Taking the Initiative
by Rainne
Part Four
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"Pack a bag, Nicki. You're going with us."
Nicki looked with wide eyes at Faith. "Where are we going?"
"Newcastle, then Glasgow. You'll stay in Glasgow, and we're going on from there."
Nicki came within an inch of a pout. "But I don't want to stay in Glasgow."
"I don't want you digging around in the towers while we're gone," Faith shot back, "so you're going to Glasgow. You're going to stay with someone there who can keep an eye on you until we make it back."
Nicki shook her head. "I mean I want to go with you."
Faith shook her head. "It's too dangerous. We might have to split up, and we're definitely gonna have to move fast. I can't let you do that. Nicki, you're gonna be a real good Partner once you get the bullshit outta your system, and I don't want you in a lot of danger. So you're gonna do this. Got me?"
Nicki nodded and went to pack her bag.
---
The trip to Newcastle was uneventful and Faith took a hotel room while Dakota and Nicki made the trip further north into Glasgow to meet up with a friend. At a small restaurant off the main drag, they were shown into a private room upstairs and Nicki was confronted with the strangest sight she had ever seen.
The woman was young, probably in her mid-twenties, and she sat behind a desk, her eyes glued to the computer monitor. She was typing madly away in a text-entry program and muttering to herself. That wasn't the weird part, though — what freaked Nicki out completely was the fact that there were at least twenty-five cats and kittens populating the room. There were cats on the floor, cats on the chairs, cats on the bureau, cats, cats, everywhere. Nicki had never seen so many cats in her life.
Dakota stepped toward the desk. "Abbie?"
"Won't be a mo... hold on..." the woman said distractedly. Dakota waited patiently. Nicki sat down and tried to attract one of the kittens. Finally, the woman stopped typing and looked up. "Ah! Dakota!" she exclaimed. She stood and walked around her desk, where she embraced the vampire warmly. "How are you, dear? It's been such a long time."
"Good, Abbie, very good. Listen, I need a favor from you, please, and I haven't got a long time to stay."
"Anything, Dakota. You know that."
Dakota turned and indicated the child, who now had two kittens in her lap and a third on her shoulder. "This is Nicki."
Nicki looked up and smiled. "Hello. They're very nice kittens."
Abbie smiled. "I have a great number of them," she said simply. "They're all very nice. How old are you, Nicki?"
"I'm nearly thirteen," Nicki responded. A fourth cat jumped up onto her other shoulder from behind and she fell over, laughing.
Dakota smiled. "She hasn't had much of a chance to really be a kid," she commented.
"Who does, these days?" Abbie responded sadly. "But no matter. You need me to keep her, I expect?" At Dakota's nod, Abbie continued. "Does she need a new identity?"
Dakota shook her head. "Nope. She just can't be left alone at the school right now. She's in disgrace."
"Oh." Abbie was quiet for a moment. "She's welcome to stay. She'll be fine here. I imagine she's training in magick?"
Dakota nodded. "Yes. She's actually doing fairly well."
"Then that's fine. I'll put her in school and she can go to lessons with the local children, and we'll work on the magicking at night. Might benefit the child to have someone else work with her."
"Might, at that. I've got to run, Abbie — I have to be back in Newcastle soon. Faith and I... well, the usual."
Abbie nodded. "Go. Be careful. The girl will be fine here."
Dakota hugged her friend. "Thanks, Abbie," she said. Then she turned to the child. "Be good, Nicki. I'll be back for you as soon as I can." And then she was gone.
Abbie walked over and sat in the floor next to Nicki. "So. These are my babies. The one in your hands there is Gina, and that one there is Wicked, and that other one over there is Tess... the tabby there on your shoulder is Nemo, this black-and-white one is Frenchie and this one right here" — she leaned over to pick up a cross-eyed Siamese — "This one is Nicodemus. She's a pain in my arse, but I keep her around anyway."
---
When Dakota arrived back in Newcastle, she found Faith at the keyboard of her laptop, downloading emails from Willow. "Hey, baby," Faith greeted her as she entered the hotel room. "I got pictures of Rory."
