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 7.25
Friday, July 19th, 2002


"Everybody out!"

Though their mutual awareness was still such that there was no actual need, Spike's eyes met Buffy's across the cavern's width, blue imploring hazel green to get the hell out. There was just a moment to make the plea before he fell to hustling the new slayers out and he knew before he made it that Buffy would be the last... or second to last to leave, but he had to try anyway.

He pulled Amanda and a couple of others to one side as they made to pass. "'Manda, pet, you make sure that Dawn an' Anya an' them know we're leavin'." He nodded to Vi. "You tell the ones down the right hand corridor as we came in an' you take the one on the left," he said motioning to the cerise-haired slayer. "They'll probably get the hint when they see the mass exodus, but if it turns out anyone got left behind I'm blamin' you three, right?"

He stepped up to the crude spiral stairway, cat still squirming and writhing ineffectually under his arm, to break the flow of girls for long enough to let his designated messengers through. He lifted the flailing cat up to eye height as he stood back. "Will you bloody give over? Unless you can damn well sprout wings an' fly you're not goin' anywhere with The Good Fairy an' Glinda.

If I thought you wouldn't shred the poor buggers I'd give you to one of the bints to take out, but since I'm the only one here who's been loaned some neat little balls that mean all the scratching you're trying to do is totally pointless an' it'd be more than my life's worth to let you get yourself killed in this mess, you're damn well staying with me. Get used to the idea."

Rupert let himself go limp in Spike's hands and the vampire stared at him suspiciously before he muttered, "Alright, then." He tucked the cat back under one arm and made his way to the edge of the cavern where he manhandled Kennedy's body until he managed to get it into a fireman's lift over his opposite shoulder. Buffy joined him as the room cleared, retrieving another of the fallen, but when Faith made to join them Spike shook his head. "Get topside. Make sure they're filling up the minibuses in order like they're meant to be an' that the first ones have started leavin'. We'll have a right balls up if they all end up tryin' to leave at the same time."

Faith nodded, knowing that the vampire was right. The potentials and others had been told that once they had at least one driver per bus, to make for the furthest bus first. As soon as it was full it was meant to leave and they would begin filling the next one. It should be fast and efficient, but human nature would make them want to hold on just a little longer, to wait for a friend or try to make sure everyone was out before they got on a bus. If those first buses weren't already filled and gone and it wasn't going smoothly, instead of a convoy they would end up with gridlock.

Soon the stream of bodies slowed to a trickle. Ha Nath and her friends scooped up the last few slayer corpses from the ground and when the last demon disappeared up the stairs, Buffy and then Spike followed after.

---

 

The first face that Faith saw when she left the building was Dawn's. In a sea of motion the teen and her boyfriend hovered at the pavement's edge, the girl bouncing up and down on her tiptoes in what Faith assumed was an effort to spot her sister. The slayer ignored the girl and headed straight for Brandon. "I thought you were bright enough to know that if you didn't get her on the first bus out of here that Spike would remove your spleen with his bare hands."

"He wouldn't," the boy argued.

"No, he wouldn't," Dawn interjected, "but he'd probably make you wish he had."

Faith raised her eyes to the sky. "They're fine. They're just making sure everyone gets out from down below, and I'm meant to be making sure everyone gets on a bus and gets gone."

"They're both okay?" Dawn had to double check before she could be convinced.

"They're peachy damn keen. Now get on that bus before I'm the one Bleach Boy is doing exploratory surgery on."

After that Faith didn't bother wasting any conversation on any of the stragglers. Where there were wounded, she helped them to the nearest transport. Where there were dawdlers, she just grabbed whatever body part or piece of clothing was convenient and gave them a push or a pull in the direction of the next bus. Dawn and Brandon were long gone by the time she saw Ha Nath and her friends emerge from the building, closely followed by Buffy and Spike. With a last nod for Xander, who waited at the wheel of the final vehicle with Anya in the seat immediately behind, she climbed into the penultimate bus, pulled the door closed and swayed her way to a seat as it sped off. She twisted to watch behind as the others clustered around the door of the last bus, holding her breath as she watched the metal framework that towered over the incomplete building warp and then, farthest sections first, begin to tumble.

"Floor it!" she shouted, with an urgency that left no room for even the watcher at the wheel to argue.

---

 

Spike tossed the Siamese onto the floor of the minibus, leaving him to find a home between people's legs or on a vacant seat, and then climbed the first two steps before turning to pull the door closed.

"Damn!" Xander swore as he flung the bus into gear, but there was no vehemence behind it. "All those vamps going poof and we're still left with Billy Idol?"

"Only as long as you stay ahead off that..." Spike answered, looking out the back window as he made his way toward the rear of the bus, trying to find an empty seat where he could deposit Kennedy's body before he joined Buffy.

Xander shifted frantically in his seat to make out what the vampire was talking about, but his rear view mirror was blocked by the number of people who were by some sort of unspoken agreement trying to place the corpses they carried at the back of the bus and then make their way forward to find seats for themselves. After a couple of seconds he gave up and checked the side-view mirror. There was nothing behind him but a cloud of dust, no school... worse he suddenly realised, no road. Forgetting about making for the right exit out of town to get to the rendezvous - slowing down for corners suddenly seemed like a very bad idea - Xander just put his foot to the floor and told himself that that bump was just a pothole in the road that he'd somehow missed with the front tyres but caught with the rear wheels. It, no way, no how, was the road dropping away from under the back wheels. Not at all.

