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 7.22
Friday, July 19th, 2002


Faith let the Turok Han swarm half way up the cliff face before she bellowed out the command, "Fire at will!"

Those of her group who had been carrying crossbows or longbows had, for the most part, already switched over to their hand-to-hand weapons. The heart shots necessary with those weapons were judged to be near impossible from the girls' positions at the top of the cliff that their opponents were climbing. The missile weapons had mostly been passed on to Amanda's group, giving the reserves a few extra shots before they were forced to reload in the case of the crossbow or a higher rate of fire from the longbows.

However, not all of Faith's group had been armed with such archaic weaponry. The specially adapted ammunition that the council's gunsmith had made had already been proven and nearly thirty of the girls had been armed with an assortment of pump-action shotguns and large calibre handguns. The caverns echoed with the sound of shot after shot, many of which shredded vampire skulls and the brains inside them, causing the affected party to detonate in a cloud of dust. Others, more or less fortunate, depending on your viewpoint, suffered injured limbs and fell from the rock wall, to be trampled or ripped apart by the blood-craving creatures below.

Dust billowed around the cliff face, obscuring the vampires that were making the climb... until another head would appear through the cloud and be used for target practice, causing the cloud to reach even higher. Nevertheless, all the firearms could do was delay the horde, buying less than a minute, but in that minute over two hundred of the Turok Han perished. A few of the handguns jammed. Mostly, the girls kept firing over and over, with so many targets to choose from that they soon expended their loads. There was no time to step back, get some space, reload. Just time to pull a sword or an axe before the first of the Turok Han reached the topmost heights and the battle proper began.

The slayers fought as they had never fought before. Power they had never unleashed flowed through their bodies. Every kick, every sword slash was imbued with supernatural strength. It didn't matter if their opponents were killed. All that mattered was that they were kept from gaining a sure footing at the top of the cliff. A punt as a vampire head and shoulders appeared over the edge. An axe crashing down on a barely visible skull. A sharpened stave driven deep into a chest as a vamp swung his leg over the lip. Fingers stamped to pulp as they search for the last handhold at the top of the climb.

Ha Nath and her friends proved nearly as effective, using experience to compensate where they might not match the slayers for strength or speed.

Time and again, vampires turned to dust or plummeted to an almost equally certain death in the maelstrom below.

Sometimes they turned the tables.

Molly's foot slipped in the loose dust as she tried for a spin kick. Her target ducked under the blow. She sprawled flat on the ground, her lower legs dangling over the abyss. As the vampire, which she had tried to stop, scrambled onto the cliff top, the one at its side tugged, hand over hand, at her jeans, pulling her further and further over the edge as her hands scrambled unsuccessfully to get a grip on something... anything. She fell screaming into the mass below and her cry was cut short.

The vampires attacked the girls on either side, who were already distracted by their own opponents, and both girls picked up scratches and scrapes before four of Amanda's group fell on the ubervamps.

Over and over, the line was overwhelmed simply by force of numbers, perhaps fluke, perhaps careful planning on the part of some of the Turok Han, waiting just short of the cliff top until all the defenders were engaged to scramble over the top in groups of three or four or five. At first, the reserves shot them down, or intercepted them, but the vampires kept coming and more girls fell.

---

 

As always when she was in a fight, Spike was aware of Buffy's every action. He knew her every sword stroke, kick or punch in the instant before she made them, knew how her body would twist, where her moves might leave an opening for the opposition and he moved with her to bar those opportunities. To an outsider, it made their small part of the fight look like a choreographed routine, so perfectly timed and so precise that it could never have been achieved without hours of repetition.

The vampire fought as if he were possessed by Mars himself. Vicious punches and kicks seemed to glance off the leather of his duster with as little effect as summer rain. Every blow he landed seemed either to result in a fresh cloud of dust or send another ubervamp tumbling into the void below. Buffy matched him vamp for vamp... and then the line collapsed.

One second they were in control, the next the Turok Han had broken through. The reserves had done the best they could, and it was thanks to them that the vampires hadn't been able to simply force their way left and right, obliterating either end of the line or turning the battle into a free for all. They had guarded their comrades' flanks, but the vampires had gained too strong a foothold to be driven back easily, and all Amanda and her girls had been able to do was funnel the Turok Han toward the exit.

Spike felt Buffy's moment of indecision, the fraction of the second while she tried to decide which of them should stay and which should go to Amanda's aid, before he answered her mental push and left her side. They couldn't do anything about the ones who had already escaped. That was up to the watchers and the others, but they had to stop the flow before there were so many that the mere humans who formed the second line would be overwhelmed.

Spike sprinted across the floor, his trajectory taking him straight toward the Brazilian football top that he recognised with ease. He called out in Portuguese as he ran.

