Automated Utopia :: Chapter Ten & Epilogue.
Title: Automated Utopia
Author: fenderlove
Rating: This chapter is rated R for language, blood, and violence.
Summary: This fanfiction is set in a Victorian SteamPunk Alternate Universe in which inventions such as Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and the harnessing of steam-power have launched a technological revolution far earlier in history. The time is 1885, and Angel Investigations is working for Scotland Yard. A new case involving a missing artifact from the British Museum and a demonic cult sends the wayward detectives on a whirlwind adventure to reclaim the object before all is lost.
Pairings: Spike/Fred.
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Automated Utopia:: Ten and Epilogue.
Chapter Ten
Inside the warehouse, Fred clutched her hands over her ears in reflex as George’s call went out like an incendiary between her ears. It stopped her in her tracks, and, in the surprise of the moment, she was tackled to the ground. Fred struggled with her assailant, trying to roll out of his grip. His weight crushed her midsection, knocking the air of out her. She thrust out her hands, scratching and hitting her attacker’s face, desperately trying to keep from being restrained by him. Her captor’s mask came off in her hands, and she saw a face she recalled from the night of the robbery at the British Museum.
“The tea boy?” she barely recognized her own voice as the words left her throat.
The seemingly mild-mannered young man who served tea to Sir Augustus and Dr. Breedlove to calm their shaken nerves was now sporting deep scratches down his forehead. He squeezed one of her wrists, hard enough that Fred felt the bones crackle beneath his fingers. Screaming out in pain, she attempted to perform a defensive maneuver that she had seen Spike successfully carry out a thousand times over- a headbutt. Her forehead connected solidly with the boy’s nose, and blood rained down on her from the wound. Even with a painful and serious injury, the young man was unmoved, outmatching her in size especially with him sitting on top of her. He volleyed two severe punches to her face, splitting her lip and bruising her cheek. Fred tasted the hot blood in her mouth and felt nauseous, nearly losing consciousness for a few seconds.
“Silas, leave her alone!” the taller of their captor’s said. The voice was quite female, the distortion removed. Fred turned her head to see Dr. Breedlove storming over towards them, her mask pulled away from her face. The museum librarian snapped, “Go help the others return the Splendeen demon.”
Once Silas’s weight was off of her, Fred tried to roll over on her side, clutching her wounded wrist to her chest. She could see Silas’s mesh mask lying on the floor, an audio-transdisrupter attached near the mouth. Still reeling from the shock of her injuries, Fred hoped that George was able to escape after sending out their S.O.S.
“I told you I was going to let you go,” Dr. Breedlove said with an irritated tone. “No matter, I suppose. The world is going to be so different once the ritual starts that you might as well stay to watch.”
“Ritual?” Fred’s mouth felt swollen, her words coming out slurred.
“Yes, all that work you did, my dear, was not for my pure academic amusement. You’ve helped me find a way to unlock a brand new world- a better one than this. No demons, no monsters, just perfection,” Dr. Breedlove had a gleam in her eyes that alluded to how real and precious this idea was to her. She then instructed two of the remaining robed figures to take Fred to the main hall while she finished preparations for the ritual to take place.
Fred felt herself being lifted up, but her mind was elsewhere, too foggy from shock to be considered truly lucid. Her thoughts went to Spike. He had rescued her from strangulation by a vengeful spirit while she had been in the process of trying to save him from eternal damnation. She had told him that he was worth saving, and how she had meant every word! If she had been worthy enough of finding rescue from the bondage of slavery in Pylea, then Spike too had been equally worthy of escaping a fate worse than death. Of course, Spike managed to save her and in the process save himself. If he rescued her again, she would owe him doubly. Fred would have laughed at the thought if half of her face was not numb. She wanted to laugh, wanted to get up, and run away. She did not want to be stuck playing the damsel in distress yet again. Fred had fought and done all she could; she hoped Spike and the others would understand, hoped that if they did find her that none of them would be hurt.
After several long moments, Fred finally realized she was no longer in motion. She had closed her eyes without meaning to, and when she opened them, she saw Betta George lying on the ground next to her, bound in a large net. He appeared to be unconscious.
“George?” she whispered, fear creeping into her voice. He did not respond to her. She reached out with her uninjured hand and stroked his scaly head through the ropes.
“Don’t trouble yourself over that demon,” Dr. Breedlove stated.
Fred began to take in the room as a whole. It was large and open. Dr. Breedlove stood at a large altar on a platform near the room’s center. She held the three tomes from the Northead collection in her hands, placing them on the altar and opening them. As torches were lit, Fred could see an intricately created circle etched into the floor inlaid with crystals and precious metals. Forty or more robed ritualists were milling along with, to Fred’s horror, at least a dozen of the gargoyle-like creatures that had attacked Spike beside the Jolly Dogs’ were lurking in the shadows.
“This will be a new era of harmony and beauty, a reawakening of the world!” Dr. Breedlove spoke fervently, running her hands over the books. She began to read from one of the smaller volumes, “Hesicibo nokamis na…”
The books began to pulse with an eerily yellow light which shifted to pale green as Dr. Breedlove continued. The robed figures all bowed to her as if praying to a god or worshipping a queen. Fred felt an intense pain in her head that seemed to correspond with the light bleating from nothing to brightness. As Dr. Breedlove seemed to reach the end of the incantation, the floor began to tremble; a few of the torches went out with all the shaking. The books and the summoning circle in the floor below roared into a violent incandescent blue, hurting Fred’s eyes even from a distance away. And then, there was nothing.
Nothing had changed; the room appeared just the same as it had been moments earlier. The rest of this cabal seemed to be looking confusedly at one another beneath their hoods. Dr. Breedlove too appeared shocked. Her arms were upraised as though she was ready to welcome this new world, but instead there was nothing to see.
“What? What’s going on?” Dr. Breedlove stated as she began flipping pages as though she were looking for something she missed. She even took out the sheet of notes that Fred had given her. “This isn’t right. It can’t be… I did everything right!” Her face turned from horror to anger. She pointed down at Fred, “You! You and that- that fish tricked me!”
Fred forced herself to a seated position on the floor, getting ready to possibly have to make another attempt at escape, “No, I swear, I decoded it using a sound theory, but it may not have been correct-”
Dr. Breedlove jumped down from the platform and stalked towards her, “You did it on purpose! The fish said that you were the key!” Before Fred could get to her feet, Dr. Breedlove grabbed a fist full of her hair, “I will have my utopia!”
Fearful of being struck on the side of her face that was not currently in pain, Fred quickly turned her head, awaiting the blows to come. The sound that came next was like the blast of a canon. Fred whipped her head up just as the librarian’s grip loosened on her hair. Dr. Breedlove’s expression was stricken, a gaping wound in the center of her chest, oozing out dark blood that seemed to sparkle in the flickering torchlight. Her body fell, blood mixing with the sawdust on the floor.
“Sorry, my dear Abigail,” Silas spoke coolly from near the platform, a pistol in hand, his nose discoloured and swollen from where Fred had headbutted him, “but you always were a bit of an idiot.”
As he approached Fred, she was unable to get to fully mobile, hindered without the use of both hands. Silas kicked Breedlove’s body out of his way, taking hold of Fred’s injured wrist and twisting it. He jerked her to her feet as she cried out in pain.
“Don’t worry, Missy, you still get to see the show,” he gave her a strong shove, and she stumbled into the arms of another.
As she lifted her head, the robed figure that caught her removed his mask, revealing a middle-aged man with a strong jaw, a carefully manicured beard, and a pair of cold, penetrating eyes.
“Let me introduce you to my uncle,” Silas smirked, tucking his pistol back under his long robe, “You and your friends at the Museum were kind enough to look into the left of his artifacts.”
“Dr. Northead?” Fred spoke, confused.
“The great, not-quite-so-late, in fact,” Daniel Northead replied nonchalantly. “And you, my girl, are quite clever, solving our little puzzle.”
“But,” Fred stammered, “but it didn’t work. You saw-”
“Yes, indeed, I did see. I saw that simpering fool Breedlove attempt to open the Device of Utopia without all the facts,” Northead responded.
“Though that can hardly be considered her fault, Uncle, since we never informed her of the facts in the first place,” Silas said, using the toe of his boot to roll Breedlove’s body over. Her rummaged through her cloak and found Fred’s notes, neatly folded, “The poor old bird was an excellent patsy, kept us from getting our hands dirty.”
Fred shook her head, “I do not understand what’s going on. If you are trying to achieve the same goal she was, why double-cross her?”
“Because she was an idealist,” Dr. Northead stated, “while I myself am a pragmatist. You see, for centuries people have tried to create utopian societies, but they always fail.” He began to half drag half carry Fred towards the platform. “And they fail because within every society, even a perfect one, there must be a leader, or else the society will collapse into chaos and anarchy.”
“Does that not defeat the purpose of having a utopian society if there are some who are of a higher caste than others?” Fred questioned, angrily.
“As I said, I am a pragmatist. Utopian societies are doomed to failure if everyone is pandered to, but this will be different. This will be my utopia, my paradise, a world of my own making,” he responded, pulling her onto the platform.
