Sweeping Sighisoara chapter 10
Title: Sweeping Sighisoara chapter 10: Hit me
Pairing: Willow/OC and for the rest, just read and see
Rating: R
Summary: A witch and a Slayer are sent to an old city in the mountains of Transylvania to retrieve a very powerful artifact, setting off a chain of events that will alter the fate of an entire dimension.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-series; somewhat smutty (for now), violence
Disclaimer: Not mine, really! So please don't sue. Joss, Fox, Mutant Enemy and all the others are the ones!
Beta: dusty273 , diebirchen
AN: Guess what? I managed to update before another year passed :D.
Many thinks to Sotia, Mari and Mailyn for making this chapter better than it was.
*Buffy’s office, Slayer Castle, Scotland*
Spike entered the room and appraised the situation. Buffy was seated at her desk with Willow, Xander, a guy who looked vaguely familiar huddled to the side, and a girl who made his hair stand on end in the middle of the room; she was looking straight at Buffy as though she was challenging her to a duel. A glance at the Slayer’s face, though, had his stomach tightening in knots and made him ignore the strangers. She looked about as weary as she had been the day before they’d taken Glory down or after she’d been thrown out of her house by her “friends.” She looked like someone who’d seen all there was to see, felt all there was to feel, and was left cold and lonely, waiting for the end to come. His Slayer had a death wish, or at least she was close to it. Again.
“Don’t worry about him. That’s Spike-he’s on our side.” Her statement shook him out of his musings and made him notice that everyone was staring at him now, including the feisty one. He didn’t miss the flash of recognition in her eyes before she continued to look at him almost disdainfully.
“He moved our Circle’s Sacred Source and brought the Scourge upon us.” The blonde stranger’s voice was melodic, but with a tinge of coldness that made him think of everlasting snow. Or maybe it was the slight unplaceable accent.
“The Scourge is either gone, souled, or crazy, and I have no idea about any source, sacred or otherwise.” He strode into the room unabashedly and stopped next to Buffy’s desk, resting a hip on the edge. The message was clear: this was his territory, and he wasn’t going to be displaced.
“Not you-you don’t really interest us. I’m referring to the darkness approaching, swallowing up entire countries one by one. It’s what we have been fighting against for centuries and what you allowed to gain access to the Source.” Her words were accusing, but her tone was almost informative. Despite the coldness and a certain degree of uneasiness he couldn’t quite figure out, she didn’t seem outright hostile to him.
“Listen here, I have no bloody clue what you’re on about, but-”
“Stop it, both of you. Why don’t we let Erika explain what she’s doing here and maybe we’ll be able to figure everything out.” Buffy’s tone brooked no argument, so Spike settled for staring at the newcomer with a smirk firmly plastered on his face.
Without missing a beat, Erika refocused on Buffy and seemed to completely ignore the vampire. “As I was saying before, Oz and I were sent here by the Circle to deliver a message and to serve as liaison in order to battle the common threat.”
’So that’s where I knew him from. And here I was, thinking I was done with the mongrels when the Poofter stopped mentioning his Dog-girl. I wonder how much this bint really knows about what’s been goin’ on here.’
~~~***~~~
By the end of the day, Buffy’s head was a whirlwind of memories and ideas. The last thirty-six hours or so had been so full that she felt every cell in her body begging for rest. Spike was back. That thought alone brought a smile to her face and an ache in her heart. Yes, he was back, but they still hadn’t had the talk, so it was still unclear how things would be between them. For that matter, she didn’t have any idea what she wanted there to be between them, anyway. Yes, she loved him, but was she still in love with him?
And what about his feelings for her? Had she not been too scared of the answer, maybe she would have asked him or would have told him or would have thought about it longer or-okay, so that train of thought led nowhere for now. Better let things develop on their own, anyway. I remember how bad it can get if either of us tries to press the matter.
