Buffy: Trick of the Dark Chapter 12

7/31/2019 Buffy: Trick of the Dark Chapter 12

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Fragile

If blood would flow

when flesh and steel are onedrying in the color of the evening sun

Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away

But something in our minds will always stay

Perhaps this final act was meant

to clinch a lifetime’s argument That nothing comes from violence

and nothing ever could

For all those born beneath an angry star Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall

like tears from a star

like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

how fragile we are

how fragile we are

How fragile we are

Gordon Sumner

-- 1987

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The Last Day Before

Los Angeles

January 21, 2016

They stood huddled around Riley as he held Laura’s body, sobbing, his grief pouring outof him. Pike had his arm around Shelley; Michael held Rachel, who wept quietly herself. Akilah

cried on the other side of Rachel, tears flowing down her face. Oz stood next to Willow, his head

down. Slightly behind him Moira stood; Liz stayed near the smaller wolf. Cordelia frowned,

saddened by the scene, for the outpouring of emotion over this girl she hadn’t really known. Thefriendly vampires had done as Buffy had suggested; Billy, Irnini, and Beletseri had blended in

with the King’s forces as they had retreated to find shelter from the daylight. Only Buffy sat

apart from them, her back turned to the group. Xander sat near her but said nothing.

The wolves had scattered, on Oz’s orders. There was nothing more they could do at themoment, and the sun would be fully up soon. So they had headed back toward the hotels and

motels, back toward wherever they were staying, so that they could get to some clothes, turnthemselves human again, and blend in with the rest of the world.

Riley wept silently, cradling the young woman in his arms. I loved you, you know. I

really did. More coherent thoughts could not invade his grief; he simply couldn’t believe she

was gone, just like that, so quickly. The rest of them watched, helpless to do anything other thanspectate.

“Buffy,” Xander murmured.

She looked up at him, eyes red.

“It’s not your fault, Buff. She knew the risks. She bought into the plan. You’d be thedistraction and she’d lower the boom. It sounded good on paper.”

Buffy rasped, “Tell that to her.”

Xander reached forward and took her hand. “How many times have you been the onewith your ass on the line, huh? He could have killed you instead of her, you know. You were out

there too. You were a slayer. You would have fit the bill.”

Buffy shook her head. “He couldn’t kill me, and he knew it.” She closed her eyes,

shaking her head. “I should have made her stay in the water.” Xander inched closer to her on the sand. “I know it looks bad now, but we’ll get him

back. You’ll get him back. You’ll figure out something and--”

“Xander, he’s invulnerable,” she interrupted him. “I can’t get him back. I can’t kill him. I

can’t even hurt him.” She slumped even further. “We’re done for. It’s finished.”

Xander shook his head. “There has to be something, some spell, some weapon... I don’t

know, maybe some trick you can play that --”

She shook her head. “You don’t get it. Good fought evil and evil won. That’s it. Gameover. We all go home and kiss our asses good- bye.”

He held her to try and comfort her; Buffy failed to return the gesture.

Willow knelt down next to Riley, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. He looked over ather, his face contorted by pain.

“We have to go,” Willow told him in a soft voice. “The sun will be up soon and we’ll be

discovered, and the police will be here. And they’ll ask a lot of questions we’re not ready to

answer.”




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He nodded and returned his gaze to Laura, who lay still in his arms.

Willow followed his gaze down to the pretty young woman, who looked peaceful in

death. She sighed; she didn’t know Laura well, but the girl had seemed like she really caredabout being a slayer and had tried to do it well. Like Buffy a long time ago. Willow began to turn

to Oz when her eyes caught the soul cage, still clutched tightly in the dead slayer’s hand. She

noted with surprise that the previous Japanese character had vanished, only to be replaced by theword Laura.

“Oz,” she murmured, bending down, “take Moira and go look for Jordi. I’ll meet you

back at the house. I have some research to do.” Oz nodded his furry head, and the two werewolves took off.

* Burbank

“Where?” Akilah asked.

“I told you, bleedin’ Sunnydale,” Billy hissed. “The big guy packed up the whole gangand headed south.” He paused. “I shoulda known. The one time we’re not at ground zero and

some blighter makes plans to open up the Hellmouth.”

“You’re sure?” Akilah pressed.

“Look, luv, I know Sunnydale. Been here a long time. I recognize the crypts. I recognize

the sewer systems. But most of all, I recognized the bleedin’ sign that says, ‘Welcome toSunnydale’ on it.” He went silent for a moment, and then added. “Look, it’s daytime, right? Just

tell the slayer to get down here. They’re gonna do somethin’ tonight, I’m not sure what, but it’s

not gonna be good news for our side, I can tell you that.”

“We’ll be there,” Akilah promised. “Where are you?”

“No place you wanna be,” Billy responded, glancing around the huge underground

cavern at the dozens of slumbering vampires. “I’ll meet you at Rachel’s at sundown if I can.” “We’ll see you then,” Akilah confirmed. “Thanks, Billy.”

He hung up, ending the call.

“Well?” Michael wondered as Akilah removed her eyephones. The woman regarded the

dejected group as they sat around Oz and Willow’s den in the early morning. Alone of the non -lycanthropes, only Riley and Liz were absent. She had gone home to see her husband and get

some rest.

“Your idea worked,” Akilah told Buffy. “Billy and the two women were able to sneak

themselves into the King’s army. And you’ll never guess where they went.”

“Sunnydale,” Buffy sighed.

Akilah raised an eyebrow.

Buffy shrugged. “It’s always Sunnydale. It’s always the Hellmouth. That’s just the way itis.” She pursed her lips. “Well, I died there once...”

Willow spoke up, “It’s probable the King is going to try and open the Hellmouth and

usher in a new age of demons on Earth.” She looked around. “We have to try and stop him

somehow.”

“With the First helping him, is the King really gonna have any trouble opening the

Hellmouth?” Pike inquired.




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Cordelia frowned. “I don’t get it. Who’s this First guy?” She looked at Willow. “Was he

the guy who knocked down your magic shield thingy last night?”

Willow nodded. “The First is a really powerful ... well, he’s not a demon, really. He’s thisincredibly ancient and powerful being. Nobody really knows his entire origin, but supposedly he

was the first force of evil to walk the earth.”

Xander frowned. “What, you mean like...” He shook his head. “Like this guy was like...the prime evil? The first demon bad guy Satan thingamabob?”

“That’s him,” Buffy concurred. “Like the King wasn’t enough by himself.”

“When he is written about -- and it’s not often,” Shelley interjected, “it basically says thathe existed before time, before space, as we know it. That at the start of everything, there was the

creative principle of the universe, and opposing it, there was the First.”

“So, worse than the devil,” Rachel offered.

“A lot worse,” Willow agreed. “Satan -- if he exists -- is merely a fallen angel.” She ran a

hand through her hair. “Well, okay, merely isn’t a good word, because angels are supposed to bereally powerful and he was supposed to be the baddest of them all. But he’d be nothing

compared to this guy. The First was around when the universe was created, he’s been there all

along, opposing the powers that be, trying to plunge everything into darkness.” “So, he’s pretty powerful,” Cordelia said.

“He’s rumored to be vastly powerful,” Pike replied. “He supposedly can see into the

future, he can bring people back from the dead, travel to other dimensions...” Pike scratched hischin. “I wonder what the hell he’s doing here. No offense, but for a guy who’s been around for

billions of years, our little war here must seem like small potatoes.”

“Maybe not,” Buffy corrected him. “This isn’t the first time he’s tried to kill me.”

Willow snapped her fingers. “When we were seniors in high school!” she remembered.

“He brought--” She stopped, looking at Xander. “He hatched a plot to kill you but it didn’t

work.”

“High school?” Cordelia wondered. “Man, this guy holds a hell of a grudge.”

“Not really,” Shelley pointed out. “Fifteen, twenty years is a blink of an eye to this guy.

Less. It probably feels like about two seconds later to him.”

“All that power and he wants to take out Buffy,” Rachel mentioned. “Why?”

“He must be afraid of you,” Xander told her.

Buffy scoffed. “He’s a zillion years old. Why would he be scared of me?” She shook her

head. “Especially now that he has the King to do his bidding. The invulnerable King.”

“If you believe what the King says,” Pike offered.

“The King, and prophecy,” Shelley argued with him.

Pike furrowed his brow. “The books all said the Judge was invulnerable, and Buffy killed

him.” He stood up. “There’s a way around it. There has to be. We just have to find it, and wehave to find it fast. Because tonight, we’re goin’ to Sunnydale, and we’re gonna finish this guy

off for good.”

“We?” Buffy echoed.

Pike held up his hands. “Or we can sit here and do nothing and let the world end. But I prefer not.”

“But this First guy--” Xander began.

Pike gazed at Willow. “That’ll be your job, Willow. You and whoever else he lps you do

the research. Find out how we can contain this guy, stick him back in the bottle, whatever.”

“Will do,” Willow assured her.




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* Los Angeles

“Hop in,” Alicia told Oz and Moira. “There’s a lot of bodies out there, but we’ll findyour cousin.” She tugged on her hat and settled into the front seat of the car, starting up thecruiser.

“Thanks again,” Oz spoke, sitting down on the passenger’s side. “We really appreciate

this.”

Alicia shrugged as she backed the car out of its space. “You’re the prime alpha, man. It’d

be my duty to help you anyway, even if it wasn’t the right thing to do. But it is.”

Moira wrapped herself in her long wool coat in the back seat; she didn’t care for the steel

grille that separated her from the front seat. “Why am I in the back?” she inquired.

“You can sit in the front if you want,” Oz offered. “I just thought you’d want the space

and privacy so you could concentrate on helping me find them.”

“Oh,” Moira replied in a small voice. “Never mind.” Moira was closer to Oz than shewas to any other wolf; she didn’t care all that much for the company of other lycanthropes,certainly not the way others seemed to thrive on it. She glanced around the predominantly empty

streets of downtown L.A., most of them bearing scars of the destruction that had occurred the

previous night.

“Man,” Alicia commented as she turned the corner, “I seen riots weren’t as bad as this.”She gestured up ahead with a gloved hand. “Look at that. They took the traffic light down, clean.

And all that fire? Man...” She sighed. “We gonna be cleanin’ this one up for weeks.”

“Sorry,” Oz muttered. “If I had taken them on at the beach like my original plan, then youwould have been spared all this.” Like I was in Boston, when I left the night of the battle. I never

had to see the carnage afterwards.

“I didn’t mean to sound like I was blamin’ you,” Alicia amended. “If we’d’a stopped ‘emlast night, then all this mess, all this death, it’d be worth it.” She regarded Oz through tintedeyephones. “You didn’t twist nobody’s arm to do what they did last night. We all volunteered.

We knew the risks.” She shrugged. “Just my bad luck I gotta be one of the ones on clean -up

duty.”They drove down the street slowly, passing through a police roadblock; Alicia flashed her

badge, and the other policemen let her pass through, ignoring the civilians in her cruiser. She

glanced at the assembled patrolmen and detectives as they rumbled off. “They’d never let you do

this on your own today. There’s some feebies there.”

“Feebies?” Moira wondered.

“FBI,” Alicia clarified. “Looks like they stoppin’ everybody. You’d been stuck there

forever tryin’ to explain what you wanted at a crime scene.” “Did they say what they thought happened last night?” Oz asked her.

Alicia tilted her head. “They’re not sure. Some of ‘em think it’s the same militia that tore

up Denver last week.”

“If they only knew how right they were,” Oz commented.

Alicia nodded in agreement. “Some of ‘em think the Yakuza are mixin’ it up with the

Russian mafia. But none of ‘em can explain the naked dead bodies all over the city. That one’s




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drivin’ ‘em nuts. They’re thinkin’ maybe it’s some sorta weird cult or somethin’.” She made eye

contact with Oz. “But they don’t tell me much, I’m just a beat cop.” They drove on in silence for a while, each of them using their wolf senses to sniff out the

city. A few times Alicia slowed, but a quick negative gesture from Oz or Moira would keep her

moving.