“So you’ve what? Killed innocent people, kidnapped demons and myself, so that you can be king of the world?” Fred felt a keen sense of righteousness build up inside of her as she struggled against him. “You’re nothing but a monster.”
Shoving her roughly to the floor, Dr. Northead barked with dark laughter, “This event has been over three centuries in the making, little girl.” He called to Silas to begin clearing the inner circle of debris, meaning Betta George’s unconscious body and Dr. Breedlove’s corpse. “Every demon on earth is about be purified. I will be a new God with an army of angels bringing about a perfect, golden world.”
Silas stepped onto the platform, staring pointedly at Fred, “You should consider yourself lucky that you get to witness such glory.”
“I’ve seen what some consider glory; it’s usually a vile trap or a higher being that feeds off people,” Fred frowned, wishing for anything that she had her steam rifle with her so that she could wipe the villainous smirk from Silas’s face.
“This is no trap,” Dr. Northead replied, “My great-great-great grandfather Nikolas Thorande discovered the secret to the grand reinvention of the world within the great ruins of Greece, but his followers turned on him before he could perform the ritual. He recorded the rites encoded in these books,” Dr. Northead indicated the altar, “and spirited them away to Cyprus before he was assassinated by his own cult.”
Silas took out a small vial from his robes and handed it to Dr. Northead, “And for the next three hundred years, our family searched the ruins attempting to rediscover what was rightfully ours.”
Dr. Northead gazed longingly into the dark vial, “Until the money ran out… Just when I had found the correct location! That’s why we had to involve the British Museum. I assumed the name Northead and falsified a background. They funded my expedition, helped me get my family’s treasure back through the ports without a second glance from the authorities.”
“Then why fake your death and let the British Museum take control of your artifacts? You could have just done whatever you wanted with them once you were in the country!” Fred’s anger at the hauteur of this man was incredible, and it filled her very person with the desire to kick him in the shins.
“You see, I have never been the scholarly sort. I needed someone to help me translate the books,” Dr. Northead explained, “I brought Dr. Breedlove into our inner circle, thinking that a woman of her qualifications would be able to solve it, but I found out that she was quite useless.”
Silas added, “If that fool Augustus Franks was not half mad, he would have been able to see through her wiles to the fact that she was a daft cow. If we had someone more competent at the Museum, we might actually have had to worry about someone recognizing the artifacts weren’t nearly as old as they were authenticated as. At least, we don’t have to worry about either of those two imbeciles anymore.” With a childish twirl of his pistol, Silas laughed maniacally.
“She was, however, good at one thing- doing all the dirty work and keeping my name out of it,” Northead continued, “So I faked an illness, letting Breedlove think I had died and that she was taking over our sect. Silas found his way as her assistant, helping in her the most daunting task of rounding up the demons we needed to make our army while plotting the theft of our property which had fallen back into Museum custody thanks to that ridiculous grant arrangement and before anyone got wise enough to spot the little discrepancies in Breedlove’s authentication.”
“But in the aspect of actually transmogrifying the demons into pure creatures, she once again proved a failure, leaving us with this grotesque hulks,” Silas indicated the gargoyle-like homunculi demons.
“The only thing she did right was find you,” Northead chuckled, taking Fred’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at him, “You are a clever wee thing, pretty too. I think I would like to keep you around.”
Fred returned his sentiments by spitting in his face. He slapped her hard to the ground.
“But there is one thing even a bright girl like you could not figure out,” Northead opened up the vial and poured seven glass beads into his palm. “I found some of my grandfather’s earlier writings along with the first of the seven keys necessary for activating the ritual. The first was hidden in a family talisman while the rest were hidden within the pottery and artifacts in the temple hideaway the old man dug out. He was a tricky bastard.” He flipped the largest tome closed and began inserting the beads into the delicate filigree work Fred had admired when she had been trapped in her cell. “Without them, the incantations will never work.” Northead muttered to himself as he carefully placed the beads within the metalwork, “Orange for Sol… green for Luna… yellow for Venus… blue for Jupiter… violet for Mercury… black for Saturn… and red for Mars…”
“That red looks a little magenta-ish to me,” Silas quipped, still fiddling with his pistol.
“Shut it, boy,” Northead hissed. Once every bead was in place, Silas handed him the notes he had confiscated off of Breedlove’s corpse, “Now, we are ready to begin again.”
Fred’s heart and mind were racing as Dr. Northead began reciting the text that she had decoded. Once again the ground shook with tremendous force. She made a last desperate attempt to prevent the travesty that would befall the whole of civilization would such lunatics be in total control. With all the momentum she could muster, she leapt at Silas, reaching for his pistol. After a few seconds of wrestling for the weapon, the young man was able to kick her away. Fred collapsed to the platform in a heap; her spirit was still strong, but her strength had fled from her. As she struggled just to sit up, Silas’s boot to her back kept her down.
Even with her head downcast and eyes closed, the light that emanated from the books was overwhelming. Fred felt the keen prick of hot, angry tears. They were not tears from her injuries nor of self-pity; they were a manifestation of the deep grief that consumed her. It was a grief for actually helping these mad men achieve their goal, for all the innocent lives that could be lost under their regime, and for her friends that she let down. No amount of diplomas from a university could save anyone now.
When the vibrations of the earth and the light was once again gone, there was complete silence. With great apprehension, Fred’s eyes opened, the quiet almost deafening. Looking up, her surroundings did not appear to have changed. Dr. Northead and Silas stood by the altar, appearing dumbfounded.
“No…” the word was more like a gasp as Dr. Northead shook his head.
Silas mouth was turned in a very sour frown, “What that it, Uncle?”
“No, you fool, that was not it!” Dr. Northead gripped the sides of the altar. His beady, rat-like eyes darted to and fro in a calculating manner. When they fell upon Fred, they narrowed. Snatching Silas’s pistol from his hands, he grabbed Fred by the hair, pressing the barrel to her temple. “You bitch, you really did think you could pull the wool over our eyes!”
“I didn’t,” Fred snapped, her body rigid, “I told Dr. Breedlove that I used a theory to decode the text, but perhaps my theory was wrong.”
“You lying cow,” Dr. Northead voice took on a murderous edge, “You’re keeping the real translation to yourself.”
“I am not a cow,” Fred’s eyes matched the dangerous tone of Dr. Northead’s speech.
“Leave her alone!” came a tired, yet determined call.
Betta George lolled drunkenly into the air, the heavy rope netting weighing him down. He floated towards the stage, nearly dropping totally to the ground several times before falling beside Fred.
“Blame me, if you must take out your anger on someone,” George pleaded, “Perhaps I made a mistake in picking her as the person to translate the books! I am only a telepath, not a seer! Plus all the wards your people bound my powers with might have limited me-”
George was silenced by a sharp blow from the butt of the pistol. Fred took Northead’s distraction to lock her hands, even with her injured wrist, and slamming them between his legs, knocking him off his balance and allowing her to throw herself off the platform and attempt another run. She did not know where she was running to, but she ran, her bare feet being scraped by the metals and stones set into the summoning circle on the floor.
Silas was behind her in an instant, removing a boot knife from its holster. He managed to catch hold of the bustle of her gown and pull her backwards, one arm wrapped around her waist while the other held the knife blade to her throat. At first, Fred saw nothing but the darkness of the room in front of her as the blade pinched her skin. Then, there was a pale blue light. For a moment, Fred thought that she had died instantly from having her throat cut, but as her eyes adjusted she realized her was staring at the familiar headlights of the Seville.
It appeared that Spike had driven the automobile up to the corrugated metal loading-bay gate and crashed right through it. Fred let out a short laugh even with a villain at her throat. She had never seen a more glorious site than that of her friends stepping in front of the tesla headlights with their weapons drawn, all trained on her would-be assassin.
As they began a quick approach, Silas panicked, backtracking with Fred still in his grasp, towards the platform. “Stay back!” he shouted. “Keep where you are or I slit her throat!”
Having heard sort of threat before, Angel and the others did not stop entirely, though they did slow their pace. A bullet deflecting off the floor and zipping over their heads, however, did cause they to yield. Dr. Northead held the still smoking pistol trained on Angel at the group’s center. Silas hoisted Fred onto the platform, and both men began using her as a shield, a pistol to her head and a knife to her throat. The tableau before him caused Spike’s vampiric features to descend. A soft clicking could be heard as Wesley cocked his pistols.
“Leave now, and we’ll let her go once we’re done with her,” Northead shouted out to them.
“I told you,” Fred gritted her teeth, “I can’t help you! I tried to decode the books for you, and it didn’t work!”
“I’ll help you,” Wesley stepped forward, lowering his weapons, “Take me instead of her.”
Dr. Northead said with disbelief, “And what makes you think that you can do what she couldn’t?”
Wesley handed his pistols to Lorne and replied, “Miss Burkle is not familiar with Mediterranean languages. Her work with the code may only be slightly off. Let me help you in exchange for her safety.”
