Angels and Demons

For the briefest moment as Buffy contemplated the trip down multiple flights of stairs and along what her brain insisted was nearly a mile of corridor to get to a bathroom, she almost wished that she was a vampire. Then, she remembered that the warmth of their conjugal bed came from her own body heat and that Spike's arms would be as cool as the night air if they didn't sleep so closely that their bodies might as well be one. Unwrapping the vampire's arm from around her waist as gently as she could and pulling regretfully away so that his dick slid free of the dampness between her thighs, she slipped from under the covers. She wrapped herself in an oversized red satin robe, a gift from Spike for these occasions, which covered her from collarbone to ankle and saved her from the necessity to retrieve nightwear that had been flung across the room or kicked off somewhere beneath the covers.

She turned to face the bed and savoured the sight of the sleeping vampire. His curls were wild and untamed. Thick dark lashes brushed against his pale, perfect skin in deceptively fragile contrast. The fullness of his lower lip made her ache to bend over and draw it into her mouth to taste its ripeness and the hollow of his cheek beneath the elegant arc of his cheekbone seemed to beg for the stroke of her hand.

There was a flicker of movement at the corner of her eye, just a glimpse of fabric-strained moonlight on the white of a clerical collar, but she didn't shift her attention from the precious vision in the bed. A southern accent spoke softly from her right side. "Pretty, ain't it?"

"He," Buffy corrected, her eyes still drinking in the visual banquet that her fears told her she might never get to see again. "And pretty doesn't come close. You're not Caleb."

"No," The First Evil admitted. "You killed him, right and proper. Terrible loss. This man was my good right arm." It seemed like the fall of its champion might actually cause the apparition a moment of regret, but it was swiftly over, shrugged off as easily as the chill of a night breeze. It continued with barely a pause, its tone brightening. "'Course it don’t pain me too much. Don’t need an arm. I’ve got an army."

Buffy gave a barely audible snort, still keeping her voice soft enough that Spike didn't even stir in his sleep. "An army of vampires. However will I fight—"

"Every day our numbers swell," the insubstantial preacher added. "But then you do have an army of your own. A couple of hundred pimply-faced girls as don't know the pointy end of a stake and bookworms that went past their sell by dates without ever getting in a real fight. Maybe I should call this off…"

Finally, the slayer turned to face The First, her irritation at being disturbed now evident in the tone of her voice. "Have you ever considered a cool name? I mean, since you're incorporeal and basically powerless... how about the Taunter? Strikes fear in the hearts of—"

Again, it tried to cut her off. "I will overrun this earth. And when my army outnumbers the humans on this earth, the scales will tip and I will be made flesh."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Talk on. I'm not afraid of you. No wait, don't. It's getting boring."

"Then why aren't you asleep… in your dead lover's arms?"

"It's called a bladder." Buffy turned away from her adversary, reminded now of the reason she had woken up, and walked to the exit. She paused with the door open, her hand still resting on the handle. "Not that you're ever going to get a chance to find out what that's like. You wouldn't be here trying to convince me that we're going to lose if you didn't know that the end was close. Make the most of the time you have left. I have a rehearsal dinner arranged for tomorrow night and the only killjoy I plan on being there for that is my wicked stepmom." She left the room and pulled the door closed after her.

The preacher glared at the door, knowing that to follow the slayer would make him look like a second rate spook, and folded in on itself in a transient flash of light.

"Okay," Buffy began, seeming slightly nervous despite the reassurance of Spike's arms around her waist and his cheek beside hers. She looked around the room, checking to make absolutely certain that Quentin Travers was nowhere in sight. "Important stuff first. Some of you people weren't around when we were working out the whole wedding list thing, but it wouldn't seem right, now that we've all got to know each other better, if you weren't all invited to the wedding. Anyway, Spike has to go over to the reception hall today and pay the rest of the deposit and give them the numbers. We'd really like it if you could all make it." Her gaze lingered on Faith before moving on to James and then to Bee, Penelope and finally to Ha Nath's co-workers. "So, if there's anyone who hasn't already sent us an official RSVP but would like to come along on Saturday night, can you just stick your hands in the air?"

Spike smirked as Giles caught Lydia's hand before she could finish lifting it. "Kinda guessed that madam librarian was your plus guest."

"Just as long as you ain't expectin' formal wear?" Faith asked with a lift of her eyebrow. "I guess I could cope with a party." She lifted the hand whose fingers were entwined with James' rather than the one which held the axe.

Around the room several other hands, belonging to watchers and demons alike, rose into the air. Spike did a rapid head count and whispered, "Got it," into Buffy's ear.

"Right then, back to the whole deal with the thousands of ubervamps waiting to chow down on the human race until there isn't one... In case anyone missed out on the widespread jubilation last night, Caleb is no more. As those Pythagoras guys say, 'he has ceased to be'... but that isn't going to help us, if we don't deal with this soon."

"Wasn't the mad preacher guy the one in charge?" Marie asked. "Won't things go back to normal now that he's gone?"

"Giles?" Buffy looked at her watcher. "You want to field this one?"

"Right..." Giles removed his glasses, dangling them from his hand as he spoke. "As far as we know, Caleb was the one who was directing the bringers. We haven't yet seen him command any of the Turok Han. They may or may not have been receiving instructions directly from The First Evil. In fact, it's difficult to imagine that they would have taken orders from any lesser authority. With Caleb's death, any remote chance we had of closing down the seal has disappeared, though I never did expect us to be able to wring any tears of remorse from him."

He settled his spectacles back into place. "Our only hope is that if we tackle the evil which lies beneath the seal, then its ability to influence people will be destroyed also.

We cannot leave it unguarded but neither can we continue to expose our people to it indefinitely. Ultimately, that would lead to our own corruption. The matter has to be settled once and for all and it has to happen soon."

The watcher nodded at the angular girl whose hand was waving in the air. "Yes, Amanda?"

"Didn't Buffy say there were thousands of them things or like tens of thousands or something? I mean there's maybe a couple of hundred of us between the girls who're old enough to fight and the watchers who aren't too old and last time we took on one of them things, even when there were a whole bunch of us and just the one of them, there was a bunch of people got hurt. I mean it's not like I'm not willing to try, but there's just an awful lot of them..."