“Damn big city,” Moira commented. “Makes Dublin seem quaint.” “You’re from the old country?” Alicia inquired.

Moira nodded. “Yup. Seems really old after bein’ over here a few years.”

“I know what you mean,” Alicia concurred. “I grew up in --”

“Take a right up ahead,” Oz instructed her. Alicia went quiet and did as he asked. Sheslowed the car, glancing at Oz, and he nodded his confirmation. Alicia found a spot by a hydrant

and parked the car; the three of them got out.

“That’s far enough,” a tall man with government issue eyephones barked.

Alicia flashed her badge. “It’s okay, Agent--”

He ignored her attempt to get him to introduce himself. “Listen, Officer --” he peered at

her badge, “Benson. This is a federal crime scene now, and unless you clear out right now, I’m

gonna have to--” Alicia drew herself up; though not an especially tall woman, she had broad shoulders and

wide hips, and standing next to Oz and Moira made her look taller than her five feet six inches.

“Listen, mister, before you go all Fed-crazy on me, I think you ought to keep in mind I’mescorting an agent of the Home Defense Agency, and an member of Interpol.”

The big Fed frowned. “Interpol?”

Alicia nodded. “That’s right. So you’d better let us through before--”

“Let me see some i.d.,” the man challenged them.

“Love to oblige you,” Oz answered him. “But I lost mine in the fighting last night.”

The man turned even more serious. “You were here last night?”

Oz gestured vaguely with one hand. “Not right here, but around the city, yeah.” Heleaned closer. “Who do you think was out here trying to stop these lunatics?”

The Fed scowled at Oz. “The HDA?”

“Home defense,” Oz agreed. “What, you don’t think fighting cultists in L.A. falls under

home defense?”

“Cultists,” the man repeated.

Moira bobbed forward, putting on her thickest brogue. “If ye let us in, we’ll be mair than

happy to tell ye what’s goin’ on.”

The Fed gazed at them skeptically. “If the HDA is in on this, then why don’t you control

the scene?”

Oz jutted his chin at the massacre beyond them. “We lost a lot of agents last night. Wedon’t have the manpower to cover the whole city. Why do you think you’re here?” Oz leaned

closer. “You guys were there in Denver too, and in Boston last year, right? Same group is

responsible.”

The tall agent furrowed his brow. “How do you know?”“I was at both places,” Oz informed him. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a couple of

agents here I’m looking for.”

The agent led them inside the blockade and turned to all three. “You know way too muchabout this. I’m gonna have to ask you for some sort of identification befor e I let you go any

further, because you all know way more than anyone is supposed to and --”




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“We know who did this,” Oz explained. “We know what his goals are and we know

where he’s headed next. He’s got a thousand followers or so and he’s very dangerous.” Oz

sighed. “Look, I don’t have time to haggle with you. I know I’m asking you to take a lot on faith,maybe more than you can handle. But I have to check on something here, and then I have to go

try and stop this guy.” He spread his arms wide. “I know you don’t know me from Adam and

you have no reason to trust me. But if you detain me, and these two women, then we’ll never beable to get word to our friends and this guy will just go on killing and killing. And I don’t think

you want that.”

The agent weighed what Oz said for a long moment, and then he nodded. “Go ahead,” he

allowed. “I trust you. I don’t know why, but I do. Go ahead, check on what you need to check.But stay close to the officer here, okay?”

Oz grinned. “Thanks,” he told the agent. “Thanks a lot.” The three of them made their way down the street, shaking their heads at the destruction.

Dead humans lay side by side with dead werewolves, the clothed and the naked mixed in with

soot and dust and dirt and blood. Every car on the street had been set aflame or destroyed, and

nearly every window on every building had been broken out. Glass and metal shards lay

everywhere, and Oz saw members of several agencies huddled around various sites on the street,investigating bodies, gingerly holding crude weapons up, and sifting through small piles of dust.

Moira clutched him on the wrist, and Oz turned to follow her gesture. The sight caughthim off guard. Amy lay sprawled on the ground, blood everywhere around her, a wound to her

head making her difficult to identify, but Oz recognized her scent, even in death. He had been

unprepared to see her body there, nude, twisted among the debris.

“She’s been shot,” Alicia noted.

Oz closed his eyes for a moment, and he heard Moira gasp. He didn’t want to look, didn’t

want to see, but he had to. He opened his eyes and looked past Moira to where Jordi lay on the

ground, huddled over, one arm thrown away from his torso, as if he reached out for something.Oz gazed at how they had defiled his body in death, how they had bit into him again and again,

and he closed his eyes once more. You started this all, Jordi. You bit me while we were playing a

long time ago, and now I’m the king of the werewolves and you’re dead on some street in L.A.,

and it’s not what either of us wanted from our lives.

“Let’s go,” Oz whispered.

“We canna leave him here,” Moira hissed.

“We can’t take him, either,” Oz noted. “Now come on, let’s go, before somebody

changes their mind and we get stuck here.”

Moira stepped in front of him. “Oz!”

He shook his head. “We go. Now. There’ll be time to give him a proper burial later.”Moira scowled at him.

“We’re gonna go get the son of a bitch that did this,” he assured her.

* Burbank

How many times have I seen you like this, sleeping, your body quiet, barely moving?

Riley wiped away a tear as he stared down at Laura’s body, perfectly still in the morningsunlight. He knew he should probably be thinking about where to bury her, what kind of




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arrangements, tombstone, and so on. He’d never dealt with this before; it was never his worry

when a slayer died in the field. Wesley and Sam had taken care of the last few, and as he gazed

at Laura’s features, he wondered how in the hell they had been able to do it. Riley hadn’t knowna slayer since Buffy; but Wesley and Sam had known them all, had seen the young, nervous

faces, had chosen who would train them and had sent them off to die, to fight some hopeless

battle that the Council never won, could never hope to win.Who are we kidding? he asked himself as he traced the line of her cold lips with a

twitching finger. Buffy’s right. This guy is gonna kill the rest of us tonight when we try to stop

him, and it will all be over. All of it.

“That’s okay,” he murmured, removing his hand from Laura’s face. “I don’t care anymore. You’re gone. There’s nothing left to lose. Nothing left they can take from me. Without

you, I might as well be dead.” He chuckled, a painful gesture, and took her hand. You asked me

to love you. You begged me to love you, said it was the only thing you wanted in your whole life.

You asked me, the one person who couldn’t bear to watch you die, to be there for you. “Man,”he breathed, “you got so much more than you asked for.” He raised the cool hand to his lips and

kissed it, wishing that life would flicker in her and that she would stroke his cheek, look up at

him, part those wondrous eyes and smile. But the twin puncture wounds on her neck arguedotherwise, ugly holes where her life had escaped her, and no amount of wishing or hoping on his

part would reverse that.

“Funny thing is, Laura, I did love you. I do love you. I didn’t ever think I would. I didn’tthink it was in me. I pretty much figured I’d just live my life alone, you know?” He set her hand

down gently at her side, straightening the sleeve so that it fell to the same length as her other one.

He wiped away another tear. “Now I wish I had.”

He clasped his hands together. “It could be worse, you know,” he told her. “At least

you’re dead now. They can’t do anything else to you. As bad as it was for me to watch you--” He

stopped, beginning to cry again. “As bad as it was for me, you know...” He broke off and begansobbing, holding himself, unable to contain his pain any further, his loss, letting it pour out of

him. After a few minutes he regained control of himself, blotting his tears on his sleeve, and he

continued, “At least you won’t have to watch me die. You’ll be spared that pain. You know?” He

tried to smile but couldn’t. He brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead.He hung his head down and sighed, trying not to cry any more. God, I miss you. I can’t

believe you can even miss somebody as much as I miss you right now. He looked up at her. God

willing, we’ll be together again soon, maybe even tonight.

“I know what you’d say,” he whispered. “You’d say I shouldn’t do anything foolishtonight, that I should do my best, that I should try to keep on going.” He shook his head.

“There’s no reason to. Not without you. It just doesn’t make sense.” He took her hand again. “I’ll

fight, all right, and I’ll kill vampires. But once they get the Hellmouth open and the demons startcoming through...” He shook his head and leaned forward, kissing her on the forehead gently.

“Well, then you can meet up with me once Saint Peter lets me in.” He replaced her hand and

stood up, no longer able to sit with her, be near her, the pain of proximity threatening tooverwhelm him.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” he sighed. Willow stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Her eyes widened slightly as she

saw the anguish on his face.

“You cared for her a great deal, didn’t you?” Willow inquired.




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Riley nodded yes.

Willow met his eyes. “You loved her.” He merely nodded again.

“You trained her well,” Willow mentioned, moving next to him. She took one of his huge

hands and pressed the soul cage into it.

“What’s this?” he wondered, looking at it. “It’s a soul cage,” she explained. “Look at the name on the outside.”

Riley flinched as he read Laura’s name. “What does this mean?”

Willow gestured to the pendant. “That’s her soul inside there.”

He looked up sharply. “What?”

Willow nodded. “She knew how to use that thing. I’m glad she paid attention and did her

research.”

Riley frowned. “What does this mean?”

Willow raised an eyebrow. “How much do you know about Billy?”

*Sunnydale

“Look, we have to,” Billy argued. “Doesn’t matter if we want to or not, we’re it. You saw

what happened to them last night. They lost a bloody slayer. They’re in no shape to fight.”

“You’re crazy,” Beletseri hissed, glancing about. The three of them had adjourned to a

deeper tunnel, silent, away from the other vampires. Initially Irnini and Beletseri had been

skeptical of Billy’s vast knowledge of the Sunnydale sewer system, but when he had explainedhis many years of first trying to kill and then working alongside Buffy Summers, they had

relented. And so they sat here in a danker-than-usual hole and plotted out their next course of

action. Or inaction, Billy groused to himself.

“I’m not crazy,” Billy argued. “Look, there’s no such thing as invulnerable, right? Nothin’s unkillable. Summers knows that. She’ll be back tonight, I can guarantee that. But therest of ‘em, they’ll be all sad and pissed off, in no shape to fight his nibs. That’s where we come

in.”

“He can’t be killed,” Beletseri pointed out. “Your precious little slayer tried last night andit didn’t work. And even she backed away, in the end.” She shook her head. “Look, the King’s

not happy with us and he’s probably gonna kill us.” She glanced at Irnini. “Maybe. If he’s not

too preoccupied with being a god, or whatever he is.” She returned her gaze to Billy. “I say all

three of us take our chances in the new world he’s gonna create tonight. We might do okay.”

Billy scowled at her. “Are you daft? The King’ll kill all three of us. You two because

you’re bleedin’ deserters, and me because I had the balls to help the slayer in the first place.” He

pointed at the smaller blonde. “The only hope for you lot is to kill him now, while his mind’s onother things, like openin’ up the Hellmouth. Once he’s runnin’ the place, he’ll have all the timein the world to indulge his little vendettas. And you two won’t be able to hide from him then.”

He sighed. “Neither will I.” Beletseri began to protest, but Irnini cut her off. “What do you propose?”

“You two know him,” Billy spoke. “Better than I do, anyway. Even the best fighter’s got

a weak point or two. Even Summers does. I figure you lot come up with his weak spot, and we’ll




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find some way to, I dunno, do him in or something. Weaken him, wound him, whatever we can

do so that Summers can beat him tonight.”

“You don’t sound optimistic about our chances,” Irnini noted.

Billy shrugged. “If he was easy to kill, somebody woulda done it by now, I s’pose.”

“He’s impossible to kill,” Irnini told him. “Impossible. I fought for him for over five

hundred years. No one can kill him, Billy. He’s too old and too fast and too smart. Even when hewasn’t invulnerable, he was damned tough to kill. Now? Forget it.”