Fred secretly hoped that Wesley was only using this as a diversion. Dr. Northead appeared to be mulling over the decision before instructing Wesley to step forward and Silas to take Fred to the others. However, before the exchange could take place, Dr. Northead caught a glimpse of something that garnered his attention- a small red bead glinting amongst Fred’s curls.
“Silas, stop,” Dr. Northead barked out the order.
Silas turned to look at his uncle with a quizzical expression. With a flick of his hand, Dr. Northead snatched the hair ornament Spike had crafted, taking a small bit of Fred’s hair with it. He ripped the small glass bead from its center, tossing away the ribbon formed from perforated metal bands. Holding it up to the light, Dr. Northead compared it to the beads he had previously inserted into the largest book’s filigree.
“Well, well, well,” Northead mused, “Looks like the fish was right about you being the key, quite literally.” Popping out magenta-ish, as Silas had called it, bead from the book’s cover, he began to replace it with the red one he had taken from Fred’s barrette.
However, a bullet from Spike’s gatlin wriststrap to Northead’s arm caused him to drop the small glass orb. In the ensuing confusion, Fred stomped hard on Silas’s foot, breaking his hold on her, and she grabbed the bead as it plinked on the floor.
The events that followed were a frenzy of motion and sound. The cult members that remained rushed forward, unleashing the homunculi demons they had created. The gargoyle-like masses roared and pounded the ground as they came headlong for the members of Angel Investigations. Fred too headed towards them, but there was no time for a proper reunion with her friends.
Lorne handed Wesley his pistols and then one of Fred’s custom-made rifles to her, “Sorry that it doesn’t quite match your outfit, Raspberry.”
Checking to make sure the barrels were loaded, Fred smiled as she cocked the rifle, “I think this dress is on its way to the rag-bag.”
The cluster of intrepid investigators closed ranks tighter in its own version of a phalanx. Gunn, Wesley, and Fred began firing their weapons at the marauding homunculi. Without a word, when Angel’s pepperbox cane ran out of ammunition and Spike’s gatlin wound down, the two vampires launched themselves, fighting in tandem with fangs bared and claws out.
Fearing that the gray-skinned homunculi would come too close and overwhelm them, Lorne removed Spike’s large knapsack of homemade incendiary devices from the back of the Seville. As he opened the flap, he was surprised by an armful of tiny Valkren’nesh demon.
“Norman! You little stowaway!” Lorne yelped, holding the small creature, “This is no place for you, lumpkin!” He was conflicted with whether to stay with the baby demon or return to aid his friends. Watching both Spike and Angel being flung to the ground like rag dolls by two demonic Goliaths made up his mind. He sat Norman down inside the Seville and shut the door, “Stay right here, kiddo. Your Uncle Spike and Uncle Angel are about to be turned into manpire pudding.”
Pulling out one of the Molotov cocktails, Lorne lit the cloth wick extending from the whiskey bottle’s neck with a flint lighter. He threw it, and the bottle landed between the demons Dr. Breedlove had worked to create, the glass shattering and flames erupting from the liquid as it dispersed on the ground. The demons howled and scrambled away from the fire, giving Angel and the others time to regroup.
However, in the chaos of the moment, Fred had separated herself from the main grouping, concentrating on the demons attacking Angel and Spike and being unaware that she was being stalked. Silas emerged out of nowhere from Fred’s right side, attempting to take her rifle away from her. As she struggled with the young man, the red bead slipped from her grasp and rolled a short distance before it was grabbed up by Dr. Northead, whose long robes were soaked down the sleeve with blood from his bullet wound.
“Uncle, hurry!” Silas shouted, tugging at the rifle in Fred’s small hands.
“Don’t let him near the books!” Fred cried out, swinging her rifle like a cricket bat at Silas when she was unable to get a proper shot at him.
Angel, Wesley, and Gunn were blocked from following Northead onto the platform by a particular large homunculi as its tremendous forearm swept them to the floor as though they were flies. Lorne’s hands fumbled with his flint lighter as he was readying another Molotov cocktail. Having learned from the previous one, the enormous creature roared furiously and barreled towards the Pylean. Falling backwards and still trying unsuccessfully to light the incendiary’s wick, Lorne was sure he was going to be pulverized when he saw the behemoth raise its massive arms to crush him. He flinched, but the pain he expected never came. When he looked up, not sure of what to expect, he found the homunculi staring into the Seville at Norman who missed blissfully unaware of the severe situation taking place outside of the automobile. The larger demon began to make strange grunting noises, pawing at the car door. Norman seemed to perk up at those noises, patting his chubby little hands at the glass.
As Angel raised his cane as a weapon and rushed towards the homunculi, Lorne ran out with arms waving, “Stop! Don’t hurt her!”
“Her?” Angel responded, but he didn’t have time to question it. Whatever Lorne had done had quelled the beast for the moment, and he had to get to the fellow on the platform trying to perform whatever ritual these cults always seem to be trying to do.
Dr. Northead had made his way to the carefully constructed altar and replaced the bead he had obtained from Fred’s barrette. Yes, his ancestor Nikolas Thorande had been a tricky bastard, indeed, fooling him with a phony seventh key while the real one remained out in the world. As soon as the bead was in place, the filigree on the book began to move, joining together to form gears. Unlike the other attempts at the ritual to unlock the Device of Utopia, there was no moving of earth, only a white glow that softly began to ebb out from the tome. The light flowed into the two smaller books. Before his eyes, the mysterious unknown symbols within the smaller volumes began transform into the Western alphabet. Northead let out of a triumphant cry of success, seemingly undeterred by the bullet wound he had suffered.
However, before he could begin reciting the correct ritual, Spike shouted, “Oi, Scragglebeard! Missing something?”
In the interim with Northead had focused on his beloved books, Spike had landed a few heavy blows to Silas’s stomach to get the young man away from Fred. It took a lot of Spike’s willpower not to completely throttle him. As he called out to Dr. Northead, Spike held Silas in a headlock.
“Back away from your hoodoo books, and I won’t separate nephew-boy’s head from his body,” Spike growled.
“Help me, Uncle!” Silas wheezed out.
Dr. Northead raised an eyebrow momentarily before beginning to recite the first line of his ritual.
Silas’s eyes grew horrified as he felt Spike‘s arm tighten around his throat, “Uncle!”
Spike started to squeeze Silas’s neck, but it began obvious that Dr. Northead had no intention of helping his nephew. A part of him wanted to outright snap the boy’s neck, just from knowing that he was partly responsible what had happened to Fred. Spike could smell her blood, see the bruises on her face and arms, and it made him want kill everyone involved in causing her suffering. However, his hold loosened, not enough to let Silas free, but enough to let him breath normally.
Raising his book into the air, Dr. Northead called out, “I beckon unto the gods of old to heed my command! Open the door-”
With a muzzle flash and a cloud of acrid smoke, a round from Fred’s rifle shredded through the book Northead held aloft, pieces of centuries old parchment sailing through the air like confetti that showered down into his face. He paused, blinking in disbelief, before letting out an anguished scream, throwing the damaged book to the ground.
With shots being fired, most of the cult members had scattered though the ones that remained were still keeping Angel and the others from reaching Dr. Northead. Their leader paced the platform in a rage, firing indiscriminately into the ground with his pistol. By some grace, he hit more of his own people and none of those who were trying to stop them. When he ran out of rounds in the chamber of the pistol, he threw it petulantly to the ground.
Picking up the remaining smaller book, the book required to open a dystopia, a world of chaos and torment, Dr. Northead yelled, “Fine, if I can’t have a Heaven of my own, I’ll make a Heaven out of Hell!”
Lost in his own ravings, Dr. Northead did not see the homunculus coming towards him, not until the beast was on top of him. A long, terrified scream was soon enough cut short, and a near-calm took over the room. Wide eyed, Angel wheeled around towards Lorne, where the demon had charged from moments earlier. The fires from the incendiaries had been trampled out during the small battle.
The approach of sirens broke the serene silence as Scotland Yard wagons surrounded the warehouse. Kate had been sent to bring reinforcements. They were a tad late, but still necessary. The officers helped round up the robed ritualists as they tried to flee, dragging them into the wagons, while Angel Investigations was left to sort out what was left.
As Spike was handing Silas off to an officer, Angel approached him and said, “We need to release the other demons that the cult has taken, but I’m not sure what we’re going to do with these homunculi that Dr. Breedlove created. They seem to crave violence…”
“Well, perhaps, Beck and the others could take them in at the Mosaic Sanitarium,” Spike replied, watching Fred trying to rouse Betta George and free him from his netting.
“And I think you’ll find them much less violent now that their captors are out of the way,” Lorne said, bringing Norman to the homunculus that had dispatched Dr. Northead. Norman reached out to the large demon, who instantly took him into her enormous arms and appeared to cuddle him. Lorne smiled, looking back at Angel, “Turns out that even with the combination of demons, part of the mind remains. She remembers Norman is her child.”
Wesley pushed his spectacles up on his nose, “Valkren’nesh demons are fiercely protective of their offspring. Those instincts must have survived the transformation.”
“Glad she took out her frustration on that mad git and not us,” Spike mused.
