A/N I know I haven't updated this (or In Sheeps Clothing) for eons I got sucked into LJ land and joined a couple of comunities for which I was required to write fic. I've posted the Spuffy fic I wrote for seasonal_spuffy here last week and if you're interested in/can stomach some really dark Spawn and a fluffy little Spaith story then you'll find them on my LJ here
As always April is there to sort out the tangled mess of my grammer big thanks go to her for wonderful beta services.
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"Great," Buffy hissed in her watcher’s ear as they surveyed the surly rabble of cruel-eyed men and burly demons that held a straggly perimeter around the school buildings. "Wasn't expecting the welcoming committee."
"Obviously they guessed our intention."
"Obviously," she repeated dryly. "Here's the plan. Me and Spike go clockwise, Faith and Angel go the other way, we take out as many as we can before the alarm goes up. Then it's all hands to the pumps, okay? And move fast; it’s almost dawn."
It occurred to her as she trailed him through the crepuscular contrast of the predawn landscape that he was quite possibly the sexiest man she had ever seen. It was a thought completely out of place in the looming shadow of the greatest battle she was ever likely to face, and yet there it was, loud and obtrusive in her mind. He was undeniably and incredibly hot, and that being so, why had she spent what might well be her last night on earth lying in his arms fully clothed? It hadn't occurred to her as they'd lain face to face on his narrow basement cot with their denim-clad legs intimately entwined to do anything more than look into his eyes and talk in whispers of all her fears and hopes.
Looking back with death snapping once again at the heels of her stylish yet practical boots, she wasn't entirely sure if she regretted that or not. Oh, sex would have been incredible—there was no doubting that—and maybe for the first time they could have called it making love, and wouldn't that have been something? But in a way she was glad they hadn't, because sex had always come easy to them and intimacy had always been that much harder. Still, it would be a shame to die without enjoying his licentious talents one last time.
"Slayer." His irritated hiss finally got her attention and her face flamed with the feeling of having been exposed, as if he'd caught her red handed with her mind in the gutter and mixing her metaphors to boot.
So she glared at him and replied with as much indignance as she could convey in a whisper, "I heard you the first time."
"Right then. After you." And then they were moving, a matched pair of silent killers gliding through the fading night to dispatch swift and soundless death, while on the other side of the school, the other Slayer and her own vampire partner completed the set.
In the end it was she and Spike who got their cover blown. His fault, really. Well, maybe a little of hers as well. Carried away with the fight as usual, she'd hurled his bright steel battle-axe at a guard vampire just at the instant he'd turned it to dust with one of her stakes, although she couldn't for the life of her recall when they had switched weapons. The heavy axe spun through its disintegrating target and found the wall instead with a resounding clang. And then all hell broke loose and they were all fighting.
The potentials did them proud, they really did, and by the time she and Spike had sprinted back to the front of the school they had all but finished off the remaining guards. It was just the start they'd needed; the small victory buoyed their fragile confidence enough so that they followed Buffy through the deserted corridors of the high school and into the sinister labyrinth below without a single word of frightened dissent.
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There is a kind of calm that comes hand in hand with shock, or maybe with the disbelief that follows it. A cotton wool numbness perhaps designed to keep the panic at bay for the time it takes for the mind to process. And so for the longest moment, there they were, all of them calmly frozen in their shared denial.
Buffy of course was first out of the stupor, forewarned if not forearmed by the Shadow men's vision, but still the sheer scale of the First's army was terrifying. She'd expected hundreds, had readied herself mentally for facing an army, but this, this snarling, seething mass of undead horror blanketed over the huge cavern was more than even she had been capable of envisioning.
Behind her, she heard the gasps of awakening fear as the reality of what they had come here to face broke through. She heard Spike's urgent whisper, "Better get on that spell then, witch," and Willows alarmed, "Oh my God," just before the first of the creatures spotted them and roared out the signal to its brethren, and then they were coming.
She glanced over her shoulder. Willow was already lost in it, mumbling strange alien phrases, her eyes glazed and sightless, palms face up as if in praise or supplication.
"Red." Spike's voice rose a little in alarm as he took a step back, one arm stretched out as if it could shield Dawn from the vast army ahead of them. "Now 'd be as good a time as any, pet."
