“O Mistress of trembling, lofty of enclosure wall, chieftainess and Mistress of Destruction, the one who proclaims words which repel storms, the one who rescues the plundered one who has arrived. The name of the gatekeeper is ‘Terror.’” – The Book of Going Forth By Day

The RV had its high points. It was large enough to hold all of the Scoobies, and then some. Depending on the duration of their flight, the bathroom and kitchenette could also come in handy. The vehicle was solid, with a passable engine and decent brakes.

But Spike couldn’t help but notice its disadvantages as well.

It was top heavy with large windows. There was no way it could make it much above legal speeds on the interstate, and Spike had no intention of pissing around in their escape from the Knights of Byzantium and everyone’s favorite hell goddess: Glorificus.

No, he wanted to blaze a trail out of Sunnyhell that would leave scorch marks on the pavement. He wanted to get this god forsaken town and its assorted big bads as far behind the Scoobies, and especially the Bit, as quickly as humanly, or superhumanly, possible.

When he had arrived with the hotwired vehicle, Buffy had complained about the monstrous SUV. It would take too much gas; they would barely have enough room to fit; blah, blah, blah… Truth be told, his reckless careening in the driver’s seat probably wasn’t helping her mood either, but when the Knights had later tried, and failed, to catch the over-engineered testament to American consumerism and they hit the outskirts of L.A in record time , her waspish comments tapered off.

And that was all that really mattered.

Day 59

Locating the mystical disturbance that had been giving Versa the Dwarel biological fits was more of a pain in the ass than Spike had anticipated.

He had wasted an entire week combing the blocks of warehouses she had mentioned over poker before realizing that the hot spot wasn’t fixed. After that, locating the thing had been a matter of taking a few long strolls with his senses wide open for any unusual tingles.

It was too bad that all that effort had been wasted on finding some kind of scar-faced, magical crack dealer. Rack might not be the kind of person who won any community service awards, but he was a human, which made him night to untouchable according to the government’s oh-so-discriminating chip.

Rack had enough mystical juice to run half of Las Vegas, a clientele which made Meth addicts look like poster children for Club Med, and a cloaking spell that had made Spike’s when he had run into it, but there was one important thing that the warlock did not have.

Ammut.

So beachfront kitty patrol it was.

Or would have been, if the sounds of a good row near Restfield’s front entrance hadn’t drawn his attention. Curiosity, if nothing else, prompted him to investigate, but it was a bone-chilling, familiar scream that sent him running.

The scene he found was a portrait of utter chaos.

Surrounded by a hoard of vampires, the Scoobies were literally fighting for their lives. Willow and Tara were on top of the Montgomery crypt, hand in hand and casting spell after spell from their magical arsenal. The display was impressive, but the ashen tint of the blonde’s face and the sweat on Red’s brow made it plain that neither would last much longer.

The others on the ground were in even more dire straights. Giles was down, bleeding from a messy, if superficial, head wound. Anya, the source of the scream Spike had heard, and Xander were standing over the older man, fending off the closest vampires. The boy must have dropped his weapon, but was making good use of a bandolier of balloons filled with holy water while Anya was swinging a bat with her usual enthusiasm if not proficiency. As for the Bot,’ she was making a true mess of things on the far side of the crowd, pummeling the undustable vampires with fists and feet, drawing much blood, but gaining little headway.

Despite their unified stand against the mob surrounding them, Spike could smell living blood on the muggy summer air.

What was more, so could the other vampires.

Their laughter and purposefully sloppy attacks told the true story. While Xander’s holy water and the Wiccans’ spells had managed to nullify some of their attackers, there were simply too many to handle since none of the group’s traditional attacks were really making much of an impact. Swings from Anya’s bat and the Bot’s fists could be avoided. Fire from Willow and Tara’s concerted attack could be shrugged away or waited out, since neither could actually kill their attackers. Kinetic blows pounded the crowd back, but not for long. Spike could see the attackers’ faces, could almost taste their mocking thoughts, and knew in his unbeating heart that the only reason why the Scoobies were still standing, or in Giles’ case, lying, was because the vampires were playing with them.

