? People taste pretty much the same everywhere?"

Angel shook his head, though Dawn had expected him to just look horrified and refuse to talk about it. "There's actually a lot of individual variation in blood–-poor people, people who've been working hard, sick people, they don't taste as good."

"Oh." And then Angel seemed to realize what he'd said, and who to, and he did look sort of horrified. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but Dawn just said, "Remind me to, like, have a cold all the time or something." She gave him a smile, and he managed a smile back.

"Did you, um, need anything else?"

Dawn shrugged. "Spike told me to call home, let Willow know I'm not dead in a ditch or anything."

"Of course. You can call from here. I should probably go, um, see how Spike is..."

Dawn didn't mean to say anything, but he froze in the act of standing up, so her face must have given something away.

He looked all shy all of a sudden, nervous again. "Did Spike... say something to you? About..." About me? Weirder and weirder, and yet, it was like Spike had said, complicated, but here was Angel worrying about him, after all the shit they'd done to each other.

"I think he was going to have a cigarette. Or, like, several. He might, um, want a few minutes."

Angel's face went sort of blank, but he just nodded. "Thanks."

Dawn went over to the desk and stared at the phone, pretending that she wasn't watching Angel stand there like he was afraid to leave the office in case he was invading Spike's space.

"He said..." Dawn bit her lip, but Angel was staring at her now, she couldn't not say it. "He said that you and him are family, and that that doesn't change, no matter what."

The slightest tense movement, maybe a nod.

"I just thought..." Dawn felt the smile come out all wobbly. "I could see wanting some family that doesn't change, that's all." Family that didn't walk off, or die, didn't leave you behind all alone. Dawn knew how much a person could want that.

She wasn't looking, but she thought Angel touched her hair; she turned her head, and the office door was closing behind him.

Dawn sighed. Time to call home like a good little girl. She dialed slowly, Spike's words still running through her mind. You don't have the blood, not the same way, not the knowing of it. She and Buffy had shared blood, though, even more than normal sisters. She wondered if it was sort of the same, if having been made from Buffy, her blood ran in Dawn like Angel's in Spike. She wondered what it would have been like to be able to know that without being told, not just to belong to someone but to be able to taste the belonging, hold it in your mouth like chocolate.

"–Hello? Hello? Dawn, is that you? Is something wrong?"

"Willow." Dawn shook her head, trying to rid it of the mental images. "It's me. I'm fine. Just distracted." Just a total spaz, basically, and, okay, she understood that Buffy was gone, that she was all alone now. "I though I should, um, call and check in. Were you worried about me?"

"Um, a little, yeah." Willow sounded hurt and sarcastic at the same time; Dawn settled herself on the edge of the desk and hunched over, elbows on knees. Even if Willow didn't actually end up yelling at her, Dawn could feel the disapproval, wanted to hide from it, even if she couldn't bring herself to hang up. "Dawnie, you shouldn't have just taken off like that. You should have said something, if you didn't want to go home, Tara and I didn't have to go to that meeting, or you could have gone to Xander's."

Dawn held back the laugh that threatened, knowing it would come out sounding all harsh and wrong. Yeah, she could have gone to Xander's, and played board games with him and Anya and slept on the couch while they had sex as quietly as they could manage in the bedroom, which wasn't actually all that quiet. Could have sat around with them, keeping them from making each other feel better, and they could have all been miserable together while Anya kicked everyone's asses at Life or Monopoly or Scrabble or Chutes and Ladders or something. Or, if she didn't want to do that, she could have gotten whiny and clingy for the millionth time in two weeks and totally prevented Willow and Tara from trying to get on with their lives, just because she didn't have a life of her own to get on with. Yeah, that would have been really, really cool. Why hadn't she thought of that?

"I didn't know til I got there," she said quietly. "I thought I was okay and then I got there and–-" Don't say Spike wasn't there, they'll crucify him, "and it was just so weird and Spike asked what he could do and I just had to leave, so we left."

"Dawn, I just. I just don't think running away is going to help. I mean, it doesn't solve anything. Buffy–-"

"I didn't run away, Willow! I didn't just disappear, okay? Angel told me I could visit and I know I didn't, like, get you to sign my permission slip or whatever I'm supposed to do, but I left you a note and I didn't ditch my babysitter or anything. I'm just visiting Angel and Cordelia. I was invited."

