Her Watcher called them "chippies" in that way he had, like it was a joke that only smart, educated people would get. It wasn't until later - she'd been watching some weird artsy movie set in the old west ‚ that she'd realized chippie was another word for whore. Which was pretty funny, she supposed. There were dozens of chipped vampires in LA since the Initiative had been forced to shut down operations in Sunnydale. Government put 'em all on a bus to LA, left them in the Greyhound terminal downtown at midnight with a crisp new fifty dollar bill in their pockets and no idea how to survive. Couldn't kill humans. Couldn't defend themselves from humans. So they panhandled, or robbed ATM's, or whored themselves for blood and money. Lot of 'em ended up doing O, trapped in that cycle. Not that she gave a fuck. Much.

But Blondie on Santa Monica was new to the game. A revelation. All shiny, with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, fingers framing the bulge at his crotch.

He'd changed his look a little. Stud piercing through the scarred brow. Hair artfully bed-head instead of slicked back. The soul patch beneath his lip was an ironic treat. He caught her looking, and, bold as brass, swept a rosy tongue over his pearly whites in a gesture that had become as common on the boulevard as the color codes of bangles and bandanas.

Wanna suck-job, honey?

He didn't seem to recognize her. And why should he? She'd been a different girl when last she'd laid eyes on William the Bloody. But, lord, how the mighty had fallen. Even lower.

She strolled over to him. "You're dry humping up the wrong tree, buddy. This is boy's town."

"Why're you here then, darlin'?" Gave her the slow once over ‚ twice. "I mean, tits like yours are a dime a dozen in LA, but you'd have to be a right clever tranny to hide your package in leather trousers that tight."

She rolled her shoulders and pushed her boobs out a bit to show them to their best advantage. "These are nature's own, babe. Genuine article, that's me. I'm just out here making sure the boys don't get ate. The wrong way, that is."

"There's a wrong way now?"

"There is if I'm me. And you're you."

His nostrils flared ever so slightly, and he pulled his head back, looking at her all slit-eyed. "Slayer."

"Yep."

"Get no trouble from me. Not out for the kill, right?" Then he flashed her a grin, and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. With the little triangle of beard beneath it was totally wicked symmetry. "I'm just a poor lad has lost his way, trying to make it on these mean, hard streets." A subtle movement from his hands had her reaching for a stake. But he had no weapon, unless his fingers rasping up and down on either side of his fly counted as such. She held her gaze there long enough for him to know she wasn't a shy flower, then looked up again. His eyes were very blue. More sky and less steel than her Watcher's.

"Well, see, I happen to know most of the chippies by name. Never seen you out here before."

"Got into town a few nights ago."

"Uh huh. Also happen to know that sometimes a smart, lazy fledge ‚ " His grin tightened at the insult, but otherwise didn't give anything away. "ã he'll get a notion that standing here looking pretty, waiting for the chumps to come to him, is a helluva lot easier than chasing 'em down."

"Maybe I just like topping bloated old queens. It's my kink, like."

"Yeah," she laughed. "Like you're on top these days."

He broke eye contact first. Shrugged, and returned to scanning for likely prospects cruising the boulevard in their SUVs. "I do all right." The hand that had been all come-hither just seconds ago, trembled as he snatched the cigarette from behind his ear.

"Really? So. How are tricks?"

"Be better if you'd bugger the fuck off," he said, lighting up. Oh, yeah. Boy was hungry and not used to it. Right on the edge of desperate.

She drew back her fist and belted him. The cigarette snapped in two, flew out of his mouth followed by a spray of saliva and blood.

"Christ! You fucking bitch!" His eyes sparked fire. He was that close to vamping out. She got a tingle. "That was my last fucking fag, you stupid cunt!" He didn't even ask why she'd done it. Didn't even try and come back at her like she knew he wanted. Definitely still chipped. They all did that after a while. Stopped fighting back altogether. The pain from retaliation was so much worse than just taking their lumps. Still, even though he was desperate, he wasn't quite broken yet. Which was kinda ... interesting.

