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An hour later, Buffy and Spike came bursting through the Magic Box’s front door. Spike casually shrugged off the blanket he’d used to protect him from the late afternoon sun.

“So glad you could join us,” Giles said in a somewhat clipped tone. The entire gang had been waiting for Buffy to arrive so he could tell them of his discovery; they didn’t appear to have appreciated being kept in the dark for so long.

“Sorry, Giles… We came as fast as we could.” Buffy blushed as images of the last hour flashed through her mind.

Spike smirked. “Several times,” he whispered close to Buffy’s ear, enjoying the sound of her increased heartbeat and the scent of her arousal.

Buffy’s blush deepened at Spike’s words, and she quickly decided that she had best get some distance between she and her sire before any more embarrassments could occur. She gracefully slipped into one of the chairs next to Dawn, giving her sister a warm smile. “So what’s the what? Is Ben a god?”

“Yes, well… No, I don’t believe Ben to be a god of any kind… In fact, I happen to believe him to be very human. A colleague of mine in Cairo has found some very interesting texts which indicate that Glorificus was once one of three gods who reigned over a particularly hellish dimension. They ruled together as a united body until Glorificus became too strong for them to restrain; as her power increased exponentially, they came to fear her. Terrified as to what she had become, and fearful as to what she would do in order to reign the dimension on her own, they tried to assassinate her in an attempt to contain what appeared to be her ever-increasing power. A fierce battle erupted between Glorificus and her former colleagues, and she was ultimately overpowered and sent to a lesser dimension as punishment for her transgressions; this demotion also served as a means of removing the threat neatly from their own dimension, although it doubtless increased the risk to her new jailers. To link her inextricably to this new dimension, she was imprisoned within the body of a male mortal child, forced to live her life trapped in a prison of flesh and bone… And if what you tell me is correct, I believe Ben to be that child,” Giles explained.

“So he’s an innocent?” Buffy asked apprehensively.

“It would seem so,” Giles said.

“So how do we stop her without harming him?” Buffy asked.

Giles swallowed heavily as he looked into Buffy’s eyes. “All my information leads me to believe that Glory’s only weakness is her unbreakable tie to her mortal counterpart. Buffy, I believe that the only way to kill Glory is to kill Ben.”

Buffy took a deep breath as she digested Giles’s information. “But he’s an innocent.”

“I know,” Giles replied quietly.

“So what’s the big deal? I say we off ‘im and get on with our lives,” Spike said nonchalantly.

Buffy turned to Spike, clearly horrified by both his words and his tone. “Y-you want me to kill him? That’s your solution?”

“Well yeah… The way I see it, it’s kill or be killed, Slayer… just like the bloody Indians back when I first had the chip. Think about it, pet. This Glory chick is willing to kill anyone who gets between her and her Key.... and Dawn’s that Key, Buffy. Are you willing to allow the life of one man to take her away from you? Not to mention the countless victims she claims on a daily basis by sucking away their bleedin’ sanity—‘s not just Dawn and the Scoobies at stake, luv. It’s nothin’ short of the world an’ everyone in it. Look at it like that, Buffy, an’ it all seems pretty cut ‘n’ dry to me, luv,” Spike explained passionately, leaning back in his chair and watching her face carefully.

Buffy looked over at Dawn and her friends and found herself completely overwhelmed by both Giles’ and Spike’s revelations. Giles was right—Ben had to be killed—but more than that, Spike’s argument was also right on target. If she protected Ben, Glory would continue to hunt for her Key. She had already tortured Spike and had threatened the lives of Buffy and her friends on several occasions already, and she hadn’t even been around for all that long. Would she be able to live with herself if she allowed Ben to live and as a result Glory ended up killing one of her friends, or taking Dawn away to try to squeeze her into whatever lock she was supposed to fit in? And the rest of the world… Glory fed off sanity, as Spike had said… what happened when she ran out of fresh victims in Sunnydale? In California? The decision was pretty clear… It was either Ben or her friends and the world at large. “You’re right,” she whispered, her voice just one slight notch above silent.

“What? What do you mean he’s right? You’re talking about murder here, Buffy!” Xander yelled in horror.