“Look, I’ve been invulnerable too, okay? It wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Irnini leaned forward. “What do you mean, used to be?” Beletseri frowned her confusionas well.

“You ever heard of this ring, it was called the Gem of Amara?”

Both of them nodded.

“Well, I found it. Traced it to Sunnydale and dug it up. Found it, tested it -- it was the real

deal all right. Put it on and walked on out into the sunlight, carefree as you please. It was right

nice casting a shadow during the day for once.” He sighed. “And the first thing I did, bein’

invulnerable and all, I went to kill that nasty little slayer that had been causin’ me and Dru so

much trouble.” Beletseri furrowed her brow. “Obviously you didn’t succeed.”

Billy nodded. “Obviously. Funny thing about bein’ invulnerable; you get careless. I just

walked right up to Summers and started beatin’ on her, right in broad daylight. I figured theshock of seein’ me in the sunshine would be so much that she’d be dazed and wouldn’t be able to

fight back all that well. And she was -- for about two seconds. And then she tossed me around

like a rag doll and took the bloody ring right off my bloody hand.” Billy considered them. “Ever been outside during a sunny day? It sucks.”

“We got caught out in the sun once,” Irnini admitted, remembering. “Took us about two

months to heal fully.”

Billy pointed at them in agreement. “See? Bein’ invulnerable makes you cocky, makesyou careless, because you know nothin’ can stop you. But that’s the bloody key, right?” He

hunched forward. “The whole ‘I can’t be stopped’ vibe will make him sloppy, and we’ll hit him

when he’s not expecting it. Catch him off guard.”

“He’s never off guard,” Beletseri argued. “Ever.”

Irnini nodded. “She’s right, Billy. He’s not.” She sat back, leaning against the sewer wall.

“Maybe in fifty years he might be cocky enough to make a mistake. Maybe. But on his first day

of being an unstoppable god? Not a chance.”

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Billy shot back.

“Not this guy,” Beletseri informed him. “Billy, he’s thousands of years old. He got that

way by not making mistakes.” She ran a hand along Irnini’s arm. “Have you seen him make anyyet?”

Billy shook his head. “Everybody has a weakness. Every bloody one. Me, I had Dru.

Angelus had Buffy.” He jutted his chin at them. “You two have each other. It’s not always a

person, but everyone, everywhere, has somethin’ they care about, somethin’ their heart’sattached to, some way in that you can hurt ‘em.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Trust me, I know from

experience.”

“He lost his consort last night,” Irnini told Billy. “That might have potentially been aweakness, but she’s out of the picture now.”

“Okay, so not a girl, but something else,” Billy prodded.




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Irnini thought a moment, then shook her head. “Nope. Nothing. He doesn’t care about

anything other than himself. All the time I fought at his side, all he wanted was to be immortal,

to go on living forever.”

Billy snapped his fingers. “That’s it, then. He’s afraid to die.”

“Not any more, he’s not,” Beletseri pointed out. “Being invulnerable kind of removes

your fear of dying.” “Sod it,” Billy swore. “There has to be something we can do, some way we can help.”

Beletseri crossed her legs. “Why are you so fired up to help the slayer? Besides the whole

soul thing you’ve got going on?”

Billy glanced at the small blonde. “She was willing to take me in when no one elsewould. Vampires didn’t want to have anything to do with me -- I had a soul. Humans couldn’t

stand me. I was all alone in the world, no one I could count on or turn to. So I went to Buffy, I

figured if anyone would understand about bein’ alone, it’d be her.” He raised an eyebrow. “Atfirst she tried to kill me, but when I proved to her I had a soul, she let me stay with her for a

while.”

Irnini furrowed her brow. “How did you prove you had a soul?”

“I asked her what I could do to make her believe me. She told me to kill myself. And Iwas just about to, when she saw that I was really gonna go through with it.” Billy looked at them.

“You two have each other. You don’t know what it’s like to go through this world alone.” He

sighed. “I’d rather be dust.”

*The sun blazed down, white and pure, on a mild winter’s day, blanketing everything

around him in its hellishly bright glare. It had been ages, eons, since he had seen light like this;

so much time had passed he could no longer be sure it could actually be understood in human

terms. He couldn’t really remember sunlight; he knew that once he had been able to walk aroundin it, that he had watched the great disc in the sky rise and fall every day; but it had never been

this bright, this sharp. Or this warm.

People around him wore heavy winter coats, but had left them open with theunseasonable heat. The King smiled to himself; it was nice for them, that this day would be so

pleasant, so beckoning, when it would be the last day they would ever know when the world was

like it was now, calm, serene, run by humans. All that would change tonight when he split openthe Hellmouth and called the demons to earth - once their home, and soon to be his kingdom.

The First had assured him that when he opened the Hellmouth, the demons of Hell would all

come forth to do his bidding. “They are beholden to me, and I am beholden to you, for without

you I cannot get the Hellmouth open.” The First had neglected to say exactly what would happen

to him if the King couldn’t pry open the Hellmouth, but his silence on the matter led the King to

believe it would be nothing good. And he has helped me; he made me in the beginning. Without

him I would have shrivelled and died countless ages ago, when Egypt was still the greatest

empire on earth. I owe him this, and I’m happy to do it for him. The King looked around at

businessmen and students as they passed him by, on their way to meetings, lunch, or whatever

appointments they had. He watched two attractive young women stroll past, their attentioncompletely consumed by their conversation. How unaware they are. How utterly unaware they

are who strolls among them. He chuckled to himself. How all that will change.




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He was aware that some people stared at him. After all, he was physically imposing; he

stood over seven feet tall, and his long hair hung loose, as he had worn it those thousands of years ago in Erech. He marveled at how good the sun felt on his skin, on his face, and he laughed

as he looked up at the great blue dome of the sky. I hadn’t realized I missed this, he mused. I

shall have to take a walk every day, when the sun is out, to remind me that the world I am about

to rule is not all darkness and death, but that there is great beauty here as well. Kasinda would have liked to walk out here beside me, he mused, even though she never could have.

He paused a moment to look at the way the sunlight played off the cascading water of a

fountain, awed by it. Kasinda would have loved all of this. She always appreciated beauty far

more than I did. He closed his eyes for a moment, surprised by the green after-images of

everything he had seen. She died for me. She died protecting me from that young slayer’s a ttack.

I shall not forget that. I’ll never forget you, Kasinda. Never. Reluctantly, the King tore his eyes from the spectacle of the fountain and looked at his

watch. There were still a few hours of sunlight left, and for a moment he considered continuing

his stroll around this city that would be the first to feel the wrath and revenge of the demons as

they made their way onto earth. I should remember it too, before it is transformed into our dark

kingdom. But tempting as the walk was, he knew he had to get back underground and attend tocertain matters involving tonight’s ritual. The First would walk him through most of it; the King

had never been a magician, and he was too old to learn much in the way of magic now. But hehad a few other details to attend to, so he moved away from the fountain and headed for the

concealed sewer entrance he had emerged from an hour earlier. Back behind the brick building,

in the shade, he found the entrance to the underground, and he easily slid aside the weighty metalgrate and dropped in.

The sewers felt dank and close after being out under the open sky, and it took him a long

moment to adjust to being inside; it took his eyes a longer moment to contract and get used to the

dimness of the sewers after the glorious sunshine above. When they had caught up, however, heheaded down the sewer, back to the main staging area for his vampire army.

The length and breadth of the Sunnydale sewer system amazed him. It was as if someone

had designed it for the very purpose of allowing huge numbers of vampires to move about

unencumbered and unmolested. He found it incredibly convenient at the moment; he needed tohouse well over a thousand vampires, and even those numbers had not crowded the sewer system

significantly. They shall always have to hide during the day, the King ruminated as he passed by

sentries, nodding a greeting. I doubt there is anything I can do about that. He thought again of the slayer that yet lived, how powerful she had been. Her punches

and kicks had hurt; she had been able to withstand his forceful blows. She was probably the

strongest of her kind ever. For all the good it will do her. He knew she would show up tonight to

try and thwart him. She didn’t really have a choice; her world would end tonight, and unless he

missed his mark with this slayer, she wouldn’t just stand on the sidelines and let him take over

the world. She would fight him, and she would die, and the world would lose its champion. Then

the demons would come, and the humans would lose so much more.These thoughts filled his head as he entered the huge main chamber, the largest open area

in the Sunnydale underground. Once a vampire king had been buried here in an earthquake; now,

vampires hung from every crevice, perched on every rock; they called out his name as he movedamong them, cheering him on and hailing him for leading them to their destiny.

Casca approached him. “How’s the surface treatin’ ya?” he inquired. “Get a good tan?”




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The King smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the sun.” He regarded Casca.

“How about you?”

“I try to keep sunbathing to a minimum,” he answered. “Bad for the complexion and all.”

The King nodded, a grin on his face. “Walk with me, Casca. There’s something I need to

discuss with you about tonight.”

Casca nodded. “Sure thing, boss. What’s the scoop?” The King waited until they had traveled apart from the other vampires before he

answered, “Actually, I wanted to talk about your role in what will happen tonight.”

Casca looked up at the huge vampire as he sto pped near a manhole cover. “Yeah? What

about it?” You got somethin’ special planned?”

“I do,” the King admitted. “But not for you.” He gripped Casca by his thick woolen

sweater and pulled him up the ladder toward the manhole cover.

“What are you doin’?” Casca wondered, the edge of fear in his voice.

The King threw the manhole cover open and climbed out, dragging Casca, kicking and

screaming, with him. The vampire howled, showing his hunting face, and burst into flames.

“Why?” he screamed.

“You killed Kasinda,” the King told him simply. “You shouldn’t have done that. I caredabout her.”

Casca opened his mouth to respond when he blew apart into ashes.The King watched his sooty remains float to the ground, and then he hopped back in the

sewer and closed it above him.

*

“I always hoped I’d never come back here,” Cordelia said, staring out the window at the

downtown strip of her home town. It hadn’t changed much.

“You didn’t have to come,” Rachel supplied from the driver’s seat. “You could havestayed in L.A., all safe and sound.”

“And bored,” Cordelia added. “No, I figure if it’s the end of the world as we know it, Ioughtta be there.” She shrugged. “Why, I’m not sure.”

“I wonder how Billy’s doin’,” Akilah mentioned.

“Spike?” Cordelia inquired. “He’s a survivor. You watch, he’ll be the only one whocomes out of this alive.”

Michael turned around to gaze at Cordelia. “Are you always this optimistic?”

“Hey,” she shot back, “listen, little Xander -wannabe. I was fighting vampires back when

you were just--“ She stopped. “Well, for a lot longer than you’ve been, anyway. And I’m not a

pessimist. But I’m realistic. You guys gave it your best shot last night, and evil slam dunked you.

You lost a slayer, you lost the two watchers who knew more than any of you, and now, youwon’t even have any werewolves with you tonight.” She folded her arms. “I think you’re being just a little naïve if you say things are looking up for those with a pulse right about now.”

Akilah scowled at Cordelia. “Why the hell are you here, anyway?”

She shrugged. “Like I said, where else am I gonna go?”

Akilah looked at her dubiously, and Cordelia continued, “Okay, so I’m not really into thewhole vampire hunting thing like you guys are. You know that. But I’d feel really stupid if you

guys lost tonight and the whole world became this big yucko demon party and I didn’t do just a




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little to try an stop that.” She regarded the young black woman. “I’m no hero, but even I can see

that if we don’t stop these guys tonight, the whole world’s gonna suck.”

“You got that right,” Michael agreed. He turned to Rachel. “You wanna park out front?I’ll get the stuff.”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll pull into the driveway. It’s okay. We can all load the van.”

“You guys have weapons?” Cordelia asked. “Cool . I was way killer with a super-soaker back when.”

