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Never mind that it didn’t beat, at the sight of those people clustered around the open door to Angel’s office, and then his sprint leading him to the doorway from which he could clearly see that broken window with the huge hole in the glass, Spike felt his heart not just miss a beat, but do a triple back flip of terror.

“No!” His cry of anguish made the workmen trying to board up the broken window drop the board in fright and he barely dodged a shaft of sunlight.

“Careful!” Harmony squeaked, jumping out of the way. Glowering murderously at the workmen she snapped: “Get that back up there – now!”

“What happened?” To a background beat of hammering as the workmen hurried to do as Harmony said, Spike began peering under every piece of furniture in the room to see where three small children might, please, please, please, be hiding.

“Malcolm from Rituals.” Harmony shrugged. “I hate jumpers. It’s so hard to get the stains out of the sidewalk. Inconsiderate, too. I mean we have to walk on that sidewalk, too. Imagine what it’s going to do for morale for everyone to have to walk past the place where he went kersplat every morning.”

Spike spun around, panic choking him. “Where are Fred, Wes, and Gunn?”

Harmony shrugged again. “Not here, I guess. There was just the one splat on the sidewalk, if you were wondering.”

The feeling of having been staked began to recede slightly. “They didn’t go out of the window?”

“Nuh uh. Though why Malcolm had to choose this room to do it from, I don’t know. I suppose he was trying to make a point to Angel about how much he sucks. But, if it was me – I’d put it in a memo. Of course, the last guy who ran Ritual Sacrifices ended up being force-fed to the office pencil sharpener, so I guess Malcolm kind of got off easy by comparison.”

“We need to find them.” Spike barely restrained himself from putting his hands around her throat and squeezing until her eyeballs popped. Quite apart from him having a soul now, and so not doing things like that, she’d probably enjoy it.

Harmony looked hurt. “I already looked under the desk.”

“Well, that’s wonderful, Harm. Who could do more than that?” As she still seemed to be failing to understand that he was using sarcasm, Spike yelled: “Seal the building, alert security, check the security cameras! Check the records of everyone who works here to make sure there aren’t any child traffickers! Get everyone with or without a pulse out there searching and bloody well find them before I start ripping people’s throats out!”

As everyone rushed to do Spike’s bidding, Sirk folded his arms. “Well, then, as it seems my services will not be required….”

“No, you don’t.” Spike grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the room. “Use some hocus pocus to track them down. They were in a locked room. Someone must have used some kind of mystical means to kidnap them. Some fiendish…fiend. See if it left a plakticine trail. Do something!”

Sirk rolled his eyes and pressed a panel on the wall. The doors of the elevator opened, revealing a book of considerable age, with sigils squirming on its spine. Sirk’s eyes narrowed. “Or they could, perhaps, have taken the lift themselves, and decided to go and randomly open portals all over the building, destroying valuable property in the process.”

Spike looked at the lift, sitting there innocently empty except for that big red leather bound book in it, and cleared his throat. “Yeah, or they could maybe have done that.”

Giving him a look of withering contempt, Sirk crossed to the lift and muttered an incantation over the panel. Spike peered at the clear imprint of little child-sized hands all over the floor numbers. They seemed to have pressed every button at the same time. He could practically hear the giggling.

Sirk’s eyes were colder than death. In fact Spike had found death quite warm and cuddly by comparison. Sirk snatched up his book. “If you do find them and are in need of my assistance, I’ll be in my office. Happy hunting.”

Things could be worse, Spike thought: Angel could be here. Then he thought about how if Angel were here, he would be the one with all the stress and the compulsion to run around like a headless chicken, and realized that no, there really was no upside to this at all. Sighing, Spike looked at the panel and pressed the first button he came to.

***

Lindsey had managed to back up ten feet before Sebassis finally realized that he was removing the children rather than helping the Circle to sacrifice them.

“Bring those children back here at once, before I have your entrails removed,” he snapped.

“Sorry.” Lindsey gave him a rueful smile. “No can do.”

“Aren’t you evil now?” Wesley whispered.

“I’m taking the day off.” Lindsey took another step back and another, while everyone in the Circle of the Black Thorn looked around for the minions they hadn’t brought with them.

Sebassis turned around. “Vail – perform some magic.” He seemed to notice for the first time that they were three evil colleagues down. “Where is Vail? And Izzy? He owed me for our last poker game!”

Lindsey took another pace and his heel clunked against a discarded knife.