She'd been wondering what to get her Watcher for his birthday.

"Sorry, man. Had to make sure, you know?" She pulled out her pack of Benson and Hedges and offered him one. He hesitated a tic, then took it like she fucking owed it to him.

Yep. Might be just the thing to cheer old Wesley up.

"So. What's your name?" she asked, as he leaned in for a light.

He took a long drag, his mouth working around a snarl for a second, then it curled suddenly into the sort of sneer that made her want to bite his lips off. In a good way. "Billy."

Well, she didn't figure he'd actually tell her. "Hey, Billy," she said, lighting up a cigarette herself. "I may have a little proposition for you."

"Money or blood involved?"

She gave him both dimples, a double-barreled, bang bang of a smile. "Both," she said.

Spike felt the phantoms of every person who'd ever lived or died in the place, turn to him the moment he walked through the doors. A feverish, busy attention, like dogs sniffing at his privates ‚ body and secrets, one and the same. And, like dogs, they scattered when their master, the Slayer, strode through the doors a few seconds behind him. Into the walls they flew, down through the floors, and up into ceilings of the Hyperion Hotel, whining in whispers.

The place was gothic, grand and decrepit at the same time, with a cavernous lobby, vaulted ceilings and a staircase that swept up wide then disappeared into pitch-black obscurity at the top. Dry rot and mouse droppings, musty bed linens and the blood stained mattresses of a thousand virgin conquests, mingled with the scents of blossoming lemon trees and night-blooming jasmine in the courtyard. The marble floor was cracked and chipped in places, but the front desk was polished to a dark warm luster. There was an office behind it. More dark wood. Many old books that seemed to be decaying in increments under the green shade of a banker's lamp. There was no one at the front desk and no one in the office.

"You live here?" he asked her. Because he really couldn't fathom it.

"Off and on. On at the moment. The plumbing's for shit ‚ well, I mean plumbing is for shit, but the plumbing here won't flush it most of the time. Suppose plumbing isn't really a problem for you though, is it?"

"I like a shower now and again."

"Well, if you're real good, we might let you stand under the trickle."

Spike hoped to hell she wasn't talking water sports. "We?" he asked, and even as he asked it the other part of "we" made his presence known, stepping out of the gloom at the top of the staircase.

"Faith?" the man said. "What's this?" His words echoed down and down ‚ not who, but what.

"Calls himself Billy," the Slayer said. Faith must be her name then. Couldn't imagine it was an attribute. She turned back to Spike with a false, grinning politeness that made his skin crawl. "Billy? This is Wesley Wyndam-Price. My Watcher."

Fucking hell. He'd been brought here to service a Watcher?

Wesley Wyndam-Price started down the stairs towards them, a lean greyhound of a man in a white button down shirt and black trousers. Dark-haired, with a day or two's growth of beard on his jaw. Artifice or neglect? Both, possibly. The world-weariness didn't seem like an affectation, but the icy mien might have been. A little madness roiled beneath the surface of him like molten glass. The skin around his eyes looked bruised from this distance, but the eyes themselves were torches aimed right at the vampire standing in his lobby.

Oh, and wasn't he the Lord Byron, Heathcliff, Mr. Rochester, Dark Knight, Lone Avenger all rolled into one Loony Toons package?

Christ. What've I let myself in for now?

"I know you," the Watcher said.

Spike repressed a shudder, forced a smile. "Don't believe I've had the pleasure, mate."

"From photographs. Accounts of your activities over the last hundred years." Fellow Englishman, too. There'd be bonding over tea and mother country anytime now. "You would be William the Bloody, if I'm not mistaken."

"You're not."

"Also known as Spike."

"Yeah."