Xuxa dropped into a low leg sweep and Spike threw himself over her head, using his body like a spear to drive her opponent to the ground.

Before the Turok Han could recover Spike had driven the sharpened end of his axe handle through its rib cage and into its heart. The blond bounced eagerly to his feet in the centre of the two lines of slayers. With one three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn he beheaded a vamp left and right, freeing two more of the slayers. He stepped forward, the axe swinging almost casually in a figure eight, which took up most of the width between the two lines.

Xuxa, Vi and a young Mexican slayer stepped up behind him. Suddenly, instead of a clear run to freedom, the vampires who had made it over the edge found themselves facing three stone-faced slayers and a bleached and leather clad nightmare, whose eyes promised no mercy other than a quick death and who seemed immune to their blows.

Spike moved forward, his axe swinging into another beheading circle as he began his dance of death.

The crowds at their back gave the ubervamps no room to retreat, and Spike gave them nowhere to go but into the path of his axe blade at the front. He spun and struck, again and again, sometimes high, separating head from body, and sometimes low, a crippling blow before he would deflect the Turok Han in the direction of the girls at his back, but always he moved forward toward the cliff's edge.

As the invading crowd thinned, more slayers managed to finish off their opponents and found that no one stepped up to take their places. The girls joined those with Spike. When the blond dropped his axe to pick up the last ubervamp, one hand at its neck, the other at its crotch and threw him over the cliff so hard that he knocked at least two others, who had been in the process of climbing, from their perches, almost half the girls stepped up and strengthened the line.

Spike grabbed his axe and stepped back to let the girls in.

The others began the job of checking the wounded. The ubervamps died and left no more than fallen dust, but the extent of the skirmish was marked by fallen bodies as clearly as seaweed marks the high tide mark on a beach.

Silently, Spike turned over the nearest body, already knowing that there was no heartbeat. The slender neck was ripped open, one eye socket a bloody mess, the other eye the same beautiful brown it had always been, Kennedy's prideful stare softened in death.

Panic suddenly gripped the vampire and his gaze was drawn to the staircase.

As if she felt his eyes on her, Tara smiled and lifted a hand, seeming almost to press it against the air as a mother might press her hand against the window, watching a young child head off for school. The air seemed to shimmer with a purple light and Spike understood. Tara had raised a barrier around herself and Bee, similar to the one they had used at the garage when the knights had attacked. She had been safe all along.

He didn't dare leave the chamber in case the Turok Han broke through again, but he quickly found the injured, picking out the heartbeats from amidst the carnage, and he made sure that Amanda and what remained of the reserves carried them upstairs and out to where Giles and his team would take over.

All the time, he listened to the sound of the battle, attuned to its cacophony, alert for any change that might mean he was needed, but these girls were his responsibility, and he wouldn't take the chance that any of them might die for the want of medical attention, or because they were unconscious when the time came to evacuate. His eyes darted often to the line. He checked for any signs that the girls were losing ground, any point where he might need to step up and steady the line, but his girls were doing him proud.

Faith wielded the axe at one end of the line as if it were an extension of her own body, staking, slashing and beheading in the smoothest of katas. Buffy moved with equal grace at the other end and if the girls in between didn't quite have the same flair or panache as the experienced slayers, they made up for it with determination and courage. They were his girls and he was proud of every one.

He gathered the last of the living wounded into his arms, a small dark-haired French girl, who he called Yvette though he had no idea what her real name actually was, and passed her to one of the other slayers to take out. Amanda came back downstairs as he did so, her eyes scanning the bodies that still lay scattered on the ground. He gave a slow shake of his head and she nodded her wistful understanding. They would see to their dead. They would not be left to lie in this hell hole, but they could wait. Now that the injured were out, most of the dwindling reserves would wait, again, in case they were needed. They spaced themselves out behind the main line, ready to step in if anyone was hurt. Only two or three could be spared to care for the fallen.

Spike turned, preparing to rejoin the fray, but he was still near the roughly hewn staircase when the diamond pendant that Bee wore began to emanate a faint but unearthly glow.

---

 

"Mr Giles!" The young watcher sounded panicked and he was staring fixedly ahead of him. Giles rushed forward, pulling open the basement door far enough to allow him to see why the watcher should be so flustered. He only just managed to push it closed and lock it with the keys Xander had provided before the arrival of the first Turok Han was intimated by a loud crash.

"You six," Giles shouted. "Yes, you lot with the polearms, get yourself up here and when something breaks through that door make it regret it..."

"B-But..." the watcher who had been on watch stuttered.

"But what, Frobisher? It's a single-width door, one which for obvious reasons that I feel the contractor would be loathe to admit is one of the very few finished doorways in this entire structure. I'm sure between six of them they should be perfectly able to deal with anything that breaks its way through."