Lorne gave a knowing smile, “That might have had to do with a little encouraging persuasion from myself.”
Fred led George back to the group after he was released from his bindings. The Splendeen demon moaned, “I’ve been conked on the head one too many times in the past few weeks! And they took my bowler!”
Fred laughed, giving him a careful hug, “I’ll buy you ten bowlers, you wonderful big floating fish!” She was so proud of him and knew that it was his efforts that led to their rescue.
“I’ve still got a bit of a headache, George, from that distress call,” Spike teased playfully.
They all bantered jokingly to relieve their stress and tension, knowing how close they came to losing one another. However, as the excitement dwindled, Fred grew unsteady on her feet. She gripped Spike’s arms after she dropped her rifle.
“Fred?” Spike held her, an arm around her back, unsure of what was wrong. “Are you all right?”
“I feel so strange,” she spoke, her body swaying a little bit before she had to kneel.
Spike went to the floor with her, giving her a gentle shake, “Fred, love, what’s wrong? Fred!”
However, Fred remained unresponsive. He wrapped his leather duster around her and lifted her into his arms. The members of Angel Investigations loaded into the Seville, once again consumed with worry for their friend, but at least they would be able to have her home safe.
Epilogue
Days went by, and Spike never left Fred’s side. The doctors had been to the house on Fairfax Street to care for her wounds. Her broken wrist was splinted and wrapped, and the swelling on the side of her face had gone down. The cut on her lip had mostly healed. Fred was laying underneath the clean, crisp linens on her bed. Her curls were washed and brushed, laying in a chestnut cascade over her pillows.
Spike held her hand, rubbing his thumb over fingers in an attempt to comfort her and let her know that he was there. The room was filled with fresh-cut flowers from all of the gentlemen in the house, but the largest of which came from a certain Splendeen demon who espoused his eternal gratitude at her keen mind and kind words.
“Love, I’m not sure if you can hear me, but I’m here,” he bent his head down to kiss the top of her hand. “You have to wake up, all right? I think I owe you a proper night of dinner and dancing… though I can completely understand if you never want to go out with me again.”
Like a porcelain doll, Fred was almost laid in state, her breathing slow but steady. The doctors seemed to think that it was just a case of exhaustion after her ordeal, but she had not moved, not even a flicker of a blink. The more Spike thought about her never waking up again, the more overwhelmed he became. He had to hold his hand over his mouth to hide his quivering lips.
His voice broke as he pleaded, “Please, Fred, wake up. Who’s going to keep me in line if you don’t? And who am I going to share my sweets with? And who’s going to stop me from throttling Wesley when he takes my books from the library? I miss you, Pet.”
Waiting for several tense moments with no response, Spike leaned up and placed a touchingly gentle kiss to her forehead. As soon as his lips touched her skin, a torrent of emotions flooded over his person. Tears welled up in his eyes and spilled out through his lashes. As he reluctantly began to pull away, a stray tear landed on the tip of Fred’s nose, which, to Spike’s amazement, twitched at the stimulation.
Hoping to gain the same reaction twice, Spike kissed her nose where the tear at landed. Fred’s hand jerked up and smacked the side of his face in reflex. He laughed jubilantly and called out to her again. Fred let out a little gasp, her face making the unpleasant expression of someone who had been woken up a few hours too early.
As she was roused into consciousness, Fred spoke quietly, “Why does it smell like a funeral parlor?”
“Because everyone sent you flowers, love,” Spike smiled, “even Appleyard and Pleydell. Though I have the sneaking suspicion that Pleydell just added that old walrus’s name to the card.”
Looking at all the various bouquets, Fred turned back to Spike, “Did you bring me flowers too?”
“Well, no,” Spike reached beneath his chair and pulled out a small cloth-wrapped bundle, “I brought you this.”
With a little help from him to obtain a seated position in her bed, Fred unwrapped her present. A brilliant smile bloomed on her face as she beheld a small toy duck. It was Spike’s design for the steam-powered bathwater warmer, complete with little paddlewheels.
“You finished it!” she said happily, holding the little metal duck in her uninjured hand.
Spike blushed slightly, “I hope that it works properly. I’m not as industrious as you, you know.”
Fred responded, “You managed to find me, which makes you fairly industrious in my group.”
“Well, that was mostly George. I just drove the Seville through a door. You’ll have fun putting it to rights again once you‘re better,” he shrugged.
“Everyone’s safe, right? No one was badly hurt?” her expression was worried.
“No, everyone’s just fine. Lorne was a little distressed about having to give little Norman back to his mother, but he’s been off to visit them at Mosaic everyday, and that’s cheered him up greatly.”
Spike launched into the tale of their investigation into finding Fred, including how, if Dr. Breedlove had been as qualified for her job as she claimed, she could have caught that the largest book stolen from the British Museum was what needed to be decoded alone since it was written in Ancient and Modern Greek and not Arcado-Cypriot as she had claimed. He concluded the story with Gunn surmising the exact warehouse number Fred might be located in after George’s distress call because of the scrap of paper found at the Simmons’ Cab Company.
“What happened to the books?” Fred inquired.
“Beck used her powers to fry the books to cinders. Don’t want anyone others like that Northead/Thorande fellow coming around looking for the remains,” Spike replied.
“And what of those beads? How on earth did you come by one of seven mystical keys to unlock a gateway to another dimension?” Fred leaned closer to him, eager and intent on learning every detail of what had transpired while she had been sleeping.
“The beads are also dust,” Spike answered, “As to how I came by one of them, pure blind unluckiness, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?
Brushing her hair away from her shoulder gently, he said, “I’m always picking up bits and bobs when I’m out. Like a magpie, I am. Never know what might come in handy when you’re tinkering around. I believe I was at the docks on patrol when I found that red bit of glass. It might have slipped through a crack in a crate and rolled away while it was being loaded into the warehouse for holding. But as to the reality of what happened, I have no idea.”
“That is quite a coincidence,” Fred shook her head, though she was very familiar with how trouble often found the members of Angel Investigations even if they were not looking for it. She then added, “I’m a little disappointed that the beads had to be destroyed too. I really liked the barrette you made me.”
“Well…” Spike paused and reached into his vest pocket. He pulled out the hair ornament, completely repaired, and set it on Fred’s lap. “I might have been able to smuggle the red one away when everyone was distracted, but you did not hear that from me.”
Fred hugged him tightly upon seeing her barrette, a hug which quickly turned into soft, quick pecks on the cheek and soon evolved into passionate kisses. Spike’s hands ran through Fred’s hair, carefully cupping the back of her head. Her thin arms rested around his shoulders, comfortable in his embrace.
“I am truly sorry for ruining your evening out,” Spike spoke as they broke their lips apart so Fred could take a breath.
Fred replied, “It’s not your fault… except for the fact that you gave me a gift which was basically a beacon that lead a bunch of insane cult members to kidnap me, but really that comes with the territory of working at a supernatural detective agency.”
It was then that Fred first truly admired Spike’s smile. He always looked so young and happy when he smiled, but he only smiled for her. He would smirk and carry on around the others, but Fred liked to think that his boyish, somewhat shy smile was hers alone.
“Would you like to help me test your invention?” Fred asked, holding up the little steam-powered toy duck.
Spike appeared confused for a moment, “How would I help-” When exactly what she was asking him to do struck him, Fred got to see his sexy smile. “If it doesn’t heat things up, then perhaps I might lend a hand.”
The pair spent the rest of the day alone in privacy, mostly in the bathtub before retiring to bed with suitably pruned skin. Fred shared her experiences of being held prisoner by the Thorande Cult, regaling Spike with the story of Betta George’s bravery and her own displeasure and hurt pride with being wrong about her theory about the glyphs in the tomes, even though she knew that there was no way for her to discover the correct answer to the query without the keys. They became reacquainted, exploring one another, physically and emotionally until late in the evening.
“We should probably head down to dinner,” Spike said, shifting a bit with Fred’s slight weight on top of him underneath the bedclothes.
“I’m torn between being famished and not wanting to leave this bed,” she replied, kissing the side of his neck.
Despite her protests, Spike got up out of bed, nude, and headed towards her shut bedroom door, “I’ll fetch you a little supper-in-bed, if you would like.”
“Aren’t you a little underdressed for leaving the bed chamber?” Fred raised an eyebrow.
His response was to give her a saucy hip-wriggle as he left the room, which sent her into a fit of giggles. She first heard the sound of his bare feet on the stairs, and then after a few minutes came outraged shouts, breaking china, and a few catcalls from Lorne from the dining room.
Fred grinned as she settled back against her pillows and thought to herself that, in that moment, she would not rather be any place else in the entire world than the townhouse she shared with her friends at No. 117 Fairfax Street, even if it meant the occasional kidnapping.
A/N: I want to thank everyone for reading and giving me encouragement about Automated Utopia as this is my first complete, novel-length fanfiction. Our intrepid heros will return, in all their steampunk glory, in The Case of the Nefarious Nuptials!
Previous Chapters :: One :: Two :: Three :: Four :: Five :: Six :: Seven :: Eight :: Nine.
x-posted @ nekid_spike and darker_spike.