“Don’t you think I know that, Xander? What would you rather have me do? Just let her take Dawn away, or allow her to kill you guys one by one? Let her brain-suck the whole of Sunnydale and California, before moving onto the rest of the US, and then what, Xan? Spike’s right. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we have no other choice. It’s us or him!” Buffy yelled back in exasperation.

“Um, guys… Sorry to interrupt, but there may be another way. We might be able to bind Glory….”

All eyes turned to Willow. In response, she flushed and shyly pulled out a book that detailed transmogrifications and the rituals involved in them. “It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try… I think if we could make Glory recede back into Ben, there may be a possibility we could bind her there forever… she’d still be in him, just not able to do any more hostile takeovers.”

Buffy nodded her head in agreement. “Sounds good to me… I mean, I know it may come to that, but I’m not really up for the whole ‘let’s kill Ben’ thing—not if there’s something else we could try first. What do you think, Giles?”

Giles took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly beginning to feel the strain of the past few days. “Well, I must say I’m inclined to agree with you, Buffy… we should explore all other possibilities before surrendering ourselves to other, more distasteful, solutions.”

“What about me?” Dawn’s small voice asked.

“Pardon?” Giles asked as he stared at Dawn’s slightly pale face.

“The Key… What am I? What do I do? Why does Glory want me?”

Giles shifted, giving Dawn an apprehensive look. “The Key is pure energy; its power is absolute. Its origins are unknown, as are the details of its creation. Its sole purpose is to open the gates separating dimensional walls. Glory intends to use you in order to return home, in all possibility so that she may avenge her banishment and reclaim rulership of her home dimension.’’

Buffy laughed. “That’s it? That’s all she wants? Just to go home? Couldn’t we just send her there, then?”

Giles turned his attention to Buffy. “Buffy, you don’t understand. The key can’t be used exclusively for one gate. If Glory was to open the portal to return home, all the gates would be opened, causing the dimensions to bleed into each other. Hell would reign on earth, quite possibly for all eternity.”

“So, I’m evil?” Dawn asked in a small voice.

“No,” Giles said soothingly. “The Key isn’t evil, or for that matter, good. It just simply is… It is energy of the purest form, above and beyond morality or definition.”

Dawn paled further as she digested this information. “So, how do I work? I mean, how do I open the gate?”

Giles visibly stiffened. “The ritual entails funnelling the Key’s essence into a specific location at a specific time. The ceremony itself is extraordinarily precise and can only be performed during a small aperture of time. If the ritual is not performed within these confines, the gateway will lock and will be impossible to open until all of the gates once again align; the alignment is an event that takes centuries to come about.”

Dawn swallowed heavily. “You said my essence… What’s that?”

“Blood,” Spike whispered.

Giles glanced at the blonde vampire, nodding his head stiffly in agreement. “Yes.”

Buffy and Dawn gasped, both looking visibly sickened by this news.

“S-she’s gonna make me bleed?” Dawn finally asked in a haunted voice.

“NO! No, she’s not.” Buffy assured her sister. “We won’t let that happen.”

“B-but what happens if she does? How do we stop the gate from opening? Or—or how do we close it? Can we close it?” Dawn asked Giles anxiously.

Giles shifted uncomfortably in his seat, removing his glasses one again to clean them and to provide him with an excuse for avoiding the frightened young girl’s eyes. “I-If the portal is activated… the dimensions will continue to bleed into one another, until the energy stops flowing.”

Dawn blinked back the tears forming in her eyes. “You mean until there’s no more blood?”

Giles nodded his head sombrely. “Yes.”

Everyone sat in silence, trying to understand the ramifications of the situation.

Finally Buffy broke the silence. “We have to stop her. We have to bind her, or kill her, or something… I’m not going to let that whack-job start playing Elizabeth Bathory on Dawn, okay? Now you said that once the ritual starts, the only way to stop it is to stop the flow of energy… So all we have to do is keep Dawn safe until she runs out of time.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Xander agreed.

Buffy smiled weakly. “Okay, here’s the plan. Willow, you and Tara research the binding spell… try to see if it will work, because otherwise we need to try to find another way to stop Glory--other than killing Ben, that is. I don’t want to have to do that unless there’s absolutely NO other way, OK?”

Willow and Tara nodded their heads and quickly fell into research mode, hurrying to the shelves upstairs where the most powerful spell books were stored.

Buffy turned to her Watcher. “Giles, can you try to find any information on closing the gates by any means other than stopping the flow of energy?”