Big huge guilt-inducing sigh, but Dawn thought it was an unspeakably low blow to try to throw that Buffy-ran-away thing in her face, and she was not going to cry, she wasn't, she wouldn't. "I just wish you'd said something. We've all been worried about you."

"Yeah, well, who was I supposed to ask, exactly? You? Tara? The bot?" She should've, actually, should've gone down to the table in the basement where the half-repaired bot resided and switched it on and asked its permission; it would've wanted to come along, of course, since Spike was involved, but then she could have said she had Buffy's permission. In a sense.

Except that she couldn't even bring herself to open the basement door, these days, so... maybe not.

"Look, Dawnie, I don't want to fight. It's okay. We just want to know you're okay."

Dawn wrapped one arm tight around her stomach. "Yeah, well. I'm fine. I went shopping today, with Cordelia. We had a good time." *I bought a motorcycle helmet, had a nervous breakdown, and shoplifted two bottles of black nail polish.* "I've got my own room here, and Angel says I can use it anytime I want to visit."

"That's... that's nice, Dawnie."

"Yeah. Anyway, I think Cordelia just got back with dinner. I better go."

"Okay. You're coming home tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Dawn forced some fake cheer into her voice to cover the churning of her stomach, the sob she could feel tightening her lungs. "Wouldn't want to miss school."

"We'll see you then."

"Yeah." Dawn hung up the phone and slipped down off the desk. She went around and crawled into the soft leather desk chair, burrowing her face against it. It didn't smell quite like Spike's coat, but it was close enough. She hugged her knees, and tried to stop shaking.

Spike crouched in the shadow of the courtyard's western wall, knees to chest as he sucked down his fifth cigarette, the lower half of the duster puddling on the ground around him. With hands that were only now beginning to stop shaking, he reached out and neatened the four butts on the ground before him into a little row, like empty shot glasses on the bar. Another two or three, and he might be ready to go inside, face Angel or Dawn, though, he devoutly hoped, not both of them at the same time. Made his head hurt just thinking of it.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the only slightly crushed pack of smokes, tapping out a sixth and lighting it from the end of the fifth, which he then stubbed out and laid beside the others. With the fresh fag firmly in place, he chanced a peek up at the dimming sky, blowing smoke toward the deeper blue of the east. Smokes were good. Smokes would keep him from biting the inside of his lip til the blood ran, and the taste of tobacco and tar or whatever the hell was in these things, formaldehyde and rat poison, would keep him from trying to remember what his sire's blood tasted like, trying to taste it in the split of his own lip. Too damned much thinking, masquerading as talking, and at this rate he'd never get through this holiday unscathed. Spike started a seventh cigarette, squinting at the eastern sky. Was that a star? A planet? A cell-phone satellite? Best not to go making wishes on things that might turn out to be airplanes instead of stars. Best not to go making wishes anyway.

He stubbed out the last cigarette half smoked, and brushed the lot into the landscaping as he stood. Time to face up, act like a man--you treat me like a man--and just get it over with. Spike scrubbed a hand over his face, and pulled out one last fag, just to kill the taste of that particular memory. He savored that cigarette, watched the smoke float up and away, like incense offered to God, like all those nights spent watching her window. His apparently irrepressible poet's brain spun a few soppy lines about the smoke rising to heaven, to remind her that he was still down here keeping his promise, and then Spike tossed down that cigarette as well, and headed inside. No more thinking, he just had to do, or he'd run mad.

Angel was in the lobby when he slipped back inside, staring fixedly into the weapons chest. Spike checked for Dawn, heard her in the office, talking on the phone, and quickly returned his full attention to his sire. Girl clearly needed a moment alone. Angel closed the door on the assortment of shiny sharp and pointy things, and went and flung himself down on a couch. He glanced up at Spike and patted the seat beside him, and Spike, like a good boy, crossed the space and sat down. He automatically drew himself up small, knees to chest, head ducked below the level of Angel's even though they sat side-by-side by his direction. Angel's hand, just as automatically, settled in Spike's hair, dextrous fingers trying to tame the hopelessly disarranged whorls.

