Chapter 16:  Out of the Woods

Xander stormed around the bend, his rifle tucked in a sharp line. Ready for anything.

Except that.

Crap.

Their bodies were entwined at the edge of the cliff, looking for all the world like the cover of some trashy harlequin novel. He froze in the shadows for a moment, watching them kiss like they invented it, and suddenly wished that Caleb had a few more seconds to work on him before Buffy turned him into evil preacher steaks. When it became obvious they weren’t gonna stop for invisible, jealous pirate guys, Xander cleared his throat.

Two moon-white faces turned to stare at him in unison. Buffy’s looked strange to him in the starlight; starved and tranquil and terrified, all at once. And Spike’s face looked like…

Well, it looked like Spike’s stupid face.

“Hey,” Xander said. “Sorry to interrupt, but…” He stopped himself.  Frowned. “Okay. Not so much with the sorry part, really.”

They kept gawking, totally bewildered. Not at what he was saying, he got the feeling. They just seemed confused by the whole idea of ‘Xander Harris’ in general. He tried not to take it personally.

“It’s the thing,” he said. “Dawn’s thing.” He flung out his free hand, as if to mime the crazy image still lodged in his brain. Buffy’s eyes clicked wide at the sound of the girl’s name. Time seemed to stop moving again. It was like they were all trapped in some really lame play, and everybody forgot their next line. “It’s, um.  Doing stuff,” he explained.

Buffy shot up. Her expression was something Xander hadn’t seen since the nights of Sunnydale; two parts brooding , one part exasperated.  Hold the pickles.  “Stuff,” she said.

“Kinda hard to describe. We think it, uh… wants you.”

The blondes didn’t seem to move so much as defrost, their limbs gradually writhing back to life. They were eerily quiet as they approached; not daring to look at each other, but not daring to drift too far apart either. An old, forgotten wound cried out, begging him to say something nasty. But that particular well had been dry a long time.

So, that’s how they marched: Xander picking his way down the black path to the compound, the Slayer and her favorite prey following silently behind. When he thought about it, there was no really good reason for the one-eyed normal guy to be leading the way, stopping every thirty seconds to shine a light on his antique field-compass. Yet every time he stole a backwards glance, he could almost understand why. The pair was shaking, walking on stiff knees. They reminded him of two people who had just survived a bomb blast. Whatever he’d interrupted seemed way too big for their bodies to hold inside.

Xander paused at the foot of a gnarled old tree, pretending to shake the compass back to life. After a few moments, he peered meekly at his old friend. She was looking at Captain Peroxide again. The softness he saw there was unexpected. It was one of those surreal and heart-mulching looks that said ‘Attention, Xander Harris! This ‘ship has totally sailed. Nothing to see here. Move along.’  He swallowed something hard in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. Buffy glanced at him, a weird kind of pity flashing in her eyes. At that precise moment, something very small and very fragile died inside him. “I’m sorry,” he continued, faking a more jovial tone. “But…uh… this thing is just totally busted. Darn army surplus rip-offs.”

Sullenly, he suggested that they lead the way. And they did.

He was blinded by the night, and moved forward by following the crunching sound of their feet. But somewhere in the darkness, Xander could just barely make out the outline of her small, white hand grasping his.

A little too tightly, if you asked him. He hoped no one ever would.

And for the first time in a very, very long time, he thought about Africa.

***

What are you?

He let the question roll around in his head for awhile, hoping it would pick up a bit of traction somewhere. As usual, it did not. Should’ve been easy. Had a bloody century to sort it out, after all. Then again, it wasn’t quite so simple.

He’d been lots of things, after all. A man, once. Then a monster. And later, by his own idiotic choice, a perverse combination of the two. But in the end, he was just a bit of nonsense, a bloody ridiculous magic trick. If only she could spot the damn card moving, the Slayer would end it, once and for all. After that he could retrace his steps, look in on Dru maybe. Wolf down a couple of human Happy Meals, and he’d be right as fucking rain. Couldn’t be that hard to remember how it’s done.  Hundred years or so of that, and everything would be back to normal.

If she would just let go.