“It won’t stop the King,” Akilah pointed out.

“Yeah, that was so my plan,” Cordelia responded as the van eased to a stop. The four of

them climbed out; Michael and Akilah went into Rachel’s house, but Rachel herself intercepted

Cordelia before she could follow. Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “What’s your deal?”

Rachel folded her arms. “I’m happy to have every hand I can get helping us out there

tonight. Buffy’s in for a big fight, and anything anyone can do to help even up those odds, I’m all

for. So thanks.”

Cordelia nodded.

“But,” Rachel continued, “this is it, okay? This is the big time. Things don’t get any more

serious than this. If you’re here just for kicks or whatever, now’s a good time to back out and gohome. Most of us probably aren’t gonna survive tonight, so if you think that you --“

“Listen, missy,” Cordelia replied, “just because I let you in my bridal party a bunch of years ago as a favor to Angel does not mean that you have the right to talk to me any way you

feel like. I’m not one of your little flunkies who runs around and does whatever you tell them to

do.” She set her hands on her hips. “Unlike the two of them, I’m not in love with anybody, and I

don’t have the great big Buffy jones that you seem to be carrying. I’m here because I choose to be here, not for any other reason.”

Rachel nodded, her brown eyes going hard. “And why exactly did you choose to be here,

Cordelia? It’s not like you’ve been big in the fightin’ evil business ever since you got married.”

“I told you,” Cordelia repeated, “my life is pretty dull. I can use the excitement.”

Rachel shook her head. “Not good enough. Not with the stakes this high.” She slid her

hair behind one ear. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Cordelia gave her a sharp glance, and then softened. “Okay, okay. We don’t have time

for games. It’s simple, Rachel. This world may be crappy and yeah, maybe I married the wrongguy and I got a bum deal in the romance and excitement department. But you know what, I’ve

been in that other world, the one where all of you are dead and the whole place is run byvampires, and I gotta tell you, that place sucks big time. Huge time. I may not have it perfect

here, but it’s a whole lot better than I would have it liv ing under some freak vampire king. No

sunshine, no bright colors, good- bye Rodeo Drive, and you can forget weekends in Cancun.” She

exhaled. “So if there’s something I can do to help stop the vampires from screwing up the world,you bet your ass I’m gonna do it.” She arched an eyebrow. “That good enough for you?”

Rachel nodded, a grin on her face. “Yup. Come on in.”

Cordelia shook her head. You know, I really didn’t miss any of you that much.

*

“This isn’t bad, for a crypt,” Willow noted as Oz, Moira, and Riley set Laura’s bodydown. They had wrapped her carefully in a sheet and Willow had bound it with both a sturdy




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twine and bonds of a more magical nature. Liz followed them inside, and Pike and Shelley

brought up the rear; Pike gently closed the door to the place.

“This is where that vampire lives?” Liz wondered.

Pike nodded. “Billy. Yup, that’d be it.”

The crypt had been swept clean and decorated only sparsely. A flatscreen lay propped up

against one wall, a spider-web connecting it to the side of the crypt. An off-white tarp had beentossed over a mostly broken couch, and a low coffee table sat in front of it. A large aluminum

cooler sat in the corner, but no one really wanted to know what a vampire kept in the fridge, so

they avoided that for the moment. Billy’s flattop sat on the table, looking small on the scarredwooden top. An overstuffed end chair -- again, covered by a tarp -- sat listing slightly at the end

of the table, and a small porcelain doll sat upon it. They all took note of the odd decoration but

refrained from mentioning it. Oz and Riley set the body down gently on the couch.Willow set down a soft leather bowling bag next to the table, and Liz moved next to her,

sliding her backpack off her shoulder and setting it next to Willow’s bag.

Riley turned to Willow expectantly. “Now what?”

Willow held back a sigh. Riley had sat with taut impatience on the whole trip, hope

battling with fear inside him. He’d never much cared for magic and while he had to study andunderstand it as a Watcher’s Council member, in general he preferred to avoid it if he could. But

if Willow could somehow use it to restore Laura to life, he was willing to believe in it fervently.

“Now, we wait,” Willow told him. “Liz has to sweep the crypt clean of any lingering presences.

Depending on how well-behaved Billy has been, that might go quickly, or that may take a

while.” She turned to Oz. “Why don’t you and Moira go join up with Rachel and her group? This

is gonna be long and boring for everyone who’s not directly involved, and maybe you can help

them out.”

Oz nodded. He leaned close to Willow and kissed her. “Be careful,” he whispered.

“Never anything but,” she returned, kissing him back. “I’ll be there soon.” He nodded, and he and Moira turned to leave. Oz paused for a moment as put a hand on

Riley’s shoulder, silently wishing the tall man luck; then the wolves departed.

“What about us?” Pike inquired. “What do you need us for?”

Willow regarded them. “I really don’t need anyone here but Liz. But I figure there’s no

way I could get rid of Riley in any case.” She flashed him a quick smile. “I could use you guys to play lookout once it starts getting dark, if we’re not done. And until then, I think we should look

at all of that Japanese stuff one more time.” She frowned. “I have this terrible feeling I’m

missing something with all of that, some piece of the puzzle that I should be getting.”

Pike and Shelley nodded and sat down on the end chair, both of them almost fitting on it;

they placed the doll on the floor. Pike withdrew the items from his satchel and Shelley flippedopen her flattop; the two of them got to work.

“So how does this work again?” Riley asked Willow, with an obvious effort to stay calm.

“Her soul is in the soul cage,” Willow reminded him. “Her body didn’t die when the King

killed her, but when her soul left it. That seems like a really trivial difference to most people, but

a lot of pretty powerful magic is based on trivial differences, so we’re in good company.” Shefavored Riley with a slight smile that he failed to return. “Anyway, since we know where her

soul is, and we have her body specially anointed with the ‘fire of heaven’ water, she’s especially

pure now, like a newborn.”

“So you put her soul back into her body, right?” Riley interrupted.




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Willow furrowed her brow. “It’s not that simple. If she was a vampire, sure, we just read

the spell and stick her soul back in. It’s a powerful spell but not that hard.” She shook her head.

“But Laura’s dead, not undead. That’s a whole different ballgame. If she was a vampire I could

just replace her soul with the Romany curse. Though that has some really nasty side effects.” She

met Riley’s eyes. “But being dead, I have to revive her body first. That’s a trickier spell, and it’s

gonna take some time. Once I’ve pumped some life back into her body, then we have to put her soul back in there. That can be tricky too; souls don’t generally want to return to their bodies,

and if we force the issue, we could do some damage.”

Riley began to speak, but Willow shushed him. “Now, Laura hasn’t been dead that long,

and her soul is safe in that little pendant. If she had gone to heaven, or whatever, we’d have amuch tougher time with all of this. The fact that she knew enough to send her soul into the cage

means that she probably didn’t want to leave her body.” Willow folded her arms. “I think she’ll

want to get back in her body, and that’ll help us a lot.”

Riley glanced at the well-wrapped body on the couch.

“And, we’ll need you,” Willow told him in a low voice. “We’ll need you here.”

“Of course,” Riley breathed. “Anything.”

“You’re gonna be her anchor,” Willow told him. “She might need some help along theway. You’re gonna be the one that gives it to her. I don’t think she’ll come back to life for me, or

for Liz, or any reason we can give her. But I bet she would for you.”

“I thought you said she wanted to get back in her body.”

“I said probably,” Willow corrected him. “And even being willing, that’s a help but that’s

no guarantee. All the books I’ve read say that being dead is a really confusing experience, and

the longer you stay that way, the worse it messes you up.” She shrugged. “From a living point of view, anyway.”

Liz glanced up from her reading. “You think she’ll be okay?”

Willow nodded. “Like I said, she hasn’t been dead all that long. And she’s in the cage,

which means likely she doesn’t have a lot to distract her, so she’ll be focused.” Willow gesturedto Riley. “That’s the reason I had him carry the pendant, though; she knows she’s close to him

somehow, and that should keep her thoughts focused on him.”

“Sounds like you thought all this through,” Riley noted.

Willow shook her head. “Well, most of it comes from Briareus’ Atlantean book, all thisreviving bodies and all that.” She looked at Liz. “I wonder if he got it from the Egyptians.”

“Yeah,” Liz agreed. “They never learned to leave the dead well enough alone.” Riley and Willow scowled at her.

“Oops,” she muttered.

*Buffy led Xander up the stairs, one hand in his; he followed her, as he always had,

wondering exactly where she was taking him and what she would show him. He hadn’t reallywanted to come back to the old mansion, but if she was going to move out, Buffy had argued,

she had to pack her things and throw out anything she wouldn’t be taking with her. The

downstairs area remained sparse; she obviously didn’t own enough items to furnish the large

house. Xander wondered what the upstairs of this place looked like, and Buffy turned to face himas they reached the top of the stairs.

“I didn’t clean up,” she admitted. “I didn’t know anyone would ever be coming to visit.”




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Xander kissed her on the forehead. “I lived with you, remember? I know you’re not Suzy

Homemaker. I don’t care. You saw my place and you didn’t run screaming.” Buffy allowed him a shy grin. “I didn’t run, anyway.”

He kissed her again. “Come on. Whatever you have in there, I’m sure it won’t be a

problem.”

She held him briefly and led him down a long marble hallway. Rooms stood open andempty on either side of them. Most held no furniture, but here and there a bed lay, or a sofa.

They obviously hadn’t been used in years; the windows had caked over with dust, so the sunlight

filtered in diffuse and grey. Only the room at the top of the hall seemed bright; Buffy led himstraight toward it.

Her bedroom was cavernous, easily the size of his entire apartment. The marble was a

slightly lighter color in here, and the sunlight played upon it -- through mostly clean windows --brilliantly, highlighting the veins of crimson and gold that shot through the cream colored slate.

Buffy slept in a monstrous four-poster bed; Xander was reasonably certain he and Buffy could

crawl under the sheets and not find each other for a week. She must have deciphered what he

was thinking, because she looked away shyly and released his hand. “This is it,” she spoke.

Along one slightly curving wall stood five clothes racks, like the ones used for wardrobein the theater. Buffy’s attire filled three of them, the other two remaining empty. A pile of shoes

and boots lay nearby. A collection of weights sat stacked in one corner, some of them

impressively large. He glanced at Buffy and she shrugged. “I work out in here sometimes.”

“I don’t think we’ll find anyplace that’ll fit that bed,” he told her.

“I’m not taking the bed,” she replied. “Just the clothes -- well, most of the clothes -- and

the shoes. And the weights, and some of that stuff over there.” She gestured to a long, low shelf near the bed, mostly obscured from Xander’s view by the bed and the long velvet draperies that

hung from the rear corners by the headboard. He moved around to that side of the bed and sat

gently in front of the shelves, taking in the contents that lay scattered among them. He spotted aSunnydale High School yearbook, from their graduating year; a few novels that she had bothered

to keep, alongside several old leather bound books with no titles that he assumed were watcher

diaries. Giles’, maybe? The rest of the bottom shelf held some more books, a few bottles of holy

water, some stakes, and an abandoned attempt at a needlepoint picture of a small house on agrassy hill.

The next shelf up held more books. Buffy didn’t seem to be an avid reader, and most of

them had that ancient ‘monster -tome’ look to them. He guessed she had gotten her hands on afew particularly useful research books. He also saw a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, which

he had given her on her twenty-second birthday.

The top shelf contained objects of slightly more interest. The cross that Angel had givenher when she had first moved to Sunnydale; a gnarled and slightly curved but very sharp stake; a

pair of glasses that looked an awful lot like the pair Giles used to wear; a small head shot of

Joyce; a faded photograph of the old Sunnydale High gang in their crimson graduation robes; an

ornate green bottle, half full of some clear liquid; a dagger, small, inlaid with gold and rubies;

and a photograph of Giles, cleaning his glasses, unaware that he was the subject of the camera’sattention. Next to Giles a fuzzy stuffed pig and a grey teddy bear propped each other up.

