The fear that grips her as the lamiabane near is nothing new, and yet no less crippling than it had been the last time she’d come face to face with one. Her heart is racing, her stomach convulsing, her breath escaping in sharp ragged pants, and she can’t do a thing to calm herself against the instinctive terror. But this isn’t the first time she’s been scared stiff during a battle, and it doesn’t stop her from racing forward and burying her stake into the side of a furred beast’s neck as it swoops in for a bite.
The demon roars in pain and swings its snouted head flat against her side, sending her flying through the air, over the rest of the pack. “Get out of here!” Spike shouts, but she’s already in motion again, moderately stunned and staggering at the lamiabane who’s targeted her vampire.
The creature takes advantage of Spike’s distraction to rake long, curved claws down his face, and Buffy sees red. “Spike!” She ducks and slides, catching the dagger he tosses to her and slicing it down the creature’s underside, sending goo spraying in every direction as the demon falls to the side, dead.
“We’ve still got four more,” Buffy says breathlessly, passing him back the dagger and fumbling for the knife that she remembers sticking in her pant leg that afternoon. The other lamiabane turn, stupid, empty yellow eyes zeroing in on the slayer and the vampire.
“I’m not going to let you fight them,” Spike growls, and there’s something about the protectiveness in his voice that warms and infuriates her all at once.
She rolls her eyes at him, flicking the side of his face where he’d been slashed. He lets out a pained hiss. “I’m not letting you get yourself killed,” she retorts, taking off toward the far end of the arena. All four lamiabane follow her movement, distracted from the bleeding vampire, but Spike snarls and leaps on top of one before it gets too far away from him, wresting control over its movements with sheer determination.
This isn’t good, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to get out of this one without being attacked. Whatever Giles’s book has said about lamiabane being harmless and peaceful is a lie, and she can attest to that from watching their blind rage through worried glances over her shoulder and hearing their roars as they near their prey. And while she isn’t letting it stop her, she knows that fear is slowing her down, keeping her from thinking creatively and interrupting what should have been flawless attacks against the beasts that could destroy her with only a single bite. The odds are against her and she’s far from full strength, and even her partner vampire is too caught up in his own fight to help her out.
Think. Think. Think! She continues her run until she’s gained enough momentum to run up the side of the arena wall, uses it to support a backflip that lands her on the back of one of the demons. Out of options, she wraps her arms around its neck and yanks with all her power, trying desperately to break its neck, to cause it pain, to do anything…
And while she kicks at either side in an attempt to ward off the other two demons, one catches her leg in its teeth and bites down into her calf.
“AUUUGH!” The scream is inhuman, twisted and warped by pain into something so alien that Buffy doesn’t recognize it as her own voice until her vocal cords are strained and aching from the cry. Goddammit, it hurts, powerful teeth clamped down around her for what seems like forever, her thrashing not enough to ward off the third lamiabane, a second set of teeth digging into her other leg…
With her last remaining strength, she manages to work through the pain and wrench the head of the lamiabane beneath her into death, but there’s no escape from the other two pumping deadly poison into her veins even as they incapacitate her. There’s no way to get free, no way to fight back…
She lets her knife fly into a glaring amber eye at her right and chokes out her relief as the demon rears back in pain, howling out a death cry as it bleeds out blackened blood and shudders to the ground, wracked with pain.
And then there’s another set of furious amber eyes leaping over her and flying at the final lamiabane with unrestrained hatred, fangs buried in the creature’s neck shoving it back and dislodging it from her leg. She rolls over and off the beast below her, watching through eyes blurred with pain as a fully vamped Spike pummels the creature below him to a bloody pulp with nothing but fists and fangs and fury.
Above her, something glitters, and for a moment she thinks that she can almost see a window in the wall and a set of eyes staring down at them, but straining her eyes takes too much energy that she needs to live right now. She blinks blearily at Spike, tries halfheartedly to staunch the flow of blood in her left leg, lets her eyes drift closed…
“No. Buffy, wake up. Wake up!” The urgent voice is right above her and she blinks groggily, staring up at Spike’s frantic face. He pulls her closer, peppering her face with soft kisses that melt into the salty water pouring from his eyes down her cheeks. “Buffy!”