Speaking of unsaid things, Angel was back too, all souled up and in a nice human, happy-inducing body. She felt somewhat betrayed that he came back and didn’t even call her for an entire month, but another part of her kind of understood it. He was back, but he wasn’t back for her. He had let go of her during the past seven years, and she had stopped waiting for him as well. ”So much for having cookies. ” She wasn’t even sure how jealous she was of the slayer he was apparently dating. ”I guess at least we share a taste for Japanese slayers.”
Shaking away naughty thoughts of oil, slayers, and former lovers tangled in a delicious heap-and wouldn’t you know it, Spike just wouldn’t stay out of that picture. Her mind drifted to the next thing that made sleep impossible: Oz, his mate, and the news they had brought. Apparently everything they thought they had known about Dracula had been false. On top of the whole surveillance thing and road to badness the Immortal had warned them about, the whole Stoker bit had been a sham and one that had been going on for centuries, at that. If everything in the message from the witches of the Circle was true, he was possibly the most dangerous foe she had ever faced, surpassing even the First Evil in the scope of his plans.
The incorporeal being and its slayer-hating sidekick had just wanted to open up the Hellmouth and unleash an army of ancient vamps from the bowels of Hell. Dracula-or, more appropriately, Ţepeş-had control of almost all the demons in Eastern Europe and possibly most of the rest of the world as well and was actively working on uniting all of them. ”Something’s definitely wrong with you when you start thinking of a legion of uber-vamps as ‘the simple times,’ and yet here I am thinking it.”
Suddenly, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Giles interrupted her thoughts. Her sources of information these days were Spike, the Immortal, a rogue Circle of witches nobody had heard of until now-she’d had Dana check the library as soon as she’d found out and there had been no mention of them-and a ‘Wolf Guard’ that even sounded ominous. All those stuffy shirts from the old Council would have had multiple strokes if they had found out. She shook it off. Giles was so high on her people-that-pissed-me-off list that she refused to even consider it.
However, the doubts still made her frown from time to time until she finally fell asleep after what felt like hours of tossing and turning.
~~~***~~~
*In the catacombs under the European side, Istanbul, Turkey*
“Stop bickering!” bellowed a furry blue demon with pale grey eyes and sharp black fangs that glistened in the torchlight when he spoke.
The twenty or so heads of clans from the ancient city gathered all around the double sarcophagus they were using as a meeting table suddenly stopped talking. They had assembled to discuss the rising threat in the north that was bound to spill forth into what they considered their territory. The result had mostly been fighting amongst themselves over who controlled which part of what neighborhood, instead of managing to actually discuss anything.
“Graonk is right; we have other things to talk about other than who had the rights to a well three centuries ago.” Szichen, the red leathery demon with white limbs and milky eyes, threw a pointed look at a scaly green lizard-like demon and a goblin-like creature that had been the loudest in their argument. “The half-breeds have banded together, and they’re gaining support amongst demon clans throughout the Balkans. We cannot let this be!”
While the others gave grunts of support and nods of approval, the massive iron doors opened with such force that one of the ornamental statues adorning the five columns holding up the ancient ceiling fell and broke in two. Before anyone else had time to react, Szichen’s body was cut in two, straight down the middle, by Dracula wielding Ştefan’s blade. When Graonk tried to move, another lightning-fast strike sent his head flying and landing with a squelching sound at the base of one of the columns.
In the complete silence that followed, only Dracula’s footsteps sent echoes bouncing off the walls, as he walked slowly around the group and then sat down in the chair from which he had just shoved Graonk’s body. Setting the sword down on the table with a clang, he crossed his arms in front of him. “So, you were discussing me, I see.” Looking once round the table at the various degrees of shock and hostility visible on the other demons’ faces, he chuckled darkly. “It wasn’t nice to fail to invite the one who is most interested in these proceedings, now was it?”
