I’ve never attempted fanfic before, so please excuse me if this is not very good. Thought I’d have a go and see if it was any fun. This tale is set in the aftermath of the final Angel episode and while it might reference a bit of what happened in the comics after, it will only be vaguely. Never read them myself. The story is centered around spike, but will likely venture into a Spike/Buffy thing down the road. Hope you enjoy :)
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Heaven And Hell
Chapter 8 Choices
Note: My apologies for the delay. Be assured I have every intention of finishing this tale. That chapter is a bit shorter than the others, but the next will be longer.
The fight wasn’t playing out favorably for Gate. How long he had been skirmishing with the girls in that shadowy parking garage sub-level he wasn’t sure but things were getting dangerous and there was still no sign or word from Spike or Tara. By the sound of the growling and yelling from the spectator demon pack, they were growing impatient for someone to die. Whether that someone was Gate or one of the Slayers didn’t matter. Patience was not a strength of this surly lot and Gate wondered how much longer it would be before they jumped into the melee.
That errant thought was driven from his thoughts when he felt the impact of a hard kick to his side and felt the world around him grow unsteady until his back slammed into a car and things steadied. There was no stopping the pained groan from escaping his bloody lips. For a split second the urge to close his eyes and sleep was overpowering but he knew he had no time. One landed strike meant a second was coming from the opposite direction. That was how these two worked.
The kick that came from the second sister shattered the passenger side window of the car he was leaning against only inches above his head as he desperately ducked. Glass flying all around him, opening small cuts on his back and neck as it fell, he whirled and lashed out with a kick of his own. He connected and was rewarded with a grunt from one of the girls.
A backhand followed his kick, then a second punch and he had the girl, it was Tease, reeling back. He moved after her, knowing he couldn’t let her recover. The aggressive move on his part cost him, of course, as Whisper’s fist clipped across the side of his head. There wasn’t anything to do but push through the flash of pain and dizziness and rain blow after blow after blow down on Tease. Spatterings of blood flew in every direction as his fists pummeled the girl but he wasn’t quite sure how solidly he was connecting with the stunned Slayer. Her thrashing and twisting was proving an effective defense. Thankfully.
Heavy weight crashed down on his back as Whisper jumped on him. Her slender arms snaked around his neck and closed on his throat in a vice grip. His oxygen suddenly cut off, he jerked back and rolled off of Tease. Whisper was not letting go, however. He tried to reach her over his shoulder but she avoided him. An attempt at an elbow only brought slight contact and a tightening of the slender but powerful arms around his throat.
“Watch it,” Whisper hissed in his ear, an action masked from the watching demons by their thrashing “You caught her back there and she’s dazed. She needs a moment.”
He snarled and made a bit of a show of surging his weight backwards so that he slammed her against something solid (he thought it was a wall). Her grip loosened immediately and he found himself able to breath once more but he did not allow that to show to their audience. Instead he projected desperation and thrashed, slamming her against the wall again.
“Sorry, pumpkin,’ he whispered back amidst all the trashing “going to flip you in sec and jump away. We can get away with a moment of taunting, I think.”
Before she could respond, he reached back and managed to grab her over his shoulder. Lurching forward as soon as he had a grip on her, he sent the girl sailing to crash beside her sister, who was only then stirring. He flicked, willing himself to appear a good fifteen feet away from them and doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping for air. Exhaustion emanated from him as he hunched over. He didn’t have to pretend that part. His muscles felt like jelly.
Gate knew that as sore as he felt, he probably looked much worse. Most of his face was swollen and he could feel blood seeping slowly from at least three places on his face alone. His body had not been spared any pain either. If he survived this night, he was going to be a mass of bruises, black and blue from top to bottom. His first encounter with a Slayer had not disappointed. Those girls were incredible.
There was some consolation in the fact that both girls looked at least as bad off as he knew he did. Peeking at them from the corner of his eye to see how they were recovering, he couldn’t help but be a bit surprised at how battered they both looked. Black eyes, bloody lips, two broken noses. Blood dripped from an assortment of small cuts as they got to their feet, leaning on each other for support. Tease had a moderately deep gash somewhere above her hairline and Whisper was noticeably favoring her left side.