Buffy shook her head. "Beyond a certain point their numbers don't matter. Bee assures me that the amulet her uncle has provided will be powerful enough to destroy all the Turok Han in the area when it is activated. All we have to do is to take and hold some sort of bridgehead long enough for the person with the amulet to do their bit. We need to hold a defensive line. You guys have all done that loads of times when we've patrolled."

"Against bringers," Shannon protested. "Not against a whole bunch of those things. You and Faith and maybe Spike and them..." She nodded toward the demons with Ha Nath. "...Are the only ones who even have a hope of going toe to toe with Turok Han. They'd just smash through the rest of us like we were nothing."

"Trust me," Buffy asked her gaze meeting the potential's. "I'm not going to say that this is going to be easy. I'm not going to say that everyone will make it. They won't. People will get hurt. People will die, but we aren't planning a kamikaze mission. We have a plan to even the odds some. Travers isn't going to like it but we aren't asking his permission... and that's why some of us need to talk to the potentials after we finish here."

Faith spoke up. "Bottom line is that we don't have a choice. We fight now and some of us die or we do nothing and we watch that seal twist people around until one of us ends up being the next Caleb and we're right back where we were or worse. You want to fight against people you've trained with? That's what we're saying. Getting the axe and getting rid of Caleb are just steps on the path. We've got to walk the rest of the road. Anybody want to disagree?"

No one did, though Giles was heard to mutter under his breath about his saying exactly the same thing but no one taking any notice.

"Yes, I already put my suit in the car. Yes, I have checked it fits. Yes, I've got a blanket if I need one... an' a spare but seein' as it's kinda overcast anyway I doubt I'll need it."

Buffy couldn't help the quirk at the corner of her mouth as Spike tried to convince her that he had everything under control. "Humour me?"

"Check Revello and my place for any replies or phone messages that have come since the last time we checked. Work out the final numbers. Pick up the cake on the way... and some pastries an' fruit juice for Wes an' the other wankers that we left watchin' the queen of the Sunnydale Pyramid. Go pay the deposit..." Spike paused as he mentally added arranging the final touches for Buffy's wedding present that was waiting at the reception hall where Wes had left it to the list. "Come back, drop off the goodies with the watcher an' tell him you an' Jailbird an' the magic bints will be over to do the business soon as you bring the munchkins up to speed on the plan. Take a turn over to the manse an' make sure the vicar's still walkin' an' talkin' an' then pick up the tickets and the other bits an' pieces for the honeymoon..."

Buffy frowned as she tried to think whether there were any other errands that needed running up before the big day.

"...An' that's it except for one last thing that might need a bit more practice." The vampire stepped closer until there was barely half an inch between their bodies.

"Huh? Practice? What do we need to practice?" The slayer's voice held more than a hint of panic.

Spike smirked, looking inordinately pleased with himself. "Hear tell I'm meant to kiss the bride."

Buffy looked around the ballroom that had been converted to a gymnasium. For this meeting, they had pulled in not only the older potentials who had been taking part in their training program, but as many of the others as they had thought would be mature enough to understand the implications of their decision. There were girls out there who were barely eight or nine and they were being asked, under the worst possible circumstances, to make a choice that would affect the rest of their lives or even whether there was a rest of their lives... but that was the problem. No one else had the right to make that choice for them, or even for the younger girls who were happily playing upstairs but they had needed to draw the line somewhere. There were times when civil liberties had to take a back seat.

Of course, this many girls, not all of them able to speak English, came with more than a handful of watchers, not all of whom were happy with the idea that it wasn't the council making the decisions. Some of them seemed to be getting a little hot under the collar but they had already thought of that. The last doors had been locked as soon as the meeting began. No one was going to sneak out part way through to warn Quentin, not unless they were so rabidly loyal to the council head that they would take a dive through one of the conservatory windows. When she, Faith, and Lydia left the building, assuming that the vote went as expected, then Giles, Ha Nath and her friends were ready to take up a rear guard position to ensure that they got a good head start. Tara was already waiting for them in Giles' car, a cloaking spell in place that would mask the presence of anyone within twenty feet of her from detection by magical means.

"Alright, ladies," Faith continued, stopping her restless pacing for the first time since she began speaking and watching the crowd, trying to look as many of the girls in the eye as she could. She handled the gaudy axe in her hands as if it were some sort of personal good luck talisman. "That's all she wrote. Now, it's up to you to decide.

All those who want to be able to hit back just as hard when those ubervamps come at ya, gimme a 'hell, yeah'!"

There was a roar of assent. Only a handful of the watchers interspersed amongs the crowd were deluded enough to try to argue, and they were soon silenced by the glares, or even the occasional fist of the potentials around them.

Faith waited for the crowd to settle. "All those who want to face these things without slayer strength or slayer speed because once upon a time some guys decided that was how it should be, speak up now!"

A deathly silence ensued. Before the other watchers in the crowd could absorb the import of the quiet, Giles, who was positioned by the exit at the top end of the room, twisted the key in the door at his back. As Ha Nath and her friends formed a line at right angles to the door he pulled it open and with the demons between them and any unfriendly watchers in the crowd, Faith, Lydia and Buffy slipped away. The door was closed and locked again before Ha Nath kicked the first of the protesters into unconsciousness.

"Careful," Wesley called out as he heard the scuffing of shoes on stone.

Buffy slowed her pace and, as she neared the bottom of the narrow stone stairway, she realised the need for Wesley's warning. The guardian, who apparently was otherwise known as Ruth... and that somehow freaked Buffy out far more than if she had come up with something that sounded completely alien, had set out a large and intricate ritual circle in the pyramid's main room. The circle was so large that, had Buffy stepped straight into the chamber, rather than edging to one side immediately she reached the bottom of the stairs, then she would have been standing on it.

"Hey..." Buffy's greeting was generalised, a smile forming as she noticed that Wes and another four watchers, who were clustered near the corridor from which Caleb had emerged, had several empty juice bottles and discarded Krispy Kreme boxes by their feet. Nevertheless, when she asked what was going on, it was to Wes that she looked. She hoped that Wes had been able to get the remaining details out of the old woman, and that he understood the workings of the ritual that was about to be performed.