After a couple of minutes, Spike was utterly relaxed and convinced that not-thinking was the way to go, and Angel murmured, "Did you and Dawn have a nice talk?"

Spike tried not to actually tense, but went guiltily still all the same, drawing an almost subliminal *shh* from Angel, and more petting. "Yeah."

"That's good," Angel said quietly. "She'll probably be a good influence on you; it seems like Buffy was. And I'm sure you'll take good care of her."

Spike tried, with limited success, to bury his face in his knees. "Course."

And that was apparently that; Angel went on petting him, and slowly, slowly, Spike relaxed, so that the front doors slamming open and a few humans staggering in seemed like the coming of Judgement to his comfort-drowned senses.

It was Wesley and Gunn, supporting Cordelia between them. She had her head resting on Wesley's shoulder. "We found her outside," he said, as they lowered Cordelia, who seemed unharmed though he hardly needed a vampire's senses to hear the rushing of her blood, to the spot on the couch that Angel had vacated as they came in. Spike, belatedly, got to his feet, stalking quickly away from the humans. Another quick check; Dawn was still, well... Still best left to herself.

Angel was crouching in front of Cordelia, looking intent but not frantic, so apparently this sort of thing happened from time to time. "Did you have a vision?"

Cordelia muttered something unladylike, and nodded like her head was about to come off. Spike inched closer. So Cordelia had the Sight, did she? Seemed to manage better with it than Dru had done. Quieter, at least.

"I saw..." One finely manicured hand sketched a vague shape in the air. "This demon. It was huge. There was so much blood, people screaming... It had four arms, and big long claws... I think it was near here. Oh God, Angel, I think it was coming here." Her eyes flashed open, and just like his princess she was scared of what she'd seen and looking to Daddy for comfort.

Four arms, and coming this way... Spike glanced at Angel, but there was no sign of recognition. Had the soul messed with his memory? Spike went and knelt down beside Cordelia, putting on his gentlest voice. "Did you see its head, ducks?"

Her eyes screwed shut again, face twisted in fear or pain or both, but she nodded. "Did it have a sort of crest, running across its head, ear to ear? Red?" Eyes open again, looking stunned and maybe harboring a glimmer of... admiration? Probably just hysteria. "And the claws on its hands, they were long and sharp on three hands, but short on the fourth?" Another nod, and Spike jumped to his feet. Action at last. Serious demon-bashing, just the thing.

"It's gotta be Pesrioth, Ang, or his twin brother out for revenge. That mojo you did on him the last time should've put him out of the way for good. You'll have to fix up a new version of the spell. The humans can help you with that, and I'll go track him down, try to keep him from doing too much damage. You can find us when you've got the stuff together and turn him to stone or whatever it was."

Spike was at the weapons chest, reaching for a sword, when Angel's voice stopped him cold. "Spike."

And with that single syllable, spoken just so, realization rushed in. He'd just paraded his sire's forgetfulness before his subalterns, and presumed to issue orders for dealing with the present crisis, and his skin crawled coldly. Spike knew with a deathly certainty that not a millimeter of Angel's claim remained carved into his skin. He'd just buggered everything, acting as though belonging to Angel was no more than a game, to be cast off in moments of urgency.

Without noticeable pause, Angel said quietly, "I don't want you facing this thing alone. If Gunn and Wes go with you, you can all keep it distracted, and I can call Wesley and give him the incantation over the phone, which will save tracking you down." There were sounds of assent from the humans, and Spike grabbed a weapon–-something shiny, he wasn't really paying attention–-and turned to follow them, keeping his eyes to the ground. As much as everything in him longed to look to his sire for some kind of reassurance, Spike knew he didn't want to see whatever was in Angel's face right now.

A hard hand caught his arm as he went by, and Angel whispered, too low for the humans to catch, "You have to come back, you know. Dawn is still here." And with that his sire released him, and Spike hurried on, toward the certainty of a good fight.

Angel got Cordelia settled with a glass of water and a couple of tablets of painkillers, and then headed to his office to get the books he would need to set up the spell. Dawn jumped a little when he opened the door, looking up at him wide-eyed from his desk chair. "Dinner?" she asked after a pause, blinking quickly.