Author: fenderlove
Rating: This chapter is rated R for language, blood, and violence.
Summary: This fanfiction is set in a Victorian SteamPunk Alternate Universe in which inventions such as Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and the harnessing of steam-power have launched a technological revolution far earlier in history. The time is 1885, and Angel Investigations is working for Scotland Yard. A new case involving a missing artifact from the British Museum and a demonic cult sends the wayward detectives on a whirlwind adventure to reclaim the object before all is lost.
Pairings: Spike/Fred.
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Automated Utopia:: Ten and Epilogue.
Chapter Ten
Inside the warehouse, Fred clutched her hands over her ears in reflex as George’s call went out like an incendiary between her ears. It stopped her in her tracks, and, in the surprise of the moment, she was tackled to the ground. Fred struggled with her assailant, trying to roll out of his grip. His weight crushed her midsection, knocking the air of out her. She thrust out her hands, scratching and hitting her attacker’s face, desperately trying to keep from being restrained by him. Her captor’s mask came off in her hands, and she saw a face she recalled from the night of the robbery at the British Museum.
“The tea boy?” she barely recognized her own voice as the words left her throat.
The seemingly mild-mannered young man who served tea to Sir Augustus and Dr. Breedlove to calm their shaken nerves was now sporting deep scratches down his forehead. He squeezed one of her wrists, hard enough that Fred felt the bones crackle beneath his fingers. Screaming out in pain, she attempted to perform a defensive maneuver that she had seen Spike successfully carry out a thousand times over- a headbutt. Her forehead connected solidly with the boy’s nose, and blood rained down on her from the wound. Even with a painful and serious injury, the young man was unmoved, outmatching her in size especially with him sitting on top of her. He volleyed two severe punches to her face, splitting her lip and bruising her cheek. Fred tasted the hot blood in her mouth and felt nauseous, nearly losing consciousness for a few seconds.
“Silas, leave her alone!” the taller of their captor’s said. The voice was quite female, the distortion removed. Fred turned her head to see Dr. Breedlove storming over towards them, her mask pulled away from her face. The museum librarian snapped, “Go help the others return the Splendeen demon.”
Once Silas’s weight was off of her, Fred tried to roll over on her side, clutching her wounded wrist to her chest. She could see Silas’s mesh mask lying on the floor, an audio-transdisrupter attached near the mouth. Still reeling from the shock of her injuries, Fred hoped that George was able to escape after sending out their S.O.S.
“I told you I was going to let you go,” Dr. Breedlove said with an irritated tone. “No matter, I suppose. The world is going to be so different once the ritual starts that you might as well stay to watch.”
“Ritual?” Fred’s mouth felt swollen, her words coming out slurred.
“Yes, all that work you did, my dear, was not for my pure academic amusement. You’ve helped me find a way to unlock a brand new world- a better one than this. No demons, no monsters, just perfection,” Dr. Breedlove had a gleam in her eyes that alluded to how real and precious this idea was to her. She then instructed two of the remaining robed figures to take Fred to the main hall while she finished preparations for the ritual to take place.
Fred felt herself being lifted up, but her mind was elsewhere, too foggy from shock to be considered truly lucid. Her thoughts went to Spike. He had rescued her from strangulation by a vengeful spirit while she had been in the process of trying to save him from eternal damnation. She had told him that he was worth saving, and how she had meant every word! If she had been worthy enough of finding rescue from the bondage of slavery in Pylea, then Spike too had been equally worthy of escaping a fate worse than death. Of course, Spike managed to save her and in the process save himself. If he rescued her again, she would owe him doubly. Fred would have laughed at the thought if half of her face was not numb. She wanted to laugh, wanted to get up, and run away. She did not want to be stuck playing the damsel in distress yet again. Fred had fought and done all she could; she hoped Spike and the others would understand, hoped that if they did find her that none of them would be hurt.
After several long moments, Fred finally realized she was no longer in motion. She had closed her eyes without meaning to, and when she opened them, she saw Betta George lying on the ground next to her, bound in a large net. He appeared to be unconscious.
“George?” she whispered, fear creeping into her voice. He did not respond to her. She reached out with her uninjured hand and stroked his scaly head through the ropes.
“Don’t trouble yourself over that demon,” Dr. Breedlove stated.
Fred began to take in the room as a whole. It was large and open. Dr. Breedlove stood at a large altar on a platform near the room’s center. She held the three tomes from the Northead collection in her hands, placing them on the altar and opening them. As torches were lit, Fred could see an intricately created circle etched into the floor inlaid with crystals and precious metals. Forty or more robed ritualists were milling along with, to Fred’s horror, at least a dozen of the gargoyle-like creatures that had attacked Spike beside the Jolly Dogs’ were lurking in the shadows.
“This will be a new era of harmony and beauty, a reawakening of the world!” Dr. Breedlove spoke fervently, running her hands over the books. She began to read from one of the smaller volumes, “Hesicibo nokamis na…”
The books began to pulse with an eerily yellow light which shifted to pale green as Dr. Breedlove continued. The robed figures all bowed to her as if praying to a god or worshipping a queen. Fred felt an intense pain in her head that seemed to correspond with the light bleating from nothing to brightness. As Dr. Breedlove seemed to reach the end of the incantation, the floor began to tremble; a few of the torches went out with all the shaking. The books and the summoning circle in the floor below roared into a violent incandescent blue, hurting Fred’s eyes even from a distance away. And then, there was nothing.
Nothing had changed; the room appeared just the same as it had been moments earlier. The rest of this cabal seemed to be looking confusedly at one another beneath their hoods. Dr. Breedlove too appeared shocked. Her arms were upraised as though she was ready to welcome this new world, but instead there was nothing to see.
“What? What’s going on?” Dr. Breedlove stated as she began flipping pages as though she were looking for something she missed. She even took out the sheet of notes that Fred had given her. “This isn’t right. It can’t be… I did everything right!” Her face turned from horror to anger. She pointed down at Fred, “You! You and that- that fish tricked me!”
Fred forced herself to a seated position on the floor, getting ready to possibly have to make another attempt at escape, “No, I swear, I decoded it using a sound theory, but it may not have been correct-”
Dr. Breedlove jumped down from the platform and stalked towards her, “You did it on purpose! The fish said that you were the key!” Before Fred could get to her feet, Dr. Breedlove grabbed a fist full of her hair, “I will have my utopia!”
Fearful of being struck on the side of her face that was not currently in pain, Fred quickly turned her head, awaiting the blows to come. The sound that came next was like the blast of a canon. Fred whipped her head up just as the librarian’s grip loosened on her hair. Dr. Breedlove’s expression was stricken, a gaping wound in the center of her chest, oozing out dark blood that seemed to sparkle in the flickering torchlight. Her body fell, blood mixing with the sawdust on the floor.
“Sorry, my dear Abigail,” Silas spoke coolly from near the platform, a pistol in hand, his nose discoloured and swollen from where Fred had headbutted him, “but you always were a bit of an idiot.”
As he approached Fred, she was unable to get to fully mobile, hindered without the use of both hands. Silas kicked Breedlove’s body out of his way, taking hold of Fred’s injured wrist and twisting it. He jerked her to her feet as she cried out in pain.
“Don’t worry, Missy, you still get to see the show,” he gave her a strong shove, and she stumbled into the arms of another.
As she lifted her head, the robed figure that caught her removed his mask, revealing a middle-aged man with a strong jaw, a carefully manicured beard, and a pair of cold, penetrating eyes.
“Let me introduce you to my uncle,” Silas smirked, tucking his pistol back under his long robe, “You and your friends at the Museum were kind enough to look into the left of his artifacts.”
“Dr. Northead?” Fred spoke, confused.
“The great, not-quite-so-late, in fact,” Daniel Northead replied nonchalantly. “And you, my girl, are quite clever, solving our little puzzle.”
“But,” Fred stammered, “but it didn’t work. You saw-”
“Yes, indeed, I did see. I saw that simpering fool Breedlove attempt to open the Device of Utopia without all the facts,” Northead responded.
“Though that can hardly be considered her fault, Uncle, since we never informed her of the facts in the first place,” Silas said, using the toe of his boot to roll Breedlove’s body over. Her rummaged through her cloak and found Fred’s notes, neatly folded, “The poor old bird was an excellent patsy, kept us from getting our hands dirty.”
Fred shook her head, “I do not understand what’s going on. If you are trying to achieve the same goal she was, why double-cross her?”
“Because she was an idealist,” Dr. Northead stated, “while I myself am a pragmatist. You see, for centuries people have tried to create utopian societies, but they always fail.” He began to half drag half carry Fred towards the platform. “And they fail because within every society, even a perfect one, there must be a leader, or else the society will collapse into chaos and anarchy.”
“Does that not defeat the purpose of having a utopian society if there are some who are of a higher caste than others?” Fred questioned, angrily.
“As I said, I am a pragmatist. Utopian societies are doomed to failure if everyone is pandered to, but this will be different. This will be my utopia, my paradise, a world of my own making,” he responded, pulling her onto the platform.