While he talked, two demons of the same races as the recently deceased ones walked in accompanied by a dozen Fyarls. Three of the demons around the table got out of their chairs to support the newcomers in what appeared to be a coming confrontation. No sooner had they done this than the Fyarls ripped their throats out and left them to die on the floor, while three almost identical demons to the newest victims then walked through the doors and took a position with the rest of the replacements. The message to the remainder of the clan leaders was clear: anyone who dared oppose Dracula would be immediately replaced by one of their own kin who had pledged allegiance to him.
All of the Balkan and Istanbul demon clans were soon under Vlad’s complete control.
~~~***~~~
*Spire Building, London, England*
Giles was still fuming over the previous day’s talk with Buffy and, to add insult to injury, he’d just had to welcome his overseer -- a girl barely out of high school. He had felt his relationship with Buffy deteriorate more and more ever since Sunnydale had been destroyed, but this was something so far beyond anything he had considered even remotely possible, that he was almost at a loss to describe, even to himself, how he felt about it.
Deciding that feelings could be dealt with at a later date, he threw himself in his usual work. Picking up one of the ancient scrolls he would have killed to have had access to back when he was still in Sunnydale, he skimmed it, then promptly threw it aside without a second thought, already looking for the next source of information, an ancient tome that had probably been under lock and key for the past several centuries.
Less than an hour later, that too was discarded in favor of yet another ancient text.
~~~***~~~
Mark watched anxiously as the best magicians he could gather on such short notice attempted to create a portal to the dimension currently under Illyria’s control. It seemed as though everything they tried had failed miserably. Finally, after the tenth try in a row, one of the magicians, a tall man with a greying beard and piercing green eyes, approached him on legs so wobbly that his attempts to appear composed were to no avail.
“We’ve done all we can for now.” Shaking his head, the man shuddered once. “It’s like hitting a wall of barbed wire that tries to envelop you before you have a chance to recoil. We need a conduit or some sort of magical key to be able to break through.”
“How is that possible? Until recently our firm had complete access to that dimension. By all the hells, we were the ones that created it!” Mark’s face betrayed no emotion, and he deliberately kept his tone neutral to intimidate the taller man. It was a trick he had picked up from the one who had occupied Giles’ office until a short while earlier.
“We don’t know how or why it happened, but ever since the incident, we’ve been unable to make contact.” They both knew what he was referring to. The incident was the battle that had taken place just before everything had changed, and all the senior members of Wolfram and Hart had mysteriously vanished. What made matters worse was that they had no information as to what had happened, since everyone involved was now gone. Even the magicians he was now using were merely apprentices of the ones that had been used back then.
Grinding his teeth, Mark turned his back on the useless mage and walked out the door of the underground summoning room, while thinking of alternate methods to get what he-and also Mr. Giles-wanted.
~~~***~~~
*Mess hall, Slayer Castle, Scotland*
Oz and Erika walked inside the room holding hands, with him squeezing her hand in support every time he felt her flinch. The former Scooby knew of his mate’s deep-seated hatred of slayers. She had told him about almost killing herself when she found out she had been Called and about how Maryun had talked her through it. The old witch had also been the one to get in touch with the Tibetan monks and ask for Oz to come to them. He would always be thankful to her for allowing him to become part of his new family and making it possible to meet the woman beside him.
It had taken them a whole year to get to know each other, but now they were so much in sync, that he almost felt like growling at the girls making her uneasy. Despite his own experience with Buffy, he could easily understand the reasons for Erika’s fury: centuries of being hunted by the Council and having slayer after slayer kill any werewolf they met without making any distinction on the basis of behavior or moral choices, made even him feel weary. He only hoped that things would go smoothly between his pack and his old friends.
Eventually, the two mates filled their trays with food from the open buffet and chose a table in one of the corners of the hall, trying very hard to ignore the inquisitive stares of some of the less discreet of the slayers gathered there for breakfast.
~~~***~~~
Buffy raised her head from the security documents she was studying when her door cracked open without warning. She was just about to tell off anyone who dared invade her space without asking for permission first, but bit her words back when Spike’s head popped in with an unrepentant grin.