“Can you two run?” Lindsey asked.

“Very, very fast,” Gunn assured him and Wesley nodded in rapid agreement.

“Okay.” He set them down on the ground and picked up the knife, willing it to grow to sword-like proportions. The two little boys watched the process with wide eyes of wonder. Lindsey caught Gunn’s eye. “Running – remember? Straight for the elevator. Get in it, press the button for Angel’s office and don’t look back. Go.” Gunn took off at a speed that would have done credit to an Olympic sprinter.

“What about you?” Wesley asked, hesitating.

“I’ll be fine,” Lindsey lied straight through his most reassuring smile.

Relieved and convinced, Wesley, ran off a few paces, then turned and gave Lindsey a little farewell wave, and then galloped after Gunn as fast as his now very little legs could carry him.

Lindsey turned to find six furious members of the Black Thorn advancing on him murderously. He swished the sword in warning, in case anyone tried getting past him to run after the children. “You need to come through me first,” he said quietly.

Sebassis drew out an evil-looking weapon that glowed with sigils of demonic power. “It will be our pleasure, worm.”

And then blades were coming at him from all directions and Lindsey was fighting not even for his life – he knew that was already forfeit – but for those precious extra seconds it would take the children to get into the elevator and press the button for safety….

***

As the quickest check confirmed that Wesley’s office was still locked up, and Gunn’s office was empty, Spike tried Fred’s laboratory next. She spent enough time in there as an adult, it seemed likely she had gone there as a child. The first thing he noticed, was that big box thing on the table. The second, was the two pieces of Knox on the floor. A quick search of the room revealed that Fred wasn’t here, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been here, and there was no telling how traumatized she might be from seeing that headless corpse lying there. The quickest examination of the crime scene revealed that Knox’s injuries were self-inflicted. Of course, someone having left one of Fred’s little decapitating toys on the floor hadn’t helped the situation, but Spike still considered Knox more or less to blame. If you worked for an evil law firm, you ought to at least have the sense to look where you were walking.

He tut-tutted over the mystical explosive device that Knox had left on the side before getting himself decapitated. That was definitely not a child-safe object to leave in plain sight. Spike pocketed it, keeping a safe distance from the big box as he did so, and then stepped over Knox to make some rapid phone calls.

With what he considered quite some efficiency, Spike ordered security to put some tape over the door, cover the body with a sheet, and keep a look out to make sure no one got in. He didn’t trust big boxy things that turned up out of nowhere. Like shiny jewellry, who knew what they would do if you touched them?

“If you see any of the children, call me on this.” He held up the walkie talkie he had snagged from the lab. “But don’t grab them – they bite.”

“I’ve been bitten before.” The guard on the door was the size of a small temple and wore the smug smile of someone who looked as if he could probably arm wrestle a Grox’lar and win. But he didn’t look as if he would be as skilled on the being-nice-to-small-children front.

“They have rabies,” Spike assured him. “The genital kind. Goes straight to the testicles. Incurable without a complete – you know…snip. That’s why I’m saying – don’t approach them, just call me. I’m immune.”

When he looked back from the lift, both the guards had their legs crossed and their eyes watering, but looked unlikely to try manhandling any small children. It was only as he went to press a button at random, that Spike realized that he might have given the impression that he was immune due to a deficiency in the… The last thing he wanted was a rumour going around the building that he was singing soprano. Before he knew it people would be saying that Angelus had given him the snip back in the day and he’d been a eunuch ever since. He stuck his head out of the lift: “When I said I was immune, I meant because of…natural immunity, because of being a vampire and…”

The guard gave him a look of genuine sympathy. “It’s all right, sir. We’ve all read Angelus’s file.”

“Bollocks.” Spike slumped back against the wall of the lift in annoyance. Great – that rumour was never going to die. All that sex with Buffy and he hadn’t one single frame of photographic evidence, while the poxy Watchers’ Council could put any libel out there that they liked. Bunch of slandering bastards. He looked at the buttons on the panel glumly and then dragged a coin out of his pocket. Heads he started on the top floor and worked down, tails he started in the basement and worked up….