Closest to the head of the bed on the shelf lay a clock and two photographs. One wasAngel, a small photo; like Giles he had no idea someone had taken his picture. He looked, as

usual, intense and brooding. Xander could tell the snapshot had been taken at the Bronze. The

other was a picture of he and Buffy. He hadn’t remembered this photo even having been taken,




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but she looked radiant in a lilac silk dress, her hair pulled back and up gracefully. He wore a dark

tuxedo with a mulberry vest and a smile that looked like he’d just been chosen to be king of theworld. That’s because I had.

He picked up the photo. “This was from Willow’s wedding?” he asked.

Buffy stared at him intently. “Yes.”

“I didn’t know they had any of just us together,” he muttered, setting it back down. She came over to him. “Willow gave it to me after --“ she hung her head. “You know,

after we--“

He put a hand on her arm. “I know. It’s okay.”

She looked up at him. “That was a really terrific day.”

He nodded. “Wasn’t half as good as the other day, when I found out you were still alive.”

She sighed, leaning against him. “For all the good it’s done you.”

He turned to face her. “You’re not dead yet, you know. So you couldn’t beat this guy the

first time. You’ll get him tonight.”

Buffy met his eyes. “He’s invulnerable, Xander. I can’t hurt him.”

He embraced her, kissing her. “He can’t hurt you, either. I saw him last night. He was

scared of you.” “Before he killed Laura, yeah, maybe, but --“

Xander shook his head. “ After he killed Laura. He’s still afraid of you. If he’s not, he’s an

idiot.” He touched her on the chin. “You can beat him, Buffy. You can beat him, and you cansave the world. I know you can.”

Buffy blinked at him. “How can you know that?”

“Because I believe in you,” he answered honestly. “I love you. I know what you can dowhen you want to. You can do anything. Anything.”

“I couldn’t keep you away once you found me,” she protested in a small voice.

“You didn’t want to,” he pointed out. He kissed her. “You wanted me here.”

She pressed her face to his neck. “I did,” she whispered. “I really did.”

He lifted her face and kissed her again. “Just like you want me here now,” he breathed.

She kissed him, hungrily, her fingers sliding up his arms and across his shoulders. They

stayed connected for a long moment, and then they separated. “We don’t have time for this,” shespoke.

Xander held her hands in his. “We don’t have the time for anything but this, Buff.” He

pulled her to him, kissing her again. “You’ve been playing dead for so long, there’s a part of you

that’s forgotten how to be alive.”

She shook her head. “We only have a few hours until the sun sets. We can’t--”

Xander silenced her with a kiss, resting his hands on her shoulders as they parted. “Hear

me out on this, okay?”

She nodded.

“Either I’m right and you’re gonna beat this guy, in which case there’s nothing that says

we can’t celebrate early. Or you’re right, we’re all gonna die, the world’s gonna plunge into

darkness and evil, and we both only have a few hours to live.” He met her eyes. “Now, I don’tlike that scenario a whole lot, and I’m bettin’ you don’t either, but if you really believe it, can

you honestly tell me there’s any better way to spend your last couple of hours on earth than

making love?” His voice dropped, going softer and husky with need. “It’s been a long time, Buff.I love you and you love me. I know you said you wanted this to be special, but what could be

more special than this?”




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She kissed him fiercely, pushing him backward onto the bed. Buffy stripped off her

sleeveless shirt and settled atop him. “You always had a way with words with me,” she smiled,kissing him again.

He shook his head. “This time we’re gonna talk with our bodies,” he assured her.

Buffy reached down to open his shirt and tore off all the buttons, almost casually. “We’re

not gonna talk, Xand,” she breathed, kissing his chest. “We’re gonna sing.” He wrapped his arms around her tightly, his body exulting in her touch, her caress, her

kisses; his heart beat in his chest so fast he thought it would explode. He reached up past her

neck and undid her ponytail, spilling her long golden mane around her head, her shoulders, allaround him like a curtain.

Buffy smiled at the old joke between them, his fascination with her hair, and chuckled.

“You’ve been itchin’ to get my hair out of that ponytail since you first saw me, haven’t you?” Xander kissed her deeply, one hand around her slim waist and the other indeed running

through her hair. “Yeah,” he admitted. “In fact, we could just sit here and you could let me just play with your hair. We don’t even have to make love, if you don’t want.”

Buffy met his eyes. “Oh, I want,” she spoke, kissing him once more.

*“Happy birthday,” Xander mumbled, kissing Buffy on the shoulder.

“It’s not my birthday,” she corrected him. “Not yet. Not for another...” she peered at the

clock. “Almost eight hours.” She kissed him again, and Xander returned the gesture. Buffyblinked, and glanced over at the clock again. She saw something unfamiliar next to it on the

shelf, and picked the item up, examining it. “What’s this?” she asked Xander. She lay atop him, both of them naked, still in bed. She

held up the Eye of Agrimatto. “The cross I get, but this thing -- “ Realization dawned in her eyes.

“This is how you found me, this thingie. This lights up when you tell it to look for me.”

Xander nodded. “Faith gave it to me, when she died. That and the cross.”

Buffy peered at the amulet. “It’s ugly.”

“I don’t wear it because it’s pretty.”

She kissed him lightly. “Why do you wear it?”

“In case I ever need to find a slayer,” he replied.

Buffy arched an eyebrow. “You need a slayer besides me?”

“I don’t need anyone besides you,” he assured her. “And you know that.”

She rested her head on her chest. “It’s still nice to hear.” She closed her eyes and issued a

small groan of contentment. “Angel told me in my dream I had to give up everybody and

everything to beat the King. He said I couldn’t do it if I was worried about anyone, that my heart

had to be free of any distractions so I could focus.” She sighed. “But right now, I can’t think

about anything but you.” She propped her head up on her chin, her face close to his. “You make

me feel alive, Xand. You make me feel ... I dunno, human again. Complete. I don’t want to be

free of you. Ever.”

“Maybe he just meant you need not to worry about me when you’re fighting, that you

need to stay focused on the King.” Xander stroked her hair. “No duh on that one.” Buffy frowned. “It was more than that. He kept going on about five and seven, too, like I

told you. Something about five and seven not being two, but being one.” She shrugged. “I still

don’t get it.”




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Xander craned his head forward to kiss her. “You should have told the big brains about

it.”

“Oh no,” Buffy told him. “I’m not gonna let Willow and Pike and all of them analyze mydreams.” She met his eyes. “Bad enough I told you.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want

everybody poking around in my head, telling me what to think.”

He ran a hand down her back, caressing her smooth skin, running his fingers along thecurve of her spine. “Nobody can tell you what to think, Buff. Nobody ever could. It was one of

the things that made me go all gaga over you.”

She lay her head down on his chest again, grinning to herself as she listened to him

breathe, as she gently rose and fell as his body moved. “I was never as happy as I was with you,”she murmured. “I mean, I loved Angel, I really loved him. But you, you were diffe rent than that.

Better. You loved me so well I was able to forget all about him.” She kissed his chest. “I always

felt like you were my gift, my reward, for being a good slayer.” She ran a hand down his arm.

“You know, be selfless, do your duty, give it your all, suffer, sacrifice, all of that, and here,

here’s this guy who’s crazy about you, just sort of a big ‘thank you’ from the powers that be.”

She clasped his hand. “You still make me feel that way.”

“I always thought I was the luckiest guy in the world, that you loved me.” He kissed thecrown of her head. “That was your gift, Buff. You made me feel like I could take on the world.

You made me feel alive. Whole.” He stroked her long hair. “You made life worth living.” He

paused, and then continued, “It’s like I was dead without you.”

“Same here,” she muttered, kissing his chest again.

“That’s why I know you’re gonna go out there and kick this guy’s ass tonight,” he toldher.

Buffy frowned at the mention of the King. “Why’s that?”

“‘Cause that’s what you do. You save people’s lives. You keep them safe. Hell, Buff, it’s

like you give people life.” He shrugged, knowing how silly that sounded. “You certainly give me

life.”

You give people life, she repeated in her head.

She sat up suddenly, smiling, look ing down at him through her long hair. “Xander, you’re

a genius.”

He raised both eyebrows. “Nobody’s ever accused me of that before. Not with anyaccuracy.”

She bent down and kissed him on the lips. “Let’s go. Let’s get dressed. We have places to

be.”

He raised himself up on his elbows, staring up at her, when suddenly it hit him. “You

have a plan,” he realized.

She smiled wide, her hazel eyes sparkling. “Yup.”

*“It sounds risky,” Pike allowed.

“Of course it’s risky,” Buffy agreed. “But it’s our onl y shot. Or our best shot, anyway.

Look, we tried it the old fashioned way, the ‘stand there and kick butt’ way, and we got our asses

handed to us. That’s not gonna work. We have to try something new.”

“But he is invulnerable,” Willow argued. “You said so yourself. What may work on other

vampires might not work on him.”




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Buffy turned to her. “Will, if we don’t try this, all we have is me fighting some guy I

can’t hurt. That makes about as much sense as hoping we’ll all sprout wings and fly away.”

“It won’t kill him,” Shelley mentioned. “At least not if the spell worked the way Waylanddescribed it working.” She glanced at Pike. “He’s impervious to harm.”

“I can still cut him,” Buffy replied. “Even after he killed Laura last night, the sword still

bit into him. His flesh can be cut. It just doesn’t hurt him or slow him down.” “We could always use a rocket launcher,” Xander offered. “That worked against the

Judge.”

“Where are we gonna get a rocket launcher on short notice?” Willow wondered. “And we

don’t even know if that would work on him.” She looked at Buffy again. “I’m sorry, but I agreewith Pike. This all sounds really risky.”

“That’s fine,” Buffy allowed. She folded her arms. “Anybody has a better plan, I’m

game. I’ll listen.”

She looked at each on them in turn, but none of them had anything to say.

“That’s what I thought,” Buffy spoke. “Will, Pike, listen, it’s a good plan and you know

it. It leaves you guys here to help Liz with that…” She trailed off. “Well, with whatever you’re

doing with Laura. You all know Riley couldn’t concentrate on this anyway, and Liz might needyour help.” She looked at Shelley. “You, I’ll need. Assuming you’re still aces with that bow.”

Shelley smiled. “Gotcha covered.”

“Good,” Buffy said. “So, me, Shelley, and Xander head over to Rachel’s place, pick upthe troops and supplies, and then we head over to the Hellmouth, take up positions. Will, you,

Pike, Liz, and Riley --“

“I’m coming with you,” Willow stated.

“Will,” Buffy began, but her friend cut her off.

“Liz can cast the spell. She’s been researching it and she knows her stuff. Pike and Riley

can help her, and they’re more than enough protection for her in case the vamps come here.” She

turned to Pike. “Which they won’t, because I warded the place. But I’m just saying.” She turned back to Buffy. “The First is out there, Buffy. Even if you beat the King, you still have to deal

with the First. And that’s probably gonna need magic, and when you need magic…”

“Will’s your girl,” Buffy finished. “Fine, you’re in. But you stay on the sidelines with

everybody else.” She looked at them. “This is only gonna work if you’re all out of the way, at adistance, where I don’t have to worry about hurting you, or protecting you. If you can agree to

that, then we’re good.”

“We’re good,” Xander answered her. Shelley and Willow nodded.

Buffy moved over to where Riley sat, in the other corner of the crypt, his eyes closed,

asleep. She gently shook him awake, and he came to at once. “Buffy,” he croaked, his voicehoarse from sleep.