The Watcher had reached the bottom of the stairs, and stood now with his eyes closed and his head cocked. One hand did a poncy little dance in the air, finger and thumb beating out a rhythm as if he were listening to music nobody else could hear. The whispered revelations of phantoms perhaps. His eyes popped open, and Spike's left foot shuffled back an inch or two. "You were the vampire Drusilla's consort. Part of Angelus's little entourage of mayhem, were you not?"

"Wasn't part of his anything," Spike snarled. Fuck. Fuck. No time to lose your cool now, chum. Hold it together. Blood and money, blood and money—

"But you knew Angel. Traveled with him and his women for a number of years."

Spike drew in air, let it out slow. "Knew Angelus. Back in the day. But Angel was no one I knew."

The smile the man returned set every nerve in his body jangling.

"Oh, Faith," Wesley exclaimed, his eyes all aglitter. "This is- this is just splendid. Perfect. Too generous of you, really."

"I knew you'd dig it. Happy birthday Wes."

They'd fed the vampire a single bag of blood from Angel's stash in the freezer. Angel would certainly not be needing it. It was only enough to take the edge off of his hunger really. Not enough so that he wouldn't be hungry later when it counted. He'd surprised them both by not complaining that it wasn't human blood. Faith had then presented William the Bloody with a hundred dollar bill (promising him two more of the same when his contractual obligations had been met) and a gift certificate to the Sunset Strip Tattoo Parlour which she'd apparently intended as Wesley's original birthday gift before this one presented itself.

Birthday Gift was thinking the whole scene was a bit of all right. The bottle of vodka helped considerably, as did Faith's hashish. He'd been twitchy as a wet cat when they'd first led him up to the suite, but now he sat at one end of the sofa, arm stretched along the back rest, legs splayed in a decadent display of the merchandise, his pretty mouth fixed in a wry smirk as he waited for his cues. Faith was perched at the other end, one leg curled beneath her, lazily twisting and untwisting a strand of her hair, watching the creature loosen up by degrees. She'd catch Wes's eye occasionally, then back to Spike. Such a game girl, his Faith.

Wesley had taken the worn leather armchair across from them, drink in hand. "So, William ‚ or do you prefer Spike?"

"Depends on whether or not I'm on top," the creature said, catching his tongue between his teeth in grinning je-m'en-foutisme.

"William it is then." Yes. That turned the smirk down a notch or two. "Tell me. Your time with Angelus. Back in the day. Was he asäperverse and deviant as they claim?"

Spike started, his eyes narrowing fractionally before relaxing back into smug default mode. He seemed to think he knew where this was going. "Worse. You can't imagine what a twisted old bastard he was. He was a master monster that one." He leaned forward, hands loosely clasped between his knees, eyes bright and feral. "Some of the things he done, even vampires only talk about in whispers."

"I've read some of it. Dreadful. Not the same as actually being there of course. Being witness."

"Oh no. Not at all. I could tell you stories would curl your toes. Shrivel your balls right up."

Wes leaned back, spread his legs wide, echoing the vampire's pose from before. He swallowed the vodka in one neat shot, and set the empty glass on the side table. "I imagine you could." He glanced at Faith and she rose languidly, sashayed her way over, and sat in his lap, arranging herself so that her knees were hooked over his open thighs, her head lolling in the crook of his neck. He pressed his hands across her belly, relaxed, possessive. "Why don't you then?"

And so the vampire began to spin the threads out ‚ the exploits of Angelus, embroidered and padded with details he hoped would suit the circumstances.

Half the shit Spike was spouting now, he was making up, drawing on experience and memory, things he'd heard from Dru, and his own years of violent debauchery. Casting the line out and seeing what little worm enticed the man to bite. He was hoping he might even get a go at the Slayer if he played this right. Hadn't had a woman in a dog's age, and missed the feel of his dick sliding in and out of the sort of hole that provided its own sweet lube. And wasn't she a pretty picture? Listening to horrors while her Watcher rubbed and fondled. Hand on her tit, idly brushing a nipple. The other hand worked her into a froth inside the open trousers. Sights and sounds that made it hard for Spike to follow the threads of his own tale. He could smell her juicy sex, and smell the blood from the torn skin of the man's knuckles, scraped raw on the bright silver teeth of her zipper—

He must have licked his lips, or paused too long in his regaling, because now both pairs of eyes were on him. Wesley's had never left his face, but Faith was blinking at him as if he were a radio that had inexplicably switched from Nine Inch Nails to Kenny G in the middle of a suicide attempt.