The witch ignored him. It was so close now, the magic, she could feel it in her body almost ready for release. Just the right amount of coaxing and bang there it'd be. "Come on," she called to it in her mind. "Now come to me." And it did, a rushing wave of power heeding its mistress' call, ringing in her ears and filling up her lungs until she was completely lost in it.
Caleb's demon mages chanted furiously from their safe place at the rear and the race was on, first to the post, come on, come on, come on! "Willow." Buffy sounded panicked, but it was so far away it didn't matter. All that mattered was getting there first, and she was. She could see the blackness of their conjuring in the corner of her eye, just behind her, and knew she had them beat.
"Ahhh!" Her anguished cry came in time with Buffy's as the scythe in the slayer’s hand awakened to the call of her magic. And it hurt, but not too much to bear, and it was working; finally she was able to help. Buffy's head fell back and her eyes focused unseeing on the high rock ceiling of the cavern. The scythe glowed and resonated in her grip and light bright as the sun shot in kaleidoscope colours around them.
Spike heard Angel's alarmed cry of his name just before the heavy body collided with his own, sending them both to the stone floor with a jarring thud, his sire's heavy trench coat fanning out over them both so that only his hand sizzled in the deathly UV. It was dark and safe beneath Angel's larger body and he felt a childlike peace in his sire’s protection. More crushing weight followed and he realised the others had joined in a lifesaving school yard pile-on.
The opposing army had no such protection, no miniature legion of warm young nymphs willing to shield them from the righteous cleansing of the sunlight, so it was ashes to ashes and finally, after centuries of haunting the gullet of hell, dust to dust.
So much dust. Buffy waved uselessly at it as it blocked her vision in the scythe’s fading sunset. "Yuck." Dawn's voice broke the stunned silence of the aftermath as she struggled to free herself from the tangle of potentials piled on top of them. Such a good girl, his Nibblet, Spike thought as she rolled off him. She must have been first on them.
The sound of splutter filled the cavern as human lungs struggled with the clotted air. "Wow." Willow stepped up next to Buffy as she surveyed the settling remains of their enemies. "That was easy."
"Yeah," Buffy agreed with pensive shrug. Too easy. Nothing was ever that easy.
Laughter filled the cavern, echoing like insanity off the high ceilings and bouncing maniacally off the walls. "Won?" Caleb's voice was filled with hysterical glee. "You think you won, little girl?" Behind him his mages took up the chanting again in menacing harmony with his voice. "You think this is over? It’s just begun."
It rose up behind him in a swirling cloud of blackened dust, an apparition petrifyingly familiar, a vision of pure evil imprinted on the race memory of every living being. An image reproduced a million times from renaissance masterpieces to rough, carved gargoyles. A thing that had been given a thousand names by a thousand races. She called it The First but she knew it now, too, as Lucifer and Satan. She had heard it called Mephistopheles and known what it meant.
The First was done, it seemed, with dressing up in dead men's clothes, done with taunting and mind games as it roared out its fury. Its army was destroyed but its rage was an inferno, and its bringer mages, unharmed by the killing light of the scythe, were stirring up a whirlpool of black and purple magic around the preacher, and from its centre came a growling that made the cavern tremble and rock and dirt shake loose to rain down on them.
It seemed to come from the earth, forming before their eyes in the swirl of magic and dust as if born in that moment of the Hellmouth's tainted earth. It growled and snarled and roared out its birth until the cavern resonated with the sound and the humans covered their ears and trembled.
Its jaws dripped blood like tar and its molten magma eyes flashed hellfire in the gloom. It was perhaps made in the rough image of a hound, and it was horror as pure in its corruption as its master, because any part of Caleb that had ever been human was now gone beyond recognition, with his malevolent god manifest at his back and the weapon of evils chosen in his hand.
"Willow!" The slayer's voice rose above the commotion, way past urgent and into desperate. "Willow, I need one of those."
"I'm working on it, Buffy." The reply was almost drowned out by Spike's familiar war cry as he charged past her with Angel and Faith on his heels, and it occurred to her in a frozen moment out of time that it was a topsy-turvy kinda world when rouges and vampires bravely lead the charge. Behind them came the potentials, their own shouts, she suspected, fuelled more by fear than aggression. Yet still they went forward into battle weapons gripped tight in delicate, female hands that held nothing more than the promise of strength. And she knew that for all that potential, they were still only girls and that they should not be here.