"But what about the girls? They're locked in now, too."

"I'm sure the girls are rather busy just now, but if they get around to killing all the Turok Han in that basement and clearing the path to the door, then I believe they'll be vocal enough to attract our attention.

Now, pull it together, man. With this exit blocked some of them are going to find the other ways out. Hopefully, it'll take some time and they'll still get caught up when Bee sets off that amulet, but if not the others are going to need our help."

---

 

Anya nervously shifted her grip on her sword and cast a sideways glance at her husband. The triumphant cries of the Turok Han spilling into the basement below was audible as a dull roar.

"So why are we here, again?" she asked, looking round at the point they had chosen to defend. They were in a large open area at the junction of two corridors, all bare breeze-block and concrete.

"There's a staircase leading to the basement there," Xander answered, nodding in the direction of the corridor ahead. "And if they get into the ducting, which, thank goodness, we'd only just started, they could come out anywhere in that wing." He used his sword to point off to the right. "The dry riser is back down there. That's where we were going to hook into the-"

"I know what a dry riser is. It's the tunnels you guys build to give vamps free access to all the important buildings."

"It's a maintenance area where we channel all the electrics and other stuff from floor to floor," he argued defiantly before his expression changed to a more sheepish one. "...And where we hook up to the main grid via underground tunnels."

"So if we're just trying to stop them going that way..." Dawn interrupted. "...wouldn't we be better blocking off that corridor than standing around the big open area?"

Xander didn't get time to answer as they heard a door bang open further down the hall.

Anya shifted her weight from foot to foot and twisted her sword again in a two-handed grip. "God, Xander, I'm terrified. I didn't think-. I mean, I just figured that you'd be terrified and make jokes that are even less amusing than usual and I would be sarcastic about it."

"You can do this, honey," Xander tried to reassure her. "Just imagine they're from the IRS and they want to audit you... or they're..."

Anya looked no less nervous than before.

"Bunnies!" Dawn called as a group of five or six vampires seemed to spot them and head their way. "Big bunnies with bad teeth."

Anya's back stiffened and she raised her head to look her attackers full on. She lifted her sword into a ready position and when she spoke under her breath her tone was cool and collected. "Bunnies... Floppy... hoppy... bunnies."

Xander stood on her left, Dawn at her right and there were enough watchers around that, if she had wanted, she could have hung back until the vampires chose other opponents and then gone for a cheap shot, but she didn't. All the evenings of practice, everything she'd ever learned in her demon days, it all seemed to crystallize in her head and she met the first vampire head on with complete focus.

---

 

In another grey corridor Wes waited calmly. Many of those who stood with him were familiar from his years at Watcher Academy. He knew they expected him to panic when the attack came. They thought he would run, that he traded on his acquaintance with Buffy and the others to gain an undeserved influence. They waited, expecting him to falter, planning to report one more failure to his father, to Quentin and to the rest of the board that he might be ignominiously dismissed for a second time.

They thought that they knew him.

The Turok Han came and Wes proved to his fellow watchers that they were wrong.

---

 

The Turok Han swept toward the last vampire-friendly exit in a torrent. As they came out the stairwell and made the turn to the right a small blonde figure stood at their back and waved them on.

"Have fun, guys!" it urged in Buffy's most chipper California girl tones.

Just for a second as the vampires crashed into the line held by many watchers and one werewolf, James looked up searching foolishly for the source of the familiar voice.

Sensing his distraction, one of the Turok Han made a grab for the sword that the watcher held two-handed. Drawn back to his more current danger, James held on grimly, trying to pull free of the grip that crushed his fingers into the leather-wrapped metal of the sword's hilt, but it took a two-handed grip to balance the creatures greater strength and, before he could free himself, the vampire's free hand swiped out, ripping slashes in the watcher's shirt and the flesh underneath.

Pain and surprise almost made the Scotsman lose his grip, but he held on, and twisted the sword just enough to clear the area in front of his face before he brought his forehead smashing into the bridge of the vampire's nose. Blood trickled from his own nose now as well as his side, but the vampire gave up on its attempt to take the sword, and James kicked it backward, trying to gain enough room to swing the weapon properly.

Oz could feel the wolf stirring inside him as the scent of blood began to fill the air, some of it old and fetid, most of it bright and human. As a whole the watchers were putting up a good fight, but they were human and fragile. Their opponents were not. He quelled the beast within him. Resisting the urge to allow it its freedom, he chanted under his breath and forced himself to stick to the moves they had practiced over and over.

The vampires were so numerous that they almost hampered each other but there were dozens of them and, with The First urging them on, they wouldn't quit.

Then there was a pounding of more feet along the corridor toward them.