“So you’ve what? Killed innocent people, kidnapped demons and myself, so that you can be king of the world?” Fred felt a keen sense of righteousness build up inside of her as she struggled against him. “You’re nothing but a monster.”
Shoving her roughly to the floor, Dr. Northead barked with dark laughter, “This event has been over three centuries in the making, little girl.” He called to Silas to begin clearing the inner circle of debris, meaning Betta George’s unconscious body and Dr. Breedlove’s corpse. “Every demon on earth is about be purified. I will be a new God with an army of angels bringing about a perfect, golden world.”
Silas stepped onto the platform, staring pointedly at Fred, “You should consider yourself lucky that you get to witness such glory.”
“I’ve seen what some consider glory; it’s usually a vile trap or a higher being that feeds off people,” Fred frowned, wishing for anything that she had her steam rifle with her so that she could wipe the villainous smirk from Silas’s face.
“This is no trap,” Dr. Northead replied, “My great-great-great grandfather Nikolas Thorande discovered the secret to the grand reinvention of the world within the great ruins of Greece, but his followers turned on him before he could perform the ritual. He recorded the rites encoded in these books,” Dr. Northead indicated the altar, “and spirited them away to Cyprus before he was assassinated by his own cult.”
Silas took out a small vial from his robes and handed it to Dr. Northead, “And for the next three hundred years, our family searched the ruins attempting to rediscover what was rightfully ours.”
Dr. Northead gazed longingly into the dark vial, “Until the money ran out… Just when I had found the correct location! That’s why we had to involve the British Museum. I assumed the name Northead and falsified a background. They funded my expedition, helped me get my family’s treasure back through the ports without a second glance from the authorities.”
“Then why fake your death and let the British Museum take control of your artifacts? You could have just done whatever you wanted with them once you were in the country!” Fred’s anger at the hauteur of this man was incredible, and it filled her very person with the desire to kick him in the shins.
“You see, I have never been the scholarly sort. I needed someone to help me translate the books,” Dr. Northead explained, “I brought Dr. Breedlove into our inner circle, thinking that a woman of her qualifications would be able to solve it, but I found out that she was quite useless.”
Silas added, “If that fool Augustus Franks was not half mad, he would have been able to see through her wiles to the fact that she was a daft cow. If we had someone more competent at the Museum, we might actually have had to worry about someone recognizing the artifacts weren’t nearly as old as they were authenticated as. At least, we don’t have to worry about either of those two imbeciles anymore.” With a childish twirl of his pistol, Silas laughed maniacally.
“She was, however, good at one thing- doing all the dirty work and keeping my name out of it,” Northead continued, “So I faked an illness, letting Breedlove think I had died and that she was taking over our sect. Silas found his way as her assistant, helping in her the most daunting task of rounding up the demons we needed to make our army while plotting the theft of our property which had fallen back into Museum custody thanks to that ridiculous grant arrangement and before anyone got wise enough to spot the little discrepancies in Breedlove’s authentication.”
“But in the aspect of actually transmogrifying the demons into pure creatures, she once again proved a failure, leaving us with this grotesque hulks,” Silas indicated the gargoyle-like homunculi demons.
“The only thing she did right was find you,” Northead chuckled, taking Fred’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at him, “You are a clever wee thing, pretty too. I think I would like to keep you around.”
Fred returned his sentiments by spitting in his face. He slapped her hard to the ground.
“But there is one thing even a bright girl like you could not figure out,” Northead opened up the vial and poured seven glass beads into his palm. “I found some of my grandfather’s earlier writings along with the first of the seven keys necessary for activating the ritual. The first was hidden in a family talisman while the rest were hidden within the pottery and artifacts in the temple hideaway the old man dug out. He was a tricky bastard.” He flipped the largest tome closed and began inserting the beads into the delicate filigree work Fred had admired when she had been trapped in her cell. “Without them, the incantations will never work.” Northead muttered to himself as he carefully placed the beads within the metalwork, “Orange for Sol… green for Luna… yellow for Venus… blue for Jupiter… violet for Mercury… black for Saturn… and red for Mars…”
“That red looks a little magenta-ish to me,” Silas quipped, still fiddling with his pistol.
“Shut it, boy,” Northead hissed. Once every bead was in place, Silas handed him the notes he had confiscated off of Breedlove’s corpse, “Now, we are ready to begin again.”
Fred’s heart and mind were racing as Dr. Northead began reciting the text that she had decoded. Once again the ground shook with tremendous force. She made a last desperate attempt to prevent the travesty that would befall the whole of civilization would such lunatics be in total control. With all the momentum she could muster, she leapt at Silas, reaching for his pistol. After a few seconds of wrestling for the weapon, the young man was able to kick her away. Fred collapsed to the platform in a heap; her spirit was still strong, but her strength had fled from her. As she struggled just to sit up, Silas’s boot to her back kept her down.
Even with her head downcast and eyes closed, the light that emanated from the books was overwhelming. Fred felt the keen prick of hot, angry tears. They were not tears from her injuries nor of self-pity; they were a manifestation of the deep grief that consumed her. It was a grief for actually helping these mad men achieve their goal, for all the innocent lives that could be lost under their regime, and for her friends that she let down. No amount of diplomas from a university could save anyone now.
When the vibrations of the earth and the light was once again gone, there was complete silence. With great apprehension, Fred’s eyes opened, the quiet almost deafening. Looking up, her surroundings did not appear to have changed. Dr. Northead and Silas stood by the altar, appearing dumbfounded.
“No…” the word was more like a gasp as Dr. Northead shook his head.
Silas mouth was turned in a very sour frown, “What that it, Uncle?”
“No, you fool, that was not it!” Dr. Northead gripped the sides of the altar. His beady, rat-like eyes darted to and fro in a calculating manner. When they fell upon Fred, they narrowed. Snatching Silas’s pistol from his hands, he grabbed Fred by the hair, pressing the barrel to her temple. “You bitch, you really did think you could pull the wool over our eyes!”
“I didn’t,” Fred snapped, her body rigid, “I told Dr. Breedlove that I used a theory to decode the text, but perhaps my theory was wrong.”
“You lying cow,” Dr. Northead voice took on a murderous edge, “You’re keeping the real translation to yourself.”
“I am not a cow,” Fred’s eyes matched the dangerous tone of Dr. Northead’s speech.
“Leave her alone!” came a tired, yet determined call.
Betta George lolled drunkenly into the air, the heavy rope netting weighing him down. He floated towards the stage, nearly dropping totally to the ground several times before falling beside Fred.
“Blame me, if you must take out your anger on someone,” George pleaded, “Perhaps I made a mistake in picking her as the person to translate the books! I am only a telepath, not a seer! Plus all the wards your people bound my powers with might have limited me-”
George was silenced by a sharp blow from the butt of the pistol. Fred took Northead’s distraction to lock her hands, even with her injured wrist, and slamming them between his legs, knocking him off his balance and allowing her to throw herself off the platform and attempt another run. She did not know where she was running to, but she ran, her bare feet being scraped by the metals and stones set into the summoning circle on the floor.
Silas was behind her in an instant, removing a boot knife from its holster. He managed to catch hold of the bustle of her gown and pull her backwards, one arm wrapped around her waist while the other held the knife blade to her throat. At first, Fred saw nothing but the darkness of the room in front of her as the blade pinched her skin. Then, there was a pale blue light. For a moment, Fred thought that she had died instantly from having her throat cut, but as her eyes adjusted she realized her was staring at the familiar headlights of the Seville.
It appeared that Spike had driven the automobile up to the corrugated metal loading-bay gate and crashed right through it. Fred let out a short laugh even with a villain at her throat. She had never seen a more glorious site than that of her friends stepping in front of the tesla headlights with their weapons drawn, all trained on her would-be assassin.
As they began a quick approach, Silas panicked, backtracking with Fred still in his grasp, towards the platform. “Stay back!” he shouted. “Keep where you are or I slit her throat!”
Having heard sort of threat before, Angel and the others did not stop entirely, though they did slow their pace. A bullet deflecting off the floor and zipping over their heads, however, did cause they to yield. Dr. Northead held the still smoking pistol trained on Angel at the group’s center. Silas hoisted Fred onto the platform, and both men began using her as a shield, a pistol to her head and a knife to her throat. The tableau before him caused Spike’s vampiric features to descend. A soft clicking could be heard as Wesley cocked his pistols.
“Leave now, and we’ll let her go once we’re done with her,” Northead shouted out to them.
“I told you,” Fred gritted her teeth, “I can’t help you! I tried to decode the books for you, and it didn’t work!”
“I’ll help you,” Wesley stepped forward, lowering his weapons, “Take me instead of her.”
Dr. Northead said with disbelief, “And what makes you think that you can do what she couldn’t?”
Wesley handed his pistols to Lorne and replied, “Miss Burkle is not familiar with Mediterranean languages. Her work with the code may only be slightly off. Let me help you in exchange for her safety.”