Buffy skirted around the room until she could reach the watcher, keeping an eye on where the old woman had looked up from her work to greet Lydia and Tara. It was as if there was a whole culture of which the slayer knew nothing. First the old woman took both Lydia's hands in hers and then both women bowed until their foreheads almost touched the backs of their hands. Even more disconcertingly, when she reached Tara the ancient didn't stop at a bow but dropped to her knees in a way that obviously made shy, helpful Tara wish for nothing more than to help her up.

"Yeah, Wes..." Faith echoed Buffy's curiosity as she came to stand at her side. "What's with the meet and greet? And I hope you understand enough of this..." She jerked the axe in the drection of the symbol that sort of reminded her of the cover art for the albums by The Fields of the Nephilim that one of her mom's string of deadbeat boyfriends had used to own. The first time she found out that he had hit her mom, she had burned the whole damn lot. Then he had hit her. When the school had called her in, her mom had told her teacher that she had fallen down the stairs. No one had asked where in their trailer the mythical staircase was. "To be sure that this isn't some con trick from The First to get all the slayers and the axe and our best magic users all in one place and suck the life out of them or something."

Wes nodded. "As best I can tell, everything is consistent with what we've been told. As a ritual to Isis to empower the feminine, none of us," he said, nodding to the other male watchers who had accompanied him, "is able to take part or help prepare, but I haven't seen anything contraindicative to the purpose as stated. As for the welcome, I believe Ruth has been waiting for someone to whom she could pass on the wisdom of the guardians, so that when she completes her part in this she will be free to die. If I were a betting man, I would say that she thinks that Tara is her successor."

"You got all that from her?" Buffy asked in a slightly mocking tone. "You've only been here overnight... or does she save the cryptic for slayers and vamps?"

Wes gave a slightly superior smile though his tone when he continued was more self-depracating. "My résumé does include watcher. Picking out the facts from overly long narratives is part of what I was expected to do, especially after Quentin Travers became council head."

"Hey! Wait a minute!" Buffy looked around the chamber in distaste. "This doesn't mean that Tara has to move into some musty windowless basement with no indoor plumbing, does it?"

"As your role is to represent the virgin, you must take your place here at the beginning of the cycle," Ruth said to Tara, indicating a clear area in the wide band of symbols that made up the outer circle. She shifted her attention to Lydia. "For your part, you shall represent the mother and take your place here, in the part of the diagram representing summer and fruitfulness."

The watcher shifted slightly uncomfortably. "Wouldn't it be better to have the more powerful magic user as the mother? I know I'm older than Tara, but it just seems more appropriate and I would say that she has the more nurturing character."

Ruth gave another of the enigmatic smiles that Buffy was beginning to find irritating in the extreme. She reached out a hand and placed it over the watcher's flat stomach. "Then, I suggest that over the next few months you try to cultivate that area of your personality, my dear. The time is close at hand when those qualities will stand you in good stead. Our co-practitioner is also best qualified for her role due to her innocence in the ways of men."

"What? No! That's..." The watcher turned chalk white as she remembered a day of whisky induced vomiting and realised that her normal method of contraception might not have been fully effective under those circumstances. She had been far too busy to pay attention to the rhythm of her body, but the more she thought about it the more plausible the idea seemed.

Faith lifted an eyebrow and barely managed to contain her wide grin at the thought of Daddy Giles before it became a laugh.

Buffy took a few moments to try to work out what such a change might mean to the group, especially since Giles had only just been talked back into staying in California and now he was going to have a baby with his English girlfriend. After a few seconds she gave up, deciding that working out where everyone was going to live could wait until after they knew who was going to live. However, she mentally reassigned the blonde watcher in the vague battle plans that she had partially formed in her head, moving her from the second line of defence and giving her responsibility for the safety of the smallest children and the wounded. If she had thought that Giles would accept it, she would have moved him as well... and Dawn and Tara and Xander and Wes and... With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the guardian's explanation of the ritual that the three witches were about to cast.

It seemed hard to believe that the ancient had been here since the time of the last true demons, waiting for her and for Faith, for the axe to reappear in the world and for evil to rise up as it never had before.

"The scythe, as was always intended even when we first set it within the molten rock of the gate to hell, will be at the very centre of the circle as befits its use. It shall rest in the hands of both slayers that its power may pass through them to their sisters. It would be best if you were to be seated but the sigil must on no account be damaged."

Buffy leaned over and whispered to Wes. "How much of all this do we really need and how much is just icing on the cake? I mean twelve hours of chanting?"

"I think when you're asking for something this big, you want to make the cake as perfect as you can. There might be other ways. You could open up the seal and harness the power of the hellmouth if you really wanted, but I think burning some extra herbs, drawing some more complicated symbols and taking a few hours to pay obeissance to Isis is far the more polite way of doing things. This is asking nicely. The other would be like the petulant tantrums of a two year old demanding to have its way now. The end result may be the same, and it may save time but it lacks a certain style. When you're dealing with a goddess, it's best to be polite."

"The sun is almost at its zenith," the old woman announced. "We should get into position." With greater ease than the lines on her face would suggest, the guardian took her place in the outer circle and settled herself into a the lotus postion.

Tara and Lydia settled into similar positions so that the three of them sat at the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Faith and Buffy moved to the circle's centre, taking care not to scuff any of the lines as they moved. They, too, took up cross-legged positions, letting their forearms rest upon their knees, and then Faith uncurled her fingers from around the axe and they found the position where it was balanced equally on each of their fingertips.

The guardian began to chant, slowly and with great care so that each syllable was ennunciated clearly enough for Lydia and Tara to follow her lead.

Buffy fixed her attention on the axe, narowing her focus down and down until she felt she was aware of the smallest fleck in the grain of the wooden handle. She let the chanting wash over her without touching her, in the same way that she used to filter out the New Age tapes that Giles had occasionally played in their meditation sessions. It was going to be a long time until fullest dark, which apparently wouldn't actually be at midnight thanks to daylight savings time, or so Wes had said, though Buffy couldn't help but wonder why they still called it midnight if it wasn't. If she could pass into a trance state for the intervening hours, so much the better, otherwise she just knew that a couple of hours from now she would be wishing that she hadn't had that third cup of coffee.