“Wanna spar, or did you give up on the grunt work when you bought that helicopter I saw outside?” The way he wiggled his eyebrows made it impossible for her to keep a straight face, so she jumped over her desk and chased after the vampire, both of them laughing as he led her to the training hall.
Seems Dawn’s tour included info on where he can let some steam off. I gotta remember to thank her.
Since almost everyone was still eating breakfast, there were just five slayers present-a couple cleaning the weapons and three more doing some light exercises in preparation. Needless to say, they all stopped when the two people that were the talk of the castle above all others tore through the heavy wooden doors and stopped in the sunlit center of the room in what were obviously fighting stances, facing each other. Had it not been for the equally large grins the two were sporting, the young slayers might have gotten the wrong idea.
“With or without?” Buffy finished her question by raising her eyebrow and tilting her head slightly to the right, towards the wall filled with weapons.
Using his tongue to lick his upper front teeth, he sized her up and down with his eyes. “Do we really need weapons for this?”
Right hand trailing down her torso from between her breasts all the way down to just above her pelvis, she quipped right back, pouting for good measure, “But they make you feel all manly.”
With a shared shout of joy, the battle began. When one tried to hit high, the other one ducked and then went low, only to be countered and thrown back, and then a counter-attack was launched without a second thought. Indeed, there seemed to be no thinking involved in the deadly dance between the two, only pure instinct guiding every thrust, parry and blow, as it was being observed by an ever increasing number of occupants of the castle. Still, somehow, they seemed to find the energy and presence of spirit to keep taunting one another.
“You still hit like a girl.”
“Oi, Slayer, all man here!”
“Well then, prove it.”
“Knew you liked an audience, pet.”
“And the pig hath spoken”
“Thought I was a girl.”
“So you finally admit it. Is that what you’ve been doing the last two years with Angel?” She combined a spin-kick to the chest with a comical widening of the eyes. “Did you tape it at least?”
“Been thinkin’ about that for a while, have you?”
“That and oil.”
“Nah, just Mountain Dew.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I don’t kiss and tell, Slayer.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Not with you.”
“Shut up.”
On and on they went, their rhythm ever faster, the blows ever more powerful. The assembled audience, now comprising of almost everyone in the castle, recognized the moment when Buffy entered what Xander called ‘Super-girl mode,’ but to the shock of everyone, Spike didn’t even seem to notice. The strength behind one of Buffy’s hits could probably make even a slayer double over in pain, but Spike just shook them off like they were fly swats, giving just as good as he got. Quietly, through taps on elbows and tilting of heads, the people watching started debating on who would eventually win between the two. Even in popularity, they seemed to be evenly matched.
All of a sudden, everything was over. The two combatants stopped dead in their tracks, sprawled on the ground with the vampire on top of the Slayer, his hands around her head, mouth at her throat, but with her designated stake hand firmly planted on his chest, over his heart.
Nobody should look that happy with mutually assured destruction, but these two aren’t just about anybody, thought Xander with a warm smile on his face.
~~~***~~~
*Room 576, secret training facility, undisclosed location in the continental US*
A telephone rang, and the uniformed man behind the desk filled with documents and with a scar running along his right cheek, picked it up. He spoke, allowing for whoever it was on the other end to speak between each sentence.
“This is Rhoades. Yes. I understand. How many? Any survivors? Find out what you can.” He then put the receiver down with a clang. Raising his dark brown eyes to the man in civilian clothes across from him, General Rhoades gave the news he prayed he never would have to. “The Chernobyl dormant Hellmouth started showing signs of activity just before contact with the team there was lost. A retrieval team was sent, but they also disappeared. The Ukrainians have asked us and the Russians to send additional troops.”
Seemingly unperturbed, the man on the other side of the desk gave a curt nod. “I’ll tell the President. You might want to check on the others as well.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” The General looked grim, his eyes travelling to the map of the world with a hundreds of different colored dots highlighting places such as Hiroshima, Krakatoa, Pompeii and Tunguska.