She was gripping his hand now.  Except it wasn’t his hand, didn’t belong to him. He wanted to tell her all about it, wanted her to know that every inch of his body was a lie - the evidence of an old, forgotten crime. Armed robbery, to be precise. His rotten old brain still held the memories of the victim - a certain dead English wanker. But those memories gave comfort rarely, and answers never.

As her fingers tangled his, he was struck with a bright recollection of his second death, his favorite one. It had been quite a bit of fun, all things considered.  A touch on the short side, perhaps. He remembered how the light crept outwards from his chest like cracks in a dam. When the fire finally came it was a benediction; some crazed God’s parting gift for a job…well, done, anyway. It was greedy the way it gobbled him up, never pausing to savor his old atoms as they giggled their way down to Hell.

Or, at least, he had hoped that was where they were headed. As usual, he wasn’t so lucky.

As the last speck of William Pratt’s corpse flared up in a red cinder, Spike had the sudden, shocking realization that he’d never had a body, not actually. The burned off scraps of the curly ponce had been a prison for something else entirely - something old and terrible. It was the precise substance of darkness, a non-flesh that had moved from host to host down through the ages. In his death moment he looked down and saw the sun, black but shining and ringed by a thousand spiders. The thing reached up for him like a nightmare flower, and then he was falling, down, down into an empty star. The instant before he perforated its glassy membrane, the vampire had glimpsed his reflection in it. And he knew himself, finally.

He knew that no blistering Lake of Hades awaited him on the other side of death, nor horned and horny devils to drive pitchforks up his arse for all eternity. Nor puffy clouds, nor chubby little bints strumming on harps, nor any such bloody nonsense. Nothing awaited him on the other side of that mirror, because he was nothing. He was a microbe, a thing beneath punishment. A meaningless smudge in a universe as dead as wind over old bone. In the end there was only darkness for his kind. And silence.

Or so he thought. After the fire and the darkness, he was transformed once again, made firm by some unseen hand. Well, not firm, exactly. He became a sort of shade – a flimsy old night-nicker sent to haunt his grandsire in the City of Angels. But, whoever or whatever bound him there had been flimsier still. And each time he started to feel like his lusty old self, he would vanish, snuffed like a bloody birthday candle. He never told anyone where he went during these stretches, not even dear Freddy. Largely because he couldn’t think of the right words to say.

Well if you must know, luv, I am quite suddenly thrust into a reflection of my true self. Which, by-the-by, turns out to be an impenetrable black void comprised of infinite space and time. Basically, I am at one with oblivion. Absolute zero. The precise cosmic absence of warmth and light. Pass the tea.

No, no, no. That’s not it, dull boy.

Yet, here again trod old Spike. The “master vampire” made flesh once more. Back to square one at last. Or minus one, if you wanted to get technical about it. Spike the Empty Vessel. William the Thirsty Virus. Ludicrous monster, cursed to plod the world rim in an itchy costume, subsisting on the stolen kisses of angels and the blood of pigs and rats.

Poor stupid plonker. Dead times three, no bloody rest for thee.

Shut up and look at her.

The third death. The third one. Another damned suicide. So fucking stupid. He flinched, tried to force the memory from his mind, but it was useless as stifling a sneeze.

”Taking this whole ‘champion’ thing a little too seriously, don’cha think, old buddy?” Angel howled from across the chasm, the sound of his voice half drowned in the swirling vapors.

“Says the bloody Yankee Doodle Dandy,” he snorted back. “What’s the matter, Peaches? ’Fraid I’m gonna sop up all your glory and pathos again?”

“Says the Boy who Lived.” His grandsire’s face was strange and sad out across the boiling mists, yellow eyes glowing like stars. “We don’t do this. We find another way.” As if on cue, massive footsteps shook the earth. The Destroyer had arrived.

“Too late for back’sies, gramps,” he gasped, feeling the Shibborrhim spread through him, its chill white talons clawing their way through his soul, slicing it to bite-sized ribbons. “Never tell her. Promise…”

Somewhere far away, a hand squeezed his. It was warm as flame.

Promise.

Look at her, wanker.