Giles opened his mouth to protest, only to have Buffy cut him off. “Don’t argue with me on this one, Giles… There has got to be another way.”

Giles nodded his head in defeat. “I’ll try.”

Buffy then turned to Xander. “Xand, I need you to try to find out when and where the ritual is to be performed… At least that way we’ll know how long we have before the final countdown. Start with the books, then move to the streets—talk to your work buddies, see if they’ve noticed anything weird or any unauthorized construction.”

“No prob, Buff,” Xander said, reaching towards the stack of books sent by Giles’ Cairo contact. Those had the most info on Glory; they’d probably help the most when it came to figuring out how to keep her from getting home.

“Anya, find out about anyone buying any unusual spell ingredients… it might have been legit, but probably most would have to be black market stuff, right?”

Anya frowned. “I’ll try… But if it is black market magic we’re dealing with, generally speaking anyone in that trade doesn’t take too kindly to questions.”

Buffy nodded. “I know, Anya… we just need to try.”

“Okay… I won’t get anywhere, but I’ll try,” Anya said with a shrug. Grabbing a writing pad, she began to scribble a list of possible dealers who would need to be investigated, along with those on the second, easier-to-compile list of legitimate magic sources.

Buffy let out an exhausted sigh as she turned to her sire. “Spike, can you hit the streets? Maybe ask around the demon population, check on any unusual activities… something that could lead us to the ritual site?”

“Of course, pet,” Spike agreed, giving her a soft smile before casually sauntering out the front door; thankfully the sun had already set, and he could start his assignment immediately.

“Okay… I’m gonna check out the old high school library…. It’s more than likely that she’ll try to open the hellmouth, or at least open the gates from the hellmouth… right?”

Giles nodded his head in agreement. “Well, yes. That’s actually a very likely location.”

“What about me?” Dawn asked quietly, still devastated from all of the news. “What do you want me to do?”

Buffy turned her attention to her little sister. “Can you wrap yourself in some cotton wool and hide in a closet?”

Dawn cracked a small smile. “If you think that will help.”

Buffy gave Dawn a tender smile. “Yeah, I think it will….”

Dawn jumped up and wrapped her arms around Buffy’s neck, giving her a loving hug; Buffy returned the embrace with equal vigour. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Dawnie… I promise.”

“I know,” Dawn mumbled before pulling back and looking into Buffy’s eyes. “But seriously, I want to help…”

Buffy smiled and brushed some hair away from Dawn’s face. “I know. Why don’t you help Xander, ‘kay? He could use someone to keep him focused,” she added playfully, winking at her little sister as she tried to lighten the mood.

Dawn smiled in return. “Okay.”

Buffy watched Dawn pick up an old dusty book and flip through the pages for any information pertaining to the location and timeline of the ritual for opening the inter-dimensional portal. A small pang of anguish tore though Buffy at the thought of losing her sister. *No. That’s not gonna happen… I’ll die before I let that bitch touch Dawn!* With that thought, Buffy gathered up her things in preparation for scoping out her old high school in the hopes of finding any evidence of Glory preparing to open the Hellmouth.

Buffy was just about to leave when her enhanced spider sense started to tingle. She didn’t know why she hadn’t felt it before; perhaps she had been too concerned for her sister’s well-being for her to notice. Buffy let her instincts carry her towards the basement, where Giles and Anya always kept their surplus stock. As she reached for the doorknob, she noticed that she could hear the dull thump of several heartbeats coming from behind the door.

Xander noticed Buffy slip into Slayer stance as she stared at the basement door. He instinctively knew something was up; he hadn’t patrolled with the Slayer on a hellmouth for five years to not know the signs of trouble when he saw them. Moving slowly and quietly, he walked over to where Buffy stood, keeping his steps as silent as possible. “What’s wrong?” he whispered in an almost inaudible tone.

Buffy shifted her gaze to her friend. “Someone’s downstairs. I can hear their heartbeats.”

Xander stiffened. “How many?”

Buffy turned her attention back to the door, listening. Focusing on the heartbeats behind the door rather than her own and the one next to her was difficult, but she managed to read the cues after a few moments. “Three… maybe four,” she finally whispered.

Xander nodded. “Okay. We can do that.”

