full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Angels and Demons by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 7.13
 
<<     >>
 

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting





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 7.13
Wednesday, July 17th, 2002


"We need talk."

"Hmm." It took Giles a few moments to draw his mind away from the research that had him engrossed and process that it was he to whom Lily was speaking. "What is it?"

"Not here. Must talk alone." The demoness turned her back on him and strode from the library. She plainly didn't even consider the possibility that Giles would choose not to follow her.

With a sigh, the watcher ripped a sheet from the pad he was using to make his notes and bookmarked his place before he jogged after her.

"Lily, if this is what I think it is, I really think we already have the best candidate available."

Lily frowned at Giles, making him feel like he was once more in primary three and being reprimanded by his teacher because he wouldn't tell how his glasses had become broken and his knuckles bruised.

It hadn't mattered then that he knew that eventually someone would put together the bruises on the bully's face and those on his fists. The boy had been in another class, one two years above his own, and Rupert would not be the one to tell tales. No more now could he tell Lily what she wanted to hear.

She made her way to the kitchen and out through the school's back door, taking a path that curved around the back of the conservatory and into what once long ago had been the formal gardens, now a tangled mass of weeds and straggly plants and hedges. She took a seat on one of the old marble benches and looked up at the moon while she waited for Giles to join her.

"Is my task," Lily informed him in a tone that brooked no argument, waiting no more than a heartbeat after he had taken a seat beside her.

Giles paused as if trying to think of a diplomatic way to phrase his answer. "Whoever wears the amulet must be of superhuman strength. We cannot risk the possibility that the bearer will be exhausted before the amulet's work is done."

"Pfff!" Lily fixed him with her red-tinted eyes that paradoxically seemed both alien and motherly. "There is strength enough in these old bones, and more in this heart, to do what must be done. Is not the muscles that will be tested but the spirit.

I old woman, but is why it should be me. I had good life. Now Clem happy and Marie and Rosa happy, is not big thing for me to go be with my husband and my little Thomas. Is fitting. Who is better?" She cast the watcher a sidelong glance as she asked what she clearly regarded as a rhetorical question.

"Is no good to curse William," she announced unequivocally. "We no have a century for him to sulk like grandsire and your slayer, she no never no more look at you again like father if you take him. Is breaking her heart if no wedding."

"I had already ruled out Spike. As you say, the results of the ensouling spell would make him too unpredictable to be a viable subject."

"Ha Nath, she volunteer..." Lily was obviously fishing, her gaze fixed on the watcher, but, other than a distant sadness and a deep-seated guilt, which she attributed to the fact that he was the one who must play god and decide to whom the task should be assigned, she could pick up nothing of the watcher's emotions.

"Yes, she did... as did a number of others including your son." The watcher gave a sigh. "I wish I could reassure you but I swore that the person in question could retain their anonymity until the time for action was here. If I begin to rule the others out then you will simply keep going until there is only one possibility left. My choice, however, is already made."

Lily gave a snort of disgust. "You no father, so you no know... no really. Maybe you have tiny idea. Maybe you love your slayer so you know little what is like to see someone make her happy. Maybe you imagine what is like if you watch her from baby, if you no wait till she is woman-child to love her, if you belong to her from her first breath. Maybe then you try harder again and think what it like if you no just see her happy, if you feel it inside when she smile or laugh or it tear you apart when she lonely and you maybe begin understand what is like for empath to be parent.

Is no right that a mother should bury all her children. Is not as should be. Clem, he in love. If you take him away, then will break old woman's heart, but is for Rosa, I will curse your name. She no need lose uncle and father." Her warning seemed matter of fact, as if she didn't really think that Giles would call on Clem but she was making her position known. Then, she continued, her voice chill.

"But if you take from him his happiness. If you are choosing Ha Nath, then you be doubly cursed. I no stand by and look. Ha Nath, she no nothing to you. She stranger. You maybe think she no matter-."

"I assure you-." Giles' indignation at the mere suggestion that he might be biased by his own emotional attachments boiled through instantly.

"Is only human ," the old demon replied, cutting him off before he could go further and her tone became almost sly. "Same if choosing were mine and I not so old, I choose werewolf. I say is for the best. Is not good for him to stay now mate is dead... but is really because he stranger, because it no hurt my heart if he die."

"Oz is young. He'll find someone else."

"Oz is wolf. When the witch die, his heart die, too."

There was a certainty to her tone that made the watcher want to weep for the stoic young man. "Surely-."

"Is not in his nature to love another. Even so, is better that burden fall to one who old, who have family waiting for her on other side." The empath gave a satisfied smile as she felt the deep confusion that Giles kept hidden beneath the mask of self-discipline into which he schooled his features. When the conversation had begun, Giles had been resolute. Now, he was undecided. It was a start. "The children, they all have much left to do... Is not fair to ask this of any of them." Lily pushed herself to her feet and slowly made her way back toward the school, her gait slightly stiff as a result of the cold seeping into her bones.

