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Home Is Where They Have to Let You In by slaymesoftly
 
Twelve
 
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Chapter Twelve


Once Buffy had spoken to her squad leaders and made sure they knew where to be when, she hurried home, stopping only to buy a cheap pair of black jeans. She chose some made with stretchy fabric, knowing Spike would be incensed, but that anything that didn’t impede his motion – the way stiff, new denim would – couldn’t be anything but a plus. On an impulse, she grabbed a pair of work shoes with reinforced toes, socks and a leather coat that was on sale.  Forgoing the amusement that bringing home unwanted underwear would have provided, she hastened out of the store and down the street, casting an eye at the already darkening sky.

She entered the kitchen to find Spike and Xander arm-wrestling on the table.  As soon as he saw her, Spike pinned Xander and stood up expectantly.

“Did you see that, Buffy? Told you I’d be fine by tonight.”

“Want to try that with me instead of a very strong, but perfectly normal human?”

“Spoil sport,” he muttered, eyeing the bags. “What’ve you got there?”

Buffy tossed the bags to him. “Jeans that will allow you to move – so I don’t want to hear any complaining about how ‘poncy’ they are – socks and shoes, and a coat to deflect fire or claws or whatever. Go get dressed.”

While Spike disappeared downstairs, Buffy rooted through the refrigerator for something to eat, settling on yogurt and left over pizza.

“Did he eat today?” she asked around mouthfuls of cold pizza. She shoved the box toward Xander.

“Yeah. He chugged his piggy blood like a good little vampire. So what’s the deal, Buffy? Is he moving in?”

“Not going to worry about that until we know he isn’t going to be carried off back to wherever they did this to him.  Nothing’s changed from when we didn’t know who he was, except that now we know. I wasn’t kicking him out then, and I’m not going to do it now.”

Xander nodded. “Well, you’ll let me know if I’m in the way.  I can stay somewhere else.”

“That is so… understanding… and completely unnecessary.  Even if we—which we so aren’t! —you’d still be welcome to stay here when you need to.”

Xander nodded and changed the subject. “So, what did you learn today? Do we have a spectacular new demon-fighting weapon?”

“I wish! Kinda wondering why we didn’t bring that rocket launcher with us when we left Sunnydale… But, we do know where the portal is going to open, and the Coven’s going to help us try to keep them from coming through.” She looked up as Spike, now wearing his new jeans, a tee-shirt and shoes for the first time since Buffy’d removed his battered boots, came into the room.

“Not one word,” he warned as Xander eyed the very tight-fitting and obviously very stretchy jeans.

“Oh come on. Be fair. Not even one?”

“Not unless you want me to feed you your own liver,” Spike growled, going to the refrigerator for more blood.

Buffy glared her own warning at Xander, who sighed and nodded. “Fine. No commenting on the vampire’s jeggings….” Even as she sputtered, “Xander!” Buffy couldn’t prevent her own giggle. She shrugged apologetically when Spike – who understood the meaning, if not the terminology – gave her a lethal stare that promised imminent retribution.  She got up and walked over to where he was growling at the microwave.

Resting one hand on his back, she went up on her toes and whispered, “They make your butt look awesome. He’s just jealous, that’s all.”  The growl turned into a snort, but Spike’s tense posture relaxed.

Without lowering his own voice, he said, “He just doesn’t want to admit that he’s staring at my arse. “  Satisfied with the unusual purple color Xander was turning, he carried his mug back to the table and sat down in the chair next to Buffy’s.

“So, what’s the plan, Slayer?”

“You heard me tell Xander about the portal, right?” He nodded, and she went on. “We’re going to set up two slayer fronts – one right in front of the portal, and one to protect the Coven’s spell casters.”

“Where do you want me?”  When Buffy hesitated, he began to growl again, his eyes flashing to yellow and back to blue.  “I’m not going to hide, Slayer! I won’t be pushed behind some wall of little girls like something too weak or special to—”

“You are special,” she murmured. “To me, anyway. And apparently to them.  If you’re where they can see you and get to you, they might be able to grab you before I—we—can do anything about it.”  She stared into his eyes. “Don’t ask me to watch you sacrifice yourself again.”

“Could say the same thing, love,” he answered, his demon banished as he basked in her unconcealed concern and affection.  “You can’t expect me to stand by and watch you risk your life for me.” He ran one hand down her cheek, smiling when she leaned into it and turned her head to kiss his palm.