She tries to smile up at him. “My…my legs. I need to…”
“Yeah.” He yanks down her jeans, tears off a strip of his shirt with his dagger and wraps it around her still-bleeding calf. “Hang on.” He fumbles in his duster jacket for a moment, comes out with a Ziploc bag packed with crumbs that he waves at her triumphantly. “Weetabix!”
“Don’ want…” she mumbles, her eyes shuttering closed.
“Sixteen percent of your daily iron,” he says reprovingly, pulling up her pants and moving to the other leg to check the damage near her ankle. “S’gonna keep you alive.”
“Oh. Okay.” She curls the sides of the bag to slide the cereal into her mouth, chewing mechanically as Spike dresses her other bite. It tastes like dust, and only Spike’s wet eyes and the way he’s shaking as he tends to her keeps her swallowing it down.
“Rest,” he murmurs, pulling her into his lap, wary eyes still hunting for danger. He’s licking his fingers absentmindedly, collecting slayer blood as he does, and she makes a face at him. “What?”
“Gross.” She swipes at his fingers woozily.
He extends one, and there’s mischief in his eyes that calms her with its normalcy. “Want some?”
“Gross.” But his own scrapes are starting to heal from the new blood, and she doesn’t have the energy to yell at him for sampling right now. Or ever, seeing as he pretty much just saved her life.
“I’m going to die soon, anyway,” she whispers, the realization of the toxin within her finally dawning for good. “Maybe not from blood loss-“ And slayer healing and the cereal are already helping, giving her energy and consciousness that had been failing her before. “-But these bites won’t take long before I’m just as bad as Faith.”
“Not gonna happen,” Spike says vehemently, brushing tangled hair from her face. “No matter what went on here, we’re still ahead of the game. We know-“ He stops, letting out a strangled stream of curses that startle her until she begins to feel the illuminating terror enveloping her. “Not more! Not sodding more-“
She props herself up against him, watches as a second pack of lamiabane emerge from a door in the wall that had seemed to be a smooth, metal wall until then. “Spike.” And she’s fully alert now, thinking and aware while he rages helplessly. “Door.”
“Door?” He glances at her, all wild-eyed and desperate. “Wha…? Door!” Realization dawns at last, and then he’s slinging her over his shoulder and hurtling across the room, running right past lamiabane befuddled by the miniature onslaught and through the open door from which the demons had come. Buffy can see them shuffle around slowly, bumping against each other as they try to make sense of the new direction of their prey.
“The bleeding hasn’t stopped on your left leg yet,” Spike says, frowning, as he sets her down on the other side of the door. “S’like a beacon to them.”
“And you?” she says pertly. Already, she’s beginning to feel more like herself, even though she has to cling to Spike to remain upright. She can’t fight yet, but she’s fairly certain that a few more minutes will make a significant difference.
He narrows his eyes at her, but there’s no anger there. “Vampire. It’s what I do. We need to keep moving.”
“Right.” She glances around. Where the arena had been huge and clean and sparse, the area beyond it is dark and dusty, crates and boxes and cabinets littering the long hall ahead of them. They stand at a crossroads between two ends of a hall, and she gestures to the more crowded one. “That way?” If nothing else, it’ll slow down their predators.
“Yeah.” He dumps her over his shoulder again, and she beats against his back in half-hearted protest before slumping back against him, concentrating on regaining her energy before they need to battle again.
There are no doors in the corridor, no side paths, and there’s a creeping worry building within Buffy as Spike moves nimbly through the hallway. “Spike? You know that we’re probably just going exactly where they want us to be going, right?”
“As long as it gets us away from those bleeding demons, I don’t give a damn,” he says grimly, climbing over a pile of crates and rounding a corner.
“Or I might’ve spoken too soon.” He stops short suddenly. She shifts over to peer ahead of them. A lamiabane stands before them, growling menacingly as it squeezes past a large closet to reach them.
“Oh, sh-“ She slides off of Spike, glancing around frantically, her gaze zeroing in on dark rafters above them. “Spike!”
He sees what she’s seeing, lifts her up again and climbs the pile of crates up to the top of a metal closet and onto the rafters above them. The supports shudder in protest, but they don’t break, not even when Spike pulls himself up to sit beside her, kicking down the closet as he does.