"Faith," Wesley murmured into her ear. "Would you mind leaving us alone for a bit?"

Now we come to it. Time to sing for your supper, Spike.

Faith gave a sweet little moan of protest, but swung her leg over his knees, stood up wobbly and made her way to the door. She paused there with her hand on the knob. Her and the Watcher exchanged a look. Spike figured she'd be within earshot.

Faith went straight to her room, stripped, and had a wash at the sink, soaping her armpits and the insides of her thighs, and under her breasts. She rinsed off, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair and twisted it into a knot, securing it with a dangerously pointy ebony chopstick. Then she looked for something to wear, something that wouldn't be a bitch to take off, that she could rinse the blood out of easily. A fine cotton slip dress printed with little orange rosebuds seemed to fit the bill. It had that innocent, backwoods, dumb as post and barefoot look Wes liked so much. Virginal schoolgirl panties in plain white cotton were essential.

Costume taken care of, she went to the closet and retrieved the duffle bag. Took inventory. Chains, padlocks, hand cuffs, shackles, flail, whip, paddle, pliers, awl, razors, knife, nails, clamps, crucifix, holy water, strap-on, gag, candles, box of matches, and wet wipes. Check.

The contents of the bag rattled and clanked as she made her way back to the suite. There she waited, leaning against the wall, having a smoke. Finally she couldn't stand it anymore, and plonked her bottom onto the duffle and pressed her eye to the keyhole.

Spike waited, and Wesley let him wait. Let him wait until he began to lose the pleasant buzz from liquor, blood, and hashish. Until his knee began to bounce and his fingers drummed his thigh and his eyes flitted about the room seeking anything on which to light that wasn't Wesley's searing, unwavering gaze, and his blood-smeared knuckles.

It was probably all of five minutes. "So what do you—"

"Faith's a lovely girl, isn't she?"

"Yee-ah. She's a looker," he offered warily.

"You've had two slayers yourself, haven't you?"

"Killed 'em, if that's what you mean," he said, a bit of pride seeping back into his tone.

"Yes, that's what I meant. Of course. That'säthat's quite feat. Two. Imagine you would have had Buffy Summers as well, if not for Angel."

"More due to other circumstances, mate." He tapped the side of his head, one short sharp knock. "Got a chip in my head means I can't kill anything. Why I'm here, innit?"

"Angel despoiled her, you know. Buffy."

"Yeah. He told me. Many, many times. How he'd rammed it home, and breached her precious maidenhead. The blood of a slayer on his big fat dick. So. The. Fuck. What."

"Angel told you?"

Spike clenched his teeth. Huffed a sigh of irritation. "Angelus told me. That's what brought him back. Should have been thanking her if you ask me. Gone on his merry way instead of poncing about sketching portraits of her loved ones, and killing their goldfish. Was pathetic." He got to his feet abruptly and stalked the cage of the room. "Look. We gonna do this thing or not? Because otherwise I'm taking my gift certificate, thank you very much, and—"

"What do you expect is going to happen tonight, William?"

He stopped his agitated pacing and tipped his head, giving Wes a sidelong gaze of calculated heat. "I expect, Mr. Wyndam-Price, that I shall be fucked."

"I expect you'll be right," Wesley said softly. The fingers, with their bloody knuckles, crooked and invited him closer. "Come here." Spike did. "On your knees." He knelt between the Watcher's legs. Held his gaze for a long, challenging moment, then slowly looked down to where he assumed he was meant to look. Tent in the trousers. As expected.