Pairing: Willow/OC and for the rest, just read and see
Rating: R
Summary: A witch and a Slayer are sent to an old city in the mountains of Transylvania to retrieve a very powerful artifact, setting off a chain of events that will alter the fate of an entire dimension.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-series; somewhat smutty (for now), violence
Disclaimer: Not mine, really! So please don't sue. Joss, Fox, Mutant Enemy and all the others are the ones!
Beta: dusty273 , diebirchen
AN: Guess what? I managed to update before another year passed :D.
Many thinks to Sotia, Mari and Mailyn for making this chapter better than it was.
*Buffy’s office, Slayer Castle, Scotland*
Spike entered the room and appraised the situation. Buffy was seated at her desk with Willow, Xander, a guy who looked vaguely familiar huddled to the side, and a girl who made his hair stand on end in the middle of the room; she was looking straight at Buffy as though she was challenging her to a duel. A glance at the Slayer’s face, though, had his stomach tightening in knots and made him ignore the strangers. She looked about as weary as she had been the day before they’d taken Glory down or after she’d been thrown out of her house by her “friends.” She looked like someone who’d seen all there was to see, felt all there was to feel, and was left cold and lonely, waiting for the end to come. His Slayer had a death wish, or at least she was close to it. Again.
“Don’t worry about him. That’s Spike-he’s on our side.” Her statement shook him out of his musings and made him notice that everyone was staring at him now, including the feisty one. He didn’t miss the flash of recognition in her eyes before she continued to look at him almost disdainfully.
“He moved our Circle’s Sacred Source and brought the Scourge upon us.” The blonde stranger’s voice was melodic, but with a tinge of coldness that made him think of everlasting snow. Or maybe it was the slight unplaceable accent.
“The Scourge is either gone, souled, or crazy, and I have no idea about any source, sacred or otherwise.” He strode into the room unabashedly and stopped next to Buffy’s desk, resting a hip on the edge. The message was clear: this was his territory, and he wasn’t going to be displaced.
“Not you-you don’t really interest us. I’m referring to the darkness approaching, swallowing up entire countries one by one. It’s what we have been fighting against for centuries and what you allowed to gain access to the Source.” Her words were accusing, but her tone was almost informative. Despite the coldness and a certain degree of uneasiness he couldn’t quite figure out, she didn’t seem outright hostile to him.
“Listen here, I have no bloody clue what you’re on about, but-”
“Stop it, both of you. Why don’t we let Erika explain what she’s doing here and maybe we’ll be able to figure everything out.” Buffy’s tone brooked no argument, so Spike settled for staring at the newcomer with a smirk firmly plastered on his face.
Without missing a beat, Erika refocused on Buffy and seemed to completely ignore the vampire. “As I was saying before, Oz and I were sent here by the Circle to deliver a message and to serve as liaison in order to battle the common threat.”
’So that’s where I knew him from. And here I was, thinking I was done with the mongrels when the Poofter stopped mentioning his Dog-girl. I wonder how much this bint really knows about what’s been goin’ on here.’
~~~***~~~
By the end of the day, Buffy’s head was a whirlwind of memories and ideas. The last thirty-six hours or so had been so full that she felt every cell in her body begging for rest. Spike was back. That thought alone brought a smile to her face and an ache in her heart. Yes, he was back, but they still hadn’t had the talk, so it was still unclear how things would be between them. For that matter, she didn’t have any idea what she wanted there to be between them, anyway. Yes, she loved him, but was she still in love with him?
And what about his feelings for her? Had she not been too scared of the answer, maybe she would have asked him or would have told him or would have thought about it longer or-okay, so that train of thought led nowhere for now. Better let things develop on their own, anyway. I remember how bad it can get if either of us tries to press the matter.
