The portal contracted, shimmering smaller until it fizzled out, turning the terrain from frosty blue to grey and black. At least Spike saw grey and black. The others were blinking in pitch black, all three taking an involuntary step towards the rock face that had been lit up by the portal moments before.

 

“I guess Dark Void was a clue,” Fred’s murmur fogged the air.

 

Dawn flipped her coat collars up around her ears, eyes wide as she took in the total darkness. “Did anyone see a road or houses before the light went out? All I saw were rocks.”

 

Spike circled the small clearing in front of the rock face and looked outwards at the seven, shale-covered paths leading away from the clearing. The shale was coated in ice, all but one of the paths were blocked with land-slid boulders and the only clear path turned under a crumbling rock archway.

 

“There’s a path leads between two mountainsides, Bit. No houses or road signs,” he said.

 

“Now we know why no one vacations here,” Xander said loudly.

 

“That kinda decides it, doesn’t it, Spike?” Dawn briskly rubbed her upper arms and stamped her feet. “We can’t stay if there’s no house to stay in.”

 

“We’ll find a cave or something for the night. Have a good look round in the morning.”

 

“Spike, we can’t see to find a cave,” Xander said, louder.

 

Spike, we can’t see to find a cave, Spike mouthed. He pulled faces inches from Xander’s nose, silently chuckling when he frowned.

 

“Just how close are you standing, Spike?”

 

He had to of course, had to lean in and whisper, “Close enough to know you’ve been…how to put this delicately…yeah, batting for the other-”

 

Xander shot his hand out in the general direction of Spike’s mouth.

 

He veered his head back, easily evading the hand. “Shouldn’t do it if you can’t come out in the open about it,” he said, strolling over to Fred.

 

“Do what?” She asked.

 

The fog around Xander’s mouth floated in panicky little puffs, “Zip it, Fangless.”

 

Spike smirked, having fun. “Keep that up and I’ll leave you blinking in the dark,” he led Fred to Dawn, placed her hand on Dawn’s shoulder and went back for Xander. “Follow me, Harris,” he said, walking back to the girls.

 

Xander stretched his arms in front of him, taking baby steps forward. His shin struck a boulder, “ouch,” he retreated, slipped on a patch of ice and went down, “Dammit.”

 

“Oopsie,” Spike said.

 

“You’re smirking. I can hear you smirking,” Xander accused with a mis-aimed glare at Spike.

 

“Stop fooling around, guys,” Dawn called sharply. “It’s freezing out here.”

 

Bit’s right. First find shelter, then hassle the boy, Spike thought. He took hold of Xander’s elbow, towed him to Fred and placed Xander’s hand on her shoulder. After Dawn had grabbed hold of his duster, Spike lead the single file onto the clear path, under the crumbling arch, rounded an abrupt bend in the path and walked the downward incline between two mountain walls.

 

“Where are we?” Dawn asked.

 

Spike squinted at a bunch of boulders crowding the narrow path up ahead. “Still in Dyulin,” he said.

 

“You know, vamp sight doesn’t give you the authority to try out your not funny stand-up routine on us. It doesn’t give you any authority…”

 

“Shush, Harris,” Spike said, stopping as a sound rustled from among the boulders.

 

“Don’t you shush me and why’d we stop?”

 

A twitching boulder was why they’d stopped and it opened red eyes, sending alarm through Spike’s fangs. He backed up, forcing Dawn, Fred and Xander into stumbling retreat.

 

"What? Spike, what?" Dawn squeaked.

 

“Dyulinians, I think,” Spike said.

 

They unfolded out of camouflage, tall, grey, muscular and surrounding the group. Weapons in their hands, black hair falling to their shoulders and grey leather bands on their wrists, Spike thought the Dyulinians looked like cross-dressing soldiers what with the swords and black leather skirts.

 

“Should visit Scotland. You’d fit right in,” he scrunched his brow in a show of deep thought. “Might have to take the hem up a couple of feet, though. And put a shirt on – wouldn’t want to give the locals the wrong idea.”

 

A soldier detached from the rest and ambled up to him. “Are you a Scottish vampire?”

