Title: A Case of Kidnapping
Author: Zab Jade
Era/Season/Setting: Post-series
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sixty-four years after the fall of Sunnydale, Buffy and Spike are living comfortably in a small demon town. As the Slayer, it’s Buffy’s job to police the demon community, which is mostly just mediating minor disputes and catching the occasional carnivorous cow before it wanders into a human city. Then, one night, there’s a knock at the door….
Author’s Note: Some parts of this are in first person, due to being segments where Spike is telling a story from his own perspective.
He stared at the blank screen for a moment before spreading his fingers across the keyboard. Most people these days just used some sort of speech to text program, or at least a holographic keyboard. Normally, he was one to jump all over the latest tech, but there didn’t seem much point in a vocal performance for a program that wouldn’t appreciate it. And the holograms were rubbish compared to the tactile experience of a proper keyboard.
He pushed on the keys, enjoying the feel and the tic-tap sound. Jfsldkadjfla;kdj. He stilled his hands and closed his eyes. His wife was working out behind him, quiet but for the sound of her heartbeat, breathing, and the occasional grunt. Their little banshee hound was sprawled across his feet while their pet creature purred from the cat tree. Sometimes, he listened to music, but this was a good backdrop, too. A perfect environment to unleash the muse.
Spike erased the gibberish on his screen and began to type.
~*~*~*~
It was a dark and stormy night in the quiet little town of Grendel Falls. Nasty sort of weather to be out in, but we’d finished patrol hours ago. Now we were both settled in all cozy on the sofa, watching the telly and contemplating a bit of fooling around. That, of bloody course, was when someone knocked at the door.
Buffy is suddenly right behind him, peering over his shoulder. “Isn’t this about that mess from a couple of weeks ago?” she asks. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t raining.”
“Hush, woman. It’s called artistic license.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Buffy grumbled. “If one of McGregor’s carnivorous cows escaped again, I’m going to slaughter the entire herd. I don’t care how good the milk is!”
She got up and stalked towards the door, a small ball of black hair with a dog somewhere inside trotting at her heels. My slayer may have been eighty-five, but it hadn’t slowed her down any. Of course, I’d always been faster, so I was right behind her by the time she opened the door.
Lee Harrison, a fit black man who stood at roughly six and a half feet, was just outside, a shaggy, fangy demon with a long muzzle towering beside him. His wife, Paula. The scents of fear and desperation rolled off both of them in waves.
“Sorry to bother you at home, Sheriff,” Lee said anxiously, “but Ashley’s been kidnapped. One of the other kids kicked a ball into the woods during a game, and when she went to get it….” His fists clenched at his sides as he struggled for words.
Paula took over, in a series of grunts, barks, and howls that I translated for Buffy. Bloody hell. Apparently, there’d been some kind of altercation as soon as the girl had been out of sight. The teachers had taken only a moment or two to secure the other children, but by then, it had been too late. Ashley had been gone, leaving nothing behind other than obvious signs of a struggle.
“The school called us and Deputy Smith,” Lee said, “but we all know your husband is the best tracker in town.” He looked away from Buffy to appeal directly to me. “Please, help find my baby.”
Their “baby” was a hairy beast with claws and a mouth full of sharp teeth who was nearly as tall as her human father. She was also a seven-year-old in first grade at Nightside Elementary, one of the local schools for the nocturnal.
Grendel Falls was an odd little town, founded by demons and runaway slaves on a tiny blip of a Hellmouth in the same year my human self had been born. Over the years, they’d taken in others who didn’t fit into the world of white, straight, “normal” humans. And roughly thirty years ago, they’d lured in a slayer to be their sheriff, offering her a place where she didn’t have to hide what she was. Along with a right cozy house with necrotempered glass windows to accommodate her vampire husband.
That was part of why we both immediately turned away from the door to gather what we’d need, Buffy going for her badge and weapons belt while I pulled on my coat. I scooped up our half-grown Banshee Hound pup — essentially a Pomeranian, but with a human lifespan and a few demony extras — and tucked her into one of the big inner pockets. Then we followed the worried parents out into the night.
…
The air smelt of a half graxle demon girl, three unfamiliar human males, and a faint chemical stench. That combined with the scent of metal and gun oil, but only the tiniest trace of blood, convinced me the humans had used some kind of tranquilizer dart. The dry ground—
“Why is the ground dry?” Buffy asks, leaning over his shoulder to read his words. “I thought it was raining in your version of events…. And if it was raining, why were the kids even playing outside?”
“… Bloody hell.”
“How are you going to ‘artistic license’ your way out of this one?”