What he didn't expect was for Wes to offer the bleeding hand, and with that hand, tease Spike's mouth to open and his tongue to unfurl. He closed his eyes because he couldn't help it. A moan came out of him, out of a place so far down and deep inside him it nearly made him weep.

He licked the heady aperitif of blood and woman from another man's fingers.

The vampire was licking Wesley's hand like a dog. Like a big grateful dog licking the juice of her pussy from Wes's fingers. She pressed her fist to her crotch and squeezed her thighs tight around it. Watched through the keyhole, his tongue, his mouth, and the rapture of his expression. Her fist forced its way farther down, driving her thighs apart as she imagined he would do. Imagined a man, then a wolf loping towards her, his eyes all golden and his sharp teeth slick with saliva. The knuckle of her thumb worked over her clit, hard and rough as his tongue. The pads of her fingertips played over wetness drawn to the surface, making the cotton slippery. Thumb, knuckle, fingers, thumb, knuckle, fingers, tongue and teeth, wolf, angel, wolf, angel, tongue tongue, teeth teeth—

Wes pushed Spike's face away, and she swallowed a gasp, bit her own tongue to keep from crying out. No, no! She was so close! Spike growled, a warning. Wes laughed low in his throat, and it was almost like he was growling back.

He pushed the vampire's mouth away, and it returned open, tongue out, so he put his whole hand over the face, and shoved. You're done, no more. Spike growled and Wesley laughed. Trembling from the effort to keep his impulses in check, Spike sat back on his haunches. His nails dug into the fabric of his faded Levis, but he waited.

The creature was hunger personified, in all its permutations. He'd give him something to suck then, the greedy whelp. But he wanted to see the flesh first, the long expanse of his pale bare flesh, which would not be like Angel's, not at all. He reached, twisted his fingers in the fabric of Spike's t-shirt and tugged hard, pulling it out, pushing it up over the navel, over the ridges of his abdomen, the sharp cage of his ribs, the hills of pectorals.

Wes paused, fascinated. One nipple was pierced and threaded with a thick silver ring from which dangled a tiny cross. He could see a stripe of black and red from where the cross had rubbed the flesh beneath the aureole. He touched the cross with a fingertip and gently pressed it to the wound. The flesh sizzled softly, and Spike hissed but otherwise didn't flinch. Didn't even close his eyes.

"What a curious thing you are," Wes whispered, and for the first time looked into his eyes, really looked. And then he couldn't wait. He pulled Spike's shirt over his head, and pulled that head down, down between his legs to cover his cock. He fell into the dark well of Spike's mouth, where a demon waited in chains for him at the bottom.

Faith saw Wesley sink farther down into the chair, knees wide, and the black wool of his trousers taut over his thighs. There was shimmer of protest in the muscles of Spike's back, and then surrender ‚ or something like surrender ‚ as he bent his neck and lowered his head to what she couldn't see.

Over the plane of Spike's back, what she could see was Wesley's shoulders in the white shirt, the arch of his throat between the open wings of his collar, the point of his chin, his slack lower lip. His nose was a dot of white with two dark spots on either side. It was weird. She thought his eyes were closed. They must be. But they could also be watching her watching them. Yes, she thought, pressing her hand flat against the wood right next to her open eye, he might be doing that now. Watching me watch him.

Her other hand returned to her clit, under the dress this time, into her panties. Wet, slippery, slick. She smiled, and licked her lips.

Slow, slow, ring around the rosy. The heel of her palm rolled over swollen flesh, picked up pace, faster and faster, and she slipped one finger in, then two, and she was practically bent in half, thrusting to the rhythm of Spike's head bobbing up and down.

