As he gradually began to feel himself returning to wakefulness, Spike became vaguely aware of several voices in the room with him, hollow and distorted through the haze of semi-consciousness that still surrounded him. The next thing he became aware of was the splitting headache that was intensified by the annoyingly loud voices of…whoever it was.

Where was he? he wondered, trying to open his eyes but finding it difficult against the pain in his head, and the light in the room, which seemed impossibly bright to him. He automatically tried to lift a hand to his aching head – and found immediately that he could not.

He tried again, recognizing the cool, metallic feel of strong iron manacles around his wrists, holding them tightly together and behind his back. Testing the limits of his bonds, he found that he could not move his wrists at all.

*Okay. This is not good.*

He tried to focus through the slowly dissipating fog of pain and sleep that still clouded his mind. What had happened? Where was he?

Just then, a familiar voice cut through the haze, dissolving it instantly as he remembered what had happened the night before, just as he had been about to drain that cute little red-headed bint…the Slayer!

*Oh bloody buggering hell!*

This could be more serious than he had thought, he realized. He forced himself to open his eyes, without lifting his head just yet from where it rested on his chest. Judging by the continued cadence of the conversation going on across the room from him, the Slayer and her little slay-groupies had not yet realized that he was awake.

He did not move an inch as he glanced around to get some idea of his surroundings. It seemed that he was directly in the center of the Slayer’s living room, chained to a wooden kitchen chair. The light which had initially seemed so intensely bright to him was in reality quite soft, coming from a small shaded lamp on an endtable beside the sofa.

He glanced sideways to see that his captors were not paying him any attention at all, engrossed in a quiet but intense conversation on the couch. The redhead and the boy were sitting on the couch, of course looking to Buffy, who was perched on the arm of the sofa, her arms crossed casually over her chest, one crossed leg swinging slowly as she spoke in a tone of triumph and authority.

*Soddin’ smug little bitch!* he snarled in his mind. *Thinks she’s right clever, ambushing me like she did! Well, I’ll show her just what a bright idea *that* was…just as soon as I…can…*

He strained uselessly against the bonds, and glanced down to see just why he had absolutely no freedom of movement at all. A length of sturdy chain had been run through the rings on the manacles at his wrists, and wrapped tightly around him and the chair he was sitting in – leaving him no leverage to work with.

“Hey, guys,” the Slayer’s voice suddenly spoke a little louder, and he could hear the shift in its direction that told him she was looking at him now. “Look who’s awake!”

Giving up the façade of unconsciousness which had clearly failed, he saw a smug smile on her face as she approached him with the enthusiastic glee of a child with a new toy. There was a sparkle of anticipation in her eyes as she approached him with a smirk.

It was deeply disturbing.

He determined right then not to let her get to him – and not to let her see it if she did. He forced a mocking smile to his lips in response to hers. “So what sort of a game is this we’re playing, eh, Slayer?” he asked her. “Holding me for ransom, are you?”

She smiled as she leaned down close to him, in a way that he knew she intended to be intimidating, but he did not move back away from her, though his every instinct was on high alert at the Slayer’s nearness, and screaming for retreat.

“More like torturing you for information,” she corrected him coolly, smiling directly into his eyes, and he felt a chill go down his spine in spite of his resolve to keep his cool. He could see in those deadly calm emerald eyes just how serious she was.

“See…I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.” She stood up a little straighter, but stayed very close as she move around behind him, trailing a hand across his shoulders as she did. “I keep meaning to talk to you, but every time we get the chance, we seem to get…” She paused, leaning down close to his ear from behind him, her hands resting on his shoulders. “…interrupted.”

Her hot breath on his ear sent an odd little tingle down his spine…and suddenly an image flashed into his mind, of their fight the other night…and what had followed it in his fantasy. Those powerful hands that were touching him now, drawing him closer to her in an intimate embrace. The tingling sensation suddenly moved lower, and he drew in a sharp breath as he felt his body beginning to respond to the images in his mind.