Speaking of unsaid things, Angel was back too, all souled up and in a nice human, happy-inducing body. She felt somewhat betrayed that he came back and didn’t even call her for an entire month, but another part of her kind of understood it. He was back, but he wasn’t back for her. He had let go of her during the past seven years, and she had stopped waiting for him as well. ”So much for having cookies. ” She wasn’t even sure how jealous she was of the slayer he was apparently dating. ”I guess at least we share a taste for Japanese slayers.”
Shaking away naughty thoughts of oil, slayers, and former lovers tangled in a delicious heap-and wouldn’t you know it, Spike just wouldn’t stay out of that picture. Her mind drifted to the next thing that made sleep impossible: Oz, his mate, and the news they had brought. Apparently everything they thought they had known about Dracula had been false. On top of the whole surveillance thing and road to badness the Immortal had warned them about, the whole Stoker bit had been a sham and one that had been going on for centuries, at that. If everything in the message from the witches of the Circle was true, he was possibly the most dangerous foe she had ever faced, surpassing even the First Evil in the scope of his plans.
The incorporeal being and its slayer-hating sidekick had just wanted to open up the Hellmouth and unleash an army of ancient vamps from the bowels of Hell. Dracula-or, more appropriately, Ţepeş-had control of almost all the demons in Eastern Europe and possibly most of the rest of the world as well and was actively working on uniting all of them. ”Something’s definitely wrong with you when you start thinking of a legion of uber-vamps as ‘the simple times,’ and yet here I am thinking it.”
Suddenly, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Giles interrupted her thoughts. Her sources of information these days were Spike, the Immortal, a rogue Circle of witches nobody had heard of until now-she’d had Dana check the library as soon as she’d found out and there had been no mention of them-and a ‘Wolf Guard’ that even sounded ominous. All those stuffy shirts from the old Council would have had multiple strokes if they had found out. She shook it off. Giles was so high on her people-that-pissed-me-off list that she refused to even consider it.
However, the doubts still made her frown from time to time until she finally fell asleep after what felt like hours of tossing and turning.
~~~***~~~
*In the catacombs under the European side, Istanbul, Turkey*
“Stop bickering!” bellowed a furry blue demon with pale grey eyes and sharp black fangs that glistened in the torchlight when he spoke.
The twenty or so heads of clans from the ancient city gathered all around the double sarcophagus they were using as a meeting table suddenly stopped talking. They had assembled to discuss the rising threat in the north that was bound to spill forth into what they considered their territory. The result had mostly been fighting amongst themselves over who controlled which part of what neighborhood, instead of managing to actually discuss anything.
“Graonk is right; we have other things to talk about other than who had the rights to a well three centuries ago.” Szichen, the red leathery demon with white limbs and milky eyes, threw a pointed look at a scaly green lizard-like demon and a goblin-like creature that had been the loudest in their argument. “The half-breeds have banded together, and they’re gaining support amongst demon clans throughout the Balkans. We cannot let this be!”
While the others gave grunts of support and nods of approval, the massive iron doors opened with such force that one of the ornamental statues adorning the five columns holding up the ancient ceiling fell and broke in two. Before anyone else had time to react, Szichen’s body was cut in two, straight down the middle, by Dracula wielding Ştefan’s blade. When Graonk tried to move, another lightning-fast strike sent his head flying and landing with a squelching sound at the base of one of the columns.
In the complete silence that followed, only Dracula’s footsteps sent echoes bouncing off the walls, as he walked slowly around the group and then sat down in the chair from which he had just shoved Graonk’s body. Setting the sword down on the table with a clang, he crossed his arms in front of him. “So, you were discussing me, I see.” Looking once round the table at the various degrees of shock and hostility visible on the other demons’ faces, he chuckled darkly. “It wasn’t nice to fail to invite the one who is most interested in these proceedings, now was it?”