***

Fred kept pressing the button but the elevator just kept sticking on the floor where her laboratory was. This was Angel’s special secret elevator and no one else should be using it anyway. She wanted to cry with frustration. She hit her hand against the button again and again, and then risked a glance over her shoulder. Gunn and Wesley were still running across the vast dark expanse of the basement, while in the light of a few fallen flaming torches, the man who had saved her was still battling with the remnants of the Circle of the Black Thorn. He had cut off one person’s head with a dramatic swing of the sword, and kicked Senator Bruckner in the chest when she came at him with a knife, but there was blood running down his face and he had been stabbed in the shoulder. She didn’t think he could hold them off for much longer.

As Gunn ran up breathlessly, she hugged him hard, hearing his heart pounding in his chest and smelling the fear and sweat all over him that she was also feeling. “I can’t get the elevator to come,” she gasped.

Wesley stumbled the last few paces and she and Gunn both had to grab him before he fell over. He clutched his side. “I have a stitch,” he panted. He looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened. “Lindsey can’t possibly fight them all off.”

“He was doing that last stand thing, Wes,” Gunn said gently. “Cause we’re little kids.”

“He told me he would be fine.” Wesley made to run back and Fred grabbed his left arm as Gunn grabbed his right.

“We can’t help him. We’re too little.” It seemed to cost Gunn something to admit that but Fred had already come to the same conclusion. Things were all too big and too far away and too heavy for her at present and she really wanted to be back in the safety of Angel’s office.

“We have to help him,” Wesley insisted. He closed his eyes and began to chant something. As he did so, the lights on the elevator began to move and Fred saw that it was finally coming down, down, down, as fast as it could.

“Wow!” She looked at Wesley sideways, remembering how much she liked seeing him do spells.

Wesley opened one eye cautiously. “I haven’t done anything yet.” He went back to chanting. Just as Fred opened her mouth to tell him that the elevator was coming, doors slid open all around the basement and zombies lumbered out, waving axes.

Gunn said quietly: “I think we should go now.”

“I think so too.” Fred tightened her grip on Wesley’s hand and he opened his eyes in surprise. One look at the situation and his jaw dropped in horror.

“I didn’t ask for zombies!” he protested.

“It’s an automatic defense mechanism.” Gunn seemed to be dredging things up from his memory with difficulty. “It kicks in when the safety protocols are broken.”

Wesley looked worried. “We broke safety protocols?”

Gunn grimaced. “They don’t like people opening portals.”

Fred felt guilty. “Oops.”

“I did it too,” Wesley admitted. “I didn’t mean to. Sometimes it’s hard not to make portals.”

“Wes…” Gunn said anxiously.

Fred turned to see what it was that Gunn was looking at with that horrified expression on her face, and saw that there were two evil killer zombies lumbering towards them, waving blood-stained axes.

Fred was still screaming as the elevator doors opened and someone said: “Who the bloody hell ordered zombies?”

Cursing his lack of a weapon, Spike dived in front of the children, punched one zombie in the face and grabbed the axe that the other one was holding. For a moment he was stuck in a stupid game of tug-of-war with a dimwitted creature with peeling skin, and then he had wrenched the axe out of its hands and sliced off its head.

“Uncle Spike!”

He ducked under the axe swing that would surely have decapitated him and blocked the next blow, desperately. As Gunn ran forward to kick the zombie in the ankles that was trying to axe him, Spike yelled: “Get in that lift, right now, and stay there, or you don’t get any more sweeties!”

Looking across the vast expanse of the basement, he saw that some of the people who had been piling onto ‘Doyle’ or whatever his name was, were now being attacked by zombies. The guy was staggering with exhaustion or pain, and looked to be bleeding too hard to put up much more of a fight.

“Please, Uncle Spike,” said Wesley tearfully. “Please help Lindsey. He saved us.”

“Get in the lift!” Spike ordered, but he was reluctantly running across the concrete all the same. A woman screamed as she was axed into several pieces by zombies. He hoped she had been evil because she was well dead now.

Becoming aware of Spike, hordes of killer zombies, peeled off to intercept him. Spike groaned inwardly. It wasn’t as if he wanted to go back to being a soulless serial killer, but somedays he just had to admit that being a champion really sucked.

***

One minute, they were sitting in the darkness with Angel feeling very bored while Lorne tested the acoustics with a rousing rendition of ‘Stop In The Name of Love’, and the next, large pieces of building were falling all around them. Angel threw himself over Lorne, and there was a moment where everything rumbled and crashed and tasted of dust, and then Lorne was saying: “Do you mind? What if we’d both died and we were found in that position? I have a rep to maintain.”