“It’s time to go,” she disclosed. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

He stood up, stretching. “Let me get my stuff, and I’ll come with you. I--“

“You’ll be staying here,” Buffy told him. “With Laura. Where you’re needed and where

you want to be.” When he tried to argue, Buffy spoke over him, “I know your heart’s in the rightplace, Riley. And I appreciate that you want to help me. But if I take you into battle with me,

you’ll just get hurt, and I don’t want that. Enough people have gotten hurt -- and died -- on my

watch. No one else.”

“What about you?” Riley challenged her.




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Buffy shrugged. “If I can’t stop the King, no one else can. And if I die, the rest of you

will too.” She gave him a bitter smile. “At least that way I won’t have to see it.” Riley digested that. “So what are you gonna try on this guy?”

She jerked a thumb at Pike. “Pike can fill you in. He’s staying with you and Liz and

Laura. I’m taking the rest with me so they can help at a distance.”

“Even Xander?” Riley asked her in a quiet voice. “Try and keep him away from me,” Buffy responded in just as low a tone. “He’s the only

exception I’m making here.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Besides, Willow tells me

you’ll be needed here to be Laura’s anchor for the spell, or something like that.” Buffy frowned

slightly. “I don’t really get magic, but I know better than to argue with Will on spell stuff.”

Riley put a hand on her shoulder. “Well, be careful.”

Buffy grinned. “If I’m careful, none of us will live to see the sun rise.” She patted h im on

the chest. “No, I’ll be reckless.” She winked up at him.

To her surprise, Riley engulfed her in those huge arms of his. “Win, Buffy,” hewhispered. “Don’t let this bastard take us.”

“I won’t,” she promised him.

*Buffy hadn’t counted on an argument when she arrived at Rachel’s, and she kept looking

at Xander, who kept looking out the window, watching the progress of the rapidly setting sun.

“No,” Buffy maintained. “Rachel, you’ll just be in harm’s way. Oz and Moira, they’rewerewolves, they can handle themselves. Shelley’s good with the bow, and Xander’s got asuper-soaker. And Willow’s the big magic. But you guys --”

“We’ve been hunting vampires all the years you hid away,” Michael told her. “No

offense, Buffy, but we can handle ourselves. We know what we’re doing.”

“This is our city,” Akilah pointed out. “We ain’t gonna lose her without a fight.”

“I’m fine with going to the crypt,” Cordelia volunteered.

The other three Sunnydale fighters stared at her.

“Listen to yourselves!” Cordelia growled at them. “I wanna fight, I wanna be the hero,

waah waah waah. You sound like babies. Buffy’s the one who’s supposed to save the world, notyou guys. She’s the big chosen chick. So swallow your pride a little and let her do her thing, and

come out from under cover when she’s done.”

“It’s not that simple,” Rachel spat.

“It is that simple,” Cordelia argued back. “Look, Rachel, I know you have serious Buffy

issues. Everybody knows that. But let go of all that for a moment and think about this. This is it,the big fight, the one that will decide whether or not humanity will even have a place on earth,

and --” she looked at Buffy, “you don’t want us there why?”

“Too many people to protect,” Buffy reminded her.

“Screw that!” Cordelia told her. “If this really is the last showdown, we have a right to be

there, all of us. Who want to go, I mean. Not that I don’t trust you, Buffy, because I do, but if people wanna be there at the last big fight, they should have the right to be.”

“She just changed sides,” Willow noted softly.

“In mid-sentence,” Xander added. “God, she was a handful.”

Willow nodded. “You were lucky to end up with Buffy.”

“Slayers are a piece of cake compared to Cordelia,” he agreed.




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“I heard that!” Cordelia snapped at him.

Buffy stared up at the brunette. “Fine. We don’t have time for a brawl. You wanna comewith me, come with me. But you stay on the sidelines with the others and you keep your head

down. You follow orders and you get the hell out of there if this doesn’t work, okay?”

Michael, Rachel, and Akilah nodded.

“Can I still go to the crypt?” Cordelia wondered. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Iknow I’m not crazy enough to want to take on a vampire army.” She glanced at them. “Twice,

anyway.”

“What happened to wanting to be involved in saving humanity?” Rachel asked her.

Cordelia pointed at Buffy. “Hello? Miss big slayer over here says it’s not safe. Now, Imay not listen to a lot of people, but I know better than to argue with Buffy. If she says it’s not

safe, it’s not safe.”

“We didn’t get into vampire hunting to be safe,” Michael told them. “We did it because

it’s the right thing to do.”

“Guys?” Willow piped up. “Can we finish this discussion in the car? We’re already

cutting it close as it is.”

Everyone nodded, gathering up their materials and weapons and sliding into coats and jackets. As they moved to leave, Rachel pulled Buffy aside. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

Buffy gave her a long look. Xander paused at the door and Buffy told him, “Go ahead.

I’ll be right there.” She returned her attention to Rachel.

“Okay, listen,” Rachel spoke softly. “Do you think you really have a chance to beat this

guy?”

“Yes,” Buffy spoke.

“You’re sure?” Rachel followed up.

“Yes,” Buffy assured her.

Rachel nodded, clearly wanting to say something more, but she stayed quiet.

“You won’t lose me again,” Buffy promised. “I’m gonna beat this guy, Rachel.”

Rachel nodded, her big eyes drinking in Buffy’s face.

Buffy flashed her a slight smile. “This Michael guy seems like he really digs you,” she

offered.

“He’s good for me,” Rachel admitted. “He might not be the person I really want, but he’sgood for me.”

“I used to want somebody I couldn’t have,” Buffy reminded Rachel. “And losing him cutout my heart, and made me throw away the guy I could have, the guy I should have had all

along.” She shook her head. “Some dreams aren’t meant to be.”

Rachel stepped forward and kissed Buffy, clumsily, awkwardly, needily. Buffy didn’t

return the kiss, but she didn’t push Rachel away. After a space Rachel pulled back, her face

flushed a deep red.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I just -- if you died tonight, I just wanted to know what it

felt like, you know...” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

Buffy reached over and lifted Rachel’s head by her chin. “Don’t be sorry for loving me,”she spoke. “Just do me a favor and give this Michael a chance. He really loves you, you know.”

Rachel nodded, still blushing. “I know.”

Buffy put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “That’s all it comes down to, Rachel. Findingsomeone who loves us well, without limit.” She sighed. “Without that, there’s no point in being

here.”




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“Is that why you hid away for so many years?” Rachel asked her.

Buffy shook her head. “It wasn’t because of you, Rachel. I just ... gave up.” She crinkledher nose as if smelling something foul. “That won’t happen again.”

Rachel hugged her briefly and let her go. “Come on, Buffy. You have a world to save.”

Buffy smiled, and the two of them walked out into the evening.

*“I can’t believe nobody else wanted to go to the crypt,” Cordelia griped as she checked

her super-soaker.

“Look at it this way, Cordy -- you get to be there when the fate of the world is decided.”

Xander finished filling his own soaker and glanced up at her. “Only a handful of people will b e

able to say that.”

“I’d rather be in the crypt,” Cordelia groused.

“You could have gone alone,” Xander offered.

Cordelia shot her a look. “Wander around alone in Sunnydale on a night like this? In a

graveyard where I don’t know where I’m headed? I don’t think so.” “Cordelia, they’re just doing magic in there,” Willow assured the brunette. “Nothing

you’d find exciting.”

“I don’t need this much excitement,” Cordelia snapped back. She ceased fussing with her gun. “This is ready, by the way,” she announced.

Xander and Willow grinned.

Oz and Moira stood below them, on the ground. He patted the old blue van. “I can’t believe you guys are still using this thing,” he spoke to Rachel.

“It runs great,” she responded, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “You really took care

of it when you had it.”

Oz smiled at the memories the old van brought back. “You must have sunk a lot of money into it.”

Rachel shrugged. “I know a guy who knows a guy.”

Michael volunteered, “I know a guy who fixes cars for us.” Rachel leaned over and kissed him. “And I know you.”

Oz grinned as the two of them kissed, and he turned to gaze out at the sun, just a sliver

above the horizon, painting everything in the area a brilliant orange -- trees, houses, everythingthat bordered the empty lot that held the Hellmouth. “Just about showtime,” he murmured.

“Think we’ll be okay?” Moira wondered.

“Stay inside the circle Willow drew, if you can,” Oz reminded her. “There’s gonna be alot of vampires here, way more than we can handle. We just have to keep them away from the

van.” He glanced up at the others. “The top part of the van, anyway.”

“But if there’s a sacred circle...?” Moira inquired.

Oz frowned. “Hey. Accidents happen.” Moira nodded in understanding.

Akilah settled near the f ront of the van’s roof, squatting down near Shelley. “You really

that good with a bow?”

Shelley nodded. “You’ll see.”

“I ain’t too bad myself,” Akilah told her, hefting her pistol crossbow. “I don’t use this too

much when I hunt, but I can hit a target pretty good.”




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Shelley admired the weapon. “That’s a nice gun.” She readied her compound bow.

“Doesn’t have much range, though.” Akilah was about to respond when she looked up at the field, at the line of sunset slowly

creeping along it away from them, and saw a huge figure step forward into the golden-red

sunshine.

“Head’s up,” she spoke loudly, attracting everyone’s attention. “He’s here.” Buffy emerged from the van. She wore a snug black sweater and her black leather jeans;

a thick belt circled her waist, with a long sheathed knife and a row of stakes hanging from it. The

Red Dragon glittered in her right hand, and the cross that Faith had given to Xander hung aroundher neck, shining against the dark sweater.

“The sun doesn’t hurt him,” Willow noted, frowning.

Buffy shrugged. “That’s just for show,” she sniped. “He’s trying to psyche me out.”

“I give him points for a cool entrance,” Oz allowed.

Buffy turned to him and shot him a fiendish grin. “Wanna see a cool entrance? Just youwait.” Then she began walking toward the King, alone. She followed the slowly retreating line of

the sun as it crawled along the field; she and the King, who advanced himself, met near the

Hellmouth.“Slayer,” he greeted her. “I knew you would come.”

“Like there’s any place else to be,” she replied.

He gestured to the Red Dragon. “You know that weapon cannot hurt me.”

Buffy flashed him a mirthless smile. “So you say. But it’s pretty, and I like it. And when

you sick your goons on me, it’ll cut through them like tissue paper.”

“I don’t need my ‘goons’,” the King told her. “I can handle you by myself.”

“You, without an army?” Buffy taunted him. “I didn’t know you could do anything

alone.”

He reached out for her, but she danced back out of his way.At that moment, the sun cleared the treetops at the far edge of the field, and vampires

began to issue forth from the alleys and yards behind the King, advancing on the Hellmouth.

“I thought you didn’t need your goons,” she threw at him.

“I don’t,” he agreed. “But they begged me for the favor of tearing you apart in front of

me, as a gift, to celebrate my ascendancy to invulnerability.” He smiled, displaying long fangs. “Icouldn’t have gotten here without them, so I didn’t think it fair to deny them their request.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes at him. “This is a waste of time. I’m gonna burn through them,

and you know it.”

“Powerful as you are, you are only human. You can make mistakes, you know.”

Buffy realized it in a flash. He’s afraid of me. He’s hoping they finish me off. Before shecould make good on that realization, however, a flood of vampires surged up around the King

and washed upon her like a wave of death.