"Willow," she demanded once more before she too swung the scythe and launched herself into the fray.
She heard Vi's spine crack as it shook her rag doll body in its jaws and tossed her aside. To her right, Angel was swinging his sword into its flank, but the blade seemed barely to penetrate its leathery hide and even he, with his vampire strength, was tiring. They all were. Their war cries were silent now, replaced only by the moans of the injured and the pitiful cries of pain of those too slow to avoid its jaws or claws. The scythe once again found its mark, cleaving a deep gash in its shoulder before a swing of its clubbed tail had her on the ground staring into the Molly's sightless eyes.
Spike's body screamed in pain as the creature’s wolf-like jaws crushed the bone of his forearm. But Faith was there in a blur of flying ebony hair and flashing steel, ramming her blade hilt deep into the creature's neck. It roared in fury and released Spike so that it could send her crashing back against the cavern wall with a negligent swipe of its foreleg. It was surely lost. How many girls were dead or bleeding to death around them? Ten? Maybe more. He watched Buffy felled and Angel's weapon knocked from his hand as it slashed at him with its blood-soaked claws, and he knew there was no way they could beat this thing.
Willow was the only hope that remained, and she was finally coming good. He felt the power resonate around the cavern like thunder and everything slowed as Buffy came to her feet, the scythe glowing and thrumming in her hands.
It was at once the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing that Spike had ever seen. Red and gold fire that seemed to come from Buffy, fierce and righteous just like her, shining and blinding and magnificent, and she at the centre with the mystical weapon of her calling held high and defiant. And even as the demon in him hissed and seethed in terrified fury at such a sight, still he stood mesmerised, because she was glorious now as never before, at one with her weapon, a warrior so pure so unfettered that it was impossible not to be awed by her.
It seemed to come from the very air, forged in the furnace of the slayer's power. Its great wings cooled from pure fire to the colour of gilded blood, and its wicked talons glinted gold as with a fierce cry from its viciously curved beak, it solidified into ten feet of pure fighting flesh.
They stumbled back, dragging their wounded with them, huddling behind their slayer as her champion took the battle to the preacher's beast.
The creatures came together in a thundering cacophony of snarling fury, talon to claw, beak to fang, and every gash and blow manifest on Buffy's filthy skin. The preacher, too, bled from the wounds his fearsome puppet had received and wore red black blood like a veil across his twisted face. Spike could see Buffy stumble when the beast dealt her fiery champion a vicious blow, heard her cry out in pain as its bite torn through the feathers to rent the skin beneath.
And in the end it was too much, the creature's malignant strength too great for Buffy's proxy, and the great bird went down. Pinned, helpless beneath the beast’s snarling jaws, Buffy was on her knees, too weak to stand, the bird’s fate and hers linked through the magic of the scythe. It was dying and it was taking Buffy with it, or maybe she was dying and it was going with her. The power was gone from her, that well of strength Spike had always imagined inexhaustible was now all but dried up, and when it emptied there would be nothing left of her. The world would end, too, of course, but that didn’t matter. If she was gone, it wasn’t much of a world anyway. Let it burn.
With a gasp she slumped forward onto hands and knees, scythe still held in her weakening grasp, sides heaving like a Grand National Winner at the finish post. She was fading and he couldn’t help her, couldn’t give her the strength she needed. Or could he?
Willow saw the idea forming in his mind. He was so cunning, that vampire, clever like Buffy herself, at seeing angles, finding loopholes to wriggle through. Clever in survival if in nothing else. "Spike." Her psychic voice sounded in his mind and his back straightened. "I can do it." She didn’t need to say more, she let her mind join with his, thoughts mingling so she wasn’t even sure who was thinking what. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the idea and making it work.
Spike felt the change in the air as soon as Willow began. Felt her magic swirling around him, around them all, to prepare the way. He dragged his battered body the few long yards to her side, pulling her up by her empty hand till she was on her knees again, one arm stretched awkwardly above her bowed head.
