Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 1 - HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

((Jim Steinman wrote it, I think, even though the site where I found the lyrics says it's Bonnie Tyler) - Bonnie Tyler




Chapter 1.10
Saturday, May 25th, 2002


"You're sure that this place is soundproof and doesn't have any sort of security cameras?" Buffy asked, having to raise her voice so that Lorne could hear. The group were seated around a large circular table and, with the exception of Fred who sat directly opposite, Lorne and Angel were the two farthest people from the slayer. The Summers girls' move to keep Wesley between them when they were seated had left Spike next to Connor on his left and placed Dawn on Lorne's left.

The Pylean shook his head. "They bank on it. There are more shady deals and illicit assignations go on in this place than honest to god dinners. Privacy is as much their stock in trade as the food."

Buffy continued to appear sceptical as she looked around the windowless room. So, they had a private dining room and lounge with its own private bathroom to themselves. So, the waiter only appeared when he was summoned by someone tugging on a Victorian style bell pull. So, according to Lorne the lacquered screens in the corner concealed another door that led to a room where, for an additional fee, the clientele could be even more relaxed... So what? She still found it impossible to believe that there was no way for the proprietors to know if any of their patrons were about to skip out on their bill.

"Look, honey, the restaurant was set out this way before security cameras were invented. Demons don't just come in all shapes and sizes, they come with all sorts of appetites and one species' delicacy is just a disgusting plate of live, wriggling worms to someone else, not to mention the fact that we're not all one big happy brotherhood of hellspawn. So, they build the place with all these separate rooms to keep everyone apart. Then, they realise that people are bringing their mistresses or having all these other meetings they don't want people to know about, so they move the waiters out of the rooms and have them on call instead and they make it a selling point. Then, they add the bedrooms... and there's no way they're going to disturb anyone in there without them ringing for room service."

"But if it's as easy as climbing in and out of a window, how do they stop people leaving without paying their bills?"

"Believe me, pop tart, they have trackers that would make a bloodhound weep. And if you don't pay up in money, you'll pay in blood and teeth and broken bones."

"Okay," the slayer grudgingly conceded. "I get it, but how come I end up looking like the slut in the vampire sandwich?"

Dawn's mouth twisted into a grin. "Just lucky, I guess," she told her disconsolate elder sister.

 

---

 

"I want to watch." Angel leaned over to whisper in Spike's ear. The group had moved from the dining table to the sofas and armchairs at the other end of the room, where they waited while the table was cleared away and after dinner drinks and cigars were brought to them.

Spike's reply was equally sotto voce. "You always did, sire , but I'm disinclined to perform and even less inclined to share, which is where your watching always ends up. If you wanted a woman, you shouldn't have brought a boy as your date."

In a flash, Angel's taloned hand gripped the blond's throat like a vice, his voice still inaudible to the humans in the room. "You will perform. If you can't get it up for your little toy, you'll perform on the end of my dick and when I move on to your little plaything her screams won't be because she's enjoying herself." Angel pushed Spike away from him and rose from the sofa. He lifted a half-empty wine bottle from the table and raised it to his lips before addressing the waiter in charge of the team clearing the table. "We want the key to the other room."

The waiter gave a deferential bow and moved over to the door, opening it with a master key and then lifting another key from a shelf just inside the room. He passed this second key to Angel. "As you wish, sir."

Spike glared daggers at the elder vampire from his seat until the table was cleared and moved into a corner of the room. Several bottles of champagne, a bottle of port and a bottle of brandy were brought in on a drinks cart along with the requisite glasses and a box of cigars. Then, just as the waiters were leaving, Spike stood and picked up one of the bottles of champagne and a pair of champagne flutes in one hand and pulled Buffy toward the bedroom with his other. Angel's grim smile widened as he followed them into the room and closed the door.

 

---

 

"That little scene had just a bit too much verisimilitude for my liking." Buffy's brows almost met in a frown. "I want to say, 'Tell me you guys didn't do that for real', but then I'd be kinda scared I might not like your answer."

"Where did you pick up a word like verisimilitude, pet?"

"I know... words. I know lots of words," Buffy blustered.

"Well, yeah. But a goodly proportion of them aren't known to mankind outside the bounds of California and not many of them run to six syllables." Spike's smile and soothing tone softened what might have been harsh words. "Lord knows you can think on your feet. You're sharp as a fresh scalpel blade, but to date you've not exactly been one for reading dictionaries."

