Where Darkness Leads

Chapter 8

"Do you have any idea what they intend to do with them?" Giles asked Buffy after they arrived at the school library.

"My feeling is they want to use them as bait," she replied. "Try to lure me into screwing up. I try to rescue them and they attack."

"We're going to need know where they were taken first," Oz said.

"Angel, can you see what you can get out of Willie?"

"I recognized one of them from Spike's entourage," she said turning to Giles.

"Right," he said. "Besides we haven't spoken in a long while."

"Good. I'll head home and gather weapons."

"Once Angel finds out we will meet you, Giles said.

"One way or another will get both of them back."

Buffy and Angel turned parading out of the library.

In a large warehouse Matthew stood in front of Willow and Michael handcuffed to rusty pipes.

"What are you going to do with us?" Willow said in her defiant sheepish manner.

"I don't think you are in the position to ask me any questions, he said, stealthily stepping forward. "If you shut up you'll live and if you don't then we are going to just have to find some other way of keeping you two quiet."

"Willow, I don't like this, Michael whispered once the vampire had walked away from them.

"Well how do you think I feel?"

"So all that Anne Rice stuff is actually true?"

"In a way."

"I'll be damned."

"How long has it been like this?"

"For a while."

It was growing difficult for Willow to answer. She didn't want to explain too much but yet still answer his questions.

We live on the gate to tell and your new girlfriend is a vampire slayer. , she thought. It wasn't going to be as simple as that.

She and Xander understood way better now then they did in the beginning. Who knew behind the the innocent town façade laid the worst demons and monsters imaginable?

The inside of Willie's Bar always felt like you were walking into a cold freezer where many of the lower dissents of Sunnydale mingled and to get a cold drink or a warm bottle of fresh blood plasma though today it was a rather quiet and slow day.

Angel stepped inside quietly taking a seat at the bar and said, "Hello Willie."

"Angel!" he exclaimed, dropping a glass on the floor he was cleaning, "You scared me. It's been a while."

"Yeah it has. So why don't you tell me where a group of Spike's boys are stirring up trouble?"

He gave Willie his smug threatening look knowing he meant business.

"Okay, you didn't hear it from me but there has been some activity down by the old industrial section. They are probably housed in one of the deserted warehouses."

"Would you like a drink while you are here? On the house."

"Sorry Willie, haven't got the time."

Angel looked down at his hands and saw stains of blood creating a shocked look in his eyes.

"What's wrong, Angel?" Willie questioned warily.

Angel threw open the men's washroom door turning on the sink faucet. He rubbed his hands together through the water attempting to wash away the blood. When he looked up into the miror he was surprised to see himself but it wasn't himself. From the eyes and the evil smug look on his face Angel could tell it was Angelus.