Friday, July 19th, 2002

Wes spared another glance at his watch. Five to one. He was almost surprised that it was still ticking. The air of the chamber seemed laden with electricity, like the pregnant heaviness of the atmosphere before a long awaited summer storm... but only in the same way that the breath of a butterfly's passing felt like the violence of a tornado. His mouth tasted of metal, although he had had nothing to eat or drink since the doughnuts Spike had brought for breakfast this morning.

Soon... Whatever was going to happen, it had to be soon.

As if to answer his thoughts the axe that rested on the hands of both the slayers began to glow. At first it was little more than a nightlight, then a torch, soon it became as bright as looking straight into a car's headlight, though it somehow seemed more diffused. The light seemed to seep into each of the slayers so that first their fingertips and then their hands and then their whole arms seemed to glow with a pure welcoming light. It spread from their shoulders both up and down, and though from the angle where he was sitting, he couldn't see Faith's face, it seemed as if Buffy's irises were darker than he had ever seen them, contrasted against the translucent glow of the surrounding tissue. Strands of hair were whipped away from their faces, as if by a strong but playful breeze that somehow seemed to blow east for one and west for the other. From the roots on out, the light claimed the locks of their hair, making them look like magnificent and alien Valkyrie.

He lowered his gaze to see how far the transformation had moved down the slayers' bodies and found to his amazement that both girls now floated several inches above the floor. The complicated sigils that had been marked out on the hard-packed earth seemed to writhe with life, the light pulsating outward through them until it reached the women in the outer circle. It saturated the three in its glow, from the ground upward. Soon, they too seemed to be touched by the mysterious multidirectional wind that didn't so much as stir the air in the corner of the room where Wes was seated.

Time passed unnoticed and Wes found himself transfixed by the glory of the light, which filled the whole circle now, and all the women who were favoured with its touch. Even this close, it never fell upon any of the men who waited, banished as they were to the corners of the room while they stood guard over the participants. Its beauty, as befitted Isis, a goddess consecrated to the feminine, was equally alluring and alien. When, finally, its work was done the godess's power drained away. It flooded back into the earth, returning the slayers to their previous positions and leaving all the women unmarked by the experience, save for their gasping breaths and glowing smiles that indicated an almost post-coital euphoria.

It was, Wes noted, five past one.

It was late evening when Spike joined Giles and Penny in the library.

"What's the news?" he asked the two watchers as he helped himself to a splash of the single malt that Giles kept on a tray to one side of the room before taking a seat on the end of Giles' desk with his feet on the chair intended for the occupant of the desk in front.

"I thought you would be the one to tell us," Giles responded dryly as he pushed back his chair to fetch a drink of his own, Penny also accepting his wordless offer.

The vampire shrugged. "Nothing coming through on vamp vision so far. Guess that means it wasn't some huge trap... but she hasn't rung neither, so seems like the mojo's taking a while. You get all the rest set up?"

Giles shrugged. "We eventually managed to convince Quentin, once he realised that his little apoplectic fit was getting him precisely nowhere, into letting us have enough people to pick up the minibuses... I wouldn't dare say anything about the whole potentials situation, especially not now that it's about to become more of a slayer situation, but it would make a refreshing change if a few more of them had valid driving licences. I'm fairly certain that Quentin thinks it's just a ploy to get transport for your wedding guests for nothing, though. I must admit to being tempted to volunteer to drive one of them myself."

"I'd do it... if I didn't have other things to do," Spike replied with a grin. "Should be a sight to see."

"Why's that?" Penny asked.

"Well, seein' as how you'll be on one of them buses, I guess you'll find out tomorrow, pet." The vamp tipped back his head and drained the last of the malt from his glass. "Right, then, figure it's time we hunted down the last of them bringers. They can't hide under the preacher man's petticoats no more an' we sure as hell don't want them interferin' in the morning."

"Shouldn't we wait for the change?"

"Well, that would depend on whether you want a bored vamp keepin' you company and drinking your single malt while he waits to find out if his future wife's gonna be alright."

"R-right," Giles rapidly acquiesced. "Penelope, if you would help out? Why don't we adjourn to the basement? I believe Anya made sure we had some reserves of the necessary components for the demon mapping spell."

When it appeared that the bringers had yet to abandon the vineyard, Spike rounded up a few volunteers who weren't due to be on duty at the seal overnight. Ha Nath and her friends went in by the front door. Spike led a mixed group of half a dozen watchers and potentials through Sunnydale's network of underground tunnels and made sure they were in position ready to block the bringers' escape route before the other demons moved in. The fight was messy, brutal and short. Spike seemed to snap any of the bringers who came into reach like so many bundles of dried twigs. He made sure, however, that no hint of it was allowed to reach Buffy and distract her from the ritual in which she was involved.

When the vineyard had been cleared out he called Giles and only when Spike was assured that there were no longer any harbingers within the limits of Sunnydale did he send the others home and make his way to the high school construction site. His group took the night time shifts as always. Tonight, the world was about to change for the girls in that group. They were tired, they were on edge, they were literally teetering on the brink of hell, they had to be worrying about what the night would bring and Tara's group would be missing their leader and the calming influence they were accustomed to her exerting. In short, they were vulnerable. He intended to be there for them, to talk them down if they needed it and to let them know that they weren't alone. The First wasn't going to play mind games with his people if he could help it.

Spike prowled from group to group, staying with each one for ten or fifteen minutes, taking the time to joke with them, to tease them that they had been chosen for the night time shift because Buffy's and Faith's groups were afraid of the dark. He laughed with them and cajoled them. He drew an occasional girl away from their fellows and told them how proud he was of them and how he would be right there with them when the battle began. He would tell them that he would do whatever he could to keep them safe, if the trouble started.

This time they didn't come in twos or threes. They didn't even come in dozens. It seemed like The First had saved up all its remaining human toys and was going to throw them at them all at once, so many that Spike could smell them on the night air long before he caught his first glimpse.

