The Sick Rose
by Pandarus


14. Finding Treasure

Gwendolyn Post found the room without any difficulty, thanks to the information in her newly-acquired book. There was no door in the smooth wall that Spike had rushed past, but she knew where the entrance was. It wasn't a case of a door concealed by a glamour, either - there literally was no door until one walked through it. It was deep magic, this, and the sort of stuff that would have given Schroedinger nightmares, or perhaps wet dreams - but Gwendolyn Post wasn't about to be disconcerted by something so simple.

She strode into the wall and passed through into the safe room, then paused just inside the threshold to survey the amassed artefacts. Priceless. The witches were cretins to harbour all these items and take no advantage of the wealth they had accrued over the centuries. Such a mouth-watering Aladdin's cave of Etruscan gems and Anasazi amulets, of blood-soaked Sumerian statuary and prophetic Dacian scrolls! Her fingers itched with the nearness of all this quiescent power; all these objects waiting patiently for their mistress to come and claim them. Perfect. Let the vampire distract the little fools - it would not take them long to finish him off, but she didn't need much time. And even if they caught her, their geas crippled them. Idiots.

She ran her tongue over dry lips and experimentally ordered the Golem forwards. Nothing - no magical cacophony or flashes of light. As far as she could detect the room was unprotected, but it seemed so easy that she was automatically mistrustful. Paused a moment more, then straightened her spine and marched into the room. It really was just as easy as that.

* * *


He rounded the corner, muscles starting to ache from the strain of fighting against the tide of power - felt like he was wading through treacle - and found himself looking down yet another bloody whitewashed corridor. But this one - thank Christ! - was lined with doors. Very Alice in Wonderland; Spike half expected to see a be-waistcoated rabbit consulting its pocket watch. (Drusilla loved the Alice books, and as far as he could gather she took them entirely seriously; certainly far more seriously than she did any of Darwin's nonsensical notions. The knots in his gut tightened convulsively at the sudden memory of reading Dodgson's stories to her in a shambolic nursery in South Kensington decades ago. She had dandled Miss Edith in her gory satin lap, primly licking fresh blood from her skinny fingers, and clapped gleefully when he got to the Queen of Hearts' stentorian calls for decapitation.)

Nostalgia wasn't getting him anywhere. Spike stared at the array of doors for a moment or two, looking for some sign. His girl had to be behind one of them - he could smell her somewhere close at hand, even through the thick scent of smouldering herbs and incense. He could still hear human hearts and an off-pitch humming laced with words in archaic Czech, but something was distorting his sense of direction and the noise could have come from anywhere as far as his ears were concerned. No sound of Drusilla; he couldn't decide whether her silence was a good thing or a bad thing and wondered again how these wretched witches proposed to avenge themselves without breaking their geas. They can't kill her, he told himself, repeating it again and again like a mantra in his head. They can't kill her. It's not allowed.

He shoved forward into the sludgy currents of magic, donned his fiercest predator's scowl and ripped open the first door with enough force to make the hinges scream. Loomed panting on the threshold and snarled ferociously at -

...an empty storage room.

Damn.

He dragged himself deeper down the corridor and flung himself savagely at the next door, with much the same result. No Drusilla. Not behind the second or the third or the fourth or -

And there she was at last, wide-eyed and wriggling, her mouth distorted into a soundless scream that quite put Edvard Munch to shame. She hung suspended in a thickening column of half-opaque orange light four or five feet above a glinting circular shape that was either a distorted mirror or a pool of - something. The air around her precious feet was hardening even as he watched. He blinked. His girl was slowly being encased in amber. In the dirty nightgown, with her disordered hair hanging in liquorice tangles down her back and the mangled manacles glinting at her wrists, Dru looked like a nightmarishly disreputable pantomime Wendy; although he couldn't see any wires holding her up. But she was flesh, not dust - the pure exhilaration he felt at having this confirmed was overwhelming. She was whole and his and still far more vividly alive than any of the living cattle they fed upon. Thank fuck.