Hurt, Angel pushed off a big chunk of marble pillar that was doing its best to pin them down. “You think it makes you look bad to be caught in a compromising position with me?”

“Sweetcheeks, everyone knows you’re gorgeous, but when all is said and done, you’re still a blood-sucking mass murderer. I do have standards.”

Angel petulantly pushed off another pile of rubble. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Honeycake, I’m not judging you, I’m just saying – not what I want on my tombstone is all.”

“I just thought we were past the whole mass murderer thing, that’s all.”

Lorne sighed and waved away a cloud of dust. Ironically, now that a building had fallen on them, it was actually much lighter in here. “No one is denying that Angelus knew how to have a good time. Now, if I were throwing another Halloween party for a bunch of evil demons in an evil law firm to promote evilness – he’d be top of my ‘A’ list. But – who you want known as your last snuggle – not so much.”

“I’m not Angelus.” Angel dusted off his coat, pouting, and held out a hand to pull Lorne up. Another rumble sounded as a distant wing collapsed onto itself.

“I know that and you know that, but you do share the same DNA and he’s the guy with the rep in the demon world. They pull us out of the rubble, they’re not going to be checking if you had a soul at the moment of…extinction. They’re just going to look at the coat and the hair and go ‘Who knew Lorne slept with serial killers?’.”

Angel considered the point for a moment. “If I was dead, I’d be dust, and no one would know who you’d been…underneath at the time we were killed.”

Lorne brightened in relief. “Good point.” He automatically dusted himself off. “For all they would know, you could just be part of the damp proof course. That’s put my mind at rest.” He looked down at his ripped and stained suit, noticing its deplorable state for the first time, then screeched in rage. “This was hand-stitched in Milan by blind monks!”

“Explains the colour scheme,” Angel murmured, still nettled.

“What was that?” Lorne demanded.

Quickly, Angel said: “I said ‘Gosh, I wonder why Archduke Sebassis’ mansion of evil just fell on us’.”

“You don’t say ‘Gosh’,” Lorne pointed out. “Wesley says ‘Gosh’.”

“You spend a lot of time with someone, you’re bound to pick up a few things.”

“I keep telling that to the girl in Embalming with thing for the slime demons, but will she listen to me? I keep telling her: 'Honey, that rash is never going to dry up as long as….'” Lorne looked around at the acre of rubble stretching in all directions. “Archduke Sebassis’ mansion of evil fell on us?”

“I think it probably fell on quite a lot of people.” Angel surveyed the extent of the damage. “Luckily, the rest of them would probably have been evil too.” There was a positive sea of oak panelling and silk tapestry out there under all the blocks of white stone. He had blood trickling down his face, and a lot of bruises, but he seemed to be more or less intact, and although Lorne’s suit had definitely had it, he was otherwise unharmed. “It’s probably a failsafe in case he dies.” He brightened at the thought. “Which could mean he’s dead. Which would be great.”

With as much dignity as they could muster, they picked their way over the rubble, dusting off as much of the damage to their clothing as they could, and clambered down to where the stretch limo was still awaiting them. The driver looked from Angel to the rubble that had once been a luxurious mansion open-mouthed. Angel self-consciously flicked off some more plaster dust from his lapel. “He wouldn’t listen to reason.” He shrugged. “Sometimes you have to make an example.”

The driver almost fell over in his efforts to open the door of the car for them. They slid in silently, and Lorne waited for the soundproofed glass to slide across before he said conversationally: “Are you insane?”

“Just trying to build a rep in the demon world.”

“Do you want to keep clients or not?”

“Do I get a choice? Because if I get a choice, I’m choosing ‘not’.”

Lorne rolled his eyes. “Shall I explain it to you again, pumpkin? If we don’t have any money – we don’t have any means to go out every day and fight evil. We get money from our clients.”

“Our evil clients.”

“Meaning we are using evil to fund the defeat of evil, which has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree? So, if we don’t have any clients, we don’t have any money, which means we don’t get to fight evil. Which means we have to keep some of our clients if we want to do any good. That means you don’t get to tell people that you levelled Archduke Sebassis’ town house.”

Angel fully intended to sulk the rest of the way to Wolfram & Hart in retaliation, but was interrupted by the ghost of Holland Manners unexpectedly manifesting opposite him in the limo. “Thank you, Angel,” the ghost said in surprise. “I’m not sure why you did it, but I do appreciate the gesture. I’m rather looking forward to a…rest.”