He pulled his people back from the site's perimeter and they obeyed instantly, though it was more from force of habit than because they understood the danger they were in. They took the partially built high school as their fortress, preparing to defend every hollow doorway and unglazed window, because Spike told them to. They fought down the heavy feelings in their guts that were only partially attributable to the anticipated fight.

"What're you even trying for, boy?" Angel asked him as the blond hit the speed dial button that would put him through to Penelope's cell. "Like you could run an army? No one will listen to you. You didn't earn their respect. You're just Buffy's wife."

Spike performed a spin-kick so graceful that, were it not for his habitual Doc Martens, it would have looked more like a ballet move than an attack. As he expected his foot passed straight through Angel's cranium without resistance. "An' you're sweet fuck all but smoke an' mirrors." Without even a pause he placed his cell against his ear and issued instructions. "Get Giles. Tell him to roust every bugger he can spare out of their pits, pass out the baseball bats an' get them down to the high school...pronto. They're going for the 'Hail Mary'." He snapped the phone shut so hard that something crunched and drew out a pick-axe handle from inside the folds of his duster.

They straggled out of alleyways or wandered across parkland in droves, shuffling toward something that ultimately would bring their own destruction.

A chorus of nervous whispers burbled in Spike's ears but didn't quite reach his brain, since the part of his brain that wasn't blocking his link with Buffy was busy checking out the tall, malnourished figure that moved directly toward him, cutting diagonally across the path of several of his companions to do so. His hair was a tangle of inch-long dreadlocks and his clothes were both filthy and in poor repair. His shirt was devoid of buttons and smeared with dark brown streaks, that could have been either dried blood or excrement. None of this separated him from the others within the crowd. It was the unadulterated hatred that made his eyes almost glow against his dark skin.

"So much for Xander sayin' that they evacuated all the hospital patients," the vampire muttered under his breath.

Somewhere in the course of his travels, since he had escaped the care of Sunnydale's mental health professionals, Robin Wood had found a four foot length of scaffolding. He swung it wildly at Spike, showing no finesse or evidence of training. Whether he had always been unstable, whether The First had broken something inside the man or whether it was the result of being incarcerated with insane companions, it appeared that the last of his reason was now gone. Spike easily evaded the madman's flailing blows. He waited his time and had to remind himself over and over again that Buffy would almost inevitably come to hear of it if his attacker died at his hands. He knew that even if he convinced her that in the heat of the fight there had been no option, the death would cast a pall over their relationship and give her reason to wonder if she could really trust him. So he waited, watching for an opening... until he heard his name tortured into a girlish scream.

He swung at Wood's head with the pick axe handle, trying to pull the blow enough to prevent it doing any permanent damage, while not wishing it to be so glancing that Wood might take up his avenging son routine any time in the near future. Varnished wood impacted with hair and flesh and the other Wood staggered backward. Spike didn't wait to see if he fell, but turned in a swirl of battle-spoils leather and ran for the point where he had last seen Xuxa, the young Brazilian girl, who might have problems talking to the other girls because she didn't speak good English and who might be teased for being slightly overweight but who had a sharp mind and was always willing to discuss football with him in his less than fluent Portuguese. The cry was unmistakably hers and, Wood or no Wood, she needed his help.

Giles felt a moment of panic as the vehicle in which he had been travelling pulled up alongside those that had departed before him. If the venue had been a shopping mall rather than a half-completed high school, he might have thought that he was in a Romero movie. True, those assailing the building were still alive but they seemed to have as much regard for their own safety as the average zombie and they swarmed the structure in their hundreds. Giles wouldn't even have believed that so many people were still living in the town, though a closer look made him revise that to existing rather than living. He could only catch brief glimpses of the girls that had been on guard duty, frantically trying to hold back the human tide that threatened to overwhelm them. Even as he watched one of the girls seemed to stumble and the insurgents pushed forward in an unstoppable tide.

There was a flash of white-blond hair amidst the defenders, and Giles' assessment was proved to be incorrect. The tide seemed first to stall and then with aching slowness turn. Finally, some of those who had gained entrance stumbled backward from the fray and as though this gave the defenders room to manoeuvre, others began leaving head first and obviously not under their own power. Another girl joined those who had been dislodged from their position after their companion's fall, and Giles saw Spike scoop up a figure from the ground behind them, cradling it in his arms as he disappeared deeper into the building.

The watcher turned to issue commands to the girls and watchers he had brought with him, but it wasn't necessary. While he had been assessing the situation, they were already moving in on the mob. They worked efficiently in pairs within a defensive line, guarding each other's backs, as they worked their way forward, picking off those at one edge of the mob, knocking them unconscious or otherwise incapacitating them. It seemed that the slayers and Spike had trained their people well, and they worked with a blend of efficiency and mercy that erred heavily on the side of efficiency. However they might feel about harming other humans, they weren't about to allow any misplaced compassion to cloud the issue where they felt that they or those in the building were threatened.

Giles felt a pang of sadness, realising that some of the girls, whether intentionally or by misjudgement, would know before this battle was over how it felt to take a human life. He wished they could have remained innocent, aware it would exact a heavy price on the souls of girls so young... not so heavy as the guilt of standing by and allowing a comrade to be badly hurt and far preferable to being killed or badly injured. Just the same, when this was all over he was going to have to mention to Quentin about having professional counsellors available, for girls and watchers alike. That, however, was a consideration for a future time. He twisted his fingers on the grip of the aluminium baseball bat that he carried, gave it an experimental swing, and, as the next minibus load of watchers and potentials began to disembark, he moved forward with them to play his part in the fray.

The attic where the Scoobies slept wasn't the only vantage point in the building. Rather, having once been the servants quarters, it occupied only the top floor of that wing of the building where the kitchens were. Quentin made his way through the dustsheet-covered debris of former centuries to get to one of the attic windows set in the roof of the main building, night vision binoculars in one hand and a torch in the other. Some nonentity of a watcher followed behind him, waiting for the chance to prove his worth to the head watcher now that his previous favourite had blatantly thrown her lot in with the rebel faction, and Penelope followed him, partly because she knew that Quentin was right about the attics providing the best viewpoint and partly because she felt it best to keep an eye on what the sly old fox was up to.