The forcefield, or whatever the blazes that whole hideous air-like-mud thing had been, was evidently limited to the corridor; he felt almost weightless now that gravity was back to its normal self, strength and energy zinging through his cold veins like cheap liquor. Everything was going to be just fine.

The first spell knocked him flat on his back and sent him flying over the smooth stone floor like a kid skidding on black ice. Fortunately his rapid progress was halted by a wall; the pain in his skull that this occasioned was really quite considerable.

Spike got to his feet a little shakily and squared his shoulders. Looked down this time, rather than just staring at his levitating lover, and took in the inevitable ring of humans. Who the hell did they think they were? A dozen of them, just as he'd thought - and such unremarkable women one would never have given them a second glance on the street. A few were dressed the part, in vaguely gothic or hippyish clothes, but for the most part they looked like shopgirls and housewives, their hair coloured with cheap dye and their makeup based on last year's Hollywood movies. Shopgirls and housewives with whiteless eyes of sheer liquid midnight, and enough power to hypnotise Drusilla and draw her mindlessly across the city in spite of chains and handcuffs.

They had been intent on their spell when he entered and most of them continued to hum and mumble, their pitch-dark eyes fixed unblinkingly on Drusilla; but a couple had turned their attention towards him. It was the blonde who'd got the first blow in, from the grimly satisfied look on her milk-and-water face. Bitch.

"We can do this the easy way, ladies, or we can do this the hard way," he said, his voice infused with all the cockiness he could muster in the circumstances. In English, because it was Johnny Foreigner's job to understand him, damn it. Jenny Foreigner. Whatever.

He couldn't help but notice that they didn't smell afraid. Perhaps he should have waited for Gwenny and her pet boulder after all; a ruthless and amoral female magic user who was on his side would be pretty damned handy right about now. If she were really on his side, that was - he'd be a fool to trust that woman as far as he could throw her wretched golem.

The second spell tried to slam him back against the wall again - not very imaginative, these girls - but he was braced for the impact this time and he leaned into it, hands buried deep in the pockets of his duster and arms flat against his body. Fingers closed over the forgotten glass bauble salvaged from the Watchers' House for Dusilla's amusement. The glass felt warm against his skin and he clasped it with all the fierce tenderness he possessed, determined not to let it break. He'd found the bloody book and stormed the bloody fortress - he was damned well going to save the girl and live happily ever after with his fairy princess if he had to kill every bloody person in Central Europe in the process.

He slid back a few inches, but that was all. Ha. Watched the bitch responsible for that particular little love pat frown her surprise and displeasure. She reached out one ring-laden hand towards him, muttering another incantation.

"Oh, I don't think so, love." Stopped fighting quite abruptly and let the current carry him back, then grabbed the nearest column and used the momentum to swing himself right around and clean out of the path of her spell. Oh, and they weren't expecting that - she was still rocking on the balls of her feet when he fell onto the nearest chanting witch and snapped her brittle neck with brisk efficiency. Moved so damn fast she didn't have time to gasp.

The discordant humming and mumbled Czech broke off altogether for one horrified moment and Drusilla's scream split the air, for all the world as if someone had let go of a mute switch. In that instant the curdling light around her faded and she began to fall, but before she had dropped more than an inch or so one of the witches resumed the spell-casting and Dru's voice was swallowed away again whilst the sunset glow buoyed her back up. It was all over in a heartbeat - the piercing cry, the half-fall - all over before the broken witch hit the ground at Spike's feet.

"Come on! Is this the best you can do? What was all the fuss about?"

The fast-congealing amber was mid-way up Drusilla's calves, but the witches had all turned their tar-black eyes away from her. They continued to hum and chant, but he had their attention now.

Blondie spat a spell at him, her face distorted with rage. He was running before the first syllable left her mouth, weaving between the columns in the hopes that this would be another piece of non-specific firepower that a person could dodge or outsmart without any actual hey presto skills. No such luck. He felt it hit him like a bucket of icy water as soon as the phrase was uttered; magic coated his body in an instant and the visceral sense of horror was sudden and total.