Something dark and angry blossomed in Spike’s chest. The Scoobies were many things: sometimes allies, sources of entertainment and irritation, his tormentors, his rescuers, but only at his most drunk had Spike ever called them friends, but they were also all he had.

Abandoned by his sire and the rest of his Order, a semi-willing traitor to his own kind, basically friendless, and for all intents and purposes crippled, the Scoobies were his only lifeline. He might not particularly like all of them, and very few of them wouldn’t shed a tear if he was reduced to dusts or bloody bits of unliving tissue, but he did need them.

And Buffy had loved them.

That was a rallying cry that the vampire could throw himself behind.

Spike tore into the mob’s ranks, a whirling dervish of black clad destruction. It didn’t take long for the menacing laughter to turn into cries of surprise and pain. The sound only served to feed Spike’s anger, stoke it to even greater heights.

After a moment’s pause of their own, the Scoobies pressed their advantage, even managing to get Giles back on his feet to join the fray.

After a few blood soaked minutes, the group of vampires overcame their initial surprise, an icy sliver of logic wound its way through Spike’s mind. He wouldn’t be enough. Oh, he was tearing through vampires like a scythe through grain, but since they couldn’t dust, they weren’t staying down. Sure, he had surprised the group, had even managed to maim a few in those first confused moments to the point that, though undusty, they physically could not rejoin the fight.

Broken spines were a bitch like that.

But now that the hoard of vampires was back on the offensive, things were still looking pretty grim for the Scoobies, Spike now among them.

Well, it wasn’t like he could die either, but the others could and for his part, Spike didn’t fancy being dismembered and entombed in a crypt of his own, or any other act of malice or vengeance that the group of vampires could concoct to torture a well-known traitor like himself.

Apparently, that thought had occurred to at least a few of the Scoobies as well. Willow’s voice inserted itself into Spike’s mind, making his lightning quick blocks and dodges falter long enough to earn him a glancing blow to the jaw.

‘Spike!’ Even the witch’s mental voice sounded exhausted.

“A bit busy here, Red,” Spike ground through clenched fangs, earning a few suspicious glances from the trio of vampires attacking him.

‘The ‘Bot,’ she said, ignoring his caustic words. ‘If she can open the portal…’ Willow’s voice trailed off as she and Tara focused another barrage of fire against the edges of the crowd, carefully avoiding the four fighters still struggling below them.

Not that she really needed to finish the thought. Dropping a shoulder and charging the snarling vampire on his left, Spike managed to bowl him aside so that he could break free of the melee and make for the ‘Bot.

Another punch to the face and the near-loss of his duster later, Spike managed to collar the robotic slayer and drag her away from the dazed vampiress that she had been repeatedly kicking in the ribs. The barrage had been a technically perfect if tactically wasteful move, seeing as how the scrawny fledgling had slumped to the ground a long while before.

“Come on,” he snarled, tugging the machine away from her monotonous play.

The ‘Bot looked over her shoulder as he tugged even more forcefully on its jacket collar. Her empty eyes were as bright and empty as ever when she spoke.

“What is it Spike? My memory files do not cover how to slay vampires that do not dust.” Perky, and vacuously obvious as ever, that was the ‘Bot.

“Just get a move on,” he snarled, half-leading, half dragging the robot further from the fray. Their departure hadn’t gone unnoticed, and a few vampires had broken from the crowd to stalk after them, dark laugher taunting their seeming retreat. “Can you open that damned gate of yours on the run?” he growled.

“But I was programmed to fight first and run ‘Hotel California’ after,” the ‘Bot stated quizzically.

Spike briefly regretted not having Warren upload a little Sun Tzu into the ‘Bot before mentally shying away from that touchy subject. “Just do it,” he snarled, shoving the false slayer behind him. Hoping that Willow hadn’t deleted all of the ‘Bot’s order-response codes, he turned to face their trio of pursuing vampires.

