chapter 16: who is he? – part II
Six books were lined up on the floor in front of Giles' weapons chest, beginning with the first volume of the Zy Qasdor. Three lay open to similar pages, each showing an illustration of assorted demon gods performing various acts of mayhem, torture or slaughter. Two drawings made Xander shudder. One was of Glorifcus in her original form (definitely not the big-haired diva the Scoobies had coined Glory) looming over the body of a woman who looked eerily familiar. The other was of a gigantic winged angel cradling a small man in its arms. The little man held a rose in one hand and a girl's head in another, and his lips were dripping blood.
“Looks like a fucking vampire to me,” Xander said aloud.
“I've already covered that,” spat Giles as he lay on his back on the sofa. He hadn't changed positions since Xander had recited the passages from the King James Version of the Bible, stopping the pain in his head from killing him. “Lucretius is more than a vampire.”
“Who's the guy with wings holding our boy in his arms like he was Rosemary's baby or something?” said Xander, extending the open book to Giles without getting up from his cross-legged position in front of the chest.
Giles sat up carefully, not wishing to press his luck. The pain might return at any moment. He had to stay lucid as long as possible and suss out an action plan before the chant stopped working and he turned back into a witless idiot and Xander a whimpering fool.
“Let me see,” he said snatching the book from Xander's outstretched hand.
It was definitely the portal jumper in the arms of an angel, a magnificent creature with ocean blue eyes and a soft round mouth.
Giles turned his head away from the image and took a deep breath. After a hundred thousand years, Shemhazi's face still possessed the power to seduce. Holding his breath, Giles looked at the page again and studied the drawing of Shemhazi from the neck down. His limbs were hoofs and claws and his torso scaled and battered with an enormous phallus twisting from between bowed legs.
He looked at the words on the page opposite the drawing, and began reading. Shemhazi, a banished angel, had led an army of heaven's outcasts to earth to find wives in a village so long ago that where didn't matter anymore, noted Giles. It was what happened there that was at the core of the Scoobies' dilemma.
“Pass me volume three,” he ordered Xander. Placing the first volume on the table in front of him, he took the book from Xander and eyed the drawing of Glorificus. She was standing over the body of a woman, a young woman with reddish brown hair and black eyes.
“Do you recognize the woman lying at Glory's feet?” He pushed the book back at Xander.
“There's something familiar…” Xander frowned.
“Look at the head in Lucretius' hand.” Giles spun the book on top of the table around to face Xander who was now kneeling on the opposite side.
“It's Willow,” breathed the boy.
“I believe my assumptions have been incorrect,” said Giles as he placed his head in his hands.
“The portal jumper wants Willow?” asked Xander, mystified.
“No, the portal jumper doesn't want Willow.” He looked up. “It wants Dawn. But the twisted angel, Shemhazi, is more powerful than the portal jumper,” said Giles as he pointed to the drawing of the angel holding the small man in its arms. “And Shemhazi wants Willow.”
“Why?”
“Our spell to save Dawn took away a thought from each of us. But in doing that, it gave you a power, took away mine, or my intellect.” Giles glanced at his glasses on the table before looking up to meet Xander's gaze. “It gave Willow free reign over all of her power and her faults.”
“Huh?”
“We were tricked, suckered, into performing a goddamned simple spell.” Giles stood up abruptly, shaking his head as he began pacing in front of the sofa. “Willow held within her something none of us suspected and the spell freed it—and her.”
Giles stared into Xander's stunned face. “She is the first witch and Shemhazi's wife—and they've got some bloody ugly family business to settle.”
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A tall broad-shouldered vampire and Spike, looking very un-Spike like with a mop of wavy brown hair tied in a ponytail, were standing on either side of a frail dark-haired girl with a broad grin painted across her face. They were dressed in old-fashioned clothing that most likely dated back to the turn of the century, suspected Tara. The girl, who photographed well, had to be Drusilla, Spike's lover of a hundred or more years. Buffy had mentioned her to Tara the year before around the time Willow had to dis-invite Spike from the Summers' house on Revello Drive because of his ‘black beauty'.
Tara threw another handful of herbs and roots into the fireplace in Jacob's living room and then looked back up at the mantle. It was cluttered with photos of Spike and Drusilla and a big dark-haired vampire, who had to be Angel or Angelus, as he was known before being cursed with a soul, Tara recalled.
“È il destino dei diavoli che distruggono i loro giovani permorire alla mano di vita,” Tara chanted and picking up the dozen dried roses she'd found in the kitchen, dropped them into the blazing fire.
Tara's task was simple. Willow had explained it during their brief trip in the Chaos demon's portal from Sunnydale to New York. “Keep burning their memories, and recite the verse over and over again until the last embers die. Anya won't be able to handle what she'll see in the alley. When the vampires and Luke forget, we'll be able to triumph over the angels of god.”
Tara stood up and grabbing an armful of framed photos from mantle, hurled them into the flames.