Giles watched her go and wondered how the old woman had managed to cloud an issue which had seemed so clear cut before. He tried to convince himself that his reasoning was just as sound tonight as it had been when the choice was first made, if it could really ever have been called a choice. Somehow, even with all the facts at his disposal, he only partially succeeded.






 

Caleb kicked out with his legs, unseating Buffy from her position over him and throwing her several feet to the side. He jumped to his feet in an instant and, as Buffy staggered tiredly to her own, he drove his fist into her face. The blow sent her stumbling backward and the preacher followed her, hitting her again and again until he had driven her back against one of the walls, but Buffy refused to give up the axe.

The cleric's eyes glowed with an unholy joy as he gave vent to his misogynistic fury, finally beating down the whore who had humiliated him over and over since he had come to Sunnydale. "You know, this is no one's fault but your own. You could have stood back and let us take care of business." As if to demonstrate the point he stepped back, smiling at the way Buffy seemed to be curling in on herself. He gesticulated as if he were using his hands to illustrate a sermon. "You didn't have to interfere, but like every woman back through to Eve you had to stick your nose in where it wasn't wanted or needed."

Buffy charged at him, but Caleb sidestepped out of the way and used her momentum to his advantage, half tripping and half throwing her so that she landed flat on her back on what appeared to be a stone altar. Buffy kicked out as he approached and connected hard with his stomach, but it earned her only a brief reprieve before he scooped her into his arms and threw her into another of the columns that Buffy hoped weren't load-bearing. The stone shattered as her back impacted with it, bringing the column toppling around her as she fell dazed to the floor and the axe slipped from her fingers.

Caleb bent down and lifted the axe from the ground, and there was nothing Buffy could do to prevent him.

Her head pounded and her thoughts were fogged as if she had been ripped from a deep sleep. In her head, two words repeated over and over again. Get up. Get up. Get up. Feeling almost like a puppet, being dragged around by strings that someone else manipulated, she began to struggle to her feet. She was only dimly aware of Caleb, once again going for the gloat instead of the kill as he twirled the axe in his hands.

"I was kinda hopin' it'd go this way." He raised the axe over his head for a two-handed blow, knowing that all the fight had been beaten from his opponent and that all he had to do was administer the final killing blow. The vampire hadn't even moved from his position guarding the stairway. He didn't even appear to want to intervene. "First I get rid of you. Then your pet vampire. And then I take out the second string batter and all the little girls." He brought the axe down hard and too fast for Buffy to move aside.

Buffy's hands moved up to meet the axe as it fell. The strength she needed came partly from rage at the idea he would dare to threaten Spike. The remainder seemed to flow into her as if it had been willed there. It brought the same feeling of being home that she felt when she awoke wrapped in her lover's arms. The axe stopped dead, and then, infinitely slowly, she twisted her grip until the axe head pointed not at her, but at the former minister. She stamped sharply on the pastor's instep and in the instant that the pain caused his concentration to waver she drove the axe forward, smashing it into Caleb's face.

The preacher's grip loosened and Buffy pirouetted gracefully, bringing the axe round in a complete circle. The blade sliced cleanly through the hand that Caleb held up to stop the blow and then bit deeply into his neck. Black ichor flowed from the wound and leaked from every available orifice as the man slumped to the ground.

Buffy raised the axe, and drove it through what remained of Caleb's neck as if she were chopping firewood. She kicked the head to one side, making sure it was completely severed and flicked the axe so that the liquid ran off its blade.

"So... You watch the watchers?" she asked the old woman as if their conversation had never been interrupted. Spike met her halfway across the room, pulling her in against his side, and she wrapped her free hand around his waist, using it for support as the strength she had borrowed ebbed away. "But who are you?"

"Guardians," the woman answered. "Women who want to help and protect you. We forged the blade centuries ago, halfway around the world."

"Hence the Luxor Casino theme," Buffy theorised.

"Forged there, it was put to use right here. to kill the last pure demon that walked upon the earth," the weapon's guardian supplied as she settled herself upon the next to bottom step on the stairway. "The rest were already driven under. And then there were men here, and then there were monks. And then there was a town. and now there is you. And the scythe remained hidden."

Buffy frowned, unsure whether her confusion were natural or the result of one of the recent blows Caleb had inflicted. "I don't understand. How is it possible that we didn't know any of this?"

The woman's shoulders barely moved in a near imperceptible shrug. "We hid, too. We had to until now. We're the last surprise."

The weariness began to fade from Buffy's face, replaced by hope. "Does this mean we can win?"
 
<<     >>