"Oh." Had Cordelia even made it to the restaurant? "Dinner is delayed. We have a demon to fight. We'll call for delivery."

Dawn nodded, visibly pulling herself together. She stood up as he went to the bookshelves and began pulling out volumes, trying to remember everything he could about the last time they'd run into this thing, over a hundred years ago, two souls and a stint in hell since.

"So, is there anything I can do?" Angel looked over, five books cradled in one arm and another in his hand. Dawn had her hands jammed into her pockets, looking certain that he'd send her off to amuse herself while the grown-ups took care of everything.

"Actually, yeah." He fought down a half-dozen memories of Buffy, complaining about having to keep Dawn at the library after school, and how hard, and yet vitally necessary, it was to keep her out of Giles' books, but that had been when she was a little kid, eleven or twelve years old. Obviously it was different now, and anyway she was the only person left to help him who wasn't suffering from post-traumatic shopping or mystical hangover. Angel grabbed the Ghirellis Codex from the top shelf and held it out for Dawn to take.

She followed him back out to the lobby, and took a seat on the couch opposite Cordelia while Angel went to dump his share of the books on the desk. "Angel?" she called. "I can't read this."

"Trust me," he replied, coming back with a scrap of paper in hand, "you don't want to." He scribbled down the sequence of three glyphs that the Codex's alphabet used to signify Pesrioth, and handed the paper to Dawn. "Just look for that pattern. It might be in there more than once, but the stuff we need will have that in it."

Dawn nodded, and with a determined air, opened the volume to the first page and started searching. Cordelia stood up, a little shaky, and Angel said, right on cue, "I think we can manage this, Cordy. You've already done your part. Why don't you go lie down?" She shot him a grateful look, and headed for the office, closing the door delicately behind her.

That left him alone with the stack of tomes he'd selected, and the sound of Dawn's finger skimming faithfully across every line of the only book that had ever given Angelus nightmares. He opened a book, flipping through, searching for some clue about the incantation he needed to adapt. He tried to remember the last time, but he was reasonably certain that he and Darla had terrorized a couple of human scholars into doing the difficult bits. All he really remembered was spending three weeks being furious with Spike, since according to some suitably self-serving contortion of logic it was all his fault, and wasn't that a concentration-destroying suite of mental images. Bound wrists, pale, reddened, tantalizingly close to bleeding. The way his head snapped when he was thrown to the floor, honey-colored curls tumbling. The way leather tore like paper under his hands when he'd been too impatient to unfasten Spike's boots. The way his ribs stood out after he'd been starved for two weeks. The sound...

Angel scrubbed at his eyes with one hand, and focused on the books, but now he was remembering how it had been, after, when he'd finally succeeded in teaching Spike whatever lesson that had been, the ten straight days of silent cringing. The mad impulse to *order* Spike to smirk and tease and argue.

Angelus had never known what to do with him either.

And now... he stared at the doors, unseeing, Spike in his mind's eye marching out all over again, holding a broadsword cack-handed and with his head down, contrite and horrified, but with that despairing stubbornness that meant he knew he couldn't be forgiven and wasn't going to embarrass himself trying.

It was such a stupid thing, and he was an idiot to have let it happen. Angelus certainly wouldn't have, and Spike had been trusting him to actually act like his sire for a few minutes, to keep him in line. Especially so soon, and knowing Spike as he did, he should have been ready for a little misstep, should have kept him on a short leash, should have put him on notice to mind himself the first instant he started questioning Cordelia. But no, he'd been to busy worrying over her, too afraid to make some gesture that would set Wes and Gunn to wondering about him, and he'd just let Spike take all the rope he needed to hang himself. Hang them both. Angel sighed, flipping through the next few pages before shutting the book before him and pulling out the next from the stack. He stole another quick glance up and froze; a slender, small girl, sitting on his couch, one leg tucked under her and the other splayed out in a posture he knew as well as his own, dark blonde hair shielding her face from his gaze. He pressed one hand hard to the desk, steadying himself, and forced himself to see. It was Dawn sitting there, not some shade of Buffy.

No matter what the memories, he was glad of Dawn's presence; it meant Spike had to come back, and that meant that no matter how little use Spike had for him now, at least they would have a chance to talk things out.