---

 

The merest crook of Bee's finger and Tara found herself walking into her new lover's arms, the only sliver of doubt because she had no doubts. That was enough to make her wonder for a moment if perhaps, like vampires, angels had their own version of thrall... though she thought with a wry smile that if that were the case she was a willing victim. Gripping with her elbows to press their bodies together, letting her forearms rest parallel with Bee's spine and curling her fingers over the angel's shoulders, she relaxed instinctively into the embrace.

Bee's dragonfly wings looked too fragile to support even one and if mere mechanics had been involved, then Tara knew she would have been forced to cling far more tightly to stay with her lover as they rose in a slow gyre toward the cave's apex.

Tara found herself wondering at the beauty of the creature in her arms. The light that was both part of the angel and the product of the diamond burned coolly against her skin but it did nothing to mar the aura of complete contentment and well-being in which she found herself cocooned.

Bee stretched out her right arm, to point at the ceiling some thirty feet behind the witch and Tara joined her will with her lover's as they sought to influence the energy of the precious stone, focussing so that the rock immediately overhead held firm despite the tremors that shook the entire cave, and aiming as much as possible of the pendant's devastating power in the direction that Bee pointed.

Tara's eyes had long since drifted closed but in her mind she could envisage dust and then rubble beginning to fall, followed by great slabs of sandstone, capable of crushing the demons below. Sunlight lanced through the resulting opening and gouts of sooty flame issued upward for each ubervamp that was caught in its rays. Together, the two women strove to contain the power in order to allow them to move into the sunlight without being hit by falling debris. They hovered, slowly spinning between worlds, a hell dimension at their feet, the California sun above them. Knowing that it would take time for their companions in the battle to reach safety, they tried to delay the coming destruction.

Nevertheless, in slow but steady increments the opening between dimensions grew larger.

Like cockroaches, the Turok Han scuttled away from the light, trying to find sanctuary in the crenellations of the cave's walls.

Then, like a tidal wave breaking through a flood barrier, the amulet's energy overwhelmed the meagre containment that Bee and Tara had been able to muster. Destruction radiated outward, but even this failed to taint Tara's feelings of serenity. It was as if she were right where she was meant to be, doing what she was meant to do, with the person she had always been meant to be with. All her will was focussed on how they needed to channel the stone's power, but that was completely divorced from her emotions. Within the light fear could not exist, nor anxiety, nor frustration, nor anger. There was only love, contentment and warmth.

The ceiling of the cave crumbled and then the walls of the cave itself, earth tumbling down into a deep abyss. Any Turok Han that might have escaped the sun and the purging glow that issued from both the angel and the necklace she wore would surely be crushed by the sheer weight of falling earth, stone and other debris.

The initial breakthrough, it seemed, had occurred to the rear of the half-completed building and the first non-vampire casualties were pieces of plant and heavy equipment that had been left at the site, plummeting downward as if they wouldn't stop until they reached the centre of the earth. The partially constructed school was claimed next. Girders twisted, walls bent and then broke before they, too, cartwheeled end over end into the deepening maw of the hellmouth.

Flames began to rise up, silvery green from wherever Bee's body touched Tara's, but they left her skin unharmed, their touch a caress.

As the school tumbled through the ground, the last of the minibuses was pulling away.

Instinctively, Tara and Bee joined their wills against the force that had been unleashed, trying somehow to shield the vehicle, to hold back the devastation that threatened to swallow it up. As The Magic Box, the cinema and the mall all slid into oblivion it seemed as if they could make no difference. Nevertheless, when Bee carried them both higher still above the crater, it was plain that there was now a significant dent at the edge of what had once been a perfect circle of annihilation.

At first, all they were able to do was to slow its path outward. They strained to stop it from swallowing the bus station, tried to divert its energy around the chain link and tarmac, but all they bought was a token delay. The crater devoured it and then the apartment block that had once been home to Lily, Maria, Rosa, Clem and Bee herself.

However, even magical energy sometimes has to obey the laws of physics. As the ruined area grew wider, the women found that they could tweak things around the edges. While the downtown apartment block was a lost cause, Revello Drive was four times that distance from the epicentre. That meant that it only took one sixteenth of the energy to shield it from the destruction.

Perhaps by accident and perhaps by design, Miss Chalmers School for Gifted Girls teetered on the very brink of the abyss. One whole wing plunged into the depths, whilst that end of the building which contained the library and the rooms the Scoobies had been using sat seemingly untouched.

Tara couldn't help but indulge in a smile. She suspected that whether consciously or subconsciously Bee was unwilling to have scores of watchers based in her home town and therefore wanted the building to be condemned. She also suspected that the blonde would have been distraught had her own personal library, that of the museum curator and the council's entire catalogue all been lost forever.

The cave-in seemed ridiculously easy to divert around the hallowed ground of Reverend Hamilton's churchyard, though they had to concentrate a little harder to ensure that the roads leading to it remained intact.

The light of the crystal was waning as they strained to keep it from claiming the hospital's empty shell. For now the building lay dormant, but when people returned to the town it would be needed.

And then, the light from the necklace fizzled out, like a faulty fluorescent bulb, its energy spent.

Much of the town had been lost. Most of its businesses were gone, but they could be rebuilt. However, many of the outlying residential areas were untouched. Most importantly of all, as Tara opened up the mystical senses she used to read someone's aura, there was a freshness and lightness to the town. It felt like the first sun after a cleansing storm, as if some invisible but pervasive miasma of evil had been washed away.

The hellmouth was no longer active.

Bee's lips met hers, the kiss joyous and triumphant. For long seconds they luxuriated in the knowledge of what they had all achieved before exhaustion claimed them both and they twirled downward, like a sycamore seed on an autumn breeze.