“You know,’ he croaked, his throat still raw from the chokehold “I wasn’t impressed when we first met, but seeing you two now, covered in blood and sweat and filth… we might have to take a bit of a detour before I bring you to Mr. Swan.” He allowed a leer to play across his battered features at that, lifting his eyebrows suggestively.
“There’s a shocker,” Tease rolled her eyes, flashing him a disgusted look “The evil lackey’s dick gets hard when he beats up a girl.”
“Mommy issues, for sure,” Whisper agreed, taking the free moment to inspect the cut on her sister’s scalp.
“Lackey?” he protested indignantly “Lackey!?”
“Told you that you’re only attracted to sick bastards,” Tease allowed the quick inspection, keeping her eyes on Gate but not responding to his appalled expression.
Gate gauged the mood of the audience. Impatience. Restlessness. The demon’s weren’t going to wait much longer. The scent of blood and pain in the air was working them into a near frenzy already. The blonde man wondered absently what was keeping Tara and Spike, their absence was worrying.
There was no time, though. He forced himself to stand straight and began walking towards the girls. “Foreplay is over, ladies. Let’s get to the fucking.”
Their fists lifted and they wearily started forward to meet them, clearly thinking the same thing he was. This mock fight couldn’t go on much longer. Someone was going to get seriously hurt even if the demon crowd didn’t decide to complicate matters.
Spike! Tara’s voice shouted urgently in his mind. You have to come now! Dominic did something to Spike!
He winced at the sudden voice in his head and the headache that came in its wake, throwing up a hand to warn the girls to pause. They complied, glancing at each other in confusion at his distracted, pained expression.
Tara? he tried to think back at her, having no idea if she would hear him. What happened?
Dominic did something to Spike, she responded in a worried mental tone. I’m almost at the penthouse now. You have to come.
The demon crowd was muttering suspiciously but he ignored them, coming out of his fighting crouch to speak to the Slayers in a calm tone, “Plan changed. Spike is down. We need to go now.”
They shared another glance and straightened their stances to match his relaxed pose. “Fight our way out?” Whisper glanced around at the demonic group surrounding them “They don’t look very happy at the moment.”
“No time,” he frowned, stepping forward and placing a hand on both of their shoulders. This was going to be difficult. That kind of distance, and bringing two people. It would be pushing the limits of that particular ability, but he didn’t see another way “Close your eyes. It can make you dizzy if you aren’t used to it.”
They seemed to understand his plan and both girls squeezed their swollen eyes shut as he gathered his will. Blinking in a fight was one thing, more reflex than anything else. Extending those jumps was more complex. His awareness stretched, seeking out Tara in the distant hotel. Fortunately he found he could trace her presence through some lingering connection from their brief psychic contact. An image formed of her stepping out of an elevator into Dominic’s opulent suite.
Focused, his will bent to the task and the world lurched in response.
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Tara rushed out of the elevator and almost barreled directly into the bloody trio that appeared directly in front of her. A startled yelp escaped her before she saw that one of the battered people was Gate. All three of them looked like they’d been in a plane crash.
“Gate, I think they’re in that room there,” she pointed, but the man groaned softly and slumped to the marble floor with a dull thud. “Gate!”
One of the bruised girls, who could only be the twin Slayers Tara had been avoiding, crouched down to check on the still man. She shrugged after a second, “He’s out. Where is Spike?”
“In there,” Tara pointed at the room beyond the bodies of the security detail Spike had handled on his way in.
The Slayers broke into a run and Tara was right on their heels. They burst into the room and found Dominic crouched over Spikes prone body. The sleek villain’s hand was on Spike’s temple and he appeared to be whispering something to the still vampire. Tara saw a pale red glow shimmering around Dominic’s hand.