Dawn picked up the scrap of paper and slid it across the page, squinting at the symbols just above her finger. After giving one false alarm–-Angel had looked nauseated as he told her that, no, that definitely wasn't it–-she was determined not to say anything unless she was sure she had something that was at least potentially what they were looking for. Still, it looked like a match. Dawn rubbed the back of her neck and stretched her legs a little as she stood. Angel had gone into his office a couple of times while she was searching, once just to check on Cordelia and once coming back with some candles and parchment and a little box. He was now hunched over the desk, working intently. Dawn, holding the book open and keeping her finger planted on the spot, slipped quietly across the lobby to stand by the desk.

She didn't say anything, waiting at his side until he sat up slightly, raising the old-fashioned pen from the page. "Got something?"

Dawn ducked her head, still embarrassed about the last time. "I think so. I mean, it might not be the right part, but that's definitely the pattern you gave me, and I think it's repeated later on the page, so that seemed to make it more likely..." Angel took the book from her hands, smiling slightly at her Xander-like babble, and Dawn let the words trail off, bouncing a little on her heels as she waited for his verdict. His smile turned to a grin. "You got it, Dawn. Perfect."

She couldn't help grinning back.

Angel looked down at the parchment before him. He'd decorated each of the corners with complicated swirls and symbols like the ones in the book, and now he switched to a piece of scrap paper, glancing back and forth between Dawn's book and another to compose a couple of lines of glyphs. Dawn watched, fascinated. She remembered Buffy making some comment once about Angel being quite the artist, but she'd never been willing to explain it to Dawn, and that was about the time she got really, really good at keeping her diary hidden. Still, Dawn could see what Buffy had been talking about; Angel's hands were incredibly steady, and even the quickly-written lines looked gorgeous. Angel closed the books, slamming shut the covers of the Codex with especial vehemence, and set them aside. "Dawn? I need your help here," he said. Dawn stared at him in confusion. "This..." Horrible thought, but she had to ask, "you don't, like, need my blood for this, do you?"

Angel shook his head. "Nothing like that. But the spell requires two hands, writing the words, and two voices, speaking the incantation. Wesley will be the other voice, but I need you to do the writing." He set a piece of parchment before her. "Just copy what's on my sheet. It doesn't have to be identical, just do the best you can."

Dawn stared, even as Angel pressed a wood-handled pen into her hand and she tried to get her fingers adjusted to it. "All those letters..."

"Don't think of it as writing. It's just drawing, just different designs. You can do this. Don't worry."

"But... Spike's out there, and Wes and Gunn. If I do this wrong–-"

"Then we'll just try it again." Angel's hand closed around hers, steadying her grip on the pen, guiding her to dip it in the ink. "The first time this happened, Darla and I did the ink, and Spike and Dru held the candles. Drusilla was so fascinated by the flame she set her eyelashes on fire, and it took us hours to get everything set up again, but we still got it done in the end." Dawn blinked, rubbing at one eye with her free hand. "I'll, um... Try not to set my eyelashes on fire."

Angel nodded sternly. "See that you don't. I'm sure you wouldn't heal as quickly as she did." He gestured encouragingly toward her blank page, and Dawn, staring at the upper left corner of his sheet, began plotting the first line. Angel, resuming his own work, placed his arm so that Dawn's view was unblocked, and soon she was lost in the precise work, dark swoops and dots and curls, the angles and inflections of the individual characters. She blew on the damp ink, dipping her pen over and over, noticing only distantly the ache in her shoulders and the sweat that beaded along her spine.

When she reached the lower right corner of the page, Dawn was surprised to realize she was finished; she'd copied the entire spell. It was Angel who stood quietly at her side, now, watching attentively. "You have a good hand, Dawn."

She flushed with pleasure, even as her comparing eye caught the innumerable flaws in her own copy. "Are you sure it's good enough to work?"

Angel nodded. "If they were exactly the same, it would be as if a single hand had made them, and that's not what we want."

He reached out and dialed Wesley's number from the desk phone, hitting the button to switch it to speaker mode.

It rang four times before Wesley picked up. Breathlessly, he said, "Angel... If you're not calling to say the incantation is ready... You're fired."

Angel frowned. "It's ready. Are you all right?"

"So far. You might have mentioned that this thing had a personal grudge against Spike."