“Well, bring it on then,” he sneered, baring his fangs and growling deep in his chest.

They seemed more than happy to oblige, but Spike had disappointingly only managed to break one arm among them before the pulse of magic behind them sent them all reeling for a brief moment.

Taking the opportunity, Spike grabbed his closest opponent by the collar of his rumpled shirt and dropped to the ground, planting one booted foot on the vampire’s chest as they fell into a backwards roll. The move sent the other vampire flying, and Spike managed to roll to his feet just in time to see the lanky demon fly through the portal he had hoped was waiting behind them.

The holding dimension was slowly starting to fill, and the vampires already within were throwing themselves, snarling and furious, against the unseen wall of their prison. That answered Spike’s question as to whether or not they could see the outside world through the gate. A hypothesis which was further supported when the crowd gave way to avoid the unliving projectile that had just flown through the gate.

Spike turned on the other two, who suddenly seemed a lot less interested in trying to beat him to dust. That brought a cruel grin to his face. “Step on up boys, I’m not done with you yet.”

Much to his disappointment, they took another look at the portal behind him, turned, and ran like whipped curs. He would have given chase if Willow’s telepathic ‘Hold onto something!’ hadn’t fully caught his attention.

He dove behind a tree just in time to feel the first gust of wind. Spike grabbed the trunk of the oak, wrapping his arms around it as the magical wind picked up force, becoming almost a solid wall of air.

The first vampire flew past a second later, clawing and tearing at the grass in a futile attempt to stop his inexorable slide to the portal. Another soon followed, cursing a blue streak as he went. Spike managed to duck his head around the tree trunk far enough to see what on Earth was happening. Squinting against the aerial barrage, it took him a moment to catch a glance of her.

Willow was floating a few feet above the roof of the crypt, eyes black and hair crackling around her with power. Tara was below, huddling against the ground and clutching Giles’ and Anya’s hands in her own. She was chanting breathlessly, and the watcher seemed to have joined her. The former demon’s arm was outstretched to the Wiccan, probably adding her own strength to the spell even though her full attention seemed to be centered on keeping a grip on Xander, who was huddled next to her.

The wind was now stripping away the topmost layer of grass and soil in a long swath around, but never touching, the four prone humans, instead buffeting the vampires surrounding them.

As tired as she had been, Spike had not been anticipating this show of force from the redhead, but when only one more fledgling, pushed away from an anchoring tombstone by an older demon, flew away down the wind tunnel to the portal, he saw Willow’s face twist with anger. The witch raised her hands extending them like claws towards the group still huddling in front of her.

If it hadn’t seemed impossible, the force of the wind increased even more, and tongues of electricity lashing through the air. Tara’s seemed to be chanting even louder, her eyes screwed shut as she yelled into the wind, but her voice was carried away under the cracking assault that her girlfriend was raining down around them. As for Willow herself, her full throated snarl, a sound her never expected to come from the impish redhead’s mouth, seemed to echo in Spike’s head, chilling him to the bone.

He hugged the tree trunk even more tightly, trying to stay well behind its spreading root system and away from the howling wind. Eyes shut tight against the biting, electrified air, he heard, but did not see, the remaining vampires sail past him. One by one, as varied as their owners, each screaming, hissing, cursing, or pleading voice simply disappeared, channeled into the portal with the gusting wall of wind that Willow had conjured.

A sharp crack above him made him open his eyes; he couldn’t help looking, no matter how ill-advised that move was. The boughs of the tree above him were twisting in the wind, straining against the wind. When a thick, heavy branch a good ten feet above him, finally gave way under the strain, Spike’s arms instinctively flew to shield his head. He realized his mistake almost instantaneously, when he too started being blown towards the ‘Bot’s waiting gateway.

Not that he had much time to contemplate his error, because the wind carried him headfirst into a tombstone.

The pain was blinding, blotting all else until there was nothing but black.