"Hah!" Buffy teased, tugging gently on the lapels of Spike's suit. "I'll have you know that you're talking to a future college graduate, who might well major in English Lit, which by my reckoning is more than you can claim."

Spike's face formed into a lopsided grin and then he gave a quiet chuckle. "Nice try, pet, but I'm still not saying nothing."

"One of these days I'll find out what you did, my William."

"But not today. Do I get a kiss for luck?"

"Maybe..."

"Maybe?"

Angel rolled his eyes and moved a chair over to stand beneath the window. "I'm going before you two get even more like a Harlequin paperback."

"Maybe, if Angel gives us some privacy."

Spike grinned and Angel sighed, climbing out of the window with a grace only slightly impeded by the slick soles of his dress shoes. Buffy tugged a little harder on Spike's suit.

 

---

 

"You two are disgusting. I could hear you all the way from here."

"Like you're not plannin' to jump the cheerleader's bones the second you get her back?" Spike asked, as he opened up the DeSoto's trunk to remove the bag of clothes he had prepared earlier. He tossed the bag and the blanket that he kept in the trunk into the backseat and then leant with his forearm on the top of the doorframe while he spoke to Angel.

"It wasn't first on my to do list," the older man tried to avoid the issue.

"Okay, once you've checked on what happened with the Mark II and you make sure she sent him packing and you make her admit how she feels because you're too gutless to say it first and you find someone who can do you a little something to stop that soul of yours from running a mile, then you were planning on screwing her senseless."

"Maybe, but even if this thing helps us find out where she is, we've still got to work out how we get there and bring her home."

"Well, that's the other reason why, when you know a guy like Boy Watcher, you don't treat him like shit."

"The other reason?"

"Well, apart from the fact that now you've got a soul, you've got no excuse for acting like a total git." Spike climbed into the back of his car to get changed and pulled the door shut, leaving Angel to do the same in his own.

---

Spike listened carefully for any sound that might betray the presence of someone other than the two vampires, who were in the ventilation system. This was the most likely point in the whole plan for them to be discovered, provided Flabby Butt didn't trip the lasers in the chamber where the axis was, Spike reminded himself. Satisfied they were alone and in the correct location, Spike pushed the vent cover carefully outwards with gloved hands until it came loose and then he turned it so that he could pull it into the vent where he was lying. He eased forward until he could look down on the first of the security cameras they had to manipulate.

He pulled a small unobtrusive object from the holdall they had brought with them. Checking he was holding it the right way, he leaned over and stuck it over the camera lens. Now, they just had to wait a few minutes to make sure no one appeared to investigate. because they had noticed either the moment he added the small periscope onto the camera or the practically imperceptible difference the device caused to the camera's field of view. True to form Spike counted to sixty and then decided that was long enough to wait. The rest was fairly simple. So long as they added the periscopes to the cameras in the prescribed order so that they approached each one from the side or behind to cover it, the ones they had already covered would continue to show an empty corridor. After all, what is a periscope but a pair of parallel mirrors? Other than that they simply avoided the pressure pads on the way to the electrical panel that they needed to access and Fred talked them through the procedure to disable the alarms which would have been triggered as they moved around from one area of the building to another. Then, when they reached the room where The Axis was housed they had to negotiate a maze of lasers.
Spike had practically waltzed through the simulation they had set up in the hotel lobby the first time and every time since. Angel, with his larger frame, had brushed the massive cat's cradle they had used on all of his first six attempts though he had cleared the maze successfully four times in a row before they stopped.


It would be an exaggeration to say that everything ran totally according to plan, but except for a brief period where the vamps played ring a rosie with a security guard, keeping a stack of packing crates between them and the oblivious guard until he moved on to the next area on his patrol route, they didn't encounter any problems for which they were unprepared. Finally, the pair stood beside the horseshoe-shaped axis on its pedestal. Now, their lives depended on Bee's interpretation of the markings on the pedestal base being accurate. The demon half-breed had suggested that the defensive spell was activated only by the removal of the artefact, so Angel was going to perform the ritual to find Cordy right there. Of course, if at this point a security guard appeared, they were screwed big time.