*Keep it together, you git,* he snapped at himself, trying to put the thoughts out of his mind. *She’s talking about bloody *torturing* you here, and you’re getting off on thinking about her! And by the way if she happens to see *that*, then you’re *really* not getting out of this, mate!*

Buffy misunderstood his reaction, the sharp intake of breath, and thought that she was having the effect she had intended on her prisoner. She smiled in satisfaction as she stood up straighter and came around to face him again.

“I know you know who killed my mother. And you’re going to tell me. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of the cryptic half-answers and evasive wording.” She leaned down close again to add in a tone that was almost flirtatious, “I like a guy who’s gonna be straight up with me.”

*Getting there, love. Getting there.* He thought, fighting back a sense of panic as he tried to keep his eyes away from the generous view of the Slayer’s cleavage as she bent down in front of him. If she caught him looking down her shirt – or saw the physical evidence of the effect she was having on him -- he knew that he would be dust quicker than he could even enjoy it.

Aloud, what he said was very different from his traitorous thoughts. All he could think of was trying to distract her from his obviously growing arousal – uncomfortably near to her, as she was leaning down in front of him. “Really,” he smirked. “So *that’s* what happened to you and Angel. And all this time I thought it was the whole you sending him to hell thing.”

Buffy stepped back suddenly, her eyes wide and her mouth opening partially in shock. She seemed stunned at the words, and for an instant he saw a flash of hurt in her suddenly tear-filled eyes, his cruel words like a slap in the face.

Which she swiftly returned.

The Slayer drew back her hand and dealt him a blinding backhand blow across the face, sending a shower of sparks and colored lights raining down in front of his vision, as his head was snapped hard to the side by the force of the blow. Before he could recover she was back in his face, one hand gripping the hair at the back of his head hard and yanking his head forward, her face mere inches from his.

“That was stupid, Spike,” she informed him, her voice soft and dangerous, her eyes glittering with hurt and rage. “The last thing you wanna do right now is make me any angrier with you!” She paused for a moment, clearly struggling for control of her own emotions, before loosening her grip slightly, but not releasing him, and pulling back just a little from him.

He realized with a flash of fear that he had pushed her a little too far, and felt somewhat sobered, thinking for the first time since finding himself in this position of just what a dangerous position it was. He realized suddenly that if he was not careful, he could very well die here, at the Slayer’s hands.

And yet…the scent of her anger and power was as intoxicating to him as it was frightening.

“I want you to think about your situation for a second here, Spike,” she said with the calm, patient air of a teacher, her emotions back under control for the moment as she met his eyes with a smile of self-satisfaction. “You’re chained to a chair in the house of your mortal enemy. You can’t get away – can’t even move.” She leaned in close again, a soft menace in her eyes as she went on slowly, evenly, “Every person in this house has lost someone very dear to them…because of *you*, Spike…”

“Now, just a bloody minute, pet…”

Lightning fast, the Slayer’s fist shot out and caught him across the face again. As he struggled to recover from the powerful blow, she leaned in close again with a patronizingly disappointed frown, shaking her head slightly. “Shhh,” she reproved him. “I’m talking.”

He didn’t dare continue his protest, and wisely kept his mouth shut as she went on.

“Even if you didn’t kill them yourself…your boss is responsible for their deaths…and you know who *did* kill them,” she pointed out, her voice still chillingly calm. “And I think that pretty much everyone in this room is willing to hold you responsible for that, Spike.”

She glanced back at her friends, and he followed her gaze to where they sat watching the scene.

He was startled by the intensity of the hatred in the eyes of the young man sitting on the couch. Spike remembered well the utter, uncontrollable rage that had driven Xander when he and Oz had attacked the mansion that night several months ago, following the random death of a girl the Whelp had been seeing. He remembered the shock, the devastation in the boy’s eyes at the sight of his friend’s broken body lying on the floor at Spike’s feet.