It seemed that Quentin had finally found the window he had chosen from outside, but it was resisting all his best efforts to open it.

"Find me a crow bar or some sort of lever," Travers ordered his new gopher. "It looks like it's been painted shut."

Penny pointed her torch in the direction of the window and decided not to point out to Quentin, the slight dents in the coat of paint that probably meant that the windows had been nailed shut and whoever had done it, probably the concerned parent of an overly adventurous child, had been so determined that they remain so that they had used a punch to drive the heads of the nails down below the level of the surface wood. Once the window frame had been painted over a few times, all there was left to show was a row of slight dimples in the paint.

Penny watched Lydia's replacement run around the room peering under dust sheets looking for anything that his superior might be able to use as a pry bar. Finally, he located an old fireside set and as if he had found the crown jewels he hurried to present Quentin with the poker.

By the time the senior watcher had cracked the paint in several places and bent the poker so that it was no longer useable, she decided that she was bored with the cabaret. She removed one of the smallest dust sheets, and used it to make a clear patch in the coating of dust that obscured the glass of the window next to the one that Quentin was endeavouring to open. She held out her hand to Quentin's minion, knowing that if she seemed sufficiently expectant he would feel unable to refuse to give her the binoculars that he had been left holding while Quentin wrestled with the window.

She watched the last of the reinforcements arrive at the construction site and join the battle, but Quentin's patience didn't last long enough to let her see much more. He snatched the binoculars away from her and edged his way into her vantage spot.

"What the devil are they doing?" Quentin protested as he viewed the carnage at the site. "Don't they realise that they're fighting human beings, albeit ones who are under the influence of an evil... something?"

"They realise they're fighting, Quentin," Penny argued.

The council head ignored her and brought out his cell phone, dialling the number he had recently managed to get from Giles via Lydia. He knew that there was no point in dealing with any of those who might be regarded as mere foot soldiers. He had to get Giles to make them pull back. This number of human civilian deaths was unacceptable. Slayers and, by extension, potentials were expendable and when a man or woman became a watcher then they accepted those risks. Those who were being slaughtered down there were those that they had vowed to protect.

After three rings, a voice kicked in to say that the cell phone he was trying to reach was currently unavailable. "Doesn't that man know how to keep a phone charged and with him?" the watcher raved.

"Well, of course he knows how. He's not an idiot... He's just never had enough incentive to do it. Why did you think that Spike called me rather than Giles in the first place?"

Quentin gave Penny a rather dirty look before he turned on his heel. "Come on, Henderson. If Rupert is incapable of handling modern technology, then we shall just have to go down there and give him his instructions face to face."

As sometimes happens within a battle, the fate of those guarding the seal, which had seemed to be in so much doubt when the fray began, was secured with the arrival of the reinforcements. The quarter of an hour that it had taken for Penny to apprise Giles of the situation, for him to gather drivers for the minibuses and for her to rouse the potentials from their beds and the younger watchers from in front of the TV had been touch and go. At any time The First's people might have forced their way through one of the many openings, and somehow every time it had seemed as if they would, Spike had appeared with half a dozen of the girls he had chosen to accompany him and they had shored the gap. The guard had held on desperately, and when reinforcements had arrived the outcome had no longer been in doubt.

So it was that by the time Quentin arrived in his hired Bentley, Spike was carrying the first of the injured away from the building. The vampire spotted the luxury car and headed straight for it. As Henderson hurried around the car to open the door for his boss, Spike waited for the senior watcher to get out and when he did, Spike leaned over and slid the injured girl into the back.

"You," he pointed at Henderson. "You take her back to the school, you find someone who can put a splint on her leg and then you find the nearest working hospital between here and LA and you get her seen to properly... and you bloody drive like you have a pile of porcelain in the back. I hear you hurt her one bit more than she need be an' after all this is over tomorrow, I'll come an' find you."

"And what makes you think you can just commandeer my vehicle?" Quentin protested.

"'Cause they're gonna need most of the minibuses to dump that lot." Spike nodded toward the bodies that littered the ground. "...far enough away that by the time they get back it'll be too late for them to cause any problems, an' 'cause in my book the kid who ended up with a broken leg fighting to keep that seal safe warrants the chauffeur driven Bentley a damn sight more than some old git that only gets here when the fight's over an' done with."

The vampire seemed to pause as two girls stumbled over, one supporting the other. "Hoi, put her in the front seat here. Someone will strap it up when you get back to the school." He turned back to the watcher and grinned widely as he patted down his pockets. "Bad sprain... Can't have her walkin' back like that."

Quentin knew that the argument was already lost and decided that his best course of action was to ignore the disgusting creature and find Giles.

From the shadowy cover of a dumpster nearly sixty

The clean up seemed to take far longer than the battle. They saw to their injured and with a slightly lesser sense of urgency to the injured on the other side. Quentin tried to put his foot down, and though he managed to organise a couple of squads of watchers to carry away the unconscious citizens of Sunnydale to the minibuses and begin the task of dumping them far enough away that they could make their own way back but not so close that they might do it before the morning, no one who had already been given a task to do by either Giles or Spike seemed inclined to change what they were doing.

They found only seven dead amongst all the unconscious bodies. When Spike had finally dealt with those of his girls requiring emergency treatment, he traced his way back to where he had begun the battle, not sure how he would feel if he found Wood to be one of the dead, but when he got there and spoke to the watchers who had been clearing that area, he found that the man had disappeared in the chaos of the fight. This might have concerned the vampire, if he didn't have other far more weighty matters to consider. Buffy still hadn't called, The First might have plans for another attack and he needed to get the potentials back to base so that they could have a hope of getting some sleep before tomorrow's attack, which meant he needed to organise a guard from the watchers. In theory, assuming their plan actually worked, the potentials would be responsible for the bloodiest of the fighting the next day. The watchers, who would be taking supporting positions, didn't need to be quite so rested. The girls would probably lie awake anyway, but even that would leave them better prepared for the morning than more guard duty.