She could see the muscles tighten at the backs of his legs, his ass clenching, jeans riding just low enough that she could imagine her fingers sliding between the cheeks and stroking the cleft. Relax baby, just relax His hands gripped Wes's thighs tight and his knees skimmed the floor, so he seemed to be hovering scant inches above it, balanced on the toes of his boots. Corded muscles in his neck played tug of war. His spine curved and dipped, and all the knobs along it rippled like beads on a string. White shells and white bones, shoulder blades jutting out over his back. She imagined wings snapping out and beating futilely, trying to fly away like—

He was nothing like Angel. Angel was all bunched muscle under the tracery of secrets etched into his skin. He was—

Fuck Angel! Fuckhimfuckhimfuckhimfuckhim. Oh god, oh god, oh god—

Yeah!

Spike tried to pull back before it hit the back of his throat, but too late. Fucking gag reflex. Just hold it moment. Then swallow. Right. That's done with.

Done with. Hundred dollars for a blow job? Not likely. And it galled, what he'd swallowed. Because it was the epitome of what he'd been swallowing for the past fucking year. This is all there is now, Spike. This is it. Swallow and swallow until you can't remember the taste of anything else. Not human fear, or human blood, or your own rage, or love, hate, bone crunching, head-busting, glass breaking, gut-slicing, heart pounding, car-bashing, death and bloody destruction for the fuck-all hell of it.

Even the taste of blood and cunt had been washed away in one throat-coating gulp. It wasn't fair. Wasn't proper. The man should be pissing himself in terror right now and promising to do anything if allowed to live. That Spike should be on his knees to a human was not the way things were supposed to be. Only time he'd bent knee with any seriousness, to anyone who mattered, had been—ages ago.

Wesley Wyndam-Price, Watcher, slouched in the chair, gazing at him, sloe-eyed and indolent, his spent dick hanging out of his trousers, and glistening with spittle. The image of idling licentiousness, elbow on the armrest, cheek and chin upon his hand. Very portrait worthy. His eyes didn't leave Spike's face as he called out, "Do come in, Faith."

There was a thump, and a little squeak from the other side of the door, and Spike smiled to himself. Knew she was there, of course, peeking through the keyhole. He could smell her ‚ all lavender soap, and April fresh dryer sheets, and musky twat liqueur. Could hear the hitch in her breathing, swallowed sighs as she rubbed herself near frantic in the corridor. Truth told, he'd been putting on a bit of show. Extra flexing here and there. He'd wanted to end the performance on a high note. Gagging before swallowing wasn't it, but he suspected she'd been too occupied to see the inelegant finish.

The door opened with a slow creak and Faith peered around the crack. "Everything all right in here?"

Wes righted himself, tucked in, zipped up. "I suspect you know, wicked girl. You've been spying at the keyhole. Very naughty."

Her answering look of coy guilt was betrayed by the saucy, sated manner in which she entered the room. She'd dressed herself like a farmer's daughter all on a summer's day - out feeding chickens perhaps, in naught but her knickers and chemise. He remembered farmers' daughters caught on their way to market in the dark hour before sunrise. And field girls with fat babies in the slings of their shawls. Angelus loved the field girls. And the shop girls. And nuns. And gypsies.

"I shall have to punish you for that," Wes was saying. "Later."

If Spike wasn't strapped for cash he'd probably have paid to see it. "No need to put it off on my account," he said, "I'll just have a seat on your sofa, shall I? Read a magazine." He rocked back onto his heels, preparing to rise.

A black shoe pressed down over his crotch, heel digging into his balls. "I didn't say you could get up."

His fangs itched to descend, sink into the artery he could hear pulsing at Wes's groin. "Don't fancy being on my knees 'til you're ready for another go, Watcher. That could takeäwhat? Hours at the very least."

"I believe you're getting paid to do whatever I want you to do."

"Getting paid to be what I am."

Wes laughed in wry astonishment. "What in hell do you think that is now?"

"A vampire that can't fucking kill you where you sit, you arse-rimming faggot. Now get your foot off me."

They locked gazes for a few moments before the shoe lazily slid down between his legs and over the tops of thighs. It was such a tender withdrawal that the sudden kick in his chest caught him unawares, knocked him backwards—

The demon rose unbidden and leapt for the Watcher's throat. A swift, exhilarating moment of pure rage and freedom.