One of the Slayers produced a stake and hurled it before Tara could say a thing. The sharpened wood whirled through the air and slammed into Dominic’s back, piercing the ridiculously expensive suit and impaling the demon. He shouted and lurched forward, whirling on them. Hate and rage made his slick features into an ugly mask and he made a slashing motion in their direction.
Tara desperately shouted a protective spell as she saw a blinding wave of heat pulse out from Dominic’s hand and lash out at them. Her shield pushed out to meet the attack but she felt it collapse under the other man’s wrathful power. Heat exploded around them and she was thrown back, her head smacking into the door.
There was silence for a long second when she wasn’t quite certain if she was alive or dead again. She lay there, trying to breathe until the pain came and let her know that she was indeed still alive. Her arms, which had reflexively lifted to cover her face, were blistered and deep red from the heat of the demon’s spell.
Groaning, she pushed herself up to check on the others. The Slayers were on their feet already. Both had added a layer of blisters to their bruised features but neither looked to be in serious danger. There was no sign of Dominic. Tara realized, looking around, that her spell had saved them the worst of the damage. The walls to either side of them were charred an angry black. Furniture and paintings were on fire, making the huge room slowly fill with smoke.
“He’s gone,” one of the Slayers muttered “He threw that thing at us then he disappeared.”
“We have to get out of here,” Tara responded shakily “Let’s get the guys and go.”
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An hour later and the five of them were settled into the small apartment of the Slayers’ Watcher, who turned out to be a young woman only a few years older than Tara named Jessica. Jessica was not British, speaking with a strong Jersey accent, which Tara found off-putting for some reason. An American Watcher just felt weird.
Gate had stirred shortly after the ladies had dragged them into the apartment, just long enough to assure them that he would live. He’d then promptly passed out again on the comfortable couch, pinning one of the Slayers and using her as a pillow. The Slayer, who’d identified herself as Janine, looked exasperated but was clearly too sore and tired to do anything about it. After a moment of protest, she’d just given up and fallen asleep herself.
Her sister, Jesse, had made a smart ass comment about sleeping with a guy who’d just kicked her ass but her heart wasn’t really in the quip. She’d curled up in a fluffy looking chair near the couch and promptly drifted off herself.
That had left Tara with the awkward task of getting a concerned Jessica up to speed. They pulled Spike into the Watcher’s bedroom and deposited him on the bed as Tara shared what she could about what had happened. The woman’s disapproval hardly registered though, as Tara’s attention was on her friend.
Spike could have been asleep or dead. He was hardly even bruised, though he had clearly been in a fight. He simply lay there, not responding when to touch or sound, his features curled into a grimace.
They’d pried his eyelids open and his pupils had been wide open regardless of the light shined into his unseeing eyes. Jessica had filled a coffee mug with some pigs blood (Tara was too distracted to wonder why the woman had pigs blood readily available) and propped Spikes head up enough so he could smell it, but he hadn’t stirred. After a bit of debate, they’d hoisted him up and tried to feed him but the blood had simply seeped out of the corners of his mouth and dribbled down his chin.
Finally they’d given up and left Spike to rest. Jessica had left shortly after that, saying she needed to consult her library, which was apparently kept elsewhere. Tara, alone with three sleeping people and one comatose vampire, tried not to worry but she knew it was pointless. She had no idea what Dominic had done and she didn’t have the resources to find out. And something told her the young watcher Jessica wasn’t going to be much help.
That left one option, something she was sure that neither she nor Spike wanted to pursue. One path to finding out what was wrong with her friend and helping make him right again. All she had to do was open a door she wasn’t sure she was ready to open, a door she knew would lead to pain.
Spike wouldn’t want her to do it. She knew that. He was stubborn like that, struggling with his desire to do what he thought was right and his need to reach out despite knowing it could not end well if he did. She didn’t want to force him to face the demon’s he was avoiding.
But she had no choice. There was no other way. So she picked up the phone and dialed a number she’d known but had never had the courage to dial.
One ring, two. Then someone answered, and Tara sighed, trying not to let her voice break and not reveal the tears in her eyes.
“Mr. Giles,” she said softly “It’s Tara.”