The frown on his face deepened, and Dawn wondered if it covered the same nervous twist that seized her own stomach. "He's not hurt?"

"Oh, no. I believe he gives new meaning to the phrase 'unholy joy'." Faintly, in the background, Dawn heard Spike shout *Now*! and Wesley said, "Oh, that'll slow him up a bit. Angel, the incantation?"

Angel read off the strange syllables, Wesley carefully repeating them back. "Okay, Wes, on my mark, we'll both recite it." As he spoke, Angel lit the two candles he'd brought out, handing one to Dawn and holding the other himself. He rolled his sheet into a tube, gesturing for Dawn to do the same, then began to chant. Wesley could be heard matching every word, and Dawn noticed how it was easy to differentiate their separate voices, just like her and Angel's versions of the drawing. About halfway through, Angel nodded to Dawn, and they both held the parchment into the flame. She copied his way of moving it slowly forward, so that the whole thing burned, even as she tried to keep her face out of the plume of gray smoke that poured through the unburned end. Her fingers were nearly in the flame when the incantation ended, and the candles suddenly went out, leaving a pinch of charred paper in her hand.

There was a silence on the other end of the phone, and then Wesley said, "Oh, my. That was certainly... effective."

Spike kept silent during the walk back to the car, listening with thin amusement to the humans' bickering. He knew that all three of them were waiting to see whether Wesley would actually come over all kindergartenish and refuse to sit next to Spike on the way home as he had on the way out. Spike could see he was desperate not to say it in so many words, and he finally ended up driving, "Because I'm the boss." Gunn grumbled, but promptly acquiesced, and took his middle seat with the air of one who knew fairness demanded the sacrifice.

Spike pressed himself to the door, staring out the window, trying to ignore two pounding heartbeats and the smell of adrenaline and post-battle giddiness in the enclosed space. He toyed with the idea of jumping from the truck, but Angel was right, he couldn't take off. He couldn't leave Dawn, even if he had bollocksed everything beyond repair. Worse, and his blood ran colder at the thought, Angel was going to think that they could paper this over by talking, and Spike wanted nothing to do with that. He'd talked enough today to last at least a decade, and if he had to go sleep in some dismal basement closet tonight to avoid more, well, better herbs in solitude than the fatted calf with his disappointed ex-sire.

Gunn's jostling suddenly took on purpose, an elbow expertly slamming into Spike's ribs. "So," he said, "Okay. Explain to me again why, even though you haven't got a curse or a soul or anything, you still don't bite people?"

Spike stared out the window as if the secrets of the universe were printed in the gutter. He heard the chuckle that Wesley choked back, and clung grimly to the tattered shreds of his dignity.

"'Cause, I mean, you just don't hear about a lot of vampires, y'know, getting on the wagon. Is there, like, a Bloodsuckers Anonymous group that you go to? Do you have pamphlets to hand out to other vampires?"

Spike gritted his teeth. "Soldier boys planted a chip in my brain."

"Oh that's right. There's a chip. And it gives you headaches when you hurt humans. Man."

Elbow. "That's rough. Losing your livelihood that way. So, you couldn't even, like, hit me? It wouldn't let you?"

Spike kept quiet.

"I bet you could. I bet you're just scared. Scared of a little microchip headache. Come on, I wanna see this. Hit me, just try it."

Spike rolled his eyes, but the effect was lost on the window.

Elbow, elbow, elbow. "Come on, man. Try it. Hit me." It was getting to the point of being worth the pain, but, no matter what they kept implying about the managerial structure of Angel Investigations, Gunn still belonged to Angel, and Spike knew better than to even try to harm a hair on his head. Angel would be...

Furious.

Angel would punish him.

Angel wouldn't waste time on talking if Spike had—- Quickly, to get it in ahead of the chip before he even finished the dangerous thought, Spike threw a right-handed punch squarely into Gunn's near temple. He was caught completely off-guard, and screamed nearly as loudly as Spike did, clutching at the chip-retaliation ground zero above his left eye. The doubled yell resounded almost unbearably in the small space, which was probably why Wesley drove nearly off the road. Spike didn't lower his hand the rest of the drive, which he spent huddled against the door, staring out the window and shivering.

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end 4/6