 

“London, born and bred. Name’s Spike, by the way.” 

 

“I am Lynx, Earned of Lord Tresten.” Flaring his nostrils, Lynx cast enquiring eyes over Fred, Dawn and Xander and asked, “Do the humans belong to you, Vampire Spike?”

 

"Hell no,” Xander hotly replied. “He's just travelling with us."

 

"Harris, you might want to find out what’s what before-"

 

"Belonging means being owned and you don't own us," Xander interrupted, making Spike wonder how dense one man can be.

 

“In that case, you will belong to Lord Tresten." Lynx unhooked a pair of cuffs from his belt, “Please extend your arms.”

 

Spike extended his sword, prepared to use it if he had to, but hoping he could talk his way out of this spot of bother.

 

“Shoot them.”

 

Scarcely had Lynx given the order than a dart stung Spike’s chest. Dawn, Xander and Fred yelped behind him, he turned toward them, swiping the sword at the nearest soldiers as he went. Three darts stung his back, another his neck and the grey-black terrain before Spike’s eyes fuzzed into all black.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Cheering bashed his eardrums, his tongue was fur-coated and some tosser shook his shoulder, making his head pound all the more. He slit his eyes open and the tosser was Harris, leaning over him with a nervous frown on his brow.

 

“Spike…”

 

“You,” he thudded his fist into Xander’s shoulder, shoving him away, “don’t bloody speak to me.”

 

"I'm just saying…"

 

"You've had your say."

 

Although he did not know what would have happened if Xander hadn't leaped in with his big gob, chances were that he hadn't made things better. Certainty was that he wasn’t interested in anything Harris had to say.

 

“We’re caged, our bags and weapons are gone and there’s a fight going on like six feet from the cage door.” Xander rubbed his shoulder, “that hurt.”

 

It couldn’t have done, because the chip didn’t fire, Spike thought, glancing around the cage.

 

Fred and Dawn were standing at the door, hands wrapped around sturdy metal bars and faces turned to watch him and Xander. Spike swallowed the rant in his throat, the many swear words he wanted to throw at the boy, and checked the girls over. They looked fine, if dusty and tousled.

 

“Fight any good?” He crossed the metal floor to the cage gate.

 

“She’s winning,” Dawn said, facing the fight, “and there’s a…a, I think it’s a demon in the next cage,” she whispered.

 

Cages stretched out on either side of theirs and he’d clocked the Gang’ral pacing in the one immediately left of them. Type of demon with no sense of loyalty and almost no sense of fear. Kind of like him, except he was loads better looking than the horned and muscle-bound disaster. A human huddled in a corner of the cage on their right and on the cage doors were cards with numbers printed on them. Four, five, six, seven, their card had in large Arabic and Roman Numerals.

 

The fight wasn’t any good. He ignored the combatants and investigated his surroundings.

 

They were inside a pit in some kind of theatre. The cages were placed along a wall of the circular pit, which was about ten feet deep and about the size of two tennis courts. To the north, south, east and west were staircases leading from tunnel mouths, through rows of seats and down into the pit.

 

Tender memories of the Boxer Revolution curved Spike’s lips into a smile. The people in China had worn tunics and baggy trousers like them up there in the seats wore; uniforms in grey, black, white or beige. A few splashes of blue here, red there.

 

A big guy in the front row commanded Spike’s eye to him. Had his feet up on the metal railings that ran around the top of the pit. Ankles crossed, foot tapping the air and forefinger playing with the small silver loops in his right earlobe, the bloke looked numb with boredom. Not ugly, if you went in for shaggy blond hair, black eyes and a trout pout. Wasn’t a scruffy dresser neither: black leather trousers, white silk tunic, indigo wristband, boots.

 

The bloke lifted his feet off the railings, leaned forward in his seat so his elbows were now on the railing, and smiled down at him.

 

Spike didn’t like the smile. Too wide and friendly, put him on edge.

 

He glanced away, back to taking in the environs. Seven marble columns made a circle around the pit, each with a flaming fire basket on its flat top. Soldiers stood at attention between one column and the next, all around the pit.  Large torches were attached to the stone walls of the theatre, pouring the smell of hot tallow into the scent of fresh blood rising from the sawdust on the pit floor.

