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Angels and Demons by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 7.06
 
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Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 7 - LAKE OF FIRE

People cry, people moan.
Look for a dry place to call their home.
Try to find some place to rest their bones.
While the Angels and the Devils try to make THEM their own.

(Nirvana, Album - MTV Unplugged with thanks to Zanthinegirl for the suggestion)




Chapter 7.06
Saturday, July 13th, 2002


Oz made his way through the library until he spotted Giles' head over the top of a stack of text books.

"Got it," he told the watcher, sliding a receipt toward the older man. "Restocked the fridge some while I was there."

"Who is around upstairs at the moment to help out?" the watcher asked.

The werewolf ran a hand through his currently dark brown hair and shrugged. "Xander, Brand and Dawn, but I don't think Buffy would rate her little sister going out on this one... That Amanda kid."

"Faith and Buffy?"

"No Buffy. Bad night or so Dawn said... Faith?" He shrugged again. "I could try her room if you want."

"Do that. Get James too. Tell everyone who's coming to be in the foyer at half past ten."

Oz gave the barest possible inclination of his head.

Giles picked up the receipt and made his way to what had once been the stable block.






 

"Are they ready?" Giles looked at the slightly built, bespectacled watcher who had taken over the small building. It looked like a mixture of scrap yard and workshop. Various devices were bolted down to the massive workbench that dominated the centre of the room. Tucked under the table was a refuse sack full of drinks cans that were undergoing a type of recycling that was slightly different than that which the soda-drinking potentials were probably expecting.

"Ain't this where you tell me?" The man pushed a small box of shotgun cartridges toward the watcher and then moved to open a long narrow safe, set into the cement floor at the back of the room. "How many?"

"Two should be sufficient, I believe."

The wiry-looking old man pulled a brace of pump-action shotguns from the safe. "Handguns?"

Giles considered further. "Another two."

The other man grunted and pulled out a pair of Desert Eagle handguns with a slightly pinkish looking silvery sheen. "Titanium Carbon Nitride finish. Good for resisting rust, not that it's much of an issue here," he provided, catching Giles' look of distaste. "Take whoever's going to be using them out back and make them fire off a couple of practice rounds."

"Even what's left of the Sunnydale police might come to investigate the sound of gunfire," Giles argued. "They've been rather more belligerent than usual of late."

"Suit yourself. Ain't my fault if the casin's hit them in the head 'cause the dumbasses can't deal with the recoil." He opened another box inside the safe and pulled out a box of ammunition. "Hollow points. If the gun jams, just bring it right back here. Don' go tryin' to clear it yourself."

"If the guns jam there's a good chance no one will be bringing anything back."

The wizened-looking man wheezed out something that might have been a chuckle.






 

"If Buffy wasn't my sister, you'd let me go." The teen climbed out of Oz's van to better get in Giles' face.

"If Buffy wasn't your sister and Debbie Harry wasn't about to be your brother-in-law, then we all might have a chance of surviving if we let you come with," Faith pointed out. "Get back in the van. Keep the engine running, look out for bringers and, if we don't come out within the next quarter of an hour, go fetch help."

Giles passed a handgun each to Faith and to Oz. "The shotguns should do the job, but if it looks like the situation is out of our control, then you might want to use these. Head shots are the only thing that'll bring them down, so don't waste bullets on anything else, unless it's the only way to avoid hitting one of us. Make sure you're braced properly and holding it firmly. Safety is at the side, and it's currently on. If it jams, go back to your primary weapon." The watcher indicated the halberds that everyone except he, James and Dawn were carrying.

"Hey!" Dawn rolled down the van window. "What about random people wandering in off the street? What do I do with them?"

"It's a closed site. There shouldn't be anyone just wandering in," Xander argued.

"Wanna tell them that?" Dawn replied, twisting and sliding until she sat in the van's window space with only her legs inside the truck. She pointed across the van's roof at a group of teenagers, who were making their way over a flattened portion of perimeter fence.






 

James passed his shotgun back to Giles, who stowed both the larger, more obvious weapons in the back of the van once more. Oz let his halberd drop to the ground and the others followed suit before they stepped away from the cover of the van to get a good look at the gaggle of kids who were making their way toward them.

"This site's off-limits to the public," Xander shouted. "Just turn around and we won't have to call the cops."

"You tryin' to say that the old guy an' the bimbos are union? You've got no more right to be here than we have. You're not going to be calling anybody."

"Well, in that case," James called back. "I guess we're just goin' to have to make you leave all on our ownsome."

The guy who seemed to be in charge of the opposition looked around at his rather larger group of companions and then back at Xander, Brandon, Giles, James and Oz. "A runt, a senior citizen and three of you against ten of us?"

"Hell, no!" Faith responded, as she broke into a run that closed the last twenty feet between the two groups. "For ten of you, I don't need any help."

"Do try not to kill any of them," Giles drawled, as some of the gang skirted Faith, deciding to bring the fight to the others instead. "It might be rather more difficult to obtain a pardon for a third murder." The leader of the group paled slightly at Giles' blasé tone the watcher noted with satisfaction, while he waited nonchalantly for one of the teens to make a try for the easy target. His kick made a satisfying crunch as it shattered the youth's kneecap, and he easily deflected his adversary's punch with his forearm before his fist connected with the teenager's jaw and sent him sprawling to the ground, where he had the good sense to stay. "Senior citizen, indeed," the watcher muttered.

He looked around and realised that the fight was already all but over. James had taken position at Faith's back, and with only those at her front to worry about, a few well-placed punches and kicks had disposed of half the opposition within seconds. James took out one on his own, as, Giles noted, did Xander, using the martial arts that he'd been so reluctant to learn. Amanda was coping ably with an opponent six inches taller than her and twice the width, right up until Oz tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, Amanda kicked him behind the knee, dropping him to a kneeling position and Oz punched him squarely on the jaw. It was done.