She’d aged. Not much, but visibly. She wore it well, and whatever cruel wisdoms the world had forced upon her over the years had only seemed to make the girl’s beauty that much more devastating. Green, green eyes caught his, and somewhere in his chest, his heart skipped its phantom beat. The notion was absurd. At once a dozen bad old ghosts cackled at him from their roosts, Drusilla’s chief among them. Her corpse lounged catlike at the edge of his sanity, the once lithe body fallen to a state of rancid decay. She smiled. Horrible, debauched mouth limp and cracked, loose against her fangs like an ancient dog. She whispered:

In shabby rags the peasants rake these fields,

fat with guilt, if not with flesh. Sour milk,

fouls their doorways, where harvest virgins give teat,

to vacuum salesmen from the shining towns.

But, our law is a winter’s law,

And casual. She too can be grim,

Snatch her light by violent claw,

And claim glory for the deed, like him…

NO! NO! NO! LOOK AT HER, DAMN YOU!

Green eyes. Dazzled and dazed no more. Gazing softly at her monster. Damning them both with a reckless thump of her heart.

No, he thought. Just me this time, luv. I swear it

Fourth time. Fourth time’s a charm.

He tried to let go, then. Bones whistled, tendons strained like longshoremen.

But she was so, damn strong.

***

“I say, there! Could you come down, please?”

Giles paused hopefully for a moment, then proceeded to jab it with the broom again. The thing scuttled crablike along the ceiling, a jumble of random metal parts blinking and shuddering like a child’s wind-up toy. “Et etrusius,” it screeched. “Quo est Buffy?! Metedoro!”

“I think you’re making it madder,” Andrew offered. “Maybe we should try singing to it. You know, like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

”Ah, yes. Thank you Andrew, I’ll try to bear that in mind the next time it FLIES AT MY BLOODY HEAD!”

Things weren’t going well at all. It’d been almost twenty minutes since Dawn’s gadget had decided to suddenly sprout legs and raise up such a fuss. In the space of five seconds, what had begun its life as a delicate neon flower had transformed into a snapping, clattering nightmare of Science Gone Wrong.

A row of spidery legs contracted as the broom brushed across the thing’s hard plastic belly. It leapt down at them once more, copper joints hissing like a nest of angry vipers. Giles beat a hasty retreat to the corner of the room, flinging a mattress into the creature’s path as he went. His young companion leapt up onto Xander’s workbench, striking a kung-fu pose.

Whirring like a drill, it scrambled towards them. “Buffy sempre lagui amet,” it demanded. “Quo est Buffy?!”

“Yes, well, you’ll have to talk more slowly. My Latin gibberish is a bit rusty, I’m afraid...”

“I’m right here, Dawn.” Giles turned just in time to see her striding through the doorway, green eyes blazing. Spike and Xander flanked her cautiously, fanning out in a small arc to surround the thing. It snapped to attention at the sound of her voice. The gleaming, dish-like structure where it’s head might’ve been swiveled clockwise.

“Y-You understand it,” Giles stuttered.

“No, but I know my sister” she said, her voice ringing with an authority he’d thought had vanished long ago. “Especially when she’s throwing a tantrum.”

As if in reply, a gear churned to life at the core of the dish. There was an electric whine, and a geyser of brilliant blue light shot straight into the air. He could see movement in the projected glow. Dozens of spectral shapes swam into position, slowly congealing to form a familiar face.

“Hey, Buff,” said Dawn. “Sorry it took so long to get this thing online.” The image of the girl’s face floated eerily in a cone of ghostly light, like something underwater. “We had it keyed to respond to your voice-print only. Just in case. Hard to know who to trust these days, you know?” Giles winced at the implication, uncertain whether or not he deserved it.

“I understand,” Buffy said, her voice flat and professional. “What can you tell us?”

“We’ve sent an evac-team to your present coordinates. They should be there within the hour.”

“We?” Giles asked. “Who is we, exactly?”

Dawn seemed to ignore him. “You’re in trouble,” she continued mechanically, her eyes staring blindly through a shower of static. “Our latest satellite readings shows multiple units converging on your position.”

Andrew gingerly crept down from table, karate hands still ready to chop. “The slayers,” he noted grimly. “The, uh, bad ones, I mean.”