Buffy nodded as she reached for the doorknob. “Okay. Keep behind me…let me fight through first, but catch any that get by and try and keep them from escaping…”

Xander swallowed heavily and grabbed an ornamental dagger form a nearby shelf.

Buffy grabbed the doorknob, wrenching the basement door open in one powerful movement and sending one of Glory’s crusty minions tumbling to the floor in front of her. Three more of the scabby creatures stood on the stairs in shock for a long moment. Then, in an instant, all hell broke loose. Three of the demons tried to make a mad dash for the front door as another ran back into the musty confines of the shop’s basement.

Buffy easily grabbed one of the minions with lightning-fast precision, incidentally leaving the path clear for the other two to run at Xander; taking advantage of the opening, the two quickly knocked him to the ground as they broke further forward into the shop. The store filled with the shrill screams of Buffy’s shocked friends as the demons ran past them, heading towards the front door.

Xander was quick to recover, swiftly pulling himself to his feet and lunging at one of the scabby creatures, knocking him to the floor just as Giles tackled the other in a similar manoeuvre.

Buffy promptly snapped the neck of the demon struggling in her arms, quickly choosing to help her friends rather than pursue the other minion who was, by now, trapped in the dank basement.

Xander was madly struggling for dominance with Glory’s minion; however, he quickly gained the upper hand, swiftly thrusting his dagger into its scabby chest.

Giles, meanwhile, struggled to overpower the demon he was fighting. Unfortunately, he lost his grip on the scabby creature, allowing it to gain control of the fight. Dawn gasped in helpless horror as she watched Giles get thrown across the store like he was some sort of overgrown rag doll. Buffy rounded the corner in time to see Giles hit the ground with a loud thump, creating a break in the blockade and allowing the demon a clear path to the front door.

Willow watched in alarm as the infiltrator yanked open the only barrier that was preventing it from reaching freedom and the safety of its insane hellgod mistress. With a flick of her wrist, Willow shouted “seal,” causing the door to slam shut and crushing the minion between the door and the frame with a bone-crunching crack.

Buffy stared at Willow in wide-eyed relief, thankful more than ever before for her red-headed friend’s extraordinary powers.

“I-Is that all of them?” Tara asked, gasping in shock.

“No, there’s one more trapped downstairs,” Buffy announced, picking up a large sword and swinging it expertly as she walked towards the basement.

“But the sewers open up down there!” Anya yelled.

Buffy let out a panicked gasp as she tore down the stairs with her friends in tow. “Where?” she yelled frantically.

Anya quickly pulled away a large box, exposing the sewer entrance. “Here!”

Buffy visibly paled. “We have to find him… He knows about Dawn!”

Buffy, Xander and Giles rushed through the entrance and desperately searched for the fleeing demon, leaving Willow, Tara and Anya behind to look after Dawn. Buffy easily gained a dramatic lead between she and her friends, rushing madly through the catacombs of the sewers.

She let out a strangled cry when she reached a junction point, growling in annoyance as she noted that the sewer forked off into five different directions. She could hear the frantic pace of Giles and Xander’s footsteps, closing in on her. Closing her eyes, Buffy tried to reach out with her senses for any traces of the demon… all to no avail; the demon’s scent was too faint for her to track. Considering their lack of surveillance acumen, these scabby demons seemed to be awfully stealthy; she couldn’t make out one discernable noise coming from any of the tunnels. She could feel her friends only feet behind her now. “We have to split up!”

Xander and Giles let out mournful sighs when they saw the splayed junction, knowing their chances of finding the escapee would now be even more limited. They refused to give up the pursuit, however, each choosing a tunnel as they split up and tried to chase down the creature.

Buffy let out an almost feral cry as they tunnel she was travelling split again, going off into two different directions. She knew she’d lost the minion for good. She couldn’t feel any presence of the demon she was pursuing in either of the tunnels. Letting out a gut-wrenching sob in defeat Buffy headed back to the shop; she didn’t want to leave Dawn alone, not now--not after she had allowed the eavesdropper to escape. She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid as to think she had the ugly little demon trapped in the basement. She could have gone after him, but instead she had chosen to go help her friends… Who hadn’t even needed any help, mind you.

Buffy was the last one to emerge from the tunnels, empty-handed and devastated. The entire shop seemed to take on a sombre tone as she walked over to Dawn, pulling the teen into her protective embrace.


