"Wanna tell me what you're doing, Baby?" Faith's voice was low and soft, deceptively gentle, as she pressed in closer to Spike, her cold, dark eyes flashing with a deadly anger.

He could not even draw breath to answer, because of the tight hand gripping his throat, pinning him to the wall. That was actually not such a bad thing -- as he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say.

He cursed himself silently for allowing himself to become so distracted by the shocking information he had found as to let her sneak up on him like that. And now, it seemed that he would pay for that carelessness.

Faith smiled slowly when she realized his predicament, a patronizing, falsely sympathetic sound to her voice, as she said, "Oh, that's right. You can't, can you?"

She removed her hand from his throat, to allow him to speak...only to deliver a stunning blow with her fist, slamming his head back into the wall with violent force. He felt his knees buckle slightly as stars danced before his vision against a backdrop of darkness, and he fought to stay on his feet and conscious.

Faith did not give him time to recover, gripping his hair and yanking his head back up, hard, and slamming it back against the wall again, leaning in close with a cruel smile as she asked in a nasty, menacing voice, "How about now?"

"Wait...please..." he gasped, his voice barely above a whisper, struggling to make his mind focus against the thick fog that fell in front of his eyes and the pain that blurred his thoughts and prevented him from coming up with a way of escape.

Or maybe there just *was* no way of escape.

"That's what I'm doing, Baby!" Faith laughed, shaking him a little by the hand that was fisted hard in his loose blonde hair. "Waiting! For you to tell me what the hell is going on here!" Her voice was almost pleasant, amused by his vain attempts to stall her, as well as by the precarious position he was in.

"I was just...I mean...I..." It was useless. He stopped talking, unable to focus his thoughts enough to formulate a convincing lie. Truth be told, he had really not thought that far ahead. He had not planned on getting caught.

*You're getting sloppy, mate. Gotta pull it together if you wanna stay alive,* he thought, then realized grimly, *Though it might actually be a little late for that.*

"Let me guess," Faith said, that same cold smile in place as she met his eyes, her own glittering with menace. "You started feeling a little out of the loop...a little, oh I don't know...replaced, maybe?" The pointed way she spoke the word and the little lift of her eyebrows as she said it told him that she knew he had been listening to her phone conversations.

"But, oh look! How convenient! There just happens to be a new Slayer in town for you to suck up to – you know, since you just *happened* to drop her a clue that *maybe* it’d be a good idea to come home. But on your way out the door...you figured you'd find out what I'm up to so you can take her a nice little welcome gift."

She paused, leaning in closer, putting her stake back in her pocket and shoving her hand into the front pocket of his jeans, where he had placed the folded pages of the book, her groping touch deliberately more invasive than it had to be. “Am I getting warm yet?” she whispered, her hot breath falling on his face, her lips a bare inch from his ear.

Feeling trapped, suffocated, and realizing that he was not going to get out of this situation with words, he tried to twist out of her painful grip on his hair, struggling to push her back away from him with one hand and raising the other to strike out against her. But he was weakened by the recent physical attacks he had endured, not to mention the hours he had spent in bed with Faith that very evening that had sapped quite a bit of his strength and left him sluggish and slow to respond.

Faith did release his hair, and removed her hand from his pocket in order to have both hands free to be better able to restrain him. After a brief struggle, she managed to catch his arms, pinning them between them, immobile, her grip too strong for him to break in his weakened state, as she slammed him back again forcefully.

A cruel smile on her lips, she brought her knee up between his legs, exerting enough pressure to elicit a deep, shuddering gasp of pain from the trapped vampire she held pinned to the wall. Her smile twisted into a smirk of sadistic satisfaction, as she met his eyes with a vindictive light in her own, a look that told him before she moved what she was going to do.

He cringed in anticipation of the brutal move, just before she jerked her knee up hard, and he groaned in pain, doubling over as much as her restraining hands would allow, nearly collapsing with the agony of it.

She leaned in closer to him again, to ask softly against his ear, "You gonna behave now, Baby?"

The pain was unbearable, as she had not yet eased up a bit on the painful pressure she was exerting. He nodded quickly, desperately, gasping for breath against the agony she was inflicting.

“You’re not gonna get out of this one,” she informed him softly. “You’re pathetic, you know that? The shape you’re in…you’re not even a challenge, Honey,” she smirked derisively. Then her expression grew more serious as she added, “But just in case I *did* need help…I’ve got a dozen men within hearing range to come in here and help me take you down if I need them.” She leaned in closer and whispered, “You don’t stand a chance.”

His heart sank with the realization that she was telling the truth, and was probably absolutely right.

"You're gonna tell me absolutely everything you’ve told her, aren't you? You’re gonna tell me everything I want to know," she prompted, nodding her head exaggeratedly, leadingly, in that same chillingly soft, patient voice. "You're not gonna give me any reason to hurt you any more than I'm already gonna, are you?" Her tone was cruelly mocking, and he knew she was speaking truthfully.

No matter how cooperative he was with her, he knew there would be no escaping at least a certain measure of pain. And in the end, no matter what she told him, he knew deep down that once she felt she had learned all that he could tell her, she would kill him.

They both knew that his usefulness to her had reached its end.

His only chance was to stall for time, and hope that an opportunity for escape presented itself.

He shook his head rapidly, his eyes on the floor. “No,” he whispered. “No, I won’t.”