Fred secretly hoped that Wesley was only using this as a diversion. Dr. Northead appeared to be mulling over the decision before instructing Wesley to step forward and Silas to take Fred to the others. However, before the exchange could take place, Dr. Northead caught a glimpse of something that garnered his attention- a small red bead glinting amongst Fred’s curls.
“Silas, stop,” Dr. Northead barked out the order.
Silas turned to look at his uncle with a quizzical expression. With a flick of his hand, Dr. Northead snatched the hair ornament Spike had crafted, taking a small bit of Fred’s hair with it. He ripped the small glass bead from its center, tossing away the ribbon formed from perforated metal bands. Holding it up to the light, Dr. Northead compared it to the beads he had previously inserted into the largest book’s filigree.
“Well, well, well,” Northead mused, “Looks like the fish was right about you being the key, quite literally.” Popping out magenta-ish, as Silas had called it, bead from the book’s cover, he began to replace it with the red one he had taken from Fred’s barrette.
However, a bullet from Spike’s gatlin wriststrap to Northead’s arm caused him to drop the small glass orb. In the ensuing confusion, Fred stomped hard on Silas’s foot, breaking his hold on her, and she grabbed the bead as it plinked on the floor.
The events that followed were a frenzy of motion and sound. The cult members that remained rushed forward, unleashing the homunculi demons they had created. The gargoyle-like masses roared and pounded the ground as they came headlong for the members of Angel Investigations. Fred too headed towards them, but there was no time for a proper reunion with her friends.
Lorne handed Wesley his pistols and then one of Fred’s custom-made rifles to her, “Sorry that it doesn’t quite match your outfit, Raspberry.”
Checking to make sure the barrels were loaded, Fred smiled as she cocked the rifle, “I think this dress is on its way to the rag-bag.”
The cluster of intrepid investigators closed ranks tighter in its own version of a phalanx. Gunn, Wesley, and Fred began firing their weapons at the marauding homunculi. Without a word, when Angel’s pepperbox cane ran out of ammunition and Spike’s gatlin wound down, the two vampires launched themselves, fighting in tandem with fangs bared and claws out.
Fearing that the gray-skinned homunculi would come too close and overwhelm them, Lorne removed Spike’s large knapsack of homemade incendiary devices from the back of the Seville. As he opened the flap, he was surprised by an armful of tiny Valkren’nesh demon.
“Norman! You little stowaway!” Lorne yelped, holding the small creature, “This is no place for you, lumpkin!” He was conflicted with whether to stay with the baby demon or return to aid his friends. Watching both Spike and Angel being flung to the ground like rag dolls by two demonic Goliaths made up his mind. He sat Norman down inside the Seville and shut the door, “Stay right here, kiddo. Your Uncle Spike and Uncle Angel are about to be turned into manpire pudding.”
Pulling out one of the Molotov cocktails, Lorne lit the cloth wick extending from the whiskey bottle’s neck with a flint lighter. He threw it, and the bottle landed between the demons Dr. Breedlove had worked to create, the glass shattering and flames erupting from the liquid as it dispersed on the ground. The demons howled and scrambled away from the fire, giving Angel and the others time to regroup.
However, in the chaos of the moment, Fred had separated herself from the main grouping, concentrating on the demons attacking Angel and Spike and being unaware that she was being stalked. Silas emerged out of nowhere from Fred’s right side, attempting to take her rifle away from her. As she struggled with the young man, the red bead slipped from her grasp and rolled a short distance before it was grabbed up by Dr. Northead, whose long robes were soaked down the sleeve with blood from his bullet wound.
“Uncle, hurry!” Silas shouted, tugging at the rifle in Fred’s small hands.
“Don’t let him near the books!” Fred cried out, swinging her rifle like a cricket bat at Silas when she was unable to get a proper shot at him.
Angel, Wesley, and Gunn were blocked from following Northead onto the platform by a particular large homunculi as its tremendous forearm swept them to the floor as though they were flies. Lorne’s hands fumbled with his flint lighter as he was readying another Molotov cocktail. Having learned from the previous one, the enormous creature roared furiously and barreled towards the Pylean. Falling backwards and still trying unsuccessfully to light the incendiary’s wick, Lorne was sure he was going to be pulverized when he saw the behemoth raise its massive arms to crush him. He flinched, but the pain he expected never came. When he looked up, not sure of what to expect, he found the homunculi staring into the Seville at Norman who missed blissfully unaware of the severe situation taking place outside of the automobile. The larger demon began to make strange grunting noises, pawing at the car door. Norman seemed to perk up at those noises, patting his chubby little hands at the glass.
As Angel raised his cane as a weapon and rushed towards the homunculi, Lorne ran out with arms waving, “Stop! Don’t hurt her!”
“Her?” Angel responded, but he didn’t have time to question it. Whatever Lorne had done had quelled the beast for the moment, and he had to get to the fellow on the platform trying to perform whatever ritual these cults always seem to be trying to do.
Dr. Northead had made his way to the carefully constructed altar and replaced the bead he had obtained from Fred’s barrette. Yes, his ancestor Nikolas Thorande had been a tricky bastard, indeed, fooling him with a phony seventh key while the real one remained out in the world. As soon as the bead was in place, the filigree on the book began to move, joining together to form gears. Unlike the other attempts at the ritual to unlock the Device of Utopia, there was no moving of earth, only a white glow that softly began to ebb out from the tome. The light flowed into the two smaller books. Before his eyes, the mysterious unknown symbols within the smaller volumes began transform into the Western alphabet. Northead let out of a triumphant cry of success, seemingly undeterred by the bullet wound he had suffered.
However, before he could begin reciting the correct ritual, Spike shouted, “Oi, Scragglebeard! Missing something?”
In the interim with Northead had focused on his beloved books, Spike had landed a few heavy blows to Silas’s stomach to get the young man away from Fred. It took a lot of Spike’s willpower not to completely throttle him. As he called out to Dr. Northead, Spike held Silas in a headlock.
“Back away from your hoodoo books, and I won’t separate nephew-boy’s head from his body,” Spike growled.
“Help me, Uncle!” Silas wheezed out.
Dr. Northead raised an eyebrow momentarily before beginning to recite the first line of his ritual.
Silas’s eyes grew horrified as he felt Spike‘s arm tighten around his throat, “Uncle!”
Spike started to squeeze Silas’s neck, but it began obvious that Dr. Northead had no intention of helping his nephew. A part of him wanted to outright snap the boy’s neck, just from knowing that he was partly responsible what had happened to Fred. Spike could smell her blood, see the bruises on her face and arms, and it made him want kill everyone involved in causing her suffering. However, his hold loosened, not enough to let Silas free, but enough to let him breath normally.
Raising his book into the air, Dr. Northead called out, “I beckon unto the gods of old to heed my command! Open the door-”
With a muzzle flash and a cloud of acrid smoke, a round from Fred’s rifle shredded through the book Northead held aloft, pieces of centuries old parchment sailing through the air like confetti that showered down into his face. He paused, blinking in disbelief, before letting out an anguished scream, throwing the damaged book to the ground.
With shots being fired, most of the cult members had scattered though the ones that remained were still keeping Angel and the others from reaching Dr. Northead. Their leader paced the platform in a rage, firing indiscriminately into the ground with his pistol. By some grace, he hit more of his own people and none of those who were trying to stop them. When he ran out of rounds in the chamber of the pistol, he threw it petulantly to the ground.
Picking up the remaining smaller book, the book required to open a dystopia, a world of chaos and torment, Dr. Northead yelled, “Fine, if I can’t have a Heaven of my own, I’ll make a Heaven out of Hell!”
Lost in his own ravings, Dr. Northead did not see the homunculus coming towards him, not until the beast was on top of him. A long, terrified scream was soon enough cut short, and a near-calm took over the room. Wide eyed, Angel wheeled around towards Lorne, where the demon had charged from moments earlier. The fires from the incendiaries had been trampled out during the small battle.
The approach of sirens broke the serene silence as Scotland Yard wagons surrounded the warehouse. Kate had been sent to bring reinforcements. They were a tad late, but still necessary. The officers helped round up the robed ritualists as they tried to flee, dragging them into the wagons, while Angel Investigations was left to sort out what was left.
As Spike was handing Silas off to an officer, Angel approached him and said, “We need to release the other demons that the cult has taken, but I’m not sure what we’re going to do with these homunculi that Dr. Breedlove created. They seem to crave violence…”
“Well, perhaps, Beck and the others could take them in at the Mosaic Sanitarium,” Spike replied, watching Fred trying to rouse Betta George and free him from his netting.
“And I think you’ll find them much less violent now that their captors are out of the way,” Lorne said, bringing Norman to the homunculus that had dispatched Dr. Northead. Norman reached out to the large demon, who instantly took him into her enormous arms and appeared to cuddle him. Lorne smiled, looking back at Angel, “Turns out that even with the combination of demons, part of the mind remains. She remembers Norman is her child.”
Wesley pushed his spectacles up on his nose, “Valkren’nesh demons are fiercely protective of their offspring. Those instincts must have survived the transformation.”
“Glad she took out her frustration on that mad git and not us,” Spike mused.
Lorne gave a knowing smile, “That might have had to do with a little encouraging persuasion from myself.”