“Okay. Enough of this stuff – I just ate, you know.”  Xander stood up, pizza in hand and waved at them. “I’m going to collect some manly weapons. Please be ready to go kill things by the time I get back.” He ignored the faces Buffy and Spike were making at him as he left the room and went to the weapon chest in the living room.

“Xander, bring my scythe back with you, please,” Buffy said. “I’ve got a feeling I might need it tonight.”


~~~~~~~~

As they approached the deserted industrial park where the Coven had determined the portal was going to open, Buffy looked up to where Willow and her chosen group of witches were standing on the open deck of a parking garage.  Buffy pointed to them, instructing Xander, “Why don’t you join the slayers up there?” She gestured to the various shotguns and other weapons he had strapped around his body. “It looks like a good spot for you to pick off anything trying to come through the portal. The fewer that make it out, the less fighting we’ll have to do.”

“Makes sense to me.” He nodded and veered off, pausing when Buffy went to talk to the squad leaders lining up around the cul-de-sac.  He walked back to Spike.  “Whenever you start feeling stupid, remember what it will do to her if she has to watch you die again. Or – probably worse from her point of view – if she can’t keep you from getting carried back to where you’ve been having such a good time these past few years….”

“I know, I know. Gonna do my best to be smart about it.”

“Well, that’s already got failure written all over it… “

“Go on, Harris. Find a nice safe spot to shoot things from. I’m not going to do anything to hurt her.”

“Yeah, says the guy who keeps dying and disappearing….” He gestured from his eye to Spike’s. “I’ll be watching you, buddy.”

There was no response as Spike turned to watch Buffy walk back to him.  His hands were in his pockets, and he looked more uncomfortable by the second.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Jus’ don’t know what to do, do I? Want to be near you, watching your back, but if I do that, it might draw more trouble to you.  If I’m far away, back here, I won’t be able to help—”

“Let’s just play it by ear, ‘k?” she said softly, touching his face and running her thumb over one of the scars.  “If they don’t see you, it’s better for the rest of us.  If they do spot you, then we’ll probably need the help.”  She held out her hand in which she held a sword.  “Here. The girls thought this would be a good one for you.”

He glanced over to the squad of girls watching them while pretending not to. “Are those the little bints that wanted to off me so badly they ended up tripping each other?”

“Yeah. I think I finally convinced them that running in to you was one of the best things that could have happened to them. Now that they know who you are, they finally believe me.” She laughed as she watched him move the sword around, testing it.  “Now they’re going around bragging how they fought William the Bloody and survived it.”

“Does that mean I can say I fought six slayers at one time and kicked their arses?”  He was saluting the girls when he caught Gill’s eye. He rubbed his ribs and gave her a thumbs up, laughing when she blushed and looked away.

“Okay, enough with distracting the teenyboppers.  Looks like it’s showtime…”

They both watched as the small bright spot in the air began to pulse and grow.  The slayers spread themselves into a line and faced the space, weapons in hand.  It was almost anticlimactic when the first demon came through, as he exploded almost as soon as he appeared, victim of a well-thrown hand grenade.

“Bringing the slayers’ weapons into the 20th century, aren’t you?” Spike said. “Got any plans to move past World War II armaments?”

“Watch and learn,” she said, beginning to walk toward the line of slayers. “From here. Please,” she added when he moved as if to follow her.  “Just do this for me. Don’t put yourself out there unless we have no choice.”

“Buffy….”

“I’ll be back,” she said, whirling and running back to him. She reached up, grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him until he relented and began to return the kiss, holding her against his body and growling as he felt her melting against him.  Sounds of battle from behind Buffy made her wrench herself away. “I’ll be back,” she repeated as she turned and ran toward the portal.  “I’ll be back. You be here!”

He stood, leaning on the sword while the slayers battled at the edge of the portal, trying to keep the demons from coming through.  Their small supply of hand grenades had been exhausted, and they were back to fighting in the usual way against the new demons climbing over the body parts at the portal entrance.

Spike could hear the witches up on the parking garage roof, chanting and filling the air with magic. In spite of their best efforts, it didn’t seem to be having much of an effect on the portal. It remained open, if too small for more than a few demons at a time to emerge. Keeping it small seemed to be the best they could do, and the fight continued to be confined mostly to the area right in front of the portal. Occasionally a small group of demons would work together to burst through and overwhelm the slayers immediately in front of them.  They rarely made it more than a short distance away as the well-trained slayers split into a front line and a rear guard, catching up to the escaping creatures and attacking them from behind.  But the need to pursue them did begin to isolate the slayers from their companions, and the portal became less well-guarded.