Her smile widened with satisfaction, and she said in a patronizing voice, “Good boy.” She finally eased the pressure of her knee, reaching one hand up to ruffle his hair in a mockingly affectionate gesture. “Now,” she said, glancing around the room as if looking for something she needed. “Let’s get settled in for a nice long talk, Baby.” She smiled at him in a predatory way, knowing that she had him right where she wanted him. “This could take a while.”

Suddenly, her smile widened as her eyes lit up. “I know,” she said with the gleeful excitement of a child, made all the more chilling by the fact that the idea that so thrilled her was no doubt some brutal method of torture. Still pinning his arms with one of hers, she put her free hand behind the back of his neck, adding, “Don’t try anything stupid. You just cooperate with me, and do what I tell you. Got it?”

He nodded again, his mind racing ahead, already alert to watch for any opportunity he had to escape.

She jerked him away from the wall and over toward the bed, shoving him down on the floor beside it, half sitting, half kneeling, as she turned away from him momentarily to open the drawer of her nightstand, digging through the various little toys she kept there.

As he watched her distractedly, glancing between her and the door, gauging the distance and the time he would need to get away, she laid several items on the nightstand, her cruel smile widening in anticipation. He found it terribly troubling to realize all the things she had kept so close to the bed during their time together, much of which he spent bound and helpless.

She set a couple small vials of holy water; a small, vicious looking whip, and several other items whose use he could only guess at, on the nightstand, before turning toward him with a pair of handcuffs in her hand. The disturbingly cheerful smile on her face was a chilling sight…

Which he fortunately only had to endure for a few seconds.

As she turned, his foot shot out to knock hers out from under her, and she fell to the floor. Scrambling to his feet, Spike brought his doubled fists down across her upper back sharply, knocking her back down to the floor as she tried to rise.

She was already calling furiously for her minions as he rushed out the bedroom door. He was immediately set upon by several vampires at once, and he was very grateful for the stake that was still in the back pocket of the jeans he wore. Though he was exhausted and weak with pain, he managed – barely – to dispatch every one of Faith’s minions that came at him in the hallway .

As the last one within sight vanished in a cloud of dust, he whirled around to be sure there were no more waiting for him, to see Faith only a few feet away.

“Very stupid, Baby,” she remarked with a smirk, and he noticed with dread that her stake was in her hand.

Well, he had his stake, too.

He watched her warily as she circled slowly around him, and he was suddenly aware that she was trying to close off his escape route down the stairs. “No, pet, sorry,” he said, his voice quiet and breathless with exertion and sheer weariness. “Stupid would be sticking around to just let you torture me and stake me.”

She shrugged. “Some things you can’t do anything about,” she pointed out, her tone casual. Then she smiled. “You’ve only given me one more reason to torture you.” She raised her eyebrows with another shrug, “Hey,” she conceded. “I guess you’ve bought yourself a couple more hours. Can’t say you’ll enjoy them.”

He circled around with her, not really having much choice, not willing to allow her to move out of his sight for even a moment. She was quick, powerful, and very, very dangerous. And he was in no condition to fight her.

And the stairs were now effectively blocked, as Faith stood at the head of them, tapping her stake in her hand and smiling in satisfaction.

“Sorry, Sweetie,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“We’ll see,” he said, his voice low and grim, his eyes darting between her face and the stake in her hand, watching carefully for any opening.

He edged closer to her – and the freedom beyond the stairway she was blocking, his stake ready. He would have to have a flawless aim to kill her with the stake, Slayer healing being what it was and all. But he hoped to at least be able to injure her enough to buy him some escape time.

Luck – and Faith’s natural impatience – worked in his favor when he came almost within reach of the dark Slayer, and she lunged toward him, her stake raised. He darted out of her way, spinning around so that his back was to the stairs. It was tempting, but he knew better than to simply take off down the stairs. As weary and worn down as he was, he knew that he had to cripple her before he fled; otherwise she would easily catch up to him.

She lunged for him again, infuriated by the failure of her first attempt, and again he dodged out of her way. Just as she was standing at the edge of the stairs, her back to them, he feinted to her left with his stake, and she instinctively pulled back to avoid the blow…and lost her balance, as he had known that she would, stumbling and trying for a moment to catch herself before she fell backward and crashed down the stairs, knocking her head on the last one with an audible crack.

He did not wait to see if she would get up, rushing down and past her, just as she staggered to her feet again.

*Buggering Slayer strength,* he thought to himself resentfully. The fall she had taken should have left her at least unconscious – and yet she was already coming after him again, though much more slowly than before, and limping a bit.

She quickly gave up as he raced down the sidewalk away from the mansion, realizing that her pursuit was useless.

“Damn it!” she swore in frustration, slamming the stake in her hand against the nearest available surface – then looking to see that she had just imbedded it in the trunk of a tree by the sidewalk.

She knew that she would have to recover before she could go after him with any success. And although she had taken the pages he had torn from her book, he surely knew enough to take back to Buffy, and allow her to become a problem.

It didn’t matter, she told herself. Within a couple of days the ritual would be performed, and then none of them would matter. She would destroy them all with ease, and they would beg her for mercy. She would make anyone who had ever hurt or insulted her pay.

But in the meantime, she decided with a smile, she would have her minions on the lookout for her deceptive ex-lover. With all of the vampires in her employ throughout Sunnydale, Spike’s ability to hide from her would be very limited. Within the hour, she would have every vampire in town on the lookout for him; it would only be a matter of time before he was caught and back in her hands.

And then she would teach him a lesson that he would never forget. He wouldn’t have time to, as he’d be dead within minutes of the teaching.

She wasn’t worried about Spike.

After all…where could he possibly go?