"Riley," Dakota said distractedly. "Let's see him."
"Here you go," she said with a flourish, calling the picture up on screen. "Prime USDA choice beefstick."
They both examined the photo for a while. "Hm. Tall, blonde, and stupid. Nice, Buffy. Why am I not surprised. I'm willing to bet he's corn-fed, too," Dakota finally commented disparagingly.
"Can't be too stupid," Faith commented. "Got what he wanted out of Red."
Dakota rolled her eyes. "Willow hasn't changed since the first day I met her. You can get anything you want out of her. All you gotta do is ask enough questions to make her nervous, and she babbles like a happy little brook."
Faith cocked her head to one side. "Ya gotta point." She called up another picture. "Here's his buddy. Name's Graham, like the cracker even."
"No neck." Dakota snickered. "Wide receiver?"
"Fullback," Faith responded. "Also looks like a moron."
"Well, you know the U.S. military. Only the best."
"Whatever." Faith closed the screen on the machine. "Let's hit the sack. Tomorrow we gotta find these boys and get 'em out of England."
Dakota grinned, leaned over, and gently bit the side of Faith's neck. "And I imagine we'll spend the next several nights running for our lives, my love... so why don't we take advantage of the fact that they don't quite yet know where we are?"
Faith liked that suggestion. She stood up and stripped her top off, then helped Dakota out of hers. Latching her lips onto those of her lover, she walked Dakota backwards to the edge of the bed, then pushed her down onto it and crawled on as well, straddling Dakota's hips.
Dakota grinned and leaned up to bite at Faith's neck. Faith responded by reaching down to unbutton Dakota's pants. Within three minutes, both vampires were naked and wrestling each other for dominance. Dakota won, finally pinning Faith down and drawing one nipple into her mouth. Faith's hand wound itself into Dakota's long hair and held her close.
Dakota slowly began to kiss a wet trail down Faith's torso. She moved down across the older woman's stomach and down one thigh to her knee, then began to gently bite her way back up. When she arrived at Faith's heated core, she didn't waste any time on play but dove right in, licking and sucking at the tender, sensitive flesh.
Faith didn't come until Dakota slid her fingers inside, and then she had almost a chain-reaction string of orgasms that sent her head reeling as her lover gently brought her back down. Dakota snuggled in next to Faith, holding her tight, and waited for her breathing to return to normal.
Breathing. Dakota smiled as she listened to it. It was a human habit, one that was entirely unnecessary for a vampire but one which Faith had retained, Dakota suspected, more so that the girls wouldn't notice so much that she was, in fact, a vampire. Dakota didn't mind. She thought it was rather cute. She herself had given up that particular affectation shortly after escaping Sunnydale.
Faith was relaxing now, reaching for Dakota, intent on providing her with the same pleasure that Dakota had brought to her. But Dakota took her hands, kissed them gently, and wrapped them around her waist, snuggling into her lover's body. "We have to be up so early," she whispered. "Why don't we save that, eh?" She winked at Faith. "Call it on account, so that you owe me. Okay?"
Faith grinned, understanding. They tried to make sure they were never even when going into a situation like this, one which could result in death. Dakota reasoned, not necessarily logically, but reasoned nonetheless, that if one of them owed the other something, they both had a good reason to make it out alive: the one so she could pay up, the other so that she could receive payment. Faith didn't care. If Dakota wanted her little mental tricks, she was welcome to them. She pulled her lover close, breathed in the scent of her hair, and fell asleep.
---
They ran into Riley almost literally the following afternoon in the sewers. Traveling together, both carrying backpacks which contained the bare necessities that they didn't dare lose, they rounded a corner in a sewer tunnel and came face to face with the beefstick from the pictures. Faith drew up short at the sight. "Rocky!"
Riley started. "Riley," he responded before he thought. Then he clutched his tranquilizer gun. "Faith."