The vampire made his way toward the point where he had last seen Giles, the watcher taking charge of the bodies of the fallen, laying them out respectfully in the corridor that led to the basement entrance. It seemed callous, but when they opened up the seal tomorrow, the bodies would be going in. The general destruction would hopefully mean that any investigation into the deaths, if the bodies ever appeared on this plane, would be inconclusive. The last thing they needed was for events tonight to become part of a series of murder trials. He had just leapt through one of the vacant windows, taking a shortcut through the shell of the building, when he felt it. Magic began to tingle through his fingers, his hands... He closed his eyes and focused with all his might on Buffy and the tingling grew stronger, overwhelming his whole body. He sank to his knees, waiting for the sensation to pass. From there he toppled to one side and rolled until he was lying on his back on the bare concrete. He gasped for breath like a fish out of water until, finally, the sensation receded enough to allow him to laugh, laughter born of his mate's euphoria and the knowledge that their plan was falling into place. Half a dozen of his girls found him there, drawn by his familiar tone. Spike knew what it was like to be hugged by a slayer. This was the first time he'd been mobbed by six at once.

The day had been a long one, the time since Buffy had last seen Spike a comparative eternity to the way they had been living in each other's pockets since they had all moved into the school. Her whole body still fizzed with the magic, like sherbet on her tongue but all over. She felt like she had the power to do anything and all she really wanted to do was to share it with him. There was no conscious thought. She didn't reason out where she might find him or use her phone to call and find out where he was. She was simply drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet and as soon as she ensured that Tara and Lydia would be escorted back to the school by Wes and the other watchers, she left the others to deal with the clean up.

When she reached the top of the steps leading from the pyramid, Faith was just snapping shut her phone.

"Heading over to the high school," the dark haired slayer announced. "You?"

Buffy oriented herself, checking her personal lodestone against the familiar terrain. "Guess so... Think you can keep up?" she asked as she broke into a run, vaulting or leaping the headstones that got in her way as she took the most direct line to the construction site.

Faith didn't let her make too much of her slight head start and soon the girls ran shoulder to shoulder, not really racing but running just because they could, for the sheer joy of the adrenaline high and burning muscles and because they could no more have stayed at a walking pace right then than they could have sat through one of Giles' explanations without fidgeting.

They cleared the high cemetery wall with an ease that would have made Hong Kong wire-artists jealous and began threading their way through the deserted streets and back alleys of the town, the flat terrain allowing Faith to push them both a gear higher. "So I guess that was kind of like condensed essence of slayer going through us?" she laughed as she stretched her stride a little further.

Buffy actually broke into a laugh before she replied. "So I'm not the only one with an appetite?"

"Hungry 'n' horny?" Faith risked a sideways glance at her companion, who seemed more at home in her own skin than she had ever seen her. "Hell yeah!" she howled into the night sky. "And if your guy has Scottie on guard duty when we get there then he'll just have to go AWOL."

The first figure they saw as they approached the school was the last one they wanted to see. "Votes for running right on by and skipping the lectures until tomorrow night? Or I suppose tonight... technically," Faith suggested as they emerged from an alleyway and spotted Quentin Travers between them and the half-complete structure of the new high school, accompanied by one of the watcher middle management.

Quentin pointed in the direction of Miss Chalmers' School for Gifted Girls and then indicated one of the alleyways which led down to a larger street, which in turn curved around to meet the road on which the school was situated. His companion, to judge by the pointing he was doing, appeared to favour a different route.

"If we get killed in the battle we might miss out on it all together," Faith suggested cheerfully.

"Rehearsal dinner? I'm expecting you and mini-Giles to be there. No dying before then... But, yeah, I think we-. Damn!" Buffy began an all out sprint, giving up on the idea of avoiding Travers as his companion slumped to the ground, clutching his abdomen. The scarecrow figure behind him pulled his screwdriver-dagger free and moved toward Travers.

News had spread rapidly through the school. There had been several girls who had been sent back injured from the construction site, and others, younger, had woken from their beds as they felt the change. They had obviously done it right, though, and none of the youngest had been affected. There wouldn't be any five year old slayers beating up their parents because they wouldn't let them stay up late.

Bee still thought of the new slayers as girls, but they weren't. They couldn't be. She had asked about that when Buffy and Faith had laid out the situation and they had been clear about it. The spell had been designed to empower only women of the slayer line. Even if some were as young as nine or ten, their personalities were already mostly formed, and extra strength or not, those who had been judged too young to take part in the training were going to have to wait for the next apocalypse before they got to lend a hand.

Bee dangled a slender white gold chain from the tips of her fingers, a cubic cut diamond, perhaps a third of an inch on each side, swinging from it by one corner. She realised that the time was almost here. She lit several more candles before lying back on her mattress again and watching the multicoloured sparkles of light that refracted through the diamond's flawless centre and played over the walls of the attic room as she waited.

Tara almost stumbled through the door when she arrived back, her features still glowing metaphorically if not physically from the after-effects of the ritual. She seemed surprised to find her roommate still awake and she checked slightly before stooping to stroke Rupert, who uncurled from his spot at Bee's feet to brush in between Tara's legs. "You didn't have to wait up."

"I wanted to... I mean who could sleep, anyway... but I wanted to be awake when you got back." For once she seemed to stumble over her words.

"Is that..." Tara's eyes fixed on the pendant, though she seemed to feel it rather than simply see it.

Bee replied with a barely perceptible nod.

"I thought you would have given that to Giles by now so that he could pass it on to..."

Bee sighed, swung her feet out from below her blankets and sat up, allowing Tara a proper view of her black satin pyjamas. "There was never going to be any passing on. I arranged to have it made... on the condition that I would be the one to wear it when the time came."

"But you-."

"I have the best chance."

Tara's face seemed to lose all of its previous animation, her eyes sad. "I-."

"I have the best chance, but if... well, if anything happens, take care of Rupert. He likes you and he's not just your average cat." Her eyes welled up, but she sped on as she could see Tara opening her mouth to interrupt. "It's okay. I'm really okay with it... If it wasn't for the fact that I was going to play the big dumb hero tomorrow I'd have to wait years to do this." She let the pendant drop back onto her cot and rose to her feet with a stately elegance. As she stepped closer to the witch, her skin seemed somehow bathed in silvery light. She reached out with a patient hand toward Tara's face, but the Wiccan didn't recoil from her touch.

