Part of the Omniverse Project
Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations created by J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon. Also alluded to herein is The West Wing created by Aaron Sorkin. And I'm bringing Hellboy (Mike Mignola and Dark Horse Comics, and Columbia Pictures) in at this point. No idea where that will lead.
Continuity Note: Takes place immediately after Carpe Noctem, and during the pilot episode of the West Wing, and very soon after the Hellboy movie.
*****
BRING OUR TROOPS HOME!
TIME TO CLEAN UP BUSH’S MESS!
INDITE LYMAN
STOP DEFORESTATION
GIVE ‘EM HELL JOSH!!!
“You’ve gotta be the only guy out here with something positive to say.” Joe remarked dryly, approaching his friend.
“Well I’ll be a monkey’s sugar daddy. Where the hell have you been?” Mickey asked.
Joe didn’t answer right away. He read Mickey’s sign again. “Give ‘em hell Josh. Which one’s Josh?”
“The Deputy Chief of Staff, haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Hey we fired Bush, that’s all I care about.”
“It’s because of ignorant people like you that Bush got even one term.”
“I thought it was through trickery and hateful lies.”
“That too. But back to my first question, where the hell have you been? I haven’t seen you since Cordy’s funeral.”
“Walk with me a bit. I’ll fill you in on all the gritty details.”
The two old friends headed off towards the mall. “Let’s see, after Cordy’s memorial service I moved to Orlando-“
“Sell out.”
“Lower them hackles dude. I didn’t work for Disney, I got a job at this haunted attraction called Skull Kingdom.”
“Disney wouldn’t hire eh?”
“Philistines. Anyway, I worked there for a few months. Good times, scared people, met some cool folks.” As they arrived at the Washington Monument, Joe interrupted his tale. “Hey is the restaurant at the American Indian Museum any good? I’ve been wanting to try it.”
“You’ve gotta go at least like, five times in order to try it all.” Mickey told him. “You wanna?”
“In a bit. Got something to show you first. Anyway, around September I decided it was time to move on.”
“I thought you got over the whole brooding drifter thing.”
“Oh there was no brooding, but there just might be a bit of a drifter in me. Which will be perfect for going on tour.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I’m putting the band back together.”
“Well that explains the Blues Brothers outfit.”
“And also brings me to this.” Joe said, stopping by a van parked against the curb.
“Oh wow.” Mickey said softly. “You got a new van. But dude you were in mourning for the old one for like, forever.”
“It died a good death.” Joe said. “The Ozmobile carried me and many a slayer into battle before it fell into the sinkhole. But when I left Orlando I realized it was time to move on. Like I said.”
“Are you gonna paint zebra stripes on it?”
“That would be disrespectful.”
*****
Jack tried to look unimpressed as the elevator descended into the headquarters of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. He’d worked in many a secret facility during his career with the CIA and SD6, but nothing as elaborate as this. Fortunately, by the time he’d reached the main floor, his stoic mask was back in place.
“Agent Bristow,” a young man greeted him enthusiastically. “I’m Agent John Meyers, welcome to the Bureau.”
Jack shook his hand with a slight smile. Damn, had he ever been that young? He thrust such personal thoughts aside. He was here for one purpose, and despite his curiosity, it was best that he not know too much about this project.
“Thank you for allowing me access.” He said. “I need any information you have on Vampires. Specifically this one.” He held out a photograph of the bloodsucker he’d apprehended the other night.
Meyers glanced at the photograph and frowned in thought. “Doesn’t look familiar, but I’ve only been with the Bureau for a few years. Let’s see what we have.”
*****
“Let’s see,” Joe muttered, looking around his motel room. “What am I forgetting?” He always forgot something. When he and Lane had traveled from Winchester Virginia to Sunnydale he’d realized halfway there that he’d left his cell phone at her watcher’s house. Then on the way back to Winchester he’d forgotten his toiletries bag at the temporary headquarters Wood and Giles had set up.
It seemed however, that this time he’d been thorough enough.
Scrolling through his phone book on his new cell phone, he speed dialed Mickey’s number. “Yo Mickey it’s me. I’m all packed and about to head out to the metro. I’ll meet you at Shady Grove. Tell your folks I said hi and I have souvenirs for them from Orlando.”
His head jerked to the right, a noise catching his attention. A slight thump. As if someone had knocked against the dresser. The room was empty, however an examination of the scene revealed a battery from his mp3 player.
“Huh,” he said, and shivered as he thought he felt a breath of air, as if someone had just hurried past him. “My motel room is haunted.” He thought.
A knock at the door took him from his spooked musings. He looked through the peephole and saw two men standing outside his door. One was shorter than the other, with sandy hair and had an unshaven look to his face. His companion was bigger, with darker hair.
Keeping the security chain latched, Joe cautiously opened the door. “Croup and Vandemar I presume?”
The two men looked confused for a moment.
“Joseph Macleod?” the smaller one asked.
“Yes,” Joe braced himself in case they pulled a terminator and decided to break the door open.