The lamiabane howls in protest, lifting a long snout to snarl at them from below, but even when it rears up they’ve still got a few feet on it, safe from its grasping claws. It huddles below them, eyes gleaming in the dim light with the cold resolve of a hunter with cornered prey.
“No way out,” Spike observes, nodding to where the rafters end a few feet away.
Buffy shifts against him. “Maybe it’ll get bored.”
“That thing?” Spike says dubiously, and they both blink down at the demon. It springs up again, letting loose a roar that shakes the rafters with its sheer volume.
She twists to glare at him. “Well, do you have any better scenarios that don’t leave us both bleeding to death? Because I’m out of ideas!”
“I have one.” His voice is soft, measured, and there’s something in it that makes her blood run cold. “While we were fighting…I saw something. A window at the top of the arena. We need to get there.” He pauses. “One of us needs to get there, love.”
“One of us?” She scowls at him. “What is this ‘one of us’ thing? We’re a package deal. And if you think that you’re going to go do something stupidly noble-“
“Someone has to get the lamiabane out of here so you can keep going. And I can handle a couple’f nonfatal bites.” He’s speaking earnestly, but it sounds like he’s miles away, a fuzzy voice coming from a television program she isn’t really watching. “Most of the vamps who’ve gotten them don’t even remember them, yeah? S’gonna be fine.”
Her throat is dry. “No. No, you can’t…” A hand moves out to stroke the scratches that still mar his pale face. “They’re not just going to bite you, Spike. I can’t lose you.” She’s breathing raggedly now, her heart pounding from fear of far more than the beast stalking them below. “I can’t…” The words come to her now- why now, why is it always when we’re out of time that I can finally say it?- stirring within her with all the courage and determination that she’s lacked until now, and she seizes them, lets them free, never mind that they’ll go unreturned, never mind that they might ruin everything, because what’s left now but this end? “I…I lo-“
Spike jerks backwards, and she can see the way his eyes shutter and close off from her, the disbelief that she’s going to do this again, the spark of light in there that he can’t completely hide even now at her words. And she wonders why it still matters to him and stops short at the nagging hopefulness, forcing herself to cease trying to see what she yearns for in his eyes.
His voice is soft, an insistence there that she doesn’t recognize. “Don’t. Not now.”
And if not now, when? When they can settle back into the same routine and she’ll never feel this urgency again? When they’re killed by whoever’s pulling the strings here and it’s over for good? When she’s bedridden and dying of the venom that has already taken her sister slayers? When the lamiabane clawing its way onto the crates manages to-
“Spike!” He sees it at the same moment as she and shoves her back, painfully twisting her legs between two of the supports but shifting her out of lamiabane’s line of fire.
“I swear, if you don’t stay back this time…” he threatens, just as the demon’s mouth closes around the side of the arm he’s using to swat at it. An odd sort of calm settles over his face, peaceful and unresisting against the demon who’s dragging him down along the wall.
She kicks frantically, struggling to free herself from where she’s stuck without injuring herself anymore. “Spike! Spike! Snap out of it, you idiot!”
It’s probably a stupid move, but she’s desperate, so she snatches her stake and hurls it at his forehead with all the force she can muster. It connects, sending him reeling back for a moment as awareness returns to his countenance. “Sorry!” He wrenches his arm free and punches the lamiabane in the throat with the other, dropping to the ground as the creature turns its attention to Buffy.
She’s still tangled in the rafters, helpless to do anything but scrabble backwards as it comes close, but then there’s Spike, of course, shouting useless taunts at the creature as he jumps onto its back and tears into its furry neck with fangs that aren’t long enough to do much more than irritate the lamiabane. It’s enough to distract it from her, though; and soon Spike is grinning up at her gleefully with fangs dripping with black blood, and she rolls her eyes at him and busies herself with getting free.
The demon roars, tossing Spike off, and he laughs the raucous laugh of a vampire who never can get enough of absolute chaos and dives forward merrily, producing his dagger from out of nowhere and plunging it into the lamiabane’s stomach. “Come on, does it hurt? Does the wee little Uri’lan’i need a Band-Aid?” he crows, stabbing it again. He throws himself at it once more, and this time, it’s too much for the injured beast, and it falters backwards to the ground and doesn’t rise again.