While he talked, two demons of the same races as the recently deceased ones walked in accompanied by a dozen Fyarls. Three of the demons around the table got out of their chairs to support the newcomers in what appeared to be a coming confrontation. No sooner had they done this than the Fyarls ripped their throats out and left them to die on the floor, while three almost identical demons to the newest victims then walked through the doors and took a position with the rest of the replacements. The message to the remainder of the clan leaders was clear: anyone who dared oppose Dracula would be immediately replaced by one of their own kin who had pledged allegiance to him.
All of the Balkan and Istanbul demon clans were soon under Vlad’s complete control.
~~~***~~~
*Spire Building, London, England*
Giles was still fuming over the previous day’s talk with Buffy and, to add insult to injury, he’d just had to welcome his overseer -- a girl barely out of high school. He had felt his relationship with Buffy deteriorate more and more ever since Sunnydale had been destroyed, but this was something so far beyond anything he had considered even remotely possible, that he was almost at a loss to describe, even to himself, how he felt about it.
Deciding that feelings could be dealt with at a later date, he threw himself in his usual work. Picking up one of the ancient scrolls he would have killed to have had access to back when he was still in Sunnydale, he skimmed it, then promptly threw it aside without a second thought, already looking for the next source of information, an ancient tome that had probably been under lock and key for the past several centuries.
Less than an hour later, that too was discarded in favor of yet another ancient text.
~~~***~~~
Mark watched anxiously as the best magicians he could gather on such short notice attempted to create a portal to the dimension currently under Illyria’s control. It seemed as though everything they tried had failed miserably. Finally, after the tenth try in a row, one of the magicians, a tall man with a greying beard and piercing green eyes, approached him on legs so wobbly that his attempts to appear composed were to no avail.
“We’ve done all we can for now.” Shaking his head, the man shuddered once. “It’s like hitting a wall of barbed wire that tries to envelop you before you have a chance to recoil. We need a conduit or some sort of magical key to be able to break through.”
“How is that possible? Until recently our firm had complete access to that dimension. By all the hells, we were the ones that created it!” Mark’s face betrayed no emotion, and he deliberately kept his tone neutral to intimidate the taller man. It was a trick he had picked up from the one who had occupied Giles’ office until a short while earlier.
“We don’t know how or why it happened, but ever since the incident, we’ve been unable to make contact.” They both knew what he was referring to. The incident was the battle that had taken place just before everything had changed, and all the senior members of Wolfram and Hart had mysteriously vanished. What made matters worse was that they had no information as to what had happened, since everyone involved was now gone. Even the magicians he was now using were merely apprentices of the ones that had been used back then.
Grinding his teeth, Mark turned his back on the useless mage and walked out the door of the underground summoning room, while thinking of alternate methods to get what he-and also Mr. Giles-wanted.
~~~***~~~
*Mess hall, Slayer Castle, Scotland*
Oz and Erika walked inside the room holding hands, with him squeezing her hand in support every time he felt her flinch. The former Scooby knew of his mate’s deep-seated hatred of slayers. She had told him about almost killing herself when she found out she had been Called and about how Maryun had talked her through it. The old witch had also been the one to get in touch with the Tibetan monks and ask for Oz to come to them. He would always be thankful to her for allowing him to become part of his new family and making it possible to meet the woman beside him.
It had taken them a whole year to get to know each other, but now they were so much in sync, that he almost felt like growling at the girls making her uneasy. Despite his own experience with Buffy, he could easily understand the reasons for Erika’s fury: centuries of being hunted by the Council and having slayer after slayer kill any werewolf they met without making any distinction on the basis of behavior or moral choices, made even him feel weary. He only hoped that things would go smoothly between his pack and his old friends.
Eventually, the two mates filled their trays with food from the open buffet and chose a table in one of the corners of the hall, trying very hard to ignore the inquisitive stares of some of the less discreet of the slayers gathered there for breakfast.
~~~***~~~
Buffy raised her head from the security documents she was studying when her door cracked open without warning. She was just about to tell off anyone who dared invade her space without asking for permission first, but bit her words back when Spike’s head popped in with an unrepentant grin.