…the humans had used some kind of tranquilizer dart. Our house had been at the edge of the storm, leaving most of the town too dry to leave any convenient footprints to follow. Of course, if that hadn’t been the case, they wouldn’t have needed me. I pulled the pup out of my coat and held a bit of cloth with Ashley’s scent towards her nose. My sense of smell was better than hers, but it was good training.
“Echo, find the matching scent.”
She sniffed around, giving a single bark and a wag of her curled tail when she got to a big patch of Ashley’s scent.
“Good girl,” I murmured, tucking away the cloth but leaving the pup free to wander back to where Buffy stood, a few feet back from the kidnapping site.
I crouched and took another deep breath, opening my mouth to let them roll across my tongue. I’d dismissed the reek of deer piss as unimportant, but this strong, this close to the school, it was likely it had been poured about by the kidnappers to mask their trail. Smart move, if all they’d had to worry about were dogs or most of the predatory demons of Grendel Falls. Unfortunately for them, they were dealing with something whose natural prey was man, not beast.
I let scent and taste guide my eyes, noting an area of broken bush branches and bruised leaves. That had been where the kidnappers had come from. The exit point was even more obvious, where they’d dragged away the not-so-little girl. The visual trail didn’t go much past that, though. If it had, Buffy’s deputy would have been able to track the miscreants himself.
I stood up and turned towards Buffy. “They tranqued the girl, dragged her back, then picked her up to carry her deeper into the woods. They know what they’re about. Once they had her up off the ground, they managed to travel without disturbing the foliage.”
“If they headed deeper in, at least that means they didn’t drive away somewhere,” she siad.
“That’s me,” Buffy chirps smugly. “Always ‘see-aying’ things.”
“Don’t you have exercising to do?” he growls. “Catching these things is what editors are for.”
“Nope. I’m all worked-out out.” She leans over to smooch the top of his head. “And what if your editor misses something? I’d be a terrible wife if I didn’t do everything I could to help you.”
She strode forward, no longer worried about contaminating the crime scene. A beam of moonlight hit her just right, her braid of silver hair gleaming. Shadows and light played across her beloved face, concealing and revealing. She was—
“…made of bad poetry?” she suggests dryly.
“That’s about enough out of you. I’ve half a mind to—“
“Oooh, half a mind! That’s doing better than usual.”
His hands twitch, but he doesn’t give in. A bit of roughhousing would be nice, but it’s Creation Time. He can play with his misbehaving wife later. Maybe catch her off guard and lay her over his knee to smack her still pert little…. He shakes the thought away. Later. They’d play later. And in the meantime…. He smiles and begins to write.
We followed the scent trail deeper into the woods, Buffy a distracting presence behind me. I’d worked on cases with her before without any problem, but something about this particular night…. Maybe it was as simple as it being a time when she was normally off duty. Maybe it was working a case involving a child turning our thoughts to what generally made a child. Or maybe it was their earlier attempt at making out at home being interrupted. No matter the cause, I could smell the frustrated need billowing out from her like a cloud.
I turned suddenly, grabbing her in my arms and kissing her before she had a chance to react.
“Spike, no,” she murmured after reluctantly pushing away. “We shouldn’t….”
“It’s alright,” I said, pushing her against a tree. “A quickie to take the edge off. We’ll both be the better for it, and better able to focus on the job.”
She hesitated a moment, then relaxed against the tree, giving me a sultry smile. I tore away her shirt and bra, freeing her slightly saggy but still gorgeous breasts. Then—
“What. The. Hell?” He fights not to grin as the words explode out of Buffy. “We did not have sex in the woods while looking for a kidnapped kid. You can do whatever you want with the weather, but ‘artistic license’ does not cover something like that!”
“But, Buffy,” he says, turning the chair now that she’s backed up a bit, “I thought you’d like it. You’re the one always reading romance novels.”
“Yeah, that I borrowed from you.”
He waves that away as unimportant. “What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t provide my wife with something she’d enjoy while reading over my shoulder?”
“Fine!” She literally throws her hands up in exasperation. “I’ll stop backseat writing.”
He watches her with a fond smile as she grumps off to the kitchen. Then he turns back to his writing, chuckling softly to himself as he deletes the nonsense from the screen.
We followed the scent trail deeper into the woods, Buffy following close and Echo at my heels. I’d worked well with the Slayer for decades and knew the cause of the tension I could smell like a cloud of bees buzzing around her.
“It’s a good thing they tranqued her,” I told her quietly. “If they’d meant to kill her, they wouldn’t have bothered.”
“No, it just means they probably haven’t killed her yet. We have no idea what they want her for or what their deal is. Do they think they can sell her as an exotic pet just because she has fur? Or do they have some kind of demon fighting ring? Or some kind of hunting thing going on?”
“No way to know until we find them,” I admitted. “But whatever their plan is, we’re going to ruin it. And if we get there soon enough, she won’t have time to be frightened.”