---

 

"And thank god. Your butt was about a quarter of an inch from blowing your chances of finding me all to hell. I don't suppose you even considered that stuffing yourself with profiteroles might not be the best way to prepare."

---

"God, she's beautiful!" Angel sighed.

"I suppose... If you're lookin' to shag a nightlight," Spike conceded. "Still looked better before she hacked all her hair off but if that's what wags your tail. Just get to the important bit. Where is she?"

"Can't you tell? She's on a higher plane. She's become a higher power."

"An' I'm one of the bloody seraphim. Don't talk daft."

"Spike!" Angel's tone of voice boded violence if Spike continued in the same vein.

"If they were lookin' for someone to turn into some sort of angel, there's a lady in Sunnydale as is a damn sight closer an' a good deal wiser than the Perfect Princess. An' if anybody up there's listening you can't have her yet. Why the hell would they take your bit of skirt when they could have Joyce or someone like that who's finished down here and who knows a thing or two about life?"

"Cordelia's different now."

"That's a bummer. I didn't mind her how she was but I'm telling you if she's a higher being, then either somebody's up to some sort of jiggery pokery or there's some other Cordelia Chase somewhere that they meant to get an' they cocked it up."

"You just don't get it do you, Spike? For weeks I've been trying to find her, to bring her home."

"Yeah? So work out the interplanar road map, find out where we're going and we'll go an' get the bint."

"No, Spike, we don't need to bring her home. She is home."

---

 

"Are you some sort of retard? I mean, I know Champion of the Powers and all that. This place doesn't even have a shoe store. How could you think this could be home? Do I look happy?"

---

 

"What sort of a dozy pillock are you, ya daft wanker? You're supposed to be in love with the bint. Where's your bloody spine? You're just goin' to sigh away and tell everybody how pretty she looked and play the bloody martyr card again, aren't you? I can tell you for a fact that the tasteless tart is stone cold gone for you. If it was her here with me, apart from the fact we'd have a dozen security guards and half of LAPD on the way because they'd have spotted her walkin' round the corridors, you can be damn sure she'd be working out a way to haul your arse back to this hell hole of a city you live in. It's a higher plane. It's not heaven, or at least if it is, don't you say anything like that to Buffy. Now, hurry up and find out where she is. There's a couple of people I want to check on while we're here and if you don't shift your arse the guard will be due back."

"Spike, it's where she belongs. I can't take her away from that. She has her own destiny now."

"Let me get this straight. You're the guy with the photographic memory, right?"

"Well, not that I like to brag, but... yeah, pretty much."

"Then how come you can't remember which sounds go with which lip movements? You honestly saying that in a quarter of a millennium you haven't worked out enough lip-reading to recognise 'Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.'?" Spike asked, enunciating the last few words as if he had been taking lessons from Professor Higgins and exaggerating the movement of his lips. "'Cause your lady has just been calling you worse than mud for the last five minutes for being too stupid to go fetch her."

 

---

 

"Darn skippy she has been... Skippy? Skip. Tell the big lunkhead to find Skip. That double-crossing weasel of a supposed guide."

 

---

"What do you mean she wants me to get her out? But, she's all glowy and higher power and stuff... And are you saying she can see us?"

"Well, I guess if she knows you wanted to just leave her up there she must be able to or maybe she normally calls you retard? Maybe it's a pet name or something? Now bloody hurry up and backtrack or whatever you do to work out how we get there."

"Cordy wouldn't call me a retard... Okay, she would, but she'd do it to my face."

"Well, since you want to leave her face in a different dimension maybe that wasn't an available option."

 

---

 

"Hello? Would you stop arguing with the Neanderthal and turn around so you can see what I'm saying, Mr Interpreter For The Trapped In Another Dimension Against Their Will? Skip. Skip. Skip. Skip. Skip. S. K. I. P. Skip."

 

---

 

Spike arched an eyebrow. "You say this bint was your secretary? You must have been hard up. She's bloody dyslexic. It's Spike. S. P. I. K. E. Spike... Or the trip to the higher plane has warped her noggin. Could be damaged goods by the time you get her back, you know?"

 

---

 

Cordy let rip a scream of frustration, her hands reaching up to pull at her hair before she remembered that it wasn't really there... but then neither were her hands.

 

---

 

"Are you still trying to tell me that she's happy to be there?" Spike asked his grandsire.