When the demi-angel cupped her chin, Tara allowed herself to be drawn farther into the room before Bee pressed scarlet lips to her quivering mouth. She tasted of bright winter mornings and smelled faintly of honeysuckle. She felt tiny in Tara's arms, smaller by far even than Willow had been, but there was a strength to her frame that somehow prevented Tara from feeling as if she might crush her or suffocate her despite the relative difference in their sizes. Her mouth opened against the bright lips, responding shyly to their unfamiliar taste and touch. Neither of them seemed to feel the need to deepen the caress and no other part of their bodies met except where Bee's hand now cradled her cheek. After long seconds a slight creaking noise prompted them to pull apart.

A dark brown tail curled around the still ajar door as Rupert left them alone in the room, but once it was gone they had eyes for no one but each other. This time Tara knew the move had to be hers. Without taking her gaze from the eyes of silver-flecked hazel that seemed to be staring straight into her soul, she backed away until she pressed against the door and it finally clicked shut. There was a shimmer of relief in Bee's eyes and she knew that this was the right thing. Whatever the morning might bring, they needed each other tonight. Tara's fingers unfastened the buttons of her blouse as she walked back toward Bee, letting it slide from her shoulders at the last second to reveal the white embroidered cotton of her bra and the full swell of her breasts.

"We don't-," Bee began but Tara's fingers reached up to still her lips.

"I'm not doing anything I don't want to," she told the older woman. She could have said that she still felt pain at Willow's loss but that she knew the witch belonged in her past. She could have said that she hoped she and Bee would both survive the upcoming battle and that they would have the chance to see where fate might take them. She could have said that she had been tempted when Bee had held her when she had cried in the night to turn around and initiate a less platonic embrace. She could have said a million things but none of them were necessary and instead she lowered her head and began another kiss, one that didn't for long remain as chaste as their previous one.

"Buffy?" Spike had his phone pressed to his ear about an instant after it rang, the ring tone no longer quite as crisp as it had once been.

"No, sorry, it's Lydia. Hasn't Buffy called?"

"Not yet. What's up? Aren't you meant to be with her?"

"Buffy and Faith left just after we finished the spell. I'm not sure where they headed. I was trying to track down Giles. I called the school and Penny said to try your number in case he was at the site with you."

"He's here. Want me to get him for you?"

"No, no, it's okay if he's busy. Just ask him... Just say if he gets a minute-."

Spike grimaced and pulled the phone from his ear. "Hoi, talk to your bint before she wears my ears out trying to work out what message she wants me to pass on." He passed the phone to Giles who stood no more than a foot or two away. "An' once you've done that might as well head back an' get what sleep you can. Once the minibuses get back and we start shippin' the non-combatants out I doubt anyone'll get much."

Spike turned and gave his attention to Oz and the group of watchers that the werewolf had rounded up, leading them away from where Giles and his girlfriend were talking. "Same drill as usual, just none of the wanna-." Spike gave a slight cough to cover his slip. "...slayers, so they get a break before we go for the final assault.

Stands to reason that that last attack was them trying to hit us with everything they had before the spell took. I doubt they held anything back... but you guys get to keep a watch just in case. I'll be staying here, too, but it's up to Oz to make the call if you see something that makes you think you need back up!"

The vampire took off at a run as he shouted the last few words.

Oz shrugged and turned to the others, beginning to allocate pairs of watchers to different spots on the site's perimeter.

"Don't you want to know why he took off like that?" one of the two female watchers asked.

Oz tilted his head on one side as if considering. "Nope, if he'd wanted help he would have asked," he replied after a second or two, and then continued with his task. When all the watchers had been assigned a post, Oz took it upon himself to check the basement and make sure no one had sneaked in during the confusion of the clean up.

Spike watched the scene unfold as if in slow motion from two different camera angles, Buffy's viewpoint superimposed lightly over his own, both of them too far away. There was no way for this to end well, and however it did end, the blame would have to fall on his shoulders. He had had the chance to stop Wood earlier, and instead he had chosen to leave without knowing what had happened to him.

Travers had at least been alerted to his attacker's presence by the other watcher's cry of pain. His first instinct had seemed to be to run but it hadn't taken him long to realise that even half-starved as his attacker was he would be easily able to outdistance a much older man whose recent pace of living had been rather more sedate. He turned to face his attacker, his eyes always seeming to be fixed on the man's face so that Spike wondered if he could even see the hand that held the screwdriver that was caked in blood and less pleasant substances that should have remained inside the other watcher's digestive tract. It was possible, depending how effective cutie's night vision was, that all that the watcher could see were the whites of his attacker's eyes and the occasional flash of once perfect, but now neglected, teeth when he smiled his maniacal grin.

"Now, Robin, what is this? You know we have no quarrel." Travers spoke calmly and evenly, but he didn't lower his arms which he held in the way of someone who had once long ago done a great deal of boxing.

"You were meant to help me kill it!" Wood threw down the accusation. "Now, you're in league with it. You gave it your car. You let it toy with all those girls. The poison you gave me didn't work. You told me that it would kill him. You said the only way that he could live was to kill her but they're both alive..."

"The poison should have worked, Robin. The plan was flawless. At the very least it should have removed the slayer and left you an emotionally broken opponent. For the moment, I admit, we have been forced into an alliance of convenience but Miss Summers has effectively rendered herself irrelevant once the current battle is over. She is now far from unique and amongst so many choices we can surely find several slayers who will be far more amenable to the council's plans. Once she is gone her paramour will be easy game."

"Really not doing much to convince me whose side I should be on, Quentin, but then it's not like anything you're saying is news." Spike could tell by her viewpoint where Buffy was crouching, catching her breath, checking on the wounded man and playing for time until he could get there, but even he could barely make out the shape of her black leather coat in the shadowed darkness of the alley, the only light that of a sliver of moon.

"And I'd guess the trade up policy goes for ex-con slayers