"Dawn, that really isn't what Faith meant by stay in the van," he added as the one-time Key kicked at a prone figure.






 

After some further remonstrance, Dawn was eventually returned to the confines of the vehicle and everyone else reclaimed their original weapons. Oz grabbed a large grocery sack from the back of the van, and they were ready. As they made their way toward the basement they discovered a few more citizens had taken refuge within the building. None of them were particularly friendly, but none of them remained conscious for very long, either.

"This is it," Xander announced, indicating a doorway. "Things get a bit fuzzy beyond this point. Walls don't seem to match the plans. Turnings that're there one day are gone the next. We'll just have to play it by ear." He pushed open the door and a fresh wave of sound reached them.

Faith brushed past him, taking the lead. "Or we could just see where the chanting's coming from."

The 'Fiat Lux' spell that Giles had had Tara prepare turned out to be unnecessary. Far from having to search out the seal, it was in the room adjacent to the entrance. It was also glowing brightly enough to illuminate the whole room. As they made their way down the steps the chanting stopped. The people in the basement were dressed in every day clothes. They ranged from around Dawn's age to older than Giles and the watcher felt a twist in his stomach as he recognised a former patron of The Magic Box turn sightless eyes upon him.

"More will give themselves. My master's power grows with every day that passes and more will be drawn to him." Giles remembered the captive bringer's words and for the first time their meaning was clear. These people still had hair, they wore their own clothes rather than black robes, and if the chanting was any indication, they still had their tongues. However, unlike those they had incapacitated on their way in, these were no longer human. They were the enemy.

Faith vaulted the rail at the side of the steps as soon as there was sufficient clearance between it and the floor above. Xander hesitated for a fraction of a second while he considered following her example, but the prospect of landing in a tangle of body parts and sharp-bladed halberd didn't appeal too much, so he kept on going down the stairs. James pressed close on his heels with Amanda behind him.

Three of the new harbingers moved to intercept Faith, but two reached the bottom of the narrow staircase. Xander didn't have space to use his polearm properly and none of the others could get past him to help. There was a sound from behind him; a sound that had always made him think more of a ripped Linda Hamilton in T2 than watchers and demon hunting, but Xander wasn't that slow that he didn't know to duck. The bringers obviously didn't have the same appreciation of the classics. Everything from the collarbone upward on the nearest bringer dissolved into a red mist. Its companion seemed oblivious to the carnage and yanked at Xander's ankle, dragging him bouncing down the last couple of steps. Amanda let out a piercing whistle and it straightened up as if to see where the noise had come from. That gave James his shot and it met a similar fate.

Faith threw the halberd like a spear, impaling one of the harbingers so deeply that six inches of blade protruded from his back. She whirled between her remaining opponents like a dervish, delivering blows with impartial hands, feet and, on occasion, her head. The rest of the group filed down off the stairs, but stayed back, confident that their help would be neither needed nor wanted and reluctant to intervene in any case lest they disturbed the balance of the fight... until one of the bringers staggered back close enough for Giles to club it into submission with his rifle butt. Faith literally threw herself at her remaining opponent, in a move more reminiscent of Saturday morning wrestling than any of the council approved manoeuvres. She flew feet first through the air to grab her in a headlock, twisting the bringer's neck and dragging her to the ground as they both landed on the glowing seal.

Faith pushed herself back up to her feet and nudged the body of the bringer with a heavily booted foot. "Rest of you guys planning on joining me any time soon, or are you all too hot and bothered watching me do my thing to get in on the action? Maybe you want some quality time with your lonely right hands before you get to work."

"Faith, I hardly think we've done anything to deserve those remarks," Giles protested.

"No? You think I don't know exactly what every guy I've ever met has wanted from me... From Uncle Johnny when I was twelve and the three minute wonder..." She tossed her head toward Xander without looking up from the harbinger's corpse. "Right on through to our Scottish friend. All I am to them is how I look... how I feel when I ride them." Her head lifted and she raised clouded eyes to stare at James. "And all they are to me is a vibrator that doesn't need batteries."

There was a coldness in James' eyes as he passed his shotgun to Giles. That was the only warning he gave before he launched himself into a headlong dive at the slayer.

Faith gave a half snort of disdain as she sidestepped out of his way and he only just managed to tuck into a roll that took him beyond the seal's far side. "You really think you can bring it to me? You think you can keep up with me in any way, shape or form? I must be good. Maybe I should try out for Julliard."

"Or maybe," James retorted, his tone bitter, his accent becoming stronger with the derision in his voice, "you should just take yersel' doon the docks like the hoor ye are, an' that way the poor bastards that have the misfortune tae have anythin' tae dae wi' ye'll ken whit they're lettin' themselves in for."

Faith ran at him and he didn't even try to block. He just grabbed a handful of denim jacket as he let her impetus drive them both over, taking the punches she threw until he could wrap strong arms around her and hold her to him. The punches slowed and then stopped. When he risked taking an arm from around her torso to push her hair away from her face, her eyes were brown again; brown, and hurt, and defiant and confused. He loosened his other arm and the slayer immediately pushed herself away.

"Are we gonna do this thing, or what?" she asked.






 

Pouring pig blood onto the seal, watching it open and even clinically dispatching the Turok Han that emerged with the shotguns seemed like an anti-climax after that. Faith was first out of the basement. James lingered to cast one last glance at the still glowing seal.

"I'm sure, once she has some time to think about it, she'll know that you were simply doing what it took to get her to move off the seal," Giles told him in his most reassuring tone.

"Yeah, an' I'm sure that she more than half believes every word that came out of her mouth."
 
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