Faith grinned, gamefaced, and bowed mockingly. "Let the hunt begin," she stated in a sarcastic tone, then she and Dakota both spun and pelted away. They could hear Riley chasing them, calling for his backup team. They ducked into a side tunnel and held perfectly still until he had run past them, then Faith pulled Dakota close and whispered in her ear. "Now we split up. You go west, draw that crowd. I'll go east and tag team Ricky. Meet me in Paris tonight. Be there by eleven-thirty. Okay?"
Dakota nodded, and they came together for one last kiss. Then they broke apart, nodded to one another, and took off in opposite directions.
---
Paris is an ideal city for a vampire to play cat-and-mouse with a human in, for there are catacombs and sewers beyond belief. Dakota led Graham and his half of the retrieval team a merry chase through the streets of Paris while Faith led Riley and his half through the sewers. Faith lost her crew at the north end of the city and Dakota left hers at the south. They met up beneath the Eiffel Tower for another long, passionate kiss, before Faith took over Graham's team, leading them north toward Luxembourg, and Dakota took over Riley's, taking them east and into Berlin.
It was in Berlin that Riley made his biggest mistake. He split his team up, sending them to search different parts of the city, while he himself made his way to the place where he knew Dakota was. He had lost his head during the two-week chase from Newcastle through Paris and into Germany, and he had decided he wanted to make the capture himself. He had even cornered Dakota, backing her into a blind tunnel in the sewers where he knew she had no way out. But then he began to taunt her.
"We've got your girlfriend," he told her mockingly. "Graham busted her on the road. You might as well come on with us. Because if you don't, we're gonna hurt her. We're gonna hurt her real bad, Dakota; the kind of hurt that Dustbuster picks up the remains of. You may be immune to sunlight, but I bet direct exposure to flame will take care of just about anything."
Dakota's world narrowed to the man who was speaking these words and approaching her with a trank gun. "Where is she?"
Riley laughed. "She's on her way to our facility right now, Dakota. You'll be joining her soon enough." He shot a dart at her, which she dodged. "Why are you making this so hard? You can't get out. There's no way out for you. And you can't do anything to me. You've got a soul. Just like Angel." He shot again, and she dodged again.
"Just like Angel?" Dakota laughed. "Who told you I was just like Angel?"
Riley laughed as well. "Willow spills a lot of things if you just ask her right," he said. And then, and he never knew what prompted him to do it, his voice became insinuating. "I found the, uh... the right way to... persuade her. Wasn't hard. Seems like she's been looking for the right kind of man —"
He never got to finish his sentence. Faster than he could have thought possible, Dakota launched herself at him. He found his gun wrenched from his hand and thrown across the tunnel, and he felt cold hands at his neck. "You made a mistake, Riley," Dakota's voice was icy in his ear. "You made a big mistake. And I don't mean fucking with me, or fucking with Faith, or even mind-fucking Willow. Shall I explain it to you?"
He tried to struggle, but she had him in too tight of a grip. He couldn't move. She continued to purr in his ear. "You made an assumption, Riley. And, well, you know what happens when you assume things. You know what that assumption was? You assumed that just because I have a soul, it's the tortured, brooding soul that Angel has — the one that makes him so he doesn't kill. But you see, Angel and I are two different manners of creature. For one thing, Angel's not half psycho. But I am."
The last thing Riley Finn ever felt was Dakota's fangs as they pierced his neck.
Once she was back topside, Dakota fished her cell phone out of her backpack and called Faith. The phone rang five times and kicked over to voice mail. Dakota's eyes narrowed. There were three other men with Riley, men who might know whether Faith had been taken and where she would be taken to. Dakota began to hunt.
---
The first man had known that Faith was taken, but had not known where. He had then attempted to kill Dakota and she had responded by relieving him first of the blade he would have beheaded her with, and then of rather a lot of blood.
The second man had known where they would take Faith, but had refused to say anything. Dakota hadn't wanted to waste time at this point, and rather than drain him, she simply twisted his head around until his neck broke.
The third man didn't give Dakota a chance to ask any questions. He simply entered into battle with her, and she was forced to turn his own gun on him.
---
Dakota returned to the Academy immediately, and gathered Maisri and her strongest witchcraft students around her. "I need a locator spell," she said, "And then I need all the activated Slayers."