“Wanna spar, or did you give up on the grunt work when you bought that helicopter I saw outside?” The way he wiggled his eyebrows made it impossible for her to keep a straight face, so she jumped over her desk and chased after the vampire, both of them laughing as he led her to the training hall.
Seems Dawn’s tour included info on where he can let some steam off. I gotta remember to thank her.
Since almost everyone was still eating breakfast, there were just five slayers present-a couple cleaning the weapons and three more doing some light exercises in preparation. Needless to say, they all stopped when the two people that were the talk of the castle above all others tore through the heavy wooden doors and stopped in the sunlit center of the room in what were obviously fighting stances, facing each other. Had it not been for the equally large grins the two were sporting, the young slayers might have gotten the wrong idea.
“With or without?” Buffy finished her question by raising her eyebrow and tilting her head slightly to the right, towards the wall filled with weapons.
Using his tongue to lick his upper front teeth, he sized her up and down with his eyes. “Do we really need weapons for this?”
Right hand trailing down her torso from between her breasts all the way down to just above her pelvis, she quipped right back, pouting for good measure, “But they make you feel all manly.”
With a shared shout of joy, the battle began. When one tried to hit high, the other one ducked and then went low, only to be countered and thrown back, and then a counter-attack was launched without a second thought. Indeed, there seemed to be no thinking involved in the deadly dance between the two, only pure instinct guiding every thrust, parry and blow, as it was being observed by an ever increasing number of occupants of the castle. Still, somehow, they seemed to find the energy and presence of spirit to keep taunting one another.
“You still hit like a girl.”
“Oi, Slayer, all man here!”
“Well then, prove it.”
“Knew you liked an audience, pet.”
“And the pig hath spoken”
“Thought I was a girl.”
“So you finally admit it. Is that what you’ve been doing the last two years with Angel?” She combined a spin-kick to the chest with a comical widening of the eyes. “Did you tape it at least?”
“Been thinkin’ about that for a while, have you?”
“That and oil.”
“Nah, just Mountain Dew.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I don’t kiss and tell, Slayer.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Not with you.”
“Shut up.”
On and on they went, their rhythm ever faster, the blows ever more powerful. The assembled audience, now comprising of almost everyone in the castle, recognized the moment when Buffy entered what Xander called ‘Super-girl mode,’ but to the shock of everyone, Spike didn’t even seem to notice. The strength behind one of Buffy’s hits could probably make even a slayer double over in pain, but Spike just shook them off like they were fly swats, giving just as good as he got. Quietly, through taps on elbows and tilting of heads, the people watching started debating on who would eventually win between the two. Even in popularity, they seemed to be evenly matched.
All of a sudden, everything was over. The two combatants stopped dead in their tracks, sprawled on the ground with the vampire on top of the Slayer, his hands around her head, mouth at her throat, but with her designated stake hand firmly planted on his chest, over his heart.
Nobody should look that happy with mutually assured destruction, but these two aren’t just about anybody, thought Xander with a warm smile on his face.
~~~***~~~
*Room 576, secret training facility, undisclosed location in the continental US*
A telephone rang, and the uniformed man behind the desk filled with documents and with a scar running along his right cheek, picked it up. He spoke, allowing for whoever it was on the other end to speak between each sentence.
“This is Rhoades. Yes. I understand. How many? Any survivors? Find out what you can.” He then put the receiver down with a clang. Raising his dark brown eyes to the man in civilian clothes across from him, General Rhoades gave the news he prayed he never would have to. “The Chernobyl dormant Hellmouth started showing signs of activity just before contact with the team there was lost. A retrieval team was sent, but they also disappeared. The Ukrainians have asked us and the Russians to send additional troops.”
Seemingly unperturbed, the man on the other side of the desk gave a curt nod. “I’ll tell the President. You might want to check on the others as well.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” The General looked grim, his eyes travelling to the map of the world with a hundreds of different colored dots highlighting places such as Hiroshima, Krakatoa, Pompeii and Tunguska.