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 7.07
Saturday, July 13th, 2002


"This is important!" Buffy shrieked. "Why did nobody wake me up and tell me before? I was counting on you guys."

"It's not their fault, Buffy," Spike intervened between Buffy and Bee and Tara. "They did everything they could. If the cookers won't work without electricity, it's hardly their fault."

Bee gave a rueful grimace. "We thought we'd just be able to light the ovens with a match, but there must be some sort of safety feature that cuts off the gas if it can't detect an electric current for the ignition."

"Look, it's no big deal." Spike knew the minute he caught a glance at Buffy's expression that he'd made a mistake.

"No big d-."

Spike placed a hand gently but firmly over Buffy's mouth. "All I mean is that the reception hall is about ten miles away from here. It's still up and running. You keep going another ten fifteen miles you get Dutton and all that. There has to be a baker's in Dutton that can do the cake and it'll be as easy for them to deliver to the hall from there as it would be for the guy we originally ordered from. No big deal. An' if the power goes out as far as Dutton, then the cake'll be the least of our worries." He loosened his grip and almost wished that he hadn't.

"Yes big deal!" Buffy insisted. "This is our wedding day and you're acting like I'm getting hysterical over nothing. How do you know there's a bakery in Dutton? What makes you think anyone will take it on now we've got less than a week's notice, huh?"

"Believe me, kitten. If there's one thing I know it's that people will do anything if you offer them enough money. You'll get your cake an' it'll be pretty as a picture. Okay?

We'll make some phone calls on Monday morning. Once we get it narrowed down some, then you can take the girls and go check out the places, eat some cake, look at their pretty picture books... It'll be fine."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"'Cause we can't have a wedding without cake..."

"We'll have cake. We'll have everything you want."

"Promise."

"I promise," Spike replied, keeping the fingers of his right hand crossed behind his back as he wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and began to steer her away from the kitchen.

"What did you mean if the power goes out in Dutton?" Buffy asked, suddenly pouncing on Spike's earlier remark. "Giles doesn't think that the outage is going to spread, does he? That's not what this meeting's about? Did they tell you what this meeting's about? The church'll be okay, right..."

"Dawn just said Giles wanted everyone together and it was urgent."

---

 

"Faith?" Giles pushed.

"I don't know... I guess. I mean it's not like I'm normally Miss Congeniality."

Giles raised a hand as if to reach for his glasses and, with only the slightest hesitation when he remembered he was wearing contacts, ran his hand through his hair instead.

"We need to know the extent of the changes that the seal was able to produce in order to assess the danger in which anyone guarding the school might find themselves. Would you have made those remarks if you hadn't been possessed?"

"Probably not..."

"Were the sentiments you expressed an accurate version of your true opinions or did the seal exaggerate things?" Giles probed, glancing over into the corner where James sat, his attention apparently riveted to something on the carpet.

Faith shrugged.

"Enough!"

Almost everyone in the room turned to look at Lily, surprised at her sudden outburst.

"You all shoo," the demon insisted, her gaze settling first on Giles, but then shifting to encompass everyone in the drawing room other than Faith and James. When no one made any immediate move to leave, she prodded Wes, who was sitting next to her on one of the sofas, in the arm. "Scoot. I send nice Scottish boy to find you when we finished. Go find other room, set up wardens for goat seal so no more people be with no eyes and no tongue. We busy."

Spike and Clem were amongst the first to get to their feet but the others soon followed.

Lily shifted to the central portion of the sofa and turned her gaze first to Faith. "You, here," she ordered in an imperious tone, indicating the space on her right. "You, here." She nodded at James and pointed to her left.

"Look, no offence, but I don't need no grandma demon to impart her country wisdom. Life is what it is. Ain't no point pretending any different."

Lily stared the slayer in the eye and, as inured as Faith was, she found it hard not to glance away. "Life is what you make it, young woman, and you make it more painful than it needs to be. Sit." All trace of any accent was gone and the demon's gaze had gone from motherly to deathly serious in the blink of an eye.

Faith obeyed, still not entirely sure why she was doing so.

Lily's gaze transferred to James and he rose to his feet, almost scuffing his way across the room with his eyes still fixed on the floor, avoiding any eye contact with the brunette, and then flopping onto the opposite end of the sofa.

"This man," Lily asked, grasping James' hand and holding it in one of hers, "has he ever done anything to hurt you, to make you unhappy?" She looked at Faith, waiting for an answer.

"Hey, don't pin this all on me. I might have said some things but he had plenty to say as well."

"Y'know fine well I was just trying to get you mad enough to come after me so y'd get off that seal," James replied bitterly.

"Do I?" Faith drawled.

Lily took one of Faith's hands, as well. "I think you do. Maybe you're scared. Maybe you don't want to believe because that would mean having hope and it would hurt if that hope was taken away, but you're not stupid."

Faith's head lowered slightly, her hair falling to obscure her features.