*Buffy slashed out with the sword, spinning about, whirling back and forth; she had no

time to think, only to react. Her slayer reflexes and years of training kept her ahead of the massof vampires. They reached for her, scratching and clawing and wielding swords of their own; but

Buffy ducked under their attacks, slicing into them, turning them to dust. She called upon all of

her agility and even the acrobatics training of her youth to avoid the sharp steel that was thrust at




312

her, the slashing claws, the rough punches and kicks; all around her they came, snarling and

groping, all of them intent on killing her. But the slayer proved too fast, too strong, too focused;

the whole of the vampire army directed itself at her, but Buffy kept them all at arm’s length, theRed Dragon flicking back and forth, incinerating the vampires one at a time. They pressed

forward, the King urging them on; but Buffy kept a circle clear around her, the sword biting into

the ranks, and she danced back and forth gracefully, never tiring, always hitting her mark. For along while they attacked without quarter or pause; but none of them could inflict more than a

scratch on the slayer, while she in turn eventually had to give ground because she kicked up so

much dust from all the slain vampires. Her darting about began to rouse the soot of the fallen,and she fought her way backward several yards, cutting a swathe through the vampires until she

stood on a patch of ground that remained relatively clear of their dusty remains. Still they came

after her, and still she resisted them, one by one, the entire army of them.After what felt like hours, the onslaught stopped. She had no idea what time it was, only

that it had been dark for a long while. She hadn’t worn a watch, or anything that would distractor impede her movement at all. Buffy took a deep breath and wiped a bead of sweat from her

brow. Her limbs should have been leaden after all that exertion, but she felt a strength surge

through her like none she had known before. She tossed her head to the side to push some hairfrom her face and called out to the King, “That the best you can do?”

The King stepped forward. “You fight with skill,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen anything

like that.”

“Of course not,” Buffy replied. “They usually give up way before I get to kill so many.”

The King nodded. “My mistake. I should not have let such numbers throw themselves

away trying to kill you.” He bared his fangs. “That’s my job.”

Before he could move on Buffy, an arrow sank home in his chest, directly into his heart.

He frowned and removed the bolt. “A pointless display,” he noted.

“No, that was important,” Buffy spoke. “If she puts an eye out, you’ll be at a real

disadvantage.”

The King turned to his followers. “Attack her minions. Leave the slayer to me!”

“And me,” the First added, stepping forward from the ranks of the vampires. The lesser

undead howled with glee and ran past Buffy. She backpedaled vainly, attempting to remain infront of the mass of vampires, which despite her efforts remained large. She took out a few as

they tried to dart around her, but the bulk of the remaining vampire army, while noticeably

smaller than when she had started the long fight, was still too numerous for her to contain. Theystreamed past her, and she turned and favored her friends clustered around the van with a hopeful

glance. Fight them off ‘till I can get ther e.

“Incoming,” Cordelia noted as the army rushed across the field toward them.

“So,” Buffy addressed the First, “I was wondering when you would show. I take it you’rethe brains behind this outfit?”

The King lunged at her; she danced away from him, pointing the sword in his direction.

“My friend here is the brains,” the First disclosed. “And you are becoming tiresome.”He raised his hand to throw a spell at Buffy.

“Oh no you don’t!” Willow whispered, across the battlefield, and cast a ward around

Buffy hastily. Whatever the First had planned, it bounced off the ward harmlessly with a quick flash.

Buffy looked up at the King, scowling at her. “If you’re gonna cheat, I’m gonna cheat.”




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“I don’t need his help to kill you,” the King growled. He came after Buffy; she stood her

ground and chopped at him with the sword, cutting him but not slowing him down. Hebackhanded her; Buffy shifted her weight to absorb the blow and sliced him again, hitting his

thigh. Blood dripped from the wound.

“That reminds me,” she said, holding the sword up. “If he’s so incredibly powerful, why

does he need your help?” She poked the sword at the King again, forcing him back a step. “Howabout it, First? What’s the story with the invulnerable minion?”

“I am no one’s minion!” the King roared. He grabbed Buffy bodily and lifted her,

throwing her across the grass. She landed in a heap and rolled to a crouch; she lost possession of the sword when she hit the ground. She glanced around for it, but before she could find it, the

King pounced on her, grabbing her by the shoulder; Buffy backhanded him, sending him

staggering back, and she kicked him three times in the ribs. He landed a solid punch across her jaw, and she shook her head, dazed. Goddammit, he’s strong, she realized as he kicked at her.

She dodged backwards, avoiding the blow.

“You’re nothing without that sword,” the King remarked, moving toward her.

“Kill her!” the First called out behind him.

“I don’t need a sword to kill you,” Buffy told the King, drawing a stake in her left hand.“You’ll need a lot more than that,” he gloated, snatching her up by the neck with one

hand in a blindingly fast move. Buffy dropped the stake and tried to peel his fingers away withher left hand; with her right hand she unsnapped the strap holding the dagger in its sheath.

“That’s it, kill her!” the First exulted. “Kill her!”

The King began to close his hand, slowly crushing Buffy’s windpipe, when she drew thedagger and raised the blade. For just a moment the King wondered what the milky white

substance coating the blade could be; but that concern was blotted out by the unbearable fire in

his thigh as she plunged the knife there, stabbing him in the same place she had wounded him

earlier with the sword. He howled in pain and released her; Buffy fell to the ground, gasping for

air. It took her a moment to fully catch her breath, but it wasn’t long before she rose to her feet.

The King stared down at the pommel sticking out of his thigh in horror.

His hunting face vanished, human features coming to the fore.

“What have you done?” he asked her.

She folded her arms. “That’s Mohra blood on the blade. Mixing with your vampire blood.” She smiled. “Welcome to the human race, King.”

“No,” he rasped. “No! That can’t be!” The First stepped forward; Buffy shifted her stance to face him. “You want some too?”

“I will not be stopped by you,” he grunted. “Not when I’m so close.”

“Actually, I’m thinking if you really didn’t need anyone else, then why--” He raised a hand, and Buffy found she could not speak.

“Silence!” the First roared.

*Shelley nocked another arrow and fired, hitting her target, bursting him into dust. Akilah

followed her lead, snapping off a shot with her pistol crossbow, and was rewarded with a similarexplosion. Cordelia, Xander, Rachel, and Michael fired their super-soakers at the front line of the

vampires, who staggered back, screaming, before they burst into flames, and then dust. After

several more minutes of this treatment, the vampires backed off and kept their distance from the




315

“That’s better,” she spoke.

The King rose. “You made me a vampire before,” he pleaded with the First. “You can

restore me.”

“And I’ll stab you again,” Buffy supplied. “I have enough Mohra juice to keep doing this

all night. All week, even. Face it, King. You’re one of us now, whether you like it or not. You

may be invulnerable, but even you can’t cheat death any more. You’ll grow old and die like aregular human being.”

He turned a terrified f ace to the First. “No!”

The First nodded. “She speaks the truth,” he admitted. “When I made you a vampire, I

removed your soul and placed a demon inside you. That’s what made you a vampire. But youhave no soul now. You’re merely human.” The hooded head dipped. “Beyond my help.”

“You’re nothing,” Buffy shot at him. “You’re just a ghost who manipulates others. But

you don’t have any power yourself. You can’t even help your own people. You can’t even raise a

finger to help some guy who’s been on your side forever.”

The First glowered at her.

“What, am I wrong?” Buffy challenged him.

*Billy staked a vampire in the back, disintegrating him. “Sod off!” he snarled. “Get away

from my crypt!”

Irnini and Beletseri followed him, hacking into the small band of vampires who tried to

force their way into Billy’s mausoleum. They hadn’t expected to be attacked from the rear, andso the three good vampires made short work of their evil compatriots, dusting the half dozen of

them. Billy shrugged when they had finished and moved to open the door; to his surprise he

found himself barred from his own dwelling.

“Hey,” he muttered in surprise.

Pike opened the door, aiming a pistol-crossbow at him.

“Bloody hell,” Billy snapped. “Bein’ threatened from my own home. That’s a new one.”

“Sorry,” Pike mumbled, lowering the gun. “But you can forgive me for bein’ a little

jumpy about a vampire tryin’ to crash this crypt.”

“Gotcha,” Billy said. “Now, let me in.”

“It’s warded,” Pike supplied. “Willow didn’t want any of your unsouled buddies sneaking

in and disrupting Liz’s spell.”

“Bloody--“ Billy bit off his curse. “You blessed my house? My house?”

“Had to,” Pike responded. “Willow and Liz both said somethin’ about how this spellwould attract some attention on the magical astral plane or some nonsense like that, and

vampires’d be drawn to it. So we hadda throw up the magical barricades.”

Billy shook his head. “So when can you take ‘em down?”

Riley stepped up behind Pike. “Hey, Billy. Come on in.” Billy stared at Pike and walked past him into the crypt.

“I didn’t know it was that easy,” Pike apologized. He invited Irnini and Beletseri in as

well.

Billy stopped a few feet in from the doorway. “Did it work?” he asked, gesturing toLaura’s bound, prone form, still covered with the shroud.




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“Don’t know yet,” Riley’s voice was tight with anxiety. “Liz said everything went okay,

but…” Liz lay slumped in a corner, her arms crossed over her knees, her head resting there.

What little of her face that could be seen through her long dark hair looked exhausted. Billy

moved over and checked on her, and then moved back to the others.

Irnini gave Billy a long look. “You have some very interesting friends,” she managedafter a moment.

“I told you, stick with me and you’ll meet all sorts of unusual folk.”

Both of the female vampires grinned.

“Oh, yeah, Billy, almost forgot,” Pike piped up. “Cordelia’s lookin’ for you. Complainedabout you not answering your eyephones.”

Billy frowned at the watcher. “We were busy,” he snapped, slipping on his newly-

acquired pair of ‘phones and calling Cordelia. “Yeah?”

“Hold on,” Cordelia told him, and Akilah hopped on the line.

“You’re all right?” she asked. “We didn’t hear, we got worried.”

“I’m okay,” Billy reassured her. “Girls are too. We’re back at the crypt. Had a little

hunting party.” He paused. “How’s by you?” “Buffy pretty much whaled on the vampire army,” Akilah relayed, “and now she’s--“

“Hold on,” Billy interrupted, staring at Laura’s form. “Hey, soldier boy.” Riley glanced at Billy.

“She moved.”

Riley leapt across the room and knelt down beside Laura on the couch. He hovered overher, looking for a sign of life, when unmistakably her shoulder twitched, and her whole arm tried

to move.

Riley gasped in surprise and hope; he drew his pocket-knife and sliced open the cords

that bound her, carefully tearing the cords and the sheet only, and ripped a piece of fabric away,

revealing Laura’s arm. The limb twitched again, and she slid it out the hole Riley had torn in thesheet. Riley moved to the next set of hopes, fear and faith warring on his face, and cut them away

as well. Laura reached up and pulled the sheet from her face; her huge brown eyes blinked open,

unfocused. Riley shifted his body, moving his face close to hers. Laura coughed, then frownedup at him.

He stroked her cheek gently, unable to hold back his tears.

“Am I in Heaven?” she whispered. Riley found himself unable to speak; he shook his head no.

Laura cleared her throat and furrowed her brow. “So I’m in Hell?”

Riley smiled through his tears this time, still shaking his head, and he bent down and

kissed her. “You’re with me,” he croaked, kissing her again.

“I’m alive?” she whispered, eyebrows shooting up. “Y’all brought me back?”

“Liz did, yeah,” Riley murmured. “You put your soul in that thing, that cage, and --”

Laura sat up and hugged him, strong arms sliding around his shoulders. “I didn’t wanthim to turn invulnerable. I figured if I killed myself before he could kill me, he--”

“It didn’t work,” Billy informed her. “He got his wish. He’s invulnerable.”

Laura looked at Riley. “Buffy? Is she okay?”

“She’s fighting him right now,” Riley explained.

Laura sat up. “We have to go help her!”




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Riley clasped her hand. “She’s at the Hellmouth, Laura. They’re having it out right now.

By the time we got there--”

Laura swung her legs off the couch. “Riley, you trained me to be a slayer. Now I’m notgonna say what y’all did wasn’t a miracle, because it was, but if I am here, I’m gonna do my job.

And that means helpin’ Buffy.”

Billy shook his head. “Girl’s got stones, I’ll give her that.” Riley leaned forward and embraced Laura, holding her close. “Okay, we’ll go.”

*“You would do well to be quiet,” the First threatened Buffy.

