"Watch Over Me" Chpt 2 (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
Okay, here's chapter two. I look forward to reviews from any of you out there. Thanks again for reading! And have a Happy New Year. :)
Chapter 2
The Scoobies met again outside Giles's apartment complex as they'd planned, a little more than an hour later. Xander and Anya were a bit late with their allotment of the supplies, and from the looks of them Buffy didn't want to know what had slowed them down. She merely gave them a look, rolled her eyes and allowed Xander to look sheepish as the six of them went through the gate together to approach her Watcher's door.
Buffy was glancing at Riley as he said something, and so didn't see whatever it was that crashed to the ground a moment later.
“Buffy! Look!”
It was Willow's voice, and Buffy twisted to take in her friend's horrified face and the soda bottles that were now spilling around everyone's feet. She heard Tara gasp, and Riley curse quietly. Then she saw what they were looking at.
“That can't be good,” Xander swallowed.
Giles's door was broken and hanging inward, and though she couldn't see much yet she could already sense the aftermath of carnage. “Oh no...” She swallowed back any further reaction and turned quickly to the others. “The rest of you stay here. I'll check this out.”
“Buffy-” Riley took a step forward, and she knew what request he was making. After a moment she nodded, and set her bags on the ground to head for the door. Riley dropped what he'd been carrying too, and followed. Thanks to the Initiative's drugs, he was stronger than the average human-not as strong as she was, but he could give her a decent fight on a good day.
Buffy approached the open doorway cautiously, her chest clenching tightly and threatening to take what breath she had left. She had to resist the urge to gasp openly; god, if anything had happened to Giles...
She shut the thought away and moved inside, grimacing at the stench that hit her. At least one of the reasons for it was obvious immediately in the dead orange hulk on the floor. But she was definitely smelling more than that, and moving around the couch to the rest of the living room she saw three more dead demons, all smaller but large enough to have been threatening in life. One by the wall still had the blade of a battle axe buried in its chest.
Riley didn't say anything. He moved silently upstairs to check for anything or anyone, and while he was up there she moved into the hallway to check the bathroom and kitchen. There was nothing there out of the ordinary, and as she came back into the main room her boyfriend was coming back down the stairs.
“Anything?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Buffy let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and sank onto one of the stools at the bar that seperated the kitchen and main area. Her insides suddenly felt like Jell-o. “Then he's not here,” she breathed. “He's not...here.”
It was bad, but it was better than finding Giles dead.
Riley moved to her side, and rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “You okay?”
Her jaw set. “Not really.” She looked up to see him staring down at her with those concerned eyes, and quickly stood. “I'll be fine. We have a problem to deal with. Go get the others; I'll start taking a closer look at all this.”
He nodded and went to do as she'd asked, and at the moment she couldn't have been more grateful for his soldiers' efficiency. Right now what she needed was to keep her head, and his relative willingness to dispense with the freak-outs and get down to business was a big help. She knew he cared, and that was good.
Now to find out just what the hell had happened here.
Xander was the first to speak as Riley brought the other four in. “Oh holy hell.”
Willow's horrified face was still on, but she was beginning to get it under control and it was obvious that having Tara at her side was helping in that respect. The other witch gripped Willow's hand tightly, whispering calming things into her ear.
None of them asked about Giles, so Buffy assumed Riley had mentioned that they hadn't found him here. “Giles is missing,” she said then, just to make certain everyone knew the specific problem at hand. She motioned to the dead demons scattered on the floor. “It looks like he was attacked, and whatever was left of them hauled him off.”
“Meaning, I would assume, that our job now is to find him,” Riley filled in.
“And kill whatever took him,” Buffy agreed.
Tara and Willow were at the back of the couch now, looking over it at the bodies. Tara seemed to to be a little dumbstruck.
“M-Mr. Giles did all this?”