He dissipated and Lorne hastily downed his Sea Breeze and poured himself another. His fingers shook a little as he dropped in the ice cubes. “Tell me you saw that, too?”

“I saw it,” Angel admitted. “I just don’t understand it.”

“Angel…”

He jumped as Lilah manifested on the seat next to him. He gulped. “Lilah?” It took him a moment to realize that she wasn’t a dead body walking this time, but only a manifestation; a spirit presumably come to say a last farewell.

She looked oddly at peace. “Tell Wesley that I said ‘thank you’” she said. And then she too vanished.

Angel snatched the Sea Breeze from Lorne’s hand and downed it. “Why are evil dead people thanking us?” he demanded.

Lorne pulled the glass back out of his hand and refilled it. “Don’t ask me, Angelcake. I’m still back in the ‘why did a building just fall on me?’ place.”

The vampire’s mood was not improved by arriving at the offices to find that a clean up crew seemed to be scraping something vaguely human-shaped off the sidewalk outside of the building. “Like that looks welcoming,” he protested. Things got worse when he tried to use his private elevator in the car park to go up to his office, only to find it didn’t respond to him pressing the buttons. Seriously annoyed now, he had to walk to the next elevator and take that instead.

“Sweetcheeks, it’s not going to kill you to walk from the elevator to your office,” Lorne protested.

“It’s the principle.” Angel scowled as each number lit up in turn. “When I was bribed to come and run this office, I was promised a private elevator. If I’m going to be corrupted by the trappings of wealth, I want the trappings. And no one should be in my office when I’m not in it.”

“Look on the bright side.” Lorne noticed that the wrong button had been pressed and pressed the correct one. “Maybe Fred needed your office to have sex with Wesley in it.”

“What?” Angel gave him a look of horror. “How would that be a bright side?”

“Wesley finally visiting the clue shop and making a purchase – how is that not good news?”

Very confused now, he sought confirmation. “Fred wants to have sex with Wesley?”

Lorne gazed at him in disbelief. “Mr Smellavision failed to notice the com-shuk-me vibes our Freddykins has been putting out in Wesley’s company for the last oh…weeks?”

“I thought she liked that creepy little Knox guy? Wesley told me that she saw him as a friend and nothing else.”

“Well, Wesley is even denser around the opposite sex than you, plumcake, and – trust me – that takes some doing. But Fred really likes the look of Wesley’s magic wand, if you get my –”

“Please stop talking now,” Angel pleaded. “I can’t deal with everyone sleeping with everyone else again. It just distracts everyone from what’s important.”

Lorne looked at him cynically. “You mean you.”

“Yes.” Angel realized he had fallen into that trap too easily. “No! I mean the mission. I mean helping the helpless and not being corrupted and doing good.”

“You know you hate it when Wesley obsesses about anything that isn’t you.”

“Well, I’m…important, in the wider scheme of fighting evil things, and, anyway, I’m not going to break his heart.”

“No, just his neck.”

“Hey! That’s what Angelus does, not me.” Angel had an uncomfortable memory of smacking Wesley around on various occasions both as himself and his unsoulled self. “I can’t be held responsible for what happens when I’m drugged or high or infected by crazy-making shroud vibes. And, look what happened with Gunn and Fred – first they used the company cellphones inappropriately and then they broke up. Where was the upside?”

The elevator stopped and the doors opened with a refined swish. “All the great sex they had for those few happy months before they went their separate ways?”

Angel thought about Nina and his groin gave an involuntary twitch. “Abstinence is good for the soul. Everyone says that.”

“Yeah, everyone who isn’t getting any. Can you for once in your life….” Lorne broke off and his face took on a disbelieving expression. “Are we on the right floor?”

Angel followed Lorne’s gaze and felt a rush of pure indignation. “That’s my office!” He ran to the door and gazed inside. His beautiful view over the city was now obscured by the boarding covering one window. His floor was almost entirely covered by children’s toys, and the remnants of what looked like a picnic. He spun around in horror. All his weapons were gone, there was paint everywhere, including little red, yellow, and blue footprints on the carpet. Melted icing and cake crumbs were mixed in with the paint. “Demons!” There could be no other explanation. “Demons attacked my office while I was out.”

Lorne picked up a book called The Tale of the Squirrelly Squirrels and held it out. “Or possibly a very unruly kindergarten class.”

Gingerly, Angel picked up a slightly sticky copy of The Teeny Weeny Ballerina. “My money’s on demons.”