But it was not the demon who found himself on his back, clutching his head in searing agony, dimly aware of the stake at his heart, and Faith's knee in his belly, and a prayer buzzing in his ears, please, please, please, yes, end this, please—

The urge passed, as it always did, and he lay very still, praying that she wouldn't. When he opened his eyes, there were jagged lines flashing like thunderbolts across his retinas.

"Well, we can't have this," Wes said. "This won't do at all."

When Faith returned from the hallway with the duffle, Wes had already rolled Spike onto his stomach and was jerking his arms behind his back, hard, so that the joints made popping sounds. She snapped the handcuffs around his wrists. He had big hands for a guy his size and she smiled, knowing what that meant. But his shoulder blades were doing that thing again, jutting out like the stubs of wings, and she stared at them, gnawing the ragged edge of her thumbnail before Wes pointedly cleared his throat, "Boots?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah." She had trouble getting those off, a lot of twisting and tugging after the laces were loose. The socks weren't even sweaty, and they slipped right off his feet like they'd been filled with baby powder.

For a vampire he was being kinda zen about the whole deal, she thought. Sometimes that happened with a chippie. Like electroshock therapy or something. You could bend them into all kinds of shapes and they'd just stay that way until you bent them into a different shape. Sometimes they drooled.

She folded his legs up over his back. Fastened the shackles around his ankles. Paused for a moment to trace the blue veins in his feet, then reached into the duffle for the length of chain. Loved the weight of it, the way it slipped and moved through her hands, heavy as an anaconda. She looped it around his throat twice and let the ends fall over his back. His muscles twitched, little spasms that erupted all through his body, as she drew the chain through the manacles, under the bar of the shackles, and back up ‚ linked them all together, neck wrists ankles.

Together, she and Wesley set him upright again, onto his knees. A little tug, his head drawn back, just enough so that he had to look up at them, or down his nose at nothing. She threaded the padlock through the links, and with a snick, closed it.

"Where you want him, birthday boy?" she asked, wrapping her fist around the chain.

"In front of the chair, I think ‚ but not too close."

Faith dragged Spike across the room, ignoring the gagging sounds he made as he tried to protest. Or possibly to beg. She wasn't sure which. And it didn't matter anyway.

Dazed, the vampire blinked eyelids over pupils that shrunk and dilated, shrunk and dilated. Worlds created and uncreated in the soft, slow blinking of his eyes. It was eerily like Angelus, that last time, when Wes had been the one bound and waiting. Those long moments before the longest night of his life, when he'd learned just how much pain the human body could endure. Passing out and coming to over and over again, until Faith had finally been able to kill the thing that had once been a friend.

The soul that had made Angel something other than Angelus was still in a jar. Faith kept hiding it from him, but he always knew where it was. Drawn to it. A softly pulsing glimmer of nothing like hope at all. The body was dust, yet the foul spirit of Angelus persisted, permeating everything.

He watched Faith busily arranging the toys from the duffle bag in a neat row. Her hands trembled a little. He thought he knew why. But, as well as he'd come to know her, he could never be sure whether she trembled from anticipation or dread.

A flicker of awareness, then real panic erupted in their captive, and he watched Spike writhe and thrash in his bonds as he cursed them, cursed the world that had brought him to this place, this point of convergence. Wes could feel the scars on his own body vibrating like the strings of a violin being plucked for tuning.

He realized with a start that Spike had ceased his useless squirming, and was now watching him. That same look Wes had seen when pressing the cross to his flesh, as if to say, there's nothing you can do to me that hasn't been done already.

Short of ending his existence, of course. It was a bond they shared. Yet, for all his posturing, Wes had no doubt he'd be begging for that before the night was through. Beg the way he had begged. Beg in a way Angelus never would have. But, for a few hours at least, they could all pretend.

He considered the beast before him. "Faith? What say we start with the sharps?"