Buffy managed a resigned smile. “I don't guess you've seen a lot of that side of him. He can fight, and he's good at it. He had to be, or he couldn't have taught me a lot of what I know.” She couldn't say all, but the painful memory of her short-lived first Watcher from back in L.A. had been long ago locked away for good. What mattered was now. Giles mattered now.
“If whoever planned this just wanted him dead, they'd have killed him and he'd still be here,” Buffy continued, making herself believe what she was saying. “That means he's still alive somewhere.”
“Buffy...” Xander had crossed to the other side of the living room as she spoke, to examine the battlefield and the dead demons, but now he was crouched by the coffee table. “I think you should come look at this.”
She went to him, and knelt beside him to look at the corner of the wooden surface.
There was human blood there. Not enough to be seriously alarming, but it made her stomach churn just the same. “He's hurt,” she said quietly.
Xander nodded slowly. “Considering the mess in here I'd have said that was probably a given already, but yeah...he's hurt.”
Buffy swallowed and stood, crossing her arms as she faced the others again. Willow had gone pale, and the others had their grim-but, thankfully, determined-faces firmly in place. Even Anya.
“We'll find him,” she assured them. “We've got work to do.”
No one argued.
Rupert was more than a little surprised to wake up at all, but once he realized he was alive he wasn't at all caught off guard by the throbbing in his skull that was centered at the back of his head. He remembered the demons, going down, the impact with that damned coffee table...
It took him another moment or so to put himself together enough remember he should be concerned about where he was.
He forced his eyes open, staring blearily at the dim surroundings. Almost before his vision cleared he could tell already that his captors had set up shop in one of the many abandoned or rarely used warehouses that littered the outskirts of Sunnydale. They seemed to be such a popular place for the creatures of darkness that inevitably came to the town to settle that he wasn't surprised about that, either. Giles realized he was sitting on the cold concrete floor, being held upright by the steel support beam at his back. His arms were behind him, around the beam, and his wrists were tied. It was uncomfortable, but not unbearable.
He was surprised that his glasses had not yet been knocked from his face.
What surprised him even more was the assortment of beings he saw scattered inside. There were five or six demons, and nearly a dozen vampires. Some seemed to mill around aimlessly, and others were gathered in small groups. Two different circles of vampires played cards, and three of the demons present encircled a battered pool table. There were dilapidated chairs and couches and old pizza boxes, and off to one side of the space was an old metal desk with chairs gathered around it. The place looked for the all the world like the modern demons' version of a base of operations.
Demons and vampires both rarely gathered at all, much less with each other. It was quite strange indeed. It was obvious enough why the vampires were inside, though, and not out hunting; Giles could see cracks of daylight filtering in here and there-enough to keep the place from being any darker than it already was.
Giles kept quiet, trying to observe all he could before being noticed, but it wasn't much longer before a few of them realized he was awake. One of them he recognized as the green demon he had injured back at his apartment. Thanks to demon physiology the wound was already beginning to heal, but it still looked nasty. He took what satisfaction he could from that, giving a thing a cold stare as it grinned at him beastially. Then the small demon skittered to the side of a tall one that had been standing near another of the inside support beams several yards away. It seemed he had been just watching, keeping an eye on all those here.
“Sohlehk. The Watcher is awake,” the small green demon reported eagerly.
The tall one called Sohlehk turned. Perhaps he was the leader here?
He was large, even taller than the horned orange beast that had broken in Giles's front door, and certainly taller than any normal human. He wasn't as thick-bodied as the other demon had been, but he had a certain presence. His color wouldn't have been strange on a human of medium skin tone, and but for his tough, thick hide and the ridges that went down the sides of his arms, across his forehead and down his cheeks he looked very similar to a human. His hands were strange, though. There were only three meaty fingers and a thumb on each, and in the centers of the palms there were more ridges, forming rough circles. The hide within the circles was nearly black, and instinctively Giles knew that some sort of power was meant to be gathered there-for whatever it was that this particular brand of demon could do. But he had never seen one of its like before. He had no idea what that might be.