 

The blood came from a skirted soldier, dying of a neck wound while a lady demon of the W’Rakta species raised her arms to the crowd’s applause. She had an indigo band on her right wrist. In fact, all the right wrists Spike could see had bands on them. Mostly indigo, but other colours too. The only people without wristbands were the ones in the cages and Spike wasn’t comforted by this fact.

 

The W’Rakta bowed to the big bloke. “May I claim my prize, Amo Tresten?”

 

“You made a successful bid and have Earned tonight’s Number Three, Sheyla. He is yours to claim,” the bloke grinned.

 

“So that’s him. Lord Tresten,” Fred whispered. “He sure is…”

 

“Huge,” Xander supplied. “I feel like I should have five magic beans in my pocket.”

 

Spike watched Sheyla stride to the cage on their right from where she dragged out the whimpering Number Three. You saw them sometimes, young corporate types who met up at The Bronze after work. This one had strayed into the wrong pub and got himself nabbed.

 

“Is it money you want? I can get money, plenty of it. Please let me go and I’ll send it you, please,” Young Corporate said in French.

 

“What did he say?” Dawn nudged Spike’s elbow.

 

He told her, listened to Sheyla’s reply and modified it in translation. “She says his dosh isn’t as pretty as him.”

 

The young man broke free of Sheyla and made it halfway to a staircase before she caught him. What followed was a stripping and weighing. She stripped him down to naked, stripped his back with a whip from a weapons trolley. Weighed his balls and penis in her hands, bent him over and wormed her fingers into him, weighing how tight he was.

 

Corporate sobbed throughout.

 

Xander and Dawn forgot to breathe. Fred went chalk-white and Spike lit a cigarette, determined to keep all his clothes on come what may.

 

The audience applauded as Sheyla hefted her prize onto her shoulder and exited the theatre at a run.

 

“What kind of place is this?” Xander asked quietly.

 

“It’s the kind of place where you better know how to moo,” Fred replied just as quietly.

 

“Mooing never saved anyone,” Spike stamped out his cigarette. “Lad should’ve fought. Might be dead now, but he’s gonna wish he was dead time Sheyla’s broken him in.”

 

“Not helping, Spike,” Xander said.

 

“Just telling it how it is. Here’s another thing. You all do exactly as I say when I say if you don’t want your privates displayed in public.”

 

*    *    *    *

 

The crowd had simmered down, new sawdust had been laid over the blood in the pit and Spike had established the lock on the gate pick-proof. Tresten came down to the centre of the pit and smiled up at the audience.

 

"Number Three was a most reluctant prize, was he not?”

 

Laughter accompanied the shouted, “most reluctant.”

 

“Yet he declined the opportunity to Bid for freedom from Tresten,” Tresten faced the cages. “Yes, all captives may Bid to be Earners rather than Earned. Should they be reluctant to do so,” Tresten spread his arms and turned in a circle, “you, my good people, may win them from me. In accordance with custom, Tresten has selected his favourites and they will not return to Bidding after tonight."

 

The audience quietened.

 

"This night and this night only, you may bid for Number Four, a pretty thing harvested on this very night. Number Five, a vampire who is sure to temper Tresten with cool ecstasy and Number Six, a dark eyed beauty to add fire to Tresten’s bed," he winked at Xander.

 

The theatre echoed with wolf whistles.

 

Tresten walked up to the cage and leered in at Dawn. “What say you, Number Four? Do you wish to Earn freedom from Tresten?”

 

Spike thought he might explode. He stepped in front of Dawn and shielding her from Tresten’s leer, slanted his head up at the giant.

 

“There’s been a mistake, mate. She’s not free to Bid. Her, her and him,” he pointed at Dawn, Fred and Xander, “they belong to me and I’ll do the earning of freedom.”

 

Laughing, Tresten walked to a staircase and sat on the fifth step up. "You have no people, Number Six was clear on that."

 

"Like I said, Number Six was mistaken. Tell him,” he swatted Xander’s ass hard, jarring him against the bars. "Tell Tresten who you belong to."