“Or else what?” Buffy responded. “You’ll do nothing to me, like you did for him? So far

all I’ve seen is that you can push me around a little and shut me up.” She patted the flat of the

sword against her left hand. “That’s not gonna stop me.”

The First turned his head toward her. “All I have to do is open up the Hellmouth, and the

power of all the dimensions of Hell will be at my disposal.”

“So why haven’t you done it yet?” Buffy gestured to the King. “All he wanted was to beinvulnerable, and he went for it. Seems to me if I could get all the power of every Hell out there

by opening a doorway, that’s the first thing I’d do -- no pun intended.”

The First seemed to glare at her from the empty hood. “I cannot open the Hellmouth. Youare correct; my power is limited on this plane. I need someone else to open it for me.” He turned

to the King. “Without you, we cannot succeed. That is why I’ve helped you all along, You defeat

the One, and I open the Hellmouth when she is dead.”

Buffy shook her head. “That plan didn’t work out so well.”

“Master,” the King spoke, “I’ll open the Hellmouth if you promise to revert me to a

vampire.”

The First nodded. “Very well, Gilgamesh. It shall be as you desire. Open the Hellmouthfor me, and I will restore you.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t!” Buffy argued.

“I can with that much power at my disposal,” the First shot back.

The King moved over to the slight rise in the ground that was the Hellmouth. “What mustI do?” he asked the First.

Buffy leapt over to the King and ran him through with the sword. “I am not gonna let you

do this,” she snapped at him.

The First raised a ghostly white hand and threw Buffy a dozen yards distant. The King

plucked the sword from his stomach and gazed at his sire.

“I shall plant the words of the spell in your head,” the First instructed his follower. “Youmerely say them aloud, and the Hellmouth will open up.”

Buffy scrambled to her feet. “No!”

The First turned to consider her. “Yes. I have waited too long for this to be stopped byyou. Even as clever as you are, you cannot interfere with this.” To prove his point, he reachedout and pushed Buffy away again, dumping her on her backside in the grass. A moment later, the

King began to chant in a language Buffy did not recognize.She stood up again, but the First merely brushed her aside like a bothersome insect. Buffy

gritted her teeth and rose up again. I’ve got to stop this, she knew. She started running toward the

First, but he slapped her again with his projection of force, and she fell to the ground hard.




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Buffy stood again, but before the First could act, the ground began to tremble, as if an

earthquake were coming. No, Buffy thought, no! She darted up and raced toward the two of them; they were momentarily distracted by something. As she grew closer, she could see what;

the fissure of the Hellmouth had started to part. No! she screamed inside as she prepared to leap

at them.

A stabbing pain shot through her, more terrible than any injury she had ever known,worse than the heartbreak of losing Angel, Giles, and Xander all in the same day. It coursed

through her limbs and dropped her to the ground in agony. Buffy rolled to her side and groaned.

“No,” she whispered. She heard, distantly, a bell sounding, and then the jagged maw of the Hellmouth began to

spread itself open.

*“He’s opening the Hellmouth!” Willow cried out. “We have to do something, fast!”

“Will,” Xander pointed out, “minor problem. Army of vampires between here and there.”

“He fooled us,” Shelley growled. “He fooled us again!” Rachel joined them. “We have to do something, Willow’s right.”

“How are we going to get through that army?” Cordelia wondered.

“Buffy!” Xander cried out as he saw his love fall to the ground and curl up in a ball. Heheard a bell sound as he turned to them. “I don’t know about you guys, but I am not gonna sit

here and watch Buffy die. I’m goin’.” He hopped down off the van, landing between Oz andMoira.

“Xander, you can’t!” Willow cautioned him. “You’ll die.”

He looked up at her. “Without Buffy, I don’t want to live.” He met her eyes. “You

comin’?”

Willow paused a moment, then nodded. “Yes. But I don’t know what good we’ll be.”

Rachel slid down after Willow, and Shelley joined them. Michael and Akilah followed

suit. Only Cordelia stayed atop the van. They all looked at her.

“Oh, Jesus, okay,” she groused, easing herself down.

“Okay, gang, listen up, here’s the plan,” Xander spoke quickly. “In order to get throughan army of vampires, we’re gonna need --”

“A slayer,” Billy interrupted, coming up around the far side of the van. “Fortunately, I

just happen to have one.”

Laura, Riley, Pike and Liz stepped out from behind the van, followed by Beletseri and

Irnini. Shelley pushed past the group and hugged Pike; Rachel shook her head. “You did it!”

Willow moved to Liz, who looked exhausted. “Are you okay?”

Liz nodded. “I will be.”

Willow gave her a maternal hug. “I knew you could do it.”

Laura tugged her western-style hat down a little tighter on her head. “Mad dash through

an army of vampires? Sounds good to me.”

Xander approached her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but ... didn’t you just come back

from the dead?”

“Sort of,” Laura told him. “Which basically means I had a really long nap. Now let’s gosave Buffy.”

Akilah came up to Billy and hugged him. “You’re okay,” she greeted him.




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“Like I wouldn’t be,” he teased her as they parted.

“I was worried, that’s all.” She looked away, “A little, anyway.”

Billy grinned at her. “I bet you were.”

“I was,” she protested, and then she stepped away from him.

Xander checked the group visually. “Everyone ready?”

Nods of assent answered the question.“Let’s go!” he spoke as they darted past the protective barrier that Willow had set up, the

werewolves first, tearing into the vampires with super-soakers, stakes, and claws and teeth.

Beletseri and Irnini both drew swords and began to hack away at the vampire army as theydarted past. The mass of undead converged on them, trying to stop them, but the determined

band hacked and splashed their way forward, the vampires in their path turning to dust or

bursting into flame as they advanced. After a long space they made it through to the other side of the vampire force; nothing stood between them and the Hellmouth but a field of grass, and the

prone form of Buffy.

Liz screamed as the various grotesque heads of the Hellmouth monster began to sprout up

from the ground.

“That’s bad,” Cordelia commented. “It is never good when that thing shows up.” Xander ran to Buffy, who still lay curled up. “Buff!” he breathed as he turned her over.

“Buffy!” She looked up at him with pain in her eyes. “It hurts,” was all she was able to manage.

“Yeah,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “How can I help?”

She shook her head and let out a sob.

This is some birthday you’re having, he thought as he stroked her hair again.

Without warning, Buffy sat straight up. She turned to look at Xander. “I love you,” she

told him.

“I love you too,” he replied.

She kissed him and stood up. “I have to go now,” she said. “You stay here.”

He grabbed her hand. “You’re coming back, right?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Five by seven,” Buffy murmured. “I get it now.” She broke free of

his grip and advanced toward the Hellmouth, shoulders squared, marching toward the King andthe First and the horrible beast that bleated and writhed in the night.

Xander watched her go, trying to hold back his tears.

*The three of them turned to face her as she approached.

“You’re persistent,” the First admitted. “That sort of agony should have killed you.”

Buffy only nodded at his words; she looked at the Hellspawn’s multiple heads, and then

at the King. “You were right,” she said simply. “When the champion of light and the champion

of dark fight, there can’t be a draw. One side has to win.”

“And our side did,” the King gloated. “In moments I will be a vampire again, and --”

“No,” Buffy interrupted.

The King glared at her. “No?” he challenged her.

“No,” she repeated simply. She moved toward him. The First thrust a hand in her direction; nothing happened.




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“You killed the wrong slayer,” Buffy told the King. “You weren’t supposed to kill Laura.

You were supposed to kill me.” She inclined her head at the First. “I was the one he was afraid

of. The one you were afraid of.” She turned to the First. “Did you even know you had a timelimit on all this?”

The First stayed mute.

Buffy took a step toward him. “You brought Angel back from Hell once to try and killme. But because you did that, he’s tied to you in some minor way. And he warned me.” She

grinned slightly. “I didn’t get it until just now.” She looked up at the First. “Five by seven. That’s

me. I’m the one that five by seven makes. Me.” They stared at her uncomprehendingly; the Hellbeast whined as it tried to pull more of its

body into this world.

“It’s my birthday,” she explained. “I’m thirty-five. Five by seven.”

“So?” the First asked, raising his hand.

Buffy wagged a finger. “Not gonna work on me anymore,” she said. She turned back tothe King. “See, if you had killed me, you guys would be rampaging all over town right now. But

I’m the One. Not you, and not him, and not this butt-ugly thing behind me.” She folded her arms.

“All the slayers who ever lived, all of them, the whole point of it all was to get to the One. Me.” “That’s impossible,” the First spoke.

“What is she talking about?” the King questioned him.

“Oh, it’s possible,” Buffy corrected the First. And then she reared back and hit him.

His body folded in half; she hit him again, spinning him around, and she kicked him

repeatedly until he fell to the ground.

“What are you doing?” the King roared. He grabbed her by the shoulder, but Buffy

grabbed his hand and squeezed. He howled as his fingers broke, and he pulled his hand away.

“That’s impossible!”

“Not for me,” Buffy told him. “Nothing’s impossible for me now.” The King held his hand gingerly and stared at her.

“You had to kill seven slayers to get your super powers. I only had to turn thirty-five.”

The King backed away from her.

The First stood up and shifted toward Buffy; she caught his robe and threw him down

again. “You’re not good with the whole being solid thing, are you?”

The empty hood stared up at her. “Once I reclaim my full powers, your strength will

mean nothing.”

Buffy shook her head. “That’s not gonna happen.” She turned to the Hellbeast, whoseattention was focused on Shelley, as she shot arrows at it, and yelled, “Hey!”

The Hellbeast ignored her.

Buffy marched up to it and grabbed a smaller head. “Hey!”

The tentacles all bent toward her, and the heads swayed in her direction. She pressed her

hands into the beast’s flank, and it howled in pain and terror.

“Get back down there,” Buffy commanded the Hellbeast. The beast snapped several sets of jaws at her; Buffy slammed one of them with a vicious

right hook. Deformed teeth scattered all over as that head reared back with the force of her blow.

The Hellbeast cried out in anguish in its many voices, and Buffy pressed her hands into its body

again. “Go back down!” she hollered.

Reluctantly, with a last look at the First, the Hellbeast retreated back into its lair.

“Impossible!” the First stammered. “I--”




Buffy spun around quickly and grabbed him by the front of his robes. “I told you,” she

snarled, “nothing’s impossible for me now.” And she turned and threw him into the Hellmouth. The First screamed as he fell backward into Hell, his dark form receding from view.

The King stared at Buffy.

“You wanna go too?”

He turned and ran, long legs carrying him away from the slayer.Buffy watched him sprint for a moment, and then she bent down next to the Hellmouth

and placed her hands on the ground. “Close,” she commanded.

Nothing happened.

“I think you need another language,” Willow suggested from several feet away.

Buffy looked up; all of her friends stared at her, gathered around near Willow.

“Well?” Willow glanced into the Hellmouth and instantly regretted it as she saw armies of demons

warring with the Hellbeast.

“Try ‘vergashin.’ That’s ‘close’ in the demon language.”

Buffy nodded, placing her hands on the ground again. “Vergashin!” she called out.

The Hellmouth began to heal itself up.“Vergashin!” she repeated, raising her voice.

The breach closed, the ground repairing itself, until the line where the mouth of Hell hadopened could no longer be discerned.

“Vergashin!” Buffy screamed, and Willow blanched as she felt the power flow from

Buffy’s arms into the ground below her. Alone of them Willow realized what she was trying todo.

Buffy slumped down, sweat dripping from her forehead.

“Buff?” Xander wondered.

“Don’t touch her!” Willow warned him. Buffy drew in a long breath; she stared at the ground and said, “Vergashin,” one last

time. Then her body slumped to the dirt.

* * *

Buffy: Trick of the Dark Chapter 12

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Transcript of Buffy: Trick of the Dark Chapter 12