But he would bet anything that it was something that had gotten this assortment of beings to follow him.
Sohlehk approached him, the small green lizard-like demon close at his heels as it sent menacing looks Giles's way.
“You have decided to join us,” Sohlehk observed in a rumble.
“Yes. I supposed it was at least preferable to never waking up at all.”
The lizard showed its teeth in that odd smirk again. “Don't be so certain of that.”
If that was meant to alarm him-well, it suceeded. Not that any of these lot would ever know it.
“If you want the Slayer, why am I here?” he demanded.
“Without her Watcher the Slayer will be at a disadvantage.”
Giles snorted. “I don't believe so; she is certainly more than capable without me. Where have you been for the last year and a half?”
“We were all locked away by the ridiculous humans in the green clothing,” the small green demon hissed. “We were held captive for months on end.”
The Initiative, he realized. These demons and vampires must have been among those trapped there that escaped when the facility tore itself apart. Apparently they didn't have the same 'behavior modification' technology in their cerebral cortexes as whatever had been inserted in Spike's brain.
Sohlehk took up the short narration. “Now that we are free, we will take the Slayer. Then this city will be ours.”
Giles blinked. The assertion wasn't one to be taken lightly, especially when this demon seemed to have a good number of followers. However, that didn't mean he would give them the satisfaction of appearing to take them seriously. “Yes, well, good luck with that.”
Seconds later the Watcher was staring at the floor, his head was spinning and pounding much louder than before, and his wrists were aching from behing pulled in unnatural directions as he hung bent over. Giles sucked in a breath and slowly straightened himself, wincing from the sting of two seperate scrapes in his cheek as he realized that Sohlehk had strode forward and struck him. Hard. He could already feel a bruise forming under the cuts from the demon's short but sharp nails.
“What the Slayer is or is not capable of with or without you does not matter. She will look for you. She will find you eventually, and we will have her.”
“She isn't stupid, if that was what you were hoping for,” Giles retorted.
“No. Of course not. We will take other measures.” Sohlehk's eyes narrowed. “Beginning with you.” He motioned, and the green lizard-like demon moved quickly to invade Giles's space. The scaly thing had strong claws much longer than Sohlehk had, and Giles had to force himself not to watch them as they danced near his face.
“You killed four of our companions,” Sohlehk said quietly, menacingly. “And you left Dagkel injured. Therefore I believe that means he is the one entitled to take the revenge for the losses of the battle.”
Dagkel hissed out something like a laugh, but Giles kept his eyes fixed definantly on Sohlehk. The lizard-like being beside him drew even closer, and he waited. When it seemed neither would expect anything, he moved. Tightening his arms and back to brace himself against the beam behind him, he snapped his legs up to kick the small green demon harshly to the side, but not far enough away that he couldn't come back to get his legs around the thing's neck. He planned to snap it.
But Dagkel barely managed to slither away, and in a second he had turned on Giles and ruthlessly stabbed one of his ugly talons through the rebellious human's shoulder.
Rupert screamed before he could stop himself. His entire body jerked from the pain. The lizard twisted the claw in his flesh, and that too hurt like hell.
Giles screwed his jaw shut and locked it that way, refusing to allow another outburst. He heard himself grunting, but he forced his mind to annalytical mode. The talon was long, but it was thin, and only curved slightly. His shoulder was on fire as if the whole of it had been ripped to shreds, but he knew the wound itself would not be as hopelessly large as it felt. And it was only flesh, not nerves or joint. More than likely he would still have full range of motion in the shoulder as soon as it healed...
Analyzing ceased to be effective.
As Dagkel twisted again Rupert gasped sharply, the air coming out again seconds later in a shout as his back arched away from the steel beam behind him. The the demon did it twice more, pulling a distressed groan and another gasp from its victim before it withdrew the claw from the wound none too carefully and backed away-still grinning it's nasty grin.