“Then we’d better hurry.”
I picked up the pace, only slowing a time or two to be sure the scent was leading where I thought it was. This part of the woods had been farmland once, but after the farmers had either left or died, the forest had reclaimed it, leaving naught but the remains of a large barn.
It wasn’t much longer before I started hearing the sound of a generator. And then the barn was in sight, the scent trail leading right inside.
…
Someone, possibly the kidnappers, had cleared out the center of the barn, piling up the rubble near the walls. That gave us plenty of space to stay out of sight while we assessed the situation. The three humans I had tracked, along with a fourth, had set up a camp of sorts next to six large cages. Four of them were empty. The other two held Ashley Harrison and an odd little creature about the size of a fox.
Unlike the girl, the creature was awake and pacing. It had the bushy tail and ears of a fox, the body, legs, and eyes of a cat, and what seemed to be the face of a jackal, all combined in a way that made those creatures seem somehow unfinished. Its fur was either white heavily speckled with black, or the other way around.
“…rest of the cages are filled, we’ll call in the hunters,” the fourth man was saying.
One of the other three tapped the end of a rifle against Ashley’s cage. “You hear that, you ugly spook? We’re going to clear out all the undesirables taking up all this land.”
Buffy made a soft, disgusted sound beside me, her nose wrinkling like she’d smelt something foul.
“You got a plan, Sheriff?” I asked quietly. Removing these particular stains from the world would have been a pleasure, but they were outsiders. That would bring in investigators wondering what had happened to them. Best to capture them live, and then have the local coven render them harmless by erasing all memory of Grendel Falls.
“Sonic attack on the guy with the gun,” she answered. “Then we knock out the other three while they’re confused. You get Ashley out of that cage, and I’ll open up the other one so whatever that is can escape.”
I nodded and dug a pair of heavy-duty earplugs out of a pocket. I didn’t particularly care much for the sonic attack, but it was a good idea. Once the plugs were in, muffling my hearing to about the level of a human, I turned to the Banshee hound sitting quietly between us.
I led her to the edge of the rubble and pointed towards the man with the gun. “Echo, sing.”
Then I clapped my hands over my ears a split second before she obeyed the command.
It started with a shriek at the same ear-splitting level as a Pomeranian. Then it shifted upwards, becoming audible only to her target. He dropped like a stone, leaving his companions frozen in shock. It only lasted for a moment, but that was all the two of us needed. Less than a minute from Echo’s song, and all the humans were unconscious, and I was breaking the lock on Ashley’s cage.
She stirred groggily, panting with thirst and staring at me with confused eyes that were the same warm brown as her father’s.
“There now, pidge,” I murmured softly. “You’re alright. Sheriff took out the nasties, and your folks are waiting anxiously to get you back.” I flashed her a smile. “I’ll tell ‘em ice cream is the best way to get rid of the dry mouth you get after being tranqued.”
That earned me a weak little giggle as she got wobbly to her feet.
“Okay,” Buffy said from the other occupied cage, “you’re free. Shoo. Scram. Vamoose.”
The weird creature was standing near the open cage door, head cocked as it stared at her. Then it leaped, landing in a smug pile in her arms as she instinctively caught it.
“Sorry, buddy,” she said with an amused snort, “but I’ve already got one clingy male in my life.” The creature just purred. Buffy shook her head and rolled her eyes. “We’ll deal with him later. For now, let’s get Ashley home.”
~*~*~*~
Spike pushed his chair back from his desk and contemplated his work. “Dealing” with the creature they’d freed had ended up entailing naming him Oreo, getting him a cat tower, and spoiling him outrageously with expensive wet cat food. They still hadn’t a clue what he actually was, but treating him like a cat had been working so far, though he got along with the Banshee hound more easily than the average moggy.
As for the rest of the tale…. They’d got Ashley back home, none the worse for wear according to her pediatrician. The kidnappers had had their memories erased and had been left in the woods outside of town in a pile of empty beer bottles with all their clothing hanging in the trees.
The bare facts of the case didn’t make much of a story, though. Maybe add in some backers along the line of the Initiative? he considered. That was a possibility. He made note of it, then stood up and stretched before wandering up from the basement and into the living room. Buffy was sitting in front of the telly, munching on some popcorn.
“So,” he said, sitting down beside her, “want to run out into the woods and have sex against a tree?”
“Oooh, how could I possibly turn down such a romantic invitation?” She batted her eyes at him. “I might swoon.”
Spike grinned. “Of course, no little kids have been kidnapped, but I’m sure we can think of something to make things interesting.”
Her response was everything he had expected. Full of love and passion. She threw a handful of popcorn at him before leaping to her feet to begin a game of chase.
Originally posted at: https://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/762745.html