Dawn nodded. “They call themselves ‘The Cause.’ We’ve been tracing their movements over the past seven months. Lost track of them after they crossed the border from Byelorussia. They’re using some sort of new technology to move people and supplies around quickly.”

“How close are they?” Buffy asked.

“We can’t tell. They stopped moving twenty minutes ago, about a half a mile out from your perimeter. We think they’re hiking the rest of the way in on foot.”

“Sneak attack,” Xander muttered, a note of bitter admiration in his voice. “Holy crap.”

“They could be inside already,” said Buffy.

“Who is we, exactly?” Giles asked again, feeling a bit agitated.

The vampire paced, suddenly indignant, “Let’s mount the bloody ramparts, then. Give ‘em somethin’ to remember us by.”

Dawn’s features darkened at the sound of the vampire’s voice. “Spike?”

The vamp’s jaw hardened. “Uh, right. Yeah.  ‘Lo.” The girl’s head spun away momentarily. She seemed to whisper something angrily to an invisible person on her left, her eyes as round as teacups.

“It’s uh… it’s a long story,” Xander chimed in. “We’ll fill you in if we manage to not get too overly dead tonight.”

When Dawn face turned back to face them, it was clear to Giles that something was very, very wrong. Her lips were moving quickly, but no sound came out. Without warning, the image started breaking apart.

Buffy leapt forward, a sturdy sort of panic in her voice. “Dawn? Dawn!” Before their eyes, the girl’s features dissolved into a swarm of blue fireflies, then vanished. She spun to face Xander. “Weapons?”

Xander almost scratched his head. “Well, I guess they probably have an armory somewhere. But this dump is pretty old. If the commies left anything behind there’s no guarantee any of it will work…or, ya know, not blow us all up.”

”Get on it,” Buffy barked, eyes flashing. “Take Andrew with you. Grab as much as you can carry and bring it to the garage. Spike, Giles and I will meet you there in ten minutes. We’ll make our stand there.”

Giles stood awestruck for a moment. The girl seemed to glow under the dim electric light. She was a general, again, rallying her troops to yet another Waterloo, to one final bloody Thermopylae. All this despite the horrific circumstances – or, perhaps, because of them. For one fleeting moment, he found it impossible to not feel proud.

And utterly, insurmountably vexed.

Dawn.

Who is ‘we’, exactly?

***

Their approach was pure liquid ice. Sykes and the Chaukau’Ri raced off around the southern lip, ready to grind through the electro-fencing there if it was still hot. Kennedy took point with the rest of the squad. The flamethrower felt wonderful in her grip, heavy enough to offset the strange shame she felt, slinking though the shadows like a thief. She kept thinking that revenge shouldn’t feel so friggin’ sneaky.

But not for long, Summers, she thought. It’s coming soon. And its gonna be LOUD, bitch.

The path to the bunker was wide open, but it didn’t allow for much in the way of cover. And with their vamp back in the picture, odds were the bad guys might smell them coming anyway. Still, it seemed like a better plan than just roaring up full-tread with the tanks. Even if Buffy’s dimwitted dildo managed to pick up the scent, they’d only have a couple of minutes to scrape together a defense. And if she knew them, they’d probably waste those bickering.

The squad paused at the foot of the gate, eyes sharp for traps. Kennedy motioned to a lean, angular recruit named Seven McCabe; a fiery Irish lass with a penchant for making things go kabloowie. Seven slung her flamethrower across her back and yanked a small arc-welding torch from her knapsack. She made a swift, almost casual gesture with the tool, and in seconds the squad was racing out across the courtyard towards the main barracks.

Kennedy held them there with an upraised fist, scanning the camp for signs of the enemy. Everywhere she looked it was lights-out. The stolen jeep was parked at the foot of a rusted observation tower. They hadn’t even bothered to cover it up.

There were twelve Slayers in her squad, all armed to the fucking teeth. In a stand-up fight, it’d be no contest. But between Summers and Harris, the enemy had just barely enough brainpower to make sure it didn’t come to that. They’d try to dig in somewhere, maybe set up some kind of ambush. And when you added a master vampire and a hellbeast the size of a goddamn tank into the mix, the odds suddenly became a bit more even.