Now, however, he could clearly see that the shock and pain had turned to fury and hatred, and the boy’s dark eyes held a vindictive satisfaction at the position Spike was in.

He shifted his gaze to Willow – and the disgust and hatred in her eyes was breathtaking in its intensity. There was a violence, a vengeful cruelty in her expression that stood in sharp contrast to her slight stature and usually meek and timid nature. The look on her face was positively chilling, and left no doubt in his mind that if she could, she would gladly tear him to pieces with her own hands.

The Slayer smiled as she took in his reaction. “So you see,” she went on, her voice softening, “you really haven’t got a lot of options at this point. There’s a couple of different ways this can go.”

He looked back up at her, meeting her gaze boldly. He was somewhat sobered by the tense, emotionally charged atmosphere that filled the room, but still determined not to let her see that his unease was beginning to border on fear.

“You can tell me nothing. And I’ll assume that you *did* kill my mother. And I’ll have some fun with some of my favorite Slayer toys…a few crosses…some holy water…” She shrugged casually with a cold smile. “Kill a couple of hours before staking you.”

He swallowed hard, but held her eyes as she went on, determined not to back down. “Or,” she continued. “You can tell me nothing, and I can spend some time finding ways to make you change your mind…see option number one, torture, etc…” she smirked. “And then when you finally *do* break…because I swear to you that you will…” she went on, once again invading his space intimidatingly, that unnerving smile inches from his face. “you’ll tell me what I want to know…and then I’ll stake you.”

She stood up straight again. “And then there’s option number three,” she added in a brighter tone. “which I like to think of as your best bet – in which you tell me the truth, straight up, right now, who killed my mother.” She paused, shrugging before she admitted matter-of-factly, “And I still stake you. We just bypass the whole nasty torture thing.” Her expression suddenly hardened with her fist in his hair, jerking his head back as she glared down at him, and added, “Unless of course it *was* you who did it. In which case the torture would still apply.”

*Okay,* he thought, trying to control his breathing, to steady his nerves. *We’ve definitely crossed the line from unease into fear.*

“Look, Slayer,” he began cautiously, still looking her directly in the eye and willing her to see the truth there. “I swear to you, I did not kill your mum. I didn’t know anything about it until after it was done!”

“But you know who did,” she interrupted in a hard, relentless tone, not easing her grip on his hair at all. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know…”

She released him suddenly, only to punch him viciously in the face, and when he recovered enough to look back up at her again, her stake was in her hand.

“Yeah, love,” he muttered, his voice slightly slurred from his own blood that filled his mouth. “That’s the way to find out what you wanna know. Have fun interrogating a big pile of dust.”

The Slayer smiled coldly as she put a hand behind his head to pull him closer to her, surprising and frightening him when she lowered the stake and pressed it sharply against his lower abdomen, leaning in close to whisper, “There’s a lot of places I could put this that won’t make you dust.”

Breathing hard now with pain and fear, he gasped out, “Slayer, I swear, I’m telling you the truth…I don’t know anymore than you do about what happened to your mum.” He drew in his breath sharply as she pressed harder with her stake, before insisting in an almost desperate tone, “But I want to help you find out!”

Buffy paused, drawing back just slightly, almost automatically at his surprising words. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked him, frowning. “Why would you want to help me? Aren’t you supposed to be helping Faith?”

The stake pressing against his flesh and her threats of extreme bodily harm came to mind, but he had a strong feeling that that response would not impress her much. So he decided then and there that this was the moment to cast the dice and see where they landed. He had intended to use this Slayer to eliminate the other through manipulations, without her ever knowing how she had helped his plans along.

But at this moment, he was fairly certain that the truth might be his only chance of surviving this encounter. He raised his eyes to look firmly into hers as he responded in a low intense voice full of fury.

“The only thing I want to help Faith do…is die.”