With the apparently unending numbers of disposable demons being sent through the portal, the gradual spread of fighting was inevitable and self-renewing.  The more slayers who were drawn away from the portal, the more of the demon soldiers could come through at one time. Slowly, but surely, their numbers continued to increase, in spite of the certain death awaiting them from the slayers that greeted their arrival.

Spike was so busy trying to keep track of Buffy as she laid waste with her scythe and admiring the discipline of the slayers under her command that he almost missed the seven feet of scaled death that had made its way to the isolated spot he’d chosen to stand in. His instincts, however, had not deserted him, and he was sheltered on two sides, forcing the demon to approach in a way that allowed Spike to catch him from the corner of his eye.

The demon stopped, studying the scarred vampire now facing him, sword at the ready. Instead of attacking, he turned and shouted something in a garbled demon tongue that Spike recognized as something he’d heard too much of in the past several years.  One leap into the air and a swipe of the sword removed the demon’s head, and for a few blissful seconds Spike thought maybe he had been in time.

The way the entire focus of the battle shifted told him it was a vain hope, and he braced himself for the coming onslaught.  He was too busy fighting off creatures more interested in capturing him than killing him to notice what else was going on, until he found himself pinned between two more of the tall, scaly demons.  He was just beginning to worry when the one on the left was gone, lying in two pieces on the ground, and Buffy was using her scythe to hack off the legs of the one holding his right arm. Spike brought his sword across and removed demon’s head, dropping it at Buffy’s feet.  She grinned at him and turned back to the fray.

Spike threw himself back into the fight with a delight totally inappropriate for the situation, but impossible to deny now that he was on Buffy’s left as she used her scythe to hold back the hordes trying to reach them.  They fought with a joy and ferocity that kept their area clear and allowed the other slayers to attack the single-minded demons from the rear, causing large amounts of damage and systematically whittling down the number of attackers. Although obviously dangerously lethal, the attacking demon soldiers did not seem to be very bright as they focused entirely on reaching Spike, paying no attention to the slayers decimating their ranks.

The loud clap of thunder as the portal popped open all the way caught everyone – including the demons – by surprise.  They threw themselves on the ground, murmuring in their language and prostrating themselves in front of the creature looming in the portal.

“Oh shit,” Buffy said, hefting the scythe. “That’s the thing that tried to break my back.”  Even the slayers, now that their opponents were busy bowing down to the new arrival, stopped and stared.  The creature in the opening, twenty-five feet tall if it was an inch, was made of pulsing, green slime and sharp spines. It had several short tentacles near its head, and three very long, powerful ones coming from its torso. A fourth tentacle ended in a stump some distance from the body. It stood on relatively short, but extremely thick legs that ended in feet with taloned toes. Its eyes were the size of dinner plates, and they took only a few seconds to locate Spike.

“Incoming, love,” he said.  “Which side do you want?”

“If he gets this far, I’m going to remove the other three tentacles,” she said. “But watch first… ”

Buffy waved to the girls on the garage, trying not to worry about the dazed witches she could see lying around them.  The girls ran to the other side, coming back with a catapult.

“A trebuchet? You’re going to fight Godzilla with a bloody medieval war machine?”

Buffy ignored him and watched intently as Xander and a small group of girls placed a large, round object on the machine.  Without wasted effort or speech, it was launched directly into the portal, hitting the demon in its mid-section. There was a split second of silence, then the world filled with a roar and bits of demon-parts. When the air cleared, the slayers sent up a cheer and began to high-five each other.

“Didn’t teach them not to gloat, did you, pet?” Spike said, as he fended off the first of the smaller demons to recover and renew the attack. 

“Left that for you,” she grunted, slicing her way through another attacker. “Guess I shouldn’t have waited.”

Worried about hitting a slayer now that the opened portal was allowing through far larger numbers of demons and escalating the furious hand-to-hand combat, Xander had stopped trying to shoot from his perch above the battleground. After assuring himself that Willow and her fellow witches had only been stunned by the magic blast that blew open the portal, he had set himself in front of them and stayed busy picking off any stray demons that made it past the small squad of slayers left on guard. The rest of the garage roof slayers had long since joined their sisters on the ground in the battle going on there.