“Sykes,” she hissed into her headset. “Report.”

The Lieutenant’s husky voice crackled in her ear. “We’re in. No sign of hostiles at the south gate. Beginning our sweep now.”

“Negative,” said Kennedy. “Hold position there, in case they try to duck out the back.” Seven was crouching nearby, chomping lazily on a chunk of Hubba Bubba. “Well,” she cooed. “What do you think, McBabe?”

The girl squinted into the blackness. “Dunno, mistress. Could be they just dug down in the underground bunkah, tryin' to wait us out. The reds built ‘em to survive a fookin’ atom bomb… But…”

“But, what?”

“Well, problem is once you’re down there, ain’t goin no place else. Only one way in, one way out. ‘Less I was plannin’ to hide down there all fookin’ wintah, widn’t want ta bury me’self inna fookin’ tomb, wid I? Especially with a hungry vampire an’ no fresh blood.” Kennedy marveled at the sight of the redhead’s gears turning. Seven was one of the smart ones, a born hunter. Her soldier’s emerald eyes smoothed a line over the horizon, finally coming to rest on a massive maintenance hangar at the east end of the complex. “Nah,” she continued slyly. “Wid it were me in this mess, I’d try ta get someplace big. Lots a space ta hide, but lots a space ta move about if I had ta. Place with lots a ways out, but only one way in. Know what I mean?”

Kennedy grinned, landed a hard shot across a pair of sweet Irish buns.

“Lead on, bonny lass.”

***

The garage was the size of a football field. Three stories up, a vaulted steel dome locked away all memory of the sky. A herd of rusted armored troop carriers littered the floor in various states of dismantlement. Every movement created a symphony of echoes, so she had stopped moving long ago. She’d seen cozier tombs than this. Literally.

Xander prowled the elevated runaround thirty yards to her right, swinging along on one stiff leg, She spared a moment to drink him in, trying to remember a time when she didn’t trust the man with her life. At age twenty-seven he had seen and done things that defied whole centuries of science and reason, but the past few hours had clearly worn him down. He desperately needed a shave. He desperately needed medical attention. He desperately needed something else that she couldn’t possibly give him. But he just kept limping along, and staring out the skinny little windows.

Down on the floor, Andrew fiddled with a yellow haz-mat tarp. He was trying to pull it over the Grossness, in a vain attempt to disguise it as a forklift. At her urging, the thing had finally agreed to shut up, although how long that would last was anyone’s guess. Once more, Andrew himself seemed to intuitively grasp the need for silence. It was strange watching them together, the boy calmly fussing the plastic sheet over the creature’s bulk as though he meant to give it a haircut, not conceal it from an army of superkillers. An officer’s pistol stuck out of his waistband. It contained exactly three bullets.

In a well of shadows near the heavy roll-doors, Giles hefted an old Kalishnikov rifle of suspect reliability. It seemed to suit him. His old white jaw was set, a pair of naked, predatory eyes glistening through the darkness. He’d held her once. It seemed so long ago. Everything did.

Dawn’s robot proxy nested in the rusted out hull of a tank, pretending to be a busted engine. At the very least, their rescuers could home in on its beacon. Aside from that, she stuck the thing in the same category as Andrew’s pet. She simply had no idea what it would do. Maybe nothing. Maybe that was for the best.

Spike hovered beside her. There was a time when his presence was comforting in this way only: the soulless comrade-at-arms with the slightly icky crush, something to endure and appease until the battle was won. The vampire had donned his dark armor again, but he refused every weapon offered to him. They were similar in that way. Preferred their bare hands. Preferred their bare everything. Win or lose, she needed to tell him something.

And I need you to listen this time, she thought, staring at the dark glassy face. Just need one more night. (yeah some general you are some general you are some general…)

She wanted to tell the voice to shut up, but it made a valid point. It had been such a long time. She’d almost forgotten how this particular game was played. Everything was expendable. Even the Slayer. Especially the Slayer. There was no tomorrow. Not unless they forced there to be one.

Gradually, her breathing found its rhythm. She felt her muscles elongate around bone, pulling in fresh oxygen, filling with rich, red blood. She ground her feet on cold concrete, found her weight there. It was time. Her soldiers were ready. She was ready.