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The street lamp dimmed as the daylight flowed into the alley. Spike could hear the night creatures slithering away, disappearing into their dark holes as they hid their too round eyes from the rising sun. He grinned. This was his battleground. Vampires had made the alleys of the world their refuge, their heaven and hell thought Spike as he stared up into the brightening daylight. Sunshine had always been the unwanted guest here. It marked the end of creatures like him—until today.
His grin broadened into a leer. He wasn't going to turn to dust, and neither was Jacob.
A roar blasted through the silence and Spike turned at the same instant as the portal jumper to see a lanky brown-haired girl with a boy at her side standing defiantly, blocking the exit from the alley. The two youths, holding hands, moved in unison, like panthers, shoulders hunched, feet seeming to disappear underneath the concrete as they crept cautiously forward.
Spike stepped to his left and sensed Jacob move with him, guarding his back. He didn't have to worry about the three women; they'd been chained to the ground by the green mist.
Cocking his head, he ran toward the girl lightening quick, his hands collapsing around her throat so fast she didn't have time to scream. Jacob held the boy, bent backwards, and was sinking his fangs into his tender flesh. Spike smelled the blood instantly.
Such ecstasy, he thought. The sensations flowing through his body, indescribable, as he lowered his fangs into the throat of the wide-eyed girl in his arms.
“No, Spike!” screamed one of the women. It was the girl with the black eyes.
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Willow stepped away from the mist, free of its chains.
“Spike! Jacob! Come here,” she ordered.
The two vampires released their victims and sped to her side obediently, leaving the bodies of the boy and the girl to slump to the pavement. Willow knew they were both still alive. Their bodies still pulsed with blood, and their heartbeats echoed in her head.
“What in the hell is going on?” Buffy's voice demanded from behind her, but Willow couldn't answer her, not now. The vampires would kill Dawn and her friend if she didn't act quickly, and Anya would give Luke back his memories in a few seconds, making it possible for him to complete the transformation of the vampires. Most of all, Tara 's chanting couldn't stop the green mist from killing all of them—if that was what it wanted. Thank god for the daylight, though. One thing about Shemhazi, he hadn't dealt with sunshine in a hundred thousand years. And it had never liked light.
Willow felt Dawn stir.
“Take them away, Dawnie. Do it now.” Willow spoke to Dawn using her mind as she struggled to hold back the demons at her side.
Dawn bolted upright as Willow watched the concrete surface break apart, and split into two giant slaps. In between the cuts in the earth, Shemhazi was emerging from the pavement.
“Hurry,” Willow screamed to Dawn.
An instant later, Willow, Jacob, Luke and Anya stood alone in the alley, facing a green fog wrapped around a giant angry angel with bent wings.
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Opening her eyes was not an option. Not yet. It was too bright and way too hot. She could feel the sunshine and heat burning through her eyelids. Didn't matter, though. The last thing Buffy wanted right now was to see where she was and what had happened to her sister and her friends. She'd had a really bad feeling when Willow had refused to look at her, let alone answer her question back in the alley. But now, she knew, she wasn't in Kansas anymore. Shit, she wasn't in Sunnydale, New York or any place that resembled earth. She was in one of those damned dimensions where anything might happen, where anything might exist.
But Buffy wasn't a coward. She wouldn't play dead. Wasn't her style.
The last thing she'd seen on earth was Spike holding Dawn by the throat. His mouth buried in her neck. She rolled onto her side and placed a hand over her eyes. She didn't want to see the sight she expected to see when she opened her eyes.
Spike was lying next to her, his eyes wide open, unblinking as he stared up at the sky. She turned to her other side. There she saw Dawn, blood dripping from a wound in her neck. Carlo was holding her in his arms.
“God, Dawnie. Are you okay?” Buffy bolted upright. “Where are we? What the hell happened to Willow? What's wrong with your neck?”
“One question at a time, slayer,” she heard Spike whisper behind her.
“I'm okay, Buffy,” answered Dawn, raising herself up into a sitting position so that she was facing Buffy. “I transported us to this dimension. For now, we're safe. For a little while.”
“How…?” Buffy paused. “You transported us?”
“Yeah, I'm the key, remember?”
Buffy recalled more than Dawn being the key. Spike was a vampire.
“Why aren't you dust?” She spun, reaching into her pocket for a stake she didn't have, as she looked at him accusingly. Her breathing was fast and short as she tried to ignore the daylight shining in his eyes. He was lying on his back in the blue grass with his arms tucked behind his head, staring up at the bright yellow sky.
"Got my gift,” he said as he suddenly sprang onto his feet, reached down and snatched Buffy up into his arms.
He had moved too quickly for her to react; all she could do was look into his yellow eyes as his body blocked the sun.
to be continued…
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Author's Chapter Notes:
We're in the alley, and Spike and Buffy are about to go toe-to-toe with freinds and a strange mist. While back in Sunnydale, Giles and Xander are getting closer to the truth about the portal jumper.