~*~~*~~*~


Spike was halfway to Willy’s Place when he felt a jolt of overwhelming panic rush through his Sire-Childe bond; he knew instantly that something was terribly wrong—Buffy just wasn’t the type to panic this much so easily. Quickly turning on his heels, he rushed back to the Magic Box with every ounce of speed he possessed.

As he arrived at the shop, he was greeted by the mangled corpse of the demon who had been crushed in the doorway. He opened the door gingerly, allowing the dead demon to fall to the floor with a sickening plop; looking quickly around the store, he saw the bodies of two more minions. Spike could hear muffled cries coming from down in the basement, and he quickly rushed down the wooden stairs only to find the entire Scooby gang standing around the open grate that lead into the sewers. Finally, he noticed that the cries he had heard while he was upstairs were coming from Buffy, who was madly clutching Dawn to her chest, sobbing “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” over and over again.

Spike pushed his way through to where Buffy and Dawn sat in a heap on the floor.
“Buffy, luv… What happened?”

Buffy lifted her pale, haunted face to look at Spike. “I let him get away.”

Spike shifted uncomfortably on his haunches, the pain in her eyes enough to make him ache. “You let who get away?”

“The demon… I-I let him get away. I thought I had him trapped, and he got away… They were spying on us.”

Spike stiffened, running his fingers through his hair in dismay. “Fuck!”

Buffy looked at Spike with eyes with full of guilt, remorse, and sheer terror. “I didn’t mean to,” she said in a small voice, looking very much like a little girl.

Spike gave Buffy a small, understanding smile as he tenderly ran his hand down her face. “I know, luv.”

“So what do we do now?” Anya asked.

“I vote that we head for the hills… get some distance between us and the most unstable one,” Xander answered.

“No!” Buffy said a little too harshly as she stood up. “No! We stay here… If we run, she’ll only find us anyway… I say if we have to fight, we fight where we know; at least that way we can prepare.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Giles asked, clearly uncertain.

“Yes! Look, we don’t even know if he heard anything, and if he did… How far do you think we’ll get if we run? Not far… this isn’t some half-man, half-machine we’re dealing with; it’s a god, a mightier-than-thou god. I say we stick together, and we fight on our turf,” Buffy announced in a very commanding voice.

The room seemed to fill with unease as everyone considered their options.

Buffy could see her friends apprehensions, and tried her best to encourage and comfort them. “Either way, we have to fight… Personally, I’d rather be here rather than on some road in the middle of nowhere. If we stay we can prepare and we can continue our research. We can’t do that if we’re running.”

“She’s right,” Willow agreed sombrely. “If we stay in a fixed location, it’s easier to protect. I don’t even know if there are any protections spell that can be used on a moving location.”

“Where will we go? We can’t stay here—this is a place of business, and the saleable merchandise might get damaged in an all-out war!” Anya argued, more than a little panicked.

Buffy let a small smile play across her lips; count on Anya’s materialism to lighten the mood in the face of certain death. “It’s okay, Anya. We can stay at my house; there’s plenty of room. Plus, Willow and Tara have already placed that early warning spell on it, so Glory won’t be able to sneak up on us--well, at least not without screechy sirens going off.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Dawn said gravely, obviously trying to appear brave through her terror.

Buffy reached out and stroked Dawn’s hair as she gave out orders. “Okay, we need to gather up all the information we have on Glory and the ritual. Giles, Xander, Anya—can you grab all the books and carry them out to Giles’ car? Just take everything—that way if we need it we have it and we don’t have to risk going out again. Willow, can you and Tara collect any ingredients you’ll need for protection spells and whatnot? Get as much as you can imagine us needing—we can always bring the extra back. Spike, help me grab some weapons—everything we can carry must go!”

Instructions clear and assignments accepted, the entire Scooby gang busied themselves with gathering up the necessary texts and ingredients while Buffy and Spike gathered as many weapons as possible, including Olaf’s troll hammer and the Dagon Sphere.

The trip back to Buffy’s house was made in tense silence. Buffy, Dawn, Willow and Tara chose to ride with Spike while Xander, Anya and Giles travelled behind them in Giles’ sporty convertible. Once they arrived at Buffy’s home, everyone busied themselves with bringing in their supplies and securing the house for the inevitable fight.