Sort of.

***

0:00 seconds

Kennedy’s Slayers split up, pronging the bunker on three sides, tiny flames licking from the tips of their weapons. Kennedy beckons to Seven McCabe. The redhead crouches at the structure’s southeast corner, slicing open a four-foot square with her arc-torch.

A steel slab bursts and falls flat, marking the way in. Kennedy nudges her scout Julie to go first. The girl takes three steps inside. She attempts a fourth one. A lonely shot rings out, and the left side of Julie Whatsername’s head disappears in a cloud of blood.


0:14 seconds

Xander clears the chamber, loads another shot. His face is a grim blank. This is not the work he wants, but she laid the rules of engagement clearly: take as many as he could, for as long as he could.

Spike is a spectre moving along the western wall. He intends surprise, and something more permanent. Behind the mask, yellow eyes pierce the darkness, searching for his final prey. He wants Willow’s dark-eyed bitch, wants her bad. There’s a last bit of business to settle there. He means to take her quick, and in full view of her skanky little mates. They seem capable enough, and the flame licking up from their arsenal beckons to him like the red song of Sirens. He assumes that they will take care of the rest.


0:15 seconds

Kennedy stifles a cry. With a white finger she orders the rest in. They charge in single file, flamethrowers blazing sideways. More gunshots erupt from within. She leaves the grunts to it, whirling around the southern edge to join her second unit. The four girls there have already cut through. She signals the charge and follows in behind, eyes sharp for the sniper.


0:27 seconds

Andrew ducks low behind a stack of tires. Echoes of gunshots sting his ears. Nobody is saying anything, the good guys or the bad guys. It creeps him out a little, but he manages to stay quiet and out of sight. There are three bullets in the gun.

Buffy is moving, snaking low under the porous rim of the runaround. A moment ago, it was dark enough to blind everyone but Spike. Now jets of orange flame expose the scenery in nightmarish strobes. Her pulse races, images of dead friends flashing through her brain. She needs to get behind them somehow, fight them in close.


0:29 seconds

Giles is on the wrong end of the action, but he spies a clean line and makes a break for it. Diving low beside the shoeless foot of a tank, he opens up with the Kalishnikov. A hot bracket of lead slings out, nailing two skulking girls in the torso. One seems to die straight off. The other staggers sideways, as if drunk, a finger still glued to the trigger of her mechanical dragon. Her fire stream touches the girl next door, igniting her. A brief horror show ensues. The girl’s black outline shambles forth heavily, ringed by flame. She is a shrieking solar eclipse. The fuel tank on her back explodes.


0:30 seconds

Xander doesn’t see the second set of girls until its too late. They fan out quietly, far away from the fiery diversion. One of them lays down suppression fire with a sub-nose SMG. The bullets scream off steel, turning the garage into a friggin’ rock concert. It’s blind fire, though, and he recovers his nerves to lean in for another shot. He imagines it might be his last.

Kennedy dashes for cover behind a concrete column. Her dark eyes scan the runaround for the sniper’s muzzle flash.

Seven McCabe leaps over the smoldering remains of her fallen comrade and makes a beeline for a set of stairs, desiring the high ground. She fingers the sash of hand grenades at her chest, peels one off.


0:32 seconds

Three more Slayers drive relentlessly towards Rupert Giles, their murderous shapes framed by fire. A wave of hot metal rolls past him, and for a moment he is quite sure that he’s dead. He drops to his knees, fumbling with a fresh clip of ammunition. He glances up just as they pass a lumpy yellow tarp.


0:35 seconds

Azazel moves without thinking, his massive tail sweeping two girls to the floor. The third sees it coming, jumps it like skipping a rope. She unloads, pounding the old monster with a sheet of bullets. Ribbons of yellow plastic and black pudding fly in all directions.

Spike drops down into a pile of shadows in the corner of the hanger. He can see the bright little bitch. Her back is towards him. He starts running.

Buffy spots a lanky redhead make a move towards the stairs. She’s clutching a metal sphere in one hand. She starts running.


