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Angels and Demons by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 7.17
 
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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 7.17
Thursday, July 18th, 2002


Somewhere in the course of his travels, since he had escaped the care of Sunnydale's mental health professionals, Robin Wood had found a four foot length of scaffolding. He swung it wildly at Spike, showing no finesse or evidence of training. Whether he had always been unstable, whether The First had broken something inside the man or whether it was the result of being incarcerated with insane companions, it appeared that the last of his reason was now gone. Spike easily evaded the madman's flailing blows. He waited his time and had to remind himself over and over again that Buffy would almost inevitably come to hear of it if his attacker died at his hands. He knew that even if he convinced her that in the heat of the fight there had been no option, the death would cast a pall over their relationship and give her reason to wonder if she could really trust him. So he waited, watching for an opening... until he heard his name tortured into a girlish scream.

He swung at Wood's head with the pick axe handle, trying to pull the blow enough to prevent it doing any permanent damage, while not wishing it to be so glancing that Wood might take up his avenging son routine any time in the near future. Varnished wood impacted with hair and flesh and the other Wood staggered backward. Spike didn't wait to see if he fell, but turned in a swirl of battle-spoils leather and ran for the point where he had last seen Xuxa, the young Brazilian girl, who might have problems talking to the other girls because she didn't speak good English and who might be teased for being slightly overweight but who had a sharp mind and was always willing to discuss football with him in his less than fluent Portuguese. The cry was unmistakably hers and, Wood or no Wood, she needed his help.






 

Giles felt a moment of panic as the vehicle in which he had been travelling pulled up alongside those that had departed before him. If the venue had been a shopping mall rather than a half-completed high school, he might have thought that he was in a Romero movie. True, those assailing the building were still alive but they seemed to have as much regard for their own safety as the average zombie and they swarmed the structure in their hundreds. Giles wouldn't even have believed that so many people were still living in the town, though a closer look made him revise that to existing rather than living. He could only catch brief glimpses of the girls that had been on guard duty, frantically trying to hold back the human tide that threatened to overwhelm them. Even as he watched one of the girls seemed to stumble and the insurgents pushed forward in an unstoppable tide.

There was a flash of white-blond hair amidst the defenders, and Giles' assessment was proved to be incorrect. The tide seemed first to stall and then with aching slowness turn. Finally, some of those who had gained entrance stumbled backward from the fray and as though this gave the defenders room to manoeuvre, others began leaving head first and obviously not under their own power. Another girl joined those who had been dislodged from their position after their companion's fall, and Giles saw Spike scoop up a figure from the ground behind them, cradling it in his arms as he disappeared deeper into the building.

The watcher turned to issue commands to the girls and watchers he had brought with him, but it wasn't necessary. While he had been assessing the situation, they were already moving in on the mob. They worked efficiently in pairs within a defensive line, guarding each other's backs, as they worked their way forward, picking off those at one edge of the mob, knocking them unconscious or otherwise incapacitating them. It seemed that the slayers and Spike had trained their people well, and they worked with a blend of efficiency and mercy that erred heavily on the side of efficiency. However they might feel about harming other humans, they weren't about to allow any misplaced compassion to cloud the issue where they felt that they or those in the building were threatened.

Giles felt a pang of sadness, realising that some of the girls, whether intentionally or by misjudgement, would know before this battle was over how it felt to take a human life. He wished they could have remained innocent, aware it would exact a heavy price on the souls of girls so young... not so heavy as the guilt of standing by and allowing a comrade to be badly hurt and far preferable to being killed or badly injured. Just the same, when this was all over he was going to have to mention to Quentin about having professional counsellors available, for girls and watchers alike. That, however, was a consideration for a future time. He twisted his fingers on the grip of the aluminium baseball bat that he carried, gave it an experimental swing, and, as the next minibus load of watchers and potentials began to disembark, he moved forward with them to play his part in the fray.






 

The attic where the Scoobies slept wasn't the only vantage point in the building. Rather, having once been the servants quarters, it occupied only the top floor of that wing of the building where the kitchens were. Quentin made his way through the dustsheet-covered debris of former centuries to get to one of the attic windows set in the roof of the main building, night vision binoculars in one hand and a torch in the other. Some nonentity of a watcher followed behind him, waiting for the chance to prove his worth to the head watcher now that his previous favourite had blatantly thrown her lot in with the rebel faction, and Penelope followed him, partly because she knew that Quentin was right about the attics providing the best viewpoint and partly because she felt it best to keep an eye on what the sly old fox was up to.

It seemed that Quentin had finally found the window he had chosen from outside, but it was resisting all his best efforts to open it.

"Find me a crow bar or some sort of lever," Travers ordered his new gopher. "It looks like it's been painted shut."