Giles slumped back against the beam. His skin was covered in a fine layer of sweat now, and he knew he was trembling. He didn't know how much of that could be seen by the demons and their vampire compatriots who stood gathered and leering.
There was little he could do about it either way.
In the haze of pain that settled over his consiousness, for a moment he heard Angel's voice instead of Sohlehk's-or, more correctly, the voice of Angelus. For a moment he was in a dark room of an abandoned mansion, tied to a chair instead of a warehouse's support beam.
“If you were to tell us where the Slayer lives, even give us a name...it would make our task that much easier to accomplish. It might even negate the need to keep you here much longer”
Buffy. They wanted him to give up Buffy. They would find her, and they would kill her, or try to, and he would have failed. Again. And then they would probably kill him anyway.
Giles pushed back with his feet and straightened as much as he could, chest still heaving to some degree. He pulled his head up and glared at the demons and vampires alike, before focusing on Sohlehk.
“Kindly...go...to hell.”
After the bodies were cleared from the apartment, the Scoobies split up into teams, took starting location assignments from Buffy, and headed out to begin an initial sweep of Sunnydale. By that point Buffy was wired, obviously more than a little concerned about what might have become of Giles, and too keyed-up to deal with a partner in the field. That was how Xander had ended up here, patrolling with Riley Finn. With Buffy out on her own and Willow and Tara together, that made three fronts for the search. Anya was back at Giles's place, manning the phone at what had become command central.
The two young men had seen nothing so far, but Xander still held the crossbow he carried warily. Maybe it was daylight, afternoon, but there could still be danger in that shadows. Besides that, it had been demons to break into Giles's home, not vampires. Vampires wouldn't have been able to get in in the first place. Therefore, crossbow. A weapon. Protection. Riley carried his own handgun, and had a stake tucked into a back pocket as they scanned the alleys and abandoned buildings of downtown Sunnydale from the center out. There wasn't much talking, but that was fine. They were supposed to be paying attention to their surroundings, anyway.
Xander followed Riley as they rounded a corner, moving from a smaller side alley into a larger one. On a better day he would have let his macho take over, insisted on taking the lead at least some of the time, but not today. Riley had more training, and Xander knew it. He also knew that he wanted them to have the best chance of staying alive themselves, and finding Giles-alive.
Riley frowned, and Xander looked at him curiously, questionig him after a moment. “What?”
“Haven't we been down this alley before?”
“Aren't you keeping up with that?”
“Trying to. Thought you were keeping up that.”
“Hey, you're the smart one here. I never even pretended to go to college, remember?”
Riley opened his mouth to protest that, but quickly shut it again. There was no point. He let out a breath. “Sorry.”
Xander shrugged. “Whatever. Doesn't really matter; can't hurt to look somewhere twice. We don't need to miss anything.”
The other man nodded slowly. “I'm getting that. We can't afford to screw this one up, can we?”
“Not if we want Buffy in one piece, no.”
Riley looked at him sharply, and Xander winced. “We have to find him, Riley. I know for sure Willow and I would be pretty heartbroken if anything happened to him, and...I'm guessing you and Anya and Tara would be a little put out, but I don't even want to think about what Buffy would do.” He looked away, realizing he was having one of his few-and-far-between serious moments, and was as usual a little freaked out but not quite sure what else to do but just go with it. “Unfortunately, my first guess would have to be that she'd go on a rampage after whatever did it and get herself killed in the process.”
When he looked back, Riley just stared at him for a moment before saying anything. “You're serious.”
“Dead serious.”
Xander watched his companion; watched as Riley realized a few things about his girlfriend that he might not have thought so much about before.
“Actually, that...makes some sense,” army-boy said finally.
“So no telling me I'm wrong, or I'm crazy? Most people seem to like doing that.”
Riley grimaced. “I wish I could, but...I don't think you're wrong.”
Xander nodded silently and motioned forward with the crossbow. “Well, I'd really rather not get to congratulate myself on being right, so...”
Riley nodded once, grimly, and the two of them moved on.
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