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Things were not going well.

They had arrived in Brazil before Spike and made it to Willow and Kennedy's in no time. There had been hugs all around. Well between Buffy, Dawn, Willow, and Angel. Kennedy seemed to think she was more than enough to protect her girlfriend, not to mention she balked as soon as Buffy started making suggestions on how to set up a defense.

Okay, so Dawn would be the first to admit that Buffy could be bossy at times. But Buffy had been doing this sort of stuff for a lot longer, and this really wasn't the time to argue.

They'd agreed to make their stand inside the house. First of all, the sun would soon come up, so they would have to stay indoors if they wanted any help from Angel. Secondly, if they were lucky Spike would still need an invitation to get in.

They weren't lucky. About half and hour after the sun had risen, Spike simply flung the door open and walked in. Things had not improved from there.

First of all it was immediatly obvious that Buffy had held back on some of the details of just how evil this Rebecca woman was. For reasons Dawn could not possibly fathom, Spike was dressed, not in his usual black on black, but a pair of bellbottom jeans with pink flowers embrodered onto the legs, and an old, pink, Spice Girls t-shirt that read "Girl Power". Pink was deffinatly not his color. It just made him look even paler and deader, not to mention that he'd probably stake himself if he knew that he was wearing pink.

It was Kennedy who struck the first blow, or tried to anyway. She leapt at Spike with an axe yelling, "I'll show you girl power," a quip which Dawn ranked as a mere 6.3. Major loss of points for obviousness.

But Spike was not in the place Kennedy expected him to be. He grabbed the handle of the axe, twisted it, and slammed the flat of the blade into Kennedy's head. Before she could recover, he picked her up and threw her at Angel who was starting an attack of his own.

Dawn watched as Buffy, Angel, and Kennedy tried and failed to stop Spike's progress. Nothing seemed to hurt him or slow him down. Willow meanwhile kept her distance, throwing in spells, but they didn't seem to effect Spike.

Dawn's job was much simpler. They had brought Rebecca Worthington along with them. Often a witch, or at least some part of her, like her hair, was needed to break her own spell. So it seemed wise to drag her along. Now Dawn held a knife to the throat of the gagged and bound witch as she watched the others getting pummeled.

Spike broke past the other's defenses, grabbed Willow, and wrapped his hand around her throat, choking her, and preventing her from speaking.

Dawn looked around desperately. The others were all down. Buffy was trying to pull herself out of a wall, Angel was trapped in a small corner by the sunlight being let in by a fallen wall, and Dawn couldn't even see Kennedy.

She didn't know what else to do, so she spun around so her back was to Spike and she was facing Rebecca. Then she yanked on Rebecca's shoulders as Dawn tumbled over backwards. Dawn's foot rose up to catch Rebecca in the stomach and to throw her towards Spike.

It worked. Dawn gracefully rolled back up to her feet, while Rebecca flew over her head and into Spike and Willow. Spike interpreted Rebecca's momentum as an attack, and momentarily released Willow so as to bat Rebecca into Kennedy, who was just now reemerging from the outside.

Dawn rushed in between Spike and Willow, her knife upraised. She knew it was dumb, but there was nothing else she could do. Willow was still coughing and sputtering on the floor behind her. Maybe this would give her the time to get away.

She braced herself, tensing her muscles for the blow she was sure was coming. But it never did. He didn't try to hit her, or throw her, or kick her. Instead he tried to step around her. She moved with him, blocking him. So he tried to go around her the other way. Again Dawn blocked him, keeping herself between Spike and Willow.

Buffy rushed over to her little sister's aid, Spike turned sensing her, and sent her sprawling back to the floor. He turned back again, and once again tried to move toward Willow. But he seemed unwilling, or unable to touch Dawn.

Dawn reached behind her to give Willow a hand up, then the two of them backed into a wall. Spike followed.

"Um, guys? Any ideas here?" Dawn asked.

Kennedy started to charge Spike again when Buffy grabbed her arm.

"Hello, already made that mistake here. He's not attacking anyone right now. Let's take advantage of the time out and figure out what's going on. You okay Dawn?"

"Just peachy," not that Dawn really felt that way. It would have been easier not to be scared if Spike's eyes were not a red swirling vortex of energy. Never a good sign.

Buff grabbed a rug up off the floor and tossed it to Angel so that he could get past his prison of daylight and join the rest of them.

They were all so absorbed in watching the standoff between Dawn and Spike, that none of them noticed that Rebecca's gag had slipped during her fall. Her eyes narrowed as she watched the young girl who had come between her and her revenge. Spying a discarded axe she muttered under her breath and the axe lifted in the air, then flew end over end straight toward Dawn's head.

Dawn saw the movement out of the corner of her eye. Before her brain could process what it was, Spike leaped in front of her catching the axe with his shoulder. Spike fell to his knees.

"NO!" Rebecca screamed.

Blood began to trickle down Spikes chest in three distinct rivulets. As everyone watched the blood formed itself into three red snakes that fell to the floor. The snakes wriggled across the room straight toward Rebecca. One of the snakes pushed it's way down her throat, while the other two slithered into her eye sockets.

"Eewwww!" Buffy, and Dawn said in unison.

Then Rebecca began looking around frantically from side to side, clutching her ears and crying, "No, no. I didn't do it. Shut up. I didn't. . . I didn't."

"Is she okay?" Buffy asked.

"I think the Furies have decided to punish her," Angel said.

"Hey," Kennedy interrupted, "I must have cut Spike with that same axe a half dozen times and he didn't even seem to notice."

Willow sighed, "That's cause you didn't cast the spell on him. He wasn't invulnerable to her. No witch with any brains casts a spell like that that she can't undo. The real mystery is why Spike couldn't attack Dawn."

"Do you think it's a key thing?" Dawn asked. It had always seemed to her that she'd gotten the short end of the mystical stick. She had always thought she should have cool powers.

"Huh?" asked Angel.

"No," Spike said. They all looked at him. His eyes were no longer red, he seemed to be himself again, except for the pink of course. "Had a promise to keep."

"Spike?" Buffy asked, pulling the axe out of his shoulder, and examining his wound, "Do you remember what happened?"

"Yeah, all of it. Couldn't stop it, I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, well except maybe for Angel."

"What promise Spike?" Willow asked.

"To protect Dawn," he said.

"Until the end of the world," Buffy whispered.

"I don't get any of this," Kennedy said, obviously upset.

"Oh, I think I do," Willow said, obviously happy to be the one with the answers, "I read it last night after Buffy called. Almost all of the literature on the Furies agrees that once they've sworn an oath to exact justice, they can't stop until they've fulfilled their oath."

"Again with the huh?" Kennedy said.

"Rebecca didn't invoke the Furies in the regular manner and get an oath from them. Instead she trapped them, or at least part of them in Spike and forced them to come after me and Xander. I don't think anything like that's been done before. Anyway, the point is, they were in essence a part of Spike, so they had to fulfill his oaths just as if they'd made them."

"So I guess that means I saved the day huh?" Dawn said.





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