Spike is stabbing it again for good measure when she finally manages to pull herself free and drop from the rafters. She lands on the ground and a jolt of pain shoots through her left leg. Damn. But when she steps forward gingerly, there’s no continuous pain, and she’s able to move to stand beside her vampire- her overly bloodthirsty vampire who’s still beating on a half-dead lamiabane. “Stop it.”
He scowls at her through his game face. “Don’t wanna.”
“It’s mean. Just kill it.” The lamiabane lets out what sounds almost like a whimper, and Spike reluctantly climbs onto it and slits its throat in a neat stroke.
“Better?”
“Much.” She reaches out to stroke the ridges of his vampire visage, smiling when they melt under her touch and leave only the man beneath. And the words are still close, even now, and she can finally whisper, “I love you.”
He doesn’t speak and his expression is unfathomable, but then he leans forward to kiss her gently and her fears and insecurity have been put to rest at last by the gentle convergence of his lips with hers. However he feels…no matter how distant he is…this doesn’t feel like destruction, and she loves him all the more for not belittling her admission.
A second lamiabane cries out somewhere nearby and she can’t bring herself to care very much, not when his lips are soft against hers, when they’re caught at this simple impasse where there’s nothing but affection and the quiet bliss that comes from it.
He pulls away from her for a moment and she can’t read him still- why can’t I read him?- but even in the riddle that is his face, she can still see the affection that’s always been there. Then he speaks, and her world nearly shatters. “You need to go.”
“No…Spike, I didn’t mean-“ She doesn’t mean to force him into anything, to do or be anything he doesn’t want. All she wants is for him to let her love him, and she should have known better than to destroy everything with her selfishness.
And of course she recognizes the defeat that descends upon his face at her stuttered words and she doesn’t know if she wants to slap herself or him for it. “Of course you didn’t,” he mumbles.
She shakes her head. “You’re getting this all wrong! That’s not what I was-“
“You need to go,” he repeats, looking anywhere but at her. “There’s another of those fuzzy hellions coming up behind us. I’ll hold it off, you find our Big Bad.”
Oh. Oh, so that’s what he… She nods her acceptance and swallows her hopes, and when he turns to look at her, she seizes him by the chin and forces him to stare at her. “Look at me,” she orders him, and she’s certain that her eyes are shining with all the love and warmth that bubbles up whenever she thinks of him. His own eyes flare with something bright and sweet for an instant before he reins it in, leaving only the pain and fear underneath.
It’s enough for now, for both of them, and she brushes a finger against his lips once before she turns and runs sloppily, her left leg dragging as she climbs past the dead lamiabane and over crates and boxes toward the next curve in the hallway.
There are no more lamiabane nearby, though she can hear roars and Spike’s gleeful shouting in the distance. The latter reassures her even as the former raises her hackles, worry for her counterpart foremost in her mind.
Focus! It’s more difficult than ever when faced with the reality of her love, when she’ll have no choice but to admit everything after this is all over. If he’s uncomfortable…if he denies her…or worse, if he ignores her feelings altogether…
But she doesn’t have time to agonize over this now. Dawn and Willow and Xander are all in danger, and Buffy’s finally strong enough to go after them again. She has to keep moving, to keep climbing over boxes and through hallways and-
Dead end. There’s nothing but a wall in front of her, but that’s never stopped her before, and she’s already kicked through it with all the force that her right leg can muster before she sees the handle on what had been a door.
“Nobody’s perfect,” she mumbles, squinting through the dimness at her new surroundings. She’s at the bottom of a stairwell, one with no emergency exit and a second door to her right- which, on perusal, leads to what looks like a mass of lamiabane lined up in tiny cages. Up it is, then.
She stalks up the stairs, silent as a cat, listening carefully for anything that might be her friends, a demon, Spike catching up to her…But there’s nothing, and when she pushes open the door at the top of the stairs, it nearly comes as a surprise when she comes face-to-face with Willow’s Wiccan boss, seated at a large table and flanked by four enormous security guards and a single snarling lamiabane.
“Ah, there you are,” Orkanel says, pressing a button that clicks a lock in the door behind her. “You do take your time, don’t you, Buffy Summers?” His eyes shine with malice that makes her shiver reflexively. “But I plan to take my time, too. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
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