Fred led George back to the group after he was released from his bindings. The Splendeen demon moaned, “I’ve been conked on the head one too many times in the past few weeks! And they took my bowler!”
Fred laughed, giving him a careful hug, “I’ll buy you ten bowlers, you wonderful big floating fish!” She was so proud of him and knew that it was his efforts that led to their rescue.
“I’ve still got a bit of a headache, George, from that distress call,” Spike teased playfully.
They all bantered jokingly to relieve their stress and tension, knowing how close they came to losing one another. However, as the excitement dwindled, Fred grew unsteady on her feet. She gripped Spike’s arms after she dropped her rifle.
“Fred?” Spike held her, an arm around her back, unsure of what was wrong. “Are you all right?”
“I feel so strange,” she spoke, her body swaying a little bit before she had to kneel.
Spike went to the floor with her, giving her a gentle shake, “Fred, love, what’s wrong? Fred!”
However, Fred remained unresponsive. He wrapped his leather duster around her and lifted her into his arms. The members of Angel Investigations loaded into the Seville, once again consumed with worry for their friend, but at least they would be able to have her home safe.
Epilogue
Days went by, and Spike never left Fred’s side. The doctors had been to the house on Fairfax Street to care for her wounds. Her broken wrist was splinted and wrapped, and the swelling on the side of her face had gone down. The cut on her lip had mostly healed. Fred was laying underneath the clean, crisp linens on her bed. Her curls were washed and brushed, laying in a chestnut cascade over her pillows.
Spike held her hand, rubbing his thumb over fingers in an attempt to comfort her and let her know that he was there. The room was filled with fresh-cut flowers from all of the gentlemen in the house, but the largest of which came from a certain Splendeen demon who espoused his eternal gratitude at her keen mind and kind words.
“Love, I’m not sure if you can hear me, but I’m here,” he bent his head down to kiss the top of her hand. “You have to wake up, all right? I think I owe you a proper night of dinner and dancing… though I can completely understand if you never want to go out with me again.”
Like a porcelain doll, Fred was almost laid in state, her breathing slow but steady. The doctors seemed to think that it was just a case of exhaustion after her ordeal, but she had not moved, not even a flicker of a blink. The more Spike thought about her never waking up again, the more overwhelmed he became. He had to hold his hand over his mouth to hide his quivering lips.
His voice broke as he pleaded, “Please, Fred, wake up. Who’s going to keep me in line if you don’t? And who am I going to share my sweets with? And who’s going to stop me from throttling Wesley when he takes my books from the library? I miss you, Pet.”
Waiting for several tense moments with no response, Spike leaned up and placed a touchingly gentle kiss to her forehead. As soon as his lips touched her skin, a torrent of emotions flooded over his person. Tears welled up in his eyes and spilled out through his lashes. As he reluctantly began to pull away, a stray tear landed on the tip of Fred’s nose, which, to Spike’s amazement, twitched at the stimulation.
Hoping to gain the same reaction twice, Spike kissed her nose where the tear at landed. Fred’s hand jerked up and smacked the side of his face in reflex. He laughed jubilantly and called out to her again. Fred let out a little gasp, her face making the unpleasant expression of someone who had been woken up a few hours too early.
As she was roused into consciousness, Fred spoke quietly, “Why does it smell like a funeral parlor?”
“Because everyone sent you flowers, love,” Spike smiled, “even Appleyard and Pleydell. Though I have the sneaking suspicion that Pleydell just added that old walrus’s name to the card.”
Looking at all the various bouquets, Fred turned back to Spike, “Did you bring me flowers too?”
“Well, no,” Spike reached beneath his chair and pulled out a small cloth-wrapped bundle, “I brought you this.”
With a little help from him to obtain a seated position in her bed, Fred unwrapped her present. A brilliant smile bloomed on her face as she beheld a small toy duck. It was Spike’s design for the steam-powered bathwater warmer, complete with little paddlewheels.
“You finished it!” she said happily, holding the little metal duck in her uninjured hand.
Spike blushed slightly, “I hope that it works properly. I’m not as industrious as you, you know.”
Fred responded, “You managed to find me, which makes you fairly industrious in my group.”
“Well, that was mostly George. I just drove the Seville through a door. You’ll have fun putting it to rights again once you‘re better,” he shrugged.
“Everyone’s safe, right? No one was badly hurt?” her expression was worried.
“No, everyone’s just fine. Lorne was a little distressed about having to give little Norman back to his mother, but he’s been off to visit them at Mosaic everyday, and that’s cheered him up greatly.”
Spike launched into the tale of their investigation into finding Fred, including how, if Dr. Breedlove had been as qualified for her job as she claimed, she could have caught that the largest book stolen from the British Museum was what needed to be decoded alone since it was written in Ancient and Modern Greek and not Arcado-Cypriot as she had claimed. He concluded the story with Gunn surmising the exact warehouse number Fred might be located in after George’s distress call because of the scrap of paper found at the Simmons’ Cab Company.
“What happened to the books?” Fred inquired.
“Beck used her powers to fry the books to cinders. Don’t want anyone others like that Northead/Thorande fellow coming around looking for the remains,” Spike replied.
“And what of those beads? How on earth did you come by one of seven mystical keys to unlock a gateway to another dimension?” Fred leaned closer to him, eager and intent on learning every detail of what had transpired while she had been sleeping.
“The beads are also dust,” Spike answered, “As to how I came by one of them, pure blind unluckiness, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?
Brushing her hair away from her shoulder gently, he said, “I’m always picking up bits and bobs when I’m out. Like a magpie, I am. Never know what might come in handy when you’re tinkering around. I believe I was at the docks on patrol when I found that red bit of glass. It might have slipped through a crack in a crate and rolled away while it was being loaded into the warehouse for holding. But as to the reality of what happened, I have no idea.”
“That is quite a coincidence,” Fred shook her head, though she was very familiar with how trouble often found the members of Angel Investigations even if they were not looking for it. She then added, “I’m a little disappointed that the beads had to be destroyed too. I really liked the barrette you made me.”
“Well…” Spike paused and reached into his vest pocket. He pulled out the hair ornament, completely repaired, and set it on Fred’s lap. “I might have been able to smuggle the red one away when everyone was distracted, but you did not hear that from me.”
Fred hugged him tightly upon seeing her barrette, a hug which quickly turned into soft, quick pecks on the cheek and soon evolved into passionate kisses. Spike’s hands ran through Fred’s hair, carefully cupping the back of her head. Her thin arms rested around his shoulders, comfortable in his embrace.
“I am truly sorry for ruining your evening out,” Spike spoke as they broke their lips apart so Fred could take a breath.
Fred replied, “It’s not your fault… except for the fact that you gave me a gift which was basically a beacon that lead a bunch of insane cult members to kidnap me, but really that comes with the territory of working at a supernatural detective agency.”
It was then that Fred first truly admired Spike’s smile. He always looked so young and happy when he smiled, but he only smiled for her. He would smirk and carry on around the others, but Fred liked to think that his boyish, somewhat shy smile was hers alone.
“Would you like to help me test your invention?” Fred asked, holding up the little steam-powered toy duck.
Spike appeared confused for a moment, “How would I help-” When exactly what she was asking him to do struck him, Fred got to see his sexy smile. “If it doesn’t heat things up, then perhaps I might lend a hand.”
The pair spent the rest of the day alone in privacy, mostly in the bathtub before retiring to bed with suitably pruned skin. Fred shared her experiences of being held prisoner by the Thorande Cult, regaling Spike with the story of Betta George’s bravery and her own displeasure and hurt pride with being wrong about her theory about the glyphs in the tomes, even though she knew that there was no way for her to discover the correct answer to the query without the keys. They became reacquainted, exploring one another, physically and emotionally until late in the evening.
“We should probably head down to dinner,” Spike said, shifting a bit with Fred’s slight weight on top of him underneath the bedclothes.
“I’m torn between being famished and not wanting to leave this bed,” she replied, kissing the side of his neck.
Despite her protests, Spike got up out of bed, nude, and headed towards her shut bedroom door, “I’ll fetch you a little supper-in-bed, if you would like.”
“Aren’t you a little underdressed for leaving the bed chamber?” Fred raised an eyebrow.
His response was to give her a saucy hip-wriggle as he left the room, which sent her into a fit of giggles. She first heard the sound of his bare feet on the stairs, and then after a few minutes came outraged shouts, breaking china, and a few catcalls from Lorne from the dining room.
Fred grinned as she settled back against her pillows and thought to herself that, in that moment, she would not rather be any place else in the entire world than the townhouse she shared with her friends at No. 117 Fairfax Street, even if it meant the occasional kidnapping.
A/N: I want to thank everyone for reading and giving me encouragement about Automated Utopia as this is my first complete, novel-length fanfiction. Our intrepid heros will return, in all their steampunk glory, in The Case of the Nefarious Nuptials!
Previous Chapters :: One :: Two :: Three :: Four :: Five :: Six :: Seven :: Eight :: Nine.
x-posted @ nekid_spike and darker_spike.