Angel was first to realise what was happening, first to respond to Spike’s desperate demand: "Help us." And if you'd told Spike just hours before that the dawn would find him standing at the gates of hell hand in hand with Angel like a couple of queers on Brighton prom, he'd have laughed his ass off. Yet here they were, and he could feel Angel's strength, as solid and enduring as the hills he and his mother had climbed when he'd been a boy and her lungs hadn't yet begun to bleed death into her pressed white handkerchiefs.
Faith joined next, wild and passionate and more afraid than he'd have ever guessed. Perhaps that made her the bravest of them all. Still, somehow Angel's presence seemed to steady her, and the jolt of power he felt pour through their joined hands and into the slayer’s broken body was enough to make him stagger.
It was only moments later that Xander and Anya joined them, their love for one another a warm undercurrent in the tide of power driven by Willow's awesome magic. And Spike could feel it all go through him. He'd have to make peace with the boy when this was over; Buffy needed love and loyalty like that in her life.
Giles next, steadfast and true, his wisdom, his admiration and love for his slayer like balm across the conduit. He brought the potentials with him, and in each of them Spike could feel that which could have made them chosen. Beneath their youth, or fear or arrogance, they were each the same. He felt their need to protect, their willingness to sacrifice, to love so much a world that would eventually destroy them. All the things that made Buffy so special, they had those things, too. Not exactly like her, of course. She was one of a kind even among the chosen, but at their core, the same, yes.
With a ragged cry, the slayer came to her feet and the bird again raised its gilded talons to claw at the beast that pinned it. But it wasn't enough and Spike knew it. All their strength combined and Willow’s power besides, and it wasn’t enough. The slayer at his side was wheezing for breath and the battle before him was still well lost to the slavering cur whose jaws ripped at the bird’s throat, and to the cackling maniac that controlled it. Something was missing. That last ingredient that could give Buffy strength enough to cheat death again today was missing.
And then in the last moment of defeat when all seemed lost and part of each of them had accepted that there was no surviving this battle, when numbness replaced pain and relief despair and all knew through Buffy that it was over. It was in that moment that she finally joined them, and he was ashamed to have forgotten her. She who he had always loved like his own blood. He'd told her often enough that she was special, that she was more than a slip of a girl and a figment of memory, but perhaps he hadn’t believed it himself or hadn’t known the extent of it. Because when her hand took Rona's at the end of their daisy chain of power, everything changed.
Innocence, and love so strong it shook him. A sister’s love so trusting and humble that he could have sobbed at feeling it pass through the pitiful husk of his dead heart. But with it, too, came a power older and more vast than the universe itself. Dawn, his angel, his little girl, his saviour and saviour to them all. The energy of the key—how could they have overlooked it? He'd joked with her just hours ago about it, and yet even he had forgotten, had been so fooled by her illusion of humanity that he hadn’t remembered what power she had. No, more than that: what power she was. And that power was her sister’s now, and everything else was only trimmings.
The slayer's head whiplashed up and the great bird gave a victorious cry and rose in one beat of its vast wings, throwing the hound away. It didn't take long after that, with Buffy standing strong, legs apart, scythe held high. Her hair, streaked with blood so it matched the crimson and gold of her champion, swirled around her in the eddying wind of its beating wings as it tore with beak and talons into its enemy. And when the dust had settled and Willow’s magic fizzled out, leaving her to topple unconscious and bleeding into Kennedy's waiting arms, when each of them drew in great draughts of laboured breath – whether they needed it or not – and leant on one another for support, that’s when they found the preacher was dead, the First was gone, and the blackened scythe they had wielded lay shattered on the ground.
Dawn came to them then, to Buffy and Spike, where they stood over Caleb's body, hands still linked, silent and pensive. And Buffy wept in her sister’s arms and whispered words of love and pride that had made them both cry and cling to one another like the orphans they were. He'd moved to leave them to their sibling embrace, but she had stopped him. His wonderful girl, so mindful of him, so open and free with her affection.
"Spike." She held out a hand to him and he took it gratefully and let her draw him in so that she was flanked by them. Him on one side, awkwardly stroking the still glossy sheet of dark chocolate hair that flowed over her shoulders, and Buffy on the other, holding her close. And when Buffy raised one hand so that their fingers were linked around Dawn’s slender frame, he couldn’t help but call them his family and lay kisses on each of their grimy foreheads.
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A/N the next and final chapter will be coming soon I promise. Also thanks to everyone who left nice feedback on my recent post *kisses*
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