"And you," she turned to James. "You're wondering what you should do... You care about her. You wanted to give this thing between you a chance to see if maybe you could love her. Then, she says that you don't mean anything to her... and now you don't know what you should do. If she meant what she said, then you should have no more to do with her, or you're going to get hurt more when she leaves you than you would now. If the evil in the seal was making her fears talk rather than her heart and she didn't mean what she said, but you leave her anyway, then you're proving her right. You would be hurting her and hurting yourself for no reason, but you don't know what the truth is, so you can't decide."

Lily released their hands and stood up. "I could tell him the answer he needs, but he deserves to find out from you. I'm going to make some tea. You have until I get back to decide what you're going to do and if you aren't truthful with each other, then I knock your stubborn heads together." She lapsed back into her normal accent as she finished. "I bring first aid kit too so you can wrap up chest, and ice for bruises."

Faith's head lifted immediately as Lily mentioned James' injuries. There was a mixture of concern and horror on her face as she remembered the pummelling she had administered while they both lay on the cellar floor.

James didn't need to make her put her feelings into words. He had his answer.

Lily closed the door behind her with a satisfied smile.

---

 

"What did you do with the people that were already there?"

"We, ehm, well... We couldn't take the chance that they might make their way back there while we were busy," Giles blustered, looking slightly embarrassed.

"We stole all their cell phones and dropped them off in the middle of nowhere," Dawn supplied. "A couple of them were nearly conscious though, so they should make it back to town before dark."

"So my little sister has now added mugging to her colourful résumé?" Buffy asked, giving Giles a hard stare.

"It wasn't exactly like that," the watcher argued.

Buffy sighed and turned to face the others who were milling around the candlelit basement. "It seems to me that we don't really have a lot of options here. We can't let any more innocents end up as bringers."

"I doubt the ones as are heading down there exactly class as innocent," Spike argued.

"Whatever! When they're human, even if they're mass murderers, they're the police's problem. Let's keep them that way. We're going to need to pull in everyone who's in training. Split each class in two. That gives us six groups, four hour shifts. We'll rearrange the patrol groups from who's left here and who's freshest when it comes to going out. If need be we'll go back to you, me and Faith. We keep them on the perimeter of the site, in pairs, so they can watch each other for signs that the seal's having an effect. Giles, see if you can scare up some walkie talkies and enough batteries to keep them running. Spike, you work out the rota and figure out how we're going to have to change the training schedule to work it in. Choose someone to be in charge of each group and when you've worked out who's up first make sure they've got a cell to call for back up if there's an all out attack, and get someone to drive the first team down there. Wes, Xander, you're with me. Tara, Bee, Lydia, when you're not taking your turns at the site, we need you to try to work out some sort of counter to this. Something to stop it drawing people in. Get some of the old guys on it, too."

"What? Where?" Xander babbled as he followed the diminutive blonde up the stairs.

"We're going to check the site and make sure it stays bringer and vampire free until the first bunch of 'mini-me's gets there." She turned at the doorway to give both Spike and Giles a slayer glare. "You've got maybe an hour before I get impatient. And, Giles, when you go to fetch those walkie-talkies, don't take Dawn. I don't want her to add looting to her list of misdemeanours."

---

 

Spike looked again at his list: Oz, Amanda, James, Tara, Brandon, Fitzpatrick. Two watchers, one potential, one werewolf, one witch and Bit's boyfriend, which was probably going to earn him some grief, but the boy had held firm when The Initiative came after Dawn, and the rest, despite Amanda's habit of rabbiting on ten to the dozen, all had cool heads. That was what would count, more than who could knock down their opponents fastest. Having someone who could keep calm enough to decide what they were capable of dealing with on their own or know when to call in reinforcements would be the difference between success and failure. Kennedy might have had a shot, but for one thing he didn't like her and for another her head was swelled enough as it was, already trying to boss around the other girls, not to mention the odd watcher.

That was it. It'd have to do. Wes was too handy to have around if there was an emergency. Lydia was tied up with keeping the school running day to day. Bee, whilst knowledgeable enough, would probably wind up putting the damn cell-phone down somewhere and walking off and leaving it. Maybe there were more watchers who might have been capable, but most of them did their best to have as little as possible to do with the vampire, which made it difficult for him to trust them. Time to go and break the news.

---

 

"You should be taking it easy," Faith argued.

The watcher simply smiled, shrugged on his leather jacket with only a slight trace of awkwardness, and held up the keys to Spike's bike. "I'm guessing that you've never seen a rugby match? You might be bad, but a cracked rib and a few bruises is nothing compared with the state I've been in now and again after eighty minutes on a rugby pitch. And that's what I do for fun."

"How'd you talk him into it?"

James shrugged. "Not a lot of use to him during the day. Did an oil change and a tune up for him."

"I'm supposed to be taking a training session in a couple of hours." Faith seemed to be wavering.

"Guess you better get a move on, then, if you want some more of that cheesecake."

Faith snatched the keys from his hand. "I'll drive. That way we have time for cheesecake and tacos."