0:37 seconds

Andrew stares moon-eyed as a monsoon of lead slams into the hell demon. The monster flails blindly under the sheet, a huge, hooded falcon. Just when the girl’s gun seems to run dry, a second one appears at her shoulder. Her flamethrower roars out, a thick tongue of flame turning the tarp into a frat party bonfire. Melvin makes a noise that would haunt Andrew for the rest of his days. There are three bullets in his gun.

Seven McCabe hits the stairs sideways, her eyes sharp on the angles. She sees nearly all of them. The one she doesn’t see lands a savage karate chop mid-chin that sends her crashing to Earth. Slashes of yellow and gray strobe her eyes as she clings to consciousness.

The demon’s unfortunate distraction allows Giles a few seconds to react. He uses them wisely, diving for cover behind the burnt-out hull of a jet engine. He estimates that he has three seconds. Gritting his teeth, he manages to jam the clip into the rifle during first two. He wastes the last one on a prayer, then leans towards his dark business.

Spike is almost on top of her, but the suit is noisy. She hears him, turns in slow motion. The fire licks by as he tackles her low, a gloved hand grabbing her weapon’s muzzle as they fall.


0:40 seconds

Melvin the Monster roars, the tarp falling away in fiery tatters. The smell of sulfur clogs the arena as he swoons.

Andrew aims. Aims. Aims. There are three bullets in his gun. It is a shining block of ice in his hands, freezing him solid.

Time sizzles like a hot watch. Giles makes a decision. Two girls die.


0:41 seconds

The redhead scrambles crabwise over polished concrete. She’s tough, and inside a moment she’s on her feet, brandishing a grenade and a sinister leer. She lunges, locking Buffy’s wrist in an iron grip. The Slayer watches in horror as her enemy thumbs the pin off her tiny bomb.

The cunny is strong. Spike manages to keep a deathgrip on the flamethrower, eating blow after brutal blow. She’s roaring a stream of obscenities. Her finger keeps a steady jet of fire screaming heavenward. Steeling his frame, he delivers a vicious head butt with the helmet, feels Kennedy’s nose crunch and splinter beneath its weight. The finger straightens. The gun jiggles free.

Xander sees everything at once. He spots the scuffle on the stairs, the wrestling match on the floor, the demon on fire. It takes him less than a second to decide which to handle first. He tries to draw a bead on the redhead, but they’re circling too fast. He spots the grenade. Inhales.


0:43 seconds

Pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. Jammed.

In the same moment, another second of Buffy’s life ticks by. The redhead is laughing, whispering, setting a warm bath for death. A savage voice cries out in her over the bang of drums. She feels muscle loosen around a bone in her arm, and she feels an old black wraith slide through it like a tendril. She only has one chance, and she uses it to twist. The redhead’s wrist goes, a snarl of crunched roots.


0:45 seconds

Kennedy scrambles to her knees, blood shooting from her nostrils like two rivers. “Fucker,” she screams, yanking a fresh oaken stake from a hip holster. Spike crawls in a semicircle, like a man trying to find a contact lens.

Giles charges into a red fog.

The demon smolders, gagging on its own dire fumes.

Andrew stares helplessly at two soft female faces ringed by red. There are three bullets…

Seven McCabe resists the urge to scream. A hunk of iron leaps up and kicks her in the sternum. She’s flying, launched backwards into the darkness. It takes forever to land. It takes three seconds to land. She forgets to let go of the…


0:48 seconds

Xander sees the flash. Somewhere below him, a redheaded Slayer is shattered into three, smoking hunks. He wrestles with the chamber, but the gun won’t cooperate. He can’t see Buffy. He can’t see anything. He


0:50 seconds

wants to get out of here. The vamp is moving too fast, now, a gleam of black mirrors. Kennedy waves the stake, out and away like a switchblade. Steaming blood runs into her mouth. She can

taste it. Giles can actually taste the smouldering flesh, wafting from a girl’s corpse like a homecooked meal. April Mahoney was her name. From Queens, NY. A home invasion they

called it. A swirl of singed tentacles tears the yellow plastic bib from over his heads. It’s the closest he’d been to dead in a million