They both pulled out their wallets and showed him their ID’s, identifying them as Federal Agents. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
Joe glanced at his cell phone. He was still on the line with Mickey’s cell. “Mickey I think I might be a little late.”
*****
She’d counted to fifty after Joe and the agents had left, before exiting the room. Hurrying out of the motel, she ducked into an alley and took a deep breath, concentrating. She felt the now familiar tingle as she returned to her visible state.
Pulling out a cell phone she dialed a succession of numbers.
“Report.” Came the voice of her superior.
“This is Wells,” Marci Ross said quietly. “They got to him first.”
*****
Juli gazed out the window to the stairs just outside and shook her head. The Exorcist stairs. Cool.
“Gotta say,” she said. “Love your taste in safe houses.”
Dixon handed her a mug of hot chocolate. “Well it’s not much but we were hoping you’d like it.”
She smirked at the drink of choice. “Hot cocoa. What am I, ten?” But she cradled it in both hands gratefully. “When can I call my parents?” she asked softly, allowing her tough façade to fall for a moment.
“We’re setting up a secure line now.” Dixon assured her. “It should be ready soon.
After a moment of silence, Juli asked; “Are they gonna come after me again?”
He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Why were they after me? What do they want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah well what do you know?” she demanded.
“Your cocoa’s getting cold.” He answered.
*****
The stake clattered onto the metal top of the table in front of William. He eyed it dispassionately. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a stake. Is that supposed to scare me?”
Jack looked at the blonde Vampire shackled to the chair on the other side of the table. Though another chair was provided, he’d yet to sit down. The look on his own face was as unreadable as that of the prisoner’s.
“No.” he said. He set the bag on the table's surface and pulled out a vial of holy water, and a cross. A bulb of garlic, a silver dagger, and a lighter. “But this might.”
William looked at the array and started to laugh. “You’re out of your bloody tree!” he cackled. “You think I’m a Vampi-“
Without a word, Jack snatched up the cross and pressed it to William’s forehead, noting with satisfaction that though he did not scream, he did flinch as his flesh burned.
“Please don’t think that was a punishment for the lie you were about to tell me.” He said. “That was to let you know that I know exactly, what you are. So please, do not insult my intelligence.”
*****
The door to the interrogation room opened, and the Feds entered. Joe looked up at them from his seat. “So which one of you is the good cop and which one is the bad cop?” he asked.
“Play your cards right and we won’t need a bad cop.” The smaller guy said. “My name is Agent Jones, this is Agent Smith.”
Joe snickered. Weiss sent Vaughn a barely discernable dirty look that his partner ignored. Instead, he sat down, and opened a file he’d brought with him.
“Joseph Macleod,” he began to read aloud. “Age 25. Born March 4th, 1980 in Sunnydale California. Graduate, Sunnydale High School, class of 1998, Valedictorian. Graduate, UCLA, Class of 2002.”
Joe shrugged. “Okay.”
Vaughn pulled a picture from another folder and slid it across the table to the boy. “We need you to tell us about your association with this girl. Buffy Summers.”
*****
“Your name is William.” Jack stated blandly. “Alias William the Bloody, alias Spike.”
“It’s just William.” He said shrugging. “I try not to live in the past.”
“What, no last name?”
William eyed his captor warily. “Don’t try to pretend to have a sense of humor mate.” He said. “It doesn’t work for you.”
Jack merely nodded. The Vampire’s last name really was of no consequence. “Fine. I’ll get right to the point. I’m going to ask you questions. You’re going to answer them. Stick to that plan, and we should be able to avoid any…unpleasantness.”
William smirked. “I’ve been tortured by scarier and uglier than you.”
“Uglier, maybe. Scarier, we’ll see.”
*****
“She went to my High School.” Joe shrugged.
“How well did you know her?” Vaughn asked.
“Not well.” Joe answered. “She mostly kept to herself, hung out in the library with her friends. I knew of her, but we weren’t really even acquaintances.”
Joe knew he was treading dangerous ground. So far he wasn’t lying, but he didn’t know what this was about. What did the government want with Buffy? He could think of all sorts of unpleasant reasons, and how far were they going to take this? Eventually they’d get to the point in the story where he really had to start lying his ass off.
“How about her friends?” Weiss asked. “You know them any better?”
Joe shook his head. “Mostly not. Xander and Willow I’d talked to a few times. Cordelia, well I’d cross the street to avoid her.”
“And Daniel Osborn?”
“We called him Oz.”
Weiss smirked. “Okay, Oz then.”
“Him I knew really well. We were in band together, and he played in the pit for the musicals. Hell, he even sold me his extra van when I graduated.”
“So you never really spent much time with Buffy and her friends at all.” Vaughn said skeptically. “Except Dan-er, Oz.”
Best to keep really close to the truth. “Well there was this one time, during my senior year the principal made ‘em try out for the spring Musical, Little Shop of Horrors. Buffy did stage crew and Xander and Willow wound up in the cast.”
