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 Glorificus in her original form, definitely not the big-haired diva the Scoobies had coined Glory. She loomed 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 dripped blood.

“Looks like a fucking vampire to me,” Xander said loudly.

“I've already covered that,” said 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 snatched 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. After a hundred thousand years, Shemhazi's face still possessed the power to seduce. Giles looked back and examined the image from the creature's neck down. His limbs were hoofs and claws and his torso scaled and battered with an enormous phallus twisting from between bowed legs.

He read the words on the page opposite the drawing.

Shemhazi, a banished angel, had led an army of heaven's outcasts to a small village to find wives. This had happened so long ago where didn't matter, thought Giles. It was what happened there that would lead him to the solution to the Scoobies' dilemma.

“Pass me volume three,” he ordered Xander, who placed the open volume on the table in front of him. Giles examined the drawing of Glorificus carefully. 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.

“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.

“No, the portal jumper doesn't want Willow.” Giles looked up. “It wants Dawn." He then pointed to the drawing of the angel holding the small man in its arms. “Shemhazi wants Willow.”

“Why?”

“Our spell to save Dawn took away a thought from each of us." Giles stared at his glasses on the table and then looked at Xander. “But 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 swayed in front of the sofa. “Willow was holding within her something none of us ever imagined, and the spell freed it—and her.”

Giles stared into Xander's stunned face. “She is the first witch, the most powerful the world has ever seen, 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. She looked 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.

“È il destino dei diavoli che distruggono i loro giovani permorire alla mano di vita,” Tara picked up the dozen dried roses she'd found in the kitchen and 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 grabbed another armful of photos from the mantle and threw them into the flames.


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The streetlamp crackled and sputtered off. Then the night creatures slithered away, disappearing into their dark holes, hiding their too round eyes from the rising sun. Spike grinned. This was his battleground. Vampires had made the alleys of the world their refuge, their heaven and hell. He looked up at the brightening sky. Daylight 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.

He heard footsteps and turned. The lanky brown-haired girl and the boy were blocking the entrance to the alley. They were holding hands, moving like panthers, shoulders hunched, feet sinking beneath the concrete as they crept cautiously forward.

Spike stepped to his left and sensed Jacob guarding his back. He didn't have to worry about the three women; they'd been chained to the ground by the black fog.

Spike cocked his head and ran at the girl, and in one swift motion collapsed his hands around her throat. She didn't have time to scream, he'd moved too fast. He smiled at Jacob, who had the boy. Spike paused, lusting at the sight of Jacob sinking his fangs into the boy's flesh. He closed his eyes as the smell of the freshly drawn blood filled his senses. Such ecstasy, he thought as he tightened his grip on the girl in his arms and bit into her long white neck.

“Stop, Spike!” screamed one of the women. Releasing the girl instantly, he glared at the witch with the black eyes and growled in frustration. He had wanted to feast on her, but he had to do as the witch asked. She was Shemhazi and he belonged to her.


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Willow stepped away from the fog, free of its chains.

“Spike! Jacob! Come here,” she ordered.

The two vampires sped to her side obediently, leaving the bodies of the boy and the girl to slump to the pavement. Willow sighed in relief. They were still alive, their heartbeats were echoing inside 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 had to be controlled 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 black fog from killing all of them—if that was what it wanted. Thank god for the daylight. One thing about Shemhazi, he hadn't dealt with sunshine in a hundred thousand years. He had never been able to tolerate the light.

Take them away, Dawnie. Do it now. Willow spoke to Dawn with her mind as she held the demons at her side. Dawn bolted upright and wrapped her arms around her lean body. She closed her eyes and a small funnel of wind circled her feet and then quickly up her legs.

“Hurry!” Willow screamed at Dawn as the concrete split in half ten feet in front of her. Willow released Spike and floated Buffy and Carlo like robots toward Dawn, as the black fog rose higher from between the cracks in the ground.

Dawn and the others disappeared and Willow relaxed. But the fog was unwrapping its gift and she had to be ready. She braced herself. Standing motionless and steely-eyed next to Jacob and Anya and Luke, she watched calmly as the giant angry angel with bent wings emerged from the black fog.

"Shemhazi, I presume." Willow bowed deeply as she summoned a funnel of ancient wind to surround her. She had to prevent the banished angel of God from touching her soul.


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Opening her eyes was not an option. Not yet. It was too bright and way too hot. The sunshine and heat were burning through her eyelids. Maybe that was of the good, though. The last thing Buffy wanted was to see her sister in Spike's grasp or Carlo being devoured by Jacob. She shook her head and opened her eyes. She wasn't in the alley. She wasn't in New York, Sunnydale or any place that resembled Earth. She was in one of those damned dimensions where anything might happen, where anything might exist.

“Dawnie. Are you okay?” Buffy bolted upright and sped to her sister's side, pushing Carlo out of the way. She examined her neck. Spike's fangs had barely penetrated the skin. Then she looked at Carlo. His throat was bloodied, but he wasn't badly hurt. “Where are we? And what happened to Willow?”

“One question at a time, slayer,” she heard Spike whisper behind her.

“I'm okay, Buffy." Dawn sat upright and faced Buffy. “I transported us to this dimension. And for now, we're safe. For a little while.”

“How…?” Buffy paused. “You transported us?”

“Yeah, I'm the key, remember?” Dawn smiled.

Buffy turned to the vampire at her side and reached into her pocket, fumbling for the stake she didn't have. Then she was breathing too fast as she saw the sunlight reflected in the blue of Spike's eyes. He was lying on his back in the road with his arms tucked behind his head, looking at the yellow sky. “Why aren't you dust?”

"Got my gift."

Spike sprang to his feet and grabbed Buffy by the shoulders, pulling her into his arms. She gasped and then struggled as he tightened his grip around her body. He had moved so fast she hadn't had time to fight. Now she was staring at his yellow eyes, and hoping she'd have at least one chance to escape.

to be continued…