Buffy slipped and slid in the gore now coating a rather large and growing area, as the battle became even more fierce than before—the original combatants, outraged over the destruction of their overlord, still eager to recapture Spike.   When Spike’s bad leg buckled and he went down under a pile of triumphant scaly enemies, Buffy’s scream was barely audible over the uproar of multitudes of individual battles. 

She was doing her best to fight her way to him, fearful of swinging the scythe into the pile of struggling bodies, when suddenly the pile became noticeably smaller. She glanced up as a large body was rather effortlessly thrown back through the portal and saw a strange woman with blue hair and body armor.

“Illyria?”

“They may not have him back,” the woman replied, her tone clearly implying that Buffy was not doing her job properly. “He should not be here.”

“I tried to tell him that,” Buffy snapped, pulling the last demon off and removing its head in almost the same motion.

“He can be very disobedient,” Illyria said, yanking Spike to his feet and shaking him.

“It’s good to see you, too, your godship,” Spike gasped, holding his side and trying to hide it at the same time.  “Don’t think I’ve had time to thank you for—”

Whatever he was going to say was drowned out by another loud pop. Everyone, demons and slayers, looked up to find three more of the giant demonic creatures emerging from the portal; several more appeared to be waiting behind them.

Once again, the few lesser demons still standing threw themselves on the ground in obeisance, whereupon the slayers quickly decapitated them before retreating in the face of the frightening beings stalking through them. The new arrivals brushed the slayers aside at first, pausing to fling one away only if she actually inflicted an injury that caught the creature’s attention. Not until they realized the small warriors were trying to keep them from their goal did they attempt to engage them in serious combat. 

Buffy had only seconds to admire the discipline and creativity the slayers were showing as they used their smaller size and quickness to dart in and out, inflicting what damage they could. She soon had to turn her attention to the leader now making its way directly for them. It paid no attention to the two women standing between it and Spike until Illyria gave a snarl and leapt, grabbing one tentacle and hurling it to the ground.  She stood triumphantly on its torso for only a second; just long enough for the creature to use one of its powerful tentacles to pluck her off and throw her against the side of the garage, where she remained still, lying on the pavement below the dent her body had made in the concrete.

“Blue!” Spike started toward her, halting when Buffy yanked him back. She pointed at the large demon, now on its feet and striding toward them.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve already been thrown against a wall. I’d just as soon not go there again.”  Darting forward, Buffy managed to slice off one of the long tentacles before she slipped and fell right in front of a large, taloned foot.  The demon gave a booming laugh and raised its leg, only to find Spike running to the opposite side, hacking at its legs with his sword and screaming, “Look here, you piece of green shit! Is this what you want?  Come and get it!”

He backed away, luring the demon from Buffy’s body. The other two creatures immediately stopped their assault on the slayers and began striding toward the sword-waving vampire.

“That’s right, you bleeding piles of hell-spawn.  Here’s what you want.”

Buffy sat up, shaking her head, and watching in horror as Spike stood his ground, waiting for the demons to reach him.

“No!” 

She scrabbled in place, trying to get to her feet and find her scythe. She was just staggering in the direction of what was undoubtedly going to be a very short battle, when Illyria flew past her.

“Wait here,” she said.  “I tire of this.”

Buffy ignored her orders, arriving just in time to see Illyria morph into the slender, brown-haired girl Buffy had a vague memory of meeting years ago. The girl looked at Spike, saying, “It’s past time for me to leave this place.  Take care of yourself, Spike.” She leaned in and gave him a brief hug before reverting to her familiar form.

“What are you—don’t, pet. Even you can’t handle—”

“I am finished here,” Illyria said.  “I require you to move away now.” She began to shimmer and quiver, causing Buffy to grab Spike’s arm.

“Let’s go.”

Dragging an unwilling Spike, Buffy moved away from where the slender blue figure was facing off against three huge creatures that were gnashing their teeth and waving their powerful tentacles around. Even as they watched, her body began to swell and change.  There was a moment of confusing motion, then Illyria was gone and in her place was a creature more than twice the size of those facing her, with a much larger mouth, more tentacles and a voice that shook the nearby buildings.

“You are done here!” she roared, picking up the first demon and throwing him bodily through the portal.  “We are all done with this world.” She advanced upon the remaining two demons that were gaping at her in disbelief.  “You will worship me as I deserve, inferior beings. Let us begin now.”

She knocked them to their knees, put a tentacle on each one’s head and forced it to the ground.   “That is better.  We will practice.”  Without so much as a final glance at Spike, Illyria threw her two new minions through the portal, stepped in and pulled it shut behind her.
 
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