Penny pointed her torch in the direction of the window and decided not to point out to Quentin, the slight dents in the coat of paint that probably meant that the windows had been nailed shut and whoever had done it, probably the concerned parent of an overly adventurous child, had been so determined that they remain so that they had used a punch to drive the heads of the nails down below the level of the surface wood. Once the window frame had been painted over a few times, all there was left to show was a row of slight dimples in the paint.

Penny watched Lydia's replacement run around the room peering under dust sheets looking for anything that his superior might be able to use as a pry bar. Finally, he located an old fireside set and as if he had found the crown jewels he hurried to present Quentin with the poker.

By the time the senior watcher had cracked the paint in several places and bent the poker so that it was no longer useable, she decided that she was bored with the cabaret. She removed one of the smallest dust sheets, and used it to make a clear patch in the coating of dust that obscured the glass of the window next to the one that Quentin was endeavouring to open. She held out her hand to Quentin's minion, knowing that if she seemed sufficiently expectant he would feel unable to refuse to give her the binoculars that he had been left holding while Quentin wrestled with the window.

She watched the last of the reinforcements arrive at the construction site and join the battle, but Quentin's patience didn't last long enough to let her see much more. He snatched the binoculars away from her and edged his way into her vantage spot.

"What the devil are they doing?" Quentin protested as he viewed the carnage at the site. "Don't they realise that they're fighting human beings, albeit ones who are under the influence of an evil... something?"

"They realise they're fighting , Quentin," Penny argued.

The council head ignored her and brought out his cell phone, dialling the number he had recently managed to get from Giles via Lydia. He knew that there was no point in dealing with any of those who might be regarded as mere foot soldiers. He had to get Giles to make them pull back. This number of human civilian deaths was unacceptable. Slayers and, by extension, potentials were expendable and when a man or woman became a watcher then they accepted those risks. Those who were being slaughtered down there were those that they had vowed to protect.

After three rings, a voice kicked in to say that the cell phone he was trying to reach was currently unavailable. "Doesn't that man know how to keep a phone charged and with him?" the watcher raved.

"Well, of course he knows how . He's not an idiot... He's just never had enough incentive to do it. Why did you think that Spike called me rather than Giles in the first place?"

Quentin gave Penny a rather dirty look before he turned on his heel. "Come on, Henderson. If Rupert is incapable of handling modern technology, then we shall just have to go down there and give him his instructions face to face."






 

As sometimes happens within a battle, the fate of those guarding the seal, which had seemed to be in so much doubt when the fray began, was secured with the arrival of the reinforcements. The quarter of an hour that it had taken for Penny to apprise Giles of the situation, for him to gather drivers for the minibuses and for her to rouse the potentials from their beds and the younger watchers from in front of the TV had been touch and go. At any time The First's people might have forced their way through one of the many openings, and somehow every time it had seemed as if they would, Spike had appeared with half a dozen of the girls he had chosen to accompany him and they had shored the gap. The guard had held on desperately, and when reinforcements had arrived the outcome had no longer been in doubt.

So it was that by the time Quentin arrived in his hired Bentley, Spike was carrying the first of the injured away from the building. The vampire spotted the luxury car and headed straight for it. As Henderson hurried around the car to open the door for his boss, Spike waited for the senior watcher to get out and when he did, Spike leaned over and slid the injured girl into the back.

"You," he pointed at Henderson. "You take her back to the school, you find someone who can put a splint on her leg and then you find the nearest working hospital between here and LA and you get her seen to properly... and you bloody drive like you have a pile of porcelain in the back. I hear you hurt her one bit more than she need be an' after all this is over tomorrow, I'll come an' find you."

"And what makes you think you can just commandeer my vehicle?" Quentin protested.

"'Cause they're gonna need most of the minibuses to dump that lot." Spike nodded toward the bodies that littered the ground. "...far enough away that by the time they get back it'll be too late for them to cause any problems, an' 'cause in my book the kid who ended up with a broken leg fighting to keep that seal safe warrants the chauffeur driven Bentley a damn sight more than some old git that only gets here when the fight's over an' done with."

The vampire seemed to pause as two girls stumbled over, one supporting the other. "Hoi, put her in the front seat here. Someone will strap it up when you get back to the school." He turned back to the watcher and grinned widely as he patted down his pockets. "Bad sprain... Can't have her walkin' back like that."

Quentin knew that the argument was already lost and decided that his best course of action was to ignore the disgusting creature and find Giles.

From the shadowy cover of a dumpster nearly sixty yards away Robin Wood watched the man who had been supposed to help him exact vengeance on his mother's killer handing over his car to the demon. When Travers moved on, Wood followed his betrayer.
 
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