0:52 seconds

years, it seemed. Decades. Generations. Time was passing in super-duper slo-mo. It was as though their deaths were a filmstrip that Buffy was studying frame-by-agonizing-frame. A curtain of

fire blares out from behind. Spike feels the heat in the nick of time, flips sideways like a circus bloke. He threads the needle, but just barely. He is running out of

chances. Not that Xander thought he had one in Hell. But if he was gonna go, he was gonna go down on that goddamn floor with them. With

her. She was already moving, on her way to save her bloody monster again. Giles could see Kennedy’s lackeys filing in from both sides. It wouldn’t be long

now. Do it now, Andrew. They need you now. All you have to do is pull the stupid


0:54 seconds

trigger. In the old days, all it had taken was a fucking song to turn Summers' butt buddy into the snarling thing that faced her now. He is closing on her fast, a blue murder shining in his limbs. A voice in Kennedy’s head tells her that she only has a few seconds left to live.

Then she sees it. It’s just a sliver; a thin line of white flesh peering out from his cracked breastplate. It would be enough. Kennedy would sing the vampire a different song tonight. A lullabye.

She slams a lethal kick into his ribcage. The vampire stumbles backwards a dozen feet, arms whirling to keep his balance. Something mechanical flickers through her. The wooden shard flips over magically in her grip. In a single fluid motion, she spins and flings it directly at the monster’s stone dead heart.

Just then, a shape cartwheels in from the corner of her vision. There’s a familiar flash of blonde, and in the next instant, Buffy Summers is standing between them, the stake pressed neatly between her palms.

They stare at each another for what feels like an eternity. Kennedy studies the blonde’s grim face and understands, suddenly and deeply, what hatred means.

There’s a thunderous sound, like the wings of a gigantic bat. She thinks it’s her heart. It isn’t.


0:59 seconds

The ceiling


0:60 seconds

explodes.

***

For a moment everything was grey dust and white, white light. It streamed though the gaping hole in the ceiling like an angel's death ray.  The world screeched to a heart-attack stop.

In the next instant, two dozen ropes tumbled into the center of the melee, uniformed men gliding down them like spiders.  A flurry of flashbang grenades went off like the Fourth of July, followed by the red roar of gunfire.

Buffy looked at Ken again.  The monster flashed a dark grin at the Slayer and the Vampire, a promise to finish this dance some other time. Then she vanished, dodging into a cloud of ash.

This next fight lasted a long time. It lasted eight seconds.  The remaining Slayers backpedaled into the shadows, laying down a curtain of flame to cover their mistress’ retreat.  The soldiers on the zip cables touched down and fanned out, eerily silent behind identical gasmasks.  Tin canisters rattled off the concrete floor, spewing orange oxide fumes. She watched Andrew stagger away from one, choking as he fell.  Somewhere nearby, a Slayer rammed a freshly carved stake through a soldier's ribcage. Moments later, she is chewed up in a well-timed crossfire, and drops to the ground beside him.

They are the last casualties of the night, it seems.  The sound of the copters was deafening now. Their blades blew the smoke clear, affording her one last glimpse of the girls as they fled.  A chunk of soldiers tore off from the pack and gave chase, filing out like lemmings into the chill Eastern night.

For the hundredth time today, she’s wasn’t sure what to do next.  She turned to face Spike, but he was inscrutable beneath the mask, his body stone-still.  She looked down and realized she was still holding Kennedy's stake, hands clamping it tight, like a mockery of a prayer.  Over his shoulder, she spied Xander puffing down a cage of stairs, his lone eye calculating the new madness swirling around them.  Giles peered in astonishment at the helicopter, his gun clattering to the floor as a pair of soldiers brushed past.

Finally, Spike wrestled off the helmet.  He stared in wonder at the divine white glow shining down.  Buffy looked too, just in time to see the last rope slice through it. Its rider sailed down, a pair of chunky combat boots clapping neatly beside them.  From behind a dusky gasmask, bright eyes locked onto Buffy's.

“You two okay?” said a muffled, yet strangely familiar voice. “Are you hurt?”  Buffy shook her head, her brow knitting low.  The stranger tugged a strap at the back of its head, pulling the mask free.

“Good,” said Samantha Finn. “It’s gonna be a long ride home.”