“What parts?”
“Xander did the voice of the plant, and Willow was the understudy for Audrey.”
Studying the file, Vaughn nodded. So far so good. “But the lead, Andrea Abrams was murdered before the final performance.”
Joe winced inwardly. Oh yeah, he remembered that. He remembered where he was when he heard of any deaths of his friends. “Yeah. Willow went on. So for those few weeks I got to know Xander and Willow. But that was pretty much it. What’s this all about anyway?”
*****
Jack dropped the silver dagger into the bag and looked at William. His skin was a patchwork of burns and cuts. “So, silver has no effect on you either.” He said conversationally. “I guess that’s just Werewolves.” He picked up the garlic and dropped that into the bag as well. All that left were the artifacts that he knew would hurt a Vampire.
“Thought you were gonna ask me questions.”
“I did. And you answered them quite satisfactorily. Now we’re going to get into some harder ones.”
*****
“What about your friend, Mickey Keeler?” Weiss asked. “He’s a year younger than you right?”
“What about him?”
“He was in the same year as Buffy. Maybe he knew her better.”
“Not really. He hung out with Willow a bit. Him, Amy and some Goth kid who’s name escapes me were a regular little coven.”
“Until Amy Madison disappeared.”
“Right.” Go ahead, his inner devil was saying. Tell them she turned herself into a rat when the townspeople tried to burn her at the stake. You know you want to.
“Why did Buffy blow up the school?” Vaughn asked suddenly.
“What?” Joe asked incredulously. So that’s what she did. He’d wondered.
“During the graduation ceremony of the Sunnydale High School class of 1999, the school was destroyed.”
“Yeah that part I knew about.” Joe said. “I was there.”
“Details about what happened are sketchy.” Weiss admitted. “There was some kind of gang attack-“
“Yeah Sunnydale was prone to those.”
“And in the confusion the mayor disappeared.”
There went his inner devil again. He didn’t disappear he turned into a giant snake and ate the principal!
“And the school blew up. It was a gas leak or something.”
“Investigators found traces of explosives in the wreckage.”
I’ll bet they did. Joe thought. Along with southern bar-b-qued demon mayor.
*****
Jack set a glass of blood in front of the prisoner and sat down. “Drink up.” He said. “We’ve been at this a while.”
Suspiciously, William sniffed the liquid, and his eyes widened. “You son of a bitch,” he growled. “That’s human blood. Who’d you kill to get this?”
Jack rolled back his sleeve, revealing a ban-aid. “No one. This was another question.”
William didn’t bother hiding his confusion.
“There are two reasons why I haven’t staked you Mr. Pratt." He noted Spike's surprise. "Yes I've found out your last name. One, is your reaction to the thought of me killing someone to feed you.”
“And the other?”
“I need you to tell me everything you know about an organization called Carpe Noctem.”
Jackpot. All pretense at toughness and outrage left his face as William’s mouth hung open. “Bloody everlasting Hell.”
*****
“Okay look,” Joe said finally. “We’ve been all over my life story with a fine toothed comb. I went to UCLA, lost some more good friends and have been wandering off and on ever since. I still talk to Oz sometimes, I got to be pretty good friends with Cordy after High School when she was trying to be an actress, but I haven’t seen Buffy or her friends since they graduated.”
And there it was, the lie. He had, in fact seen Buffy since graduation. During his wanderings he’d happened upon one Lane Geerson and became one of her scoobies when her watcher found her and started training her. He’d been the one to take her Sunnydale when the bringers attacked and that was when he’d learned of the true story behind Buffy’s constant saving of the day. He’d helped out in what little ways he could, and in the end, said his goodbyes.
He hoped they wouldn’t ask him if he knew where any of the scoobies or Buffy were now. He didn’t want to lie again. How much trouble was he already in?
“Okay you can go.” Vaughn said calmly. “Thanks for your cooperation.”
“Wait, what?”
“We’re done.” Vaughn said. “We were hoping you could help us with our investigation, but you obviously can’t tell us anything we don’t already know. So,” They rose, and Weiss escorted him to the door. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ve called you a cab, it’ll take you where ever you need to go.”
“Uhm, okay.” Joe said, a little confused. Had he just managed to help cover up the whole Slayer thing? Or were they just pretending to believe him so they could catch him later?
*****
“You believe him?” Weiss asked Vaughn later.
“No, but we can’t hold him without giving too much away ourselves.”
“So we’re still pretty much at square one.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s Syd holding up?”
“Well she’s a little freaked by having someone take a bite out of her, but she’s healing.”
“Good…Those didn’t look like human teeth marks.”
“No. No they didn’t.”
Epilogue
“Amy Madison?” the woman asked, walking confidently up to the young witch.
Amy looked up from her book, shading her eyes against the sun. “Uhm, yeah, can I help you?”
“My name is Irina Derevko.” The woman said. “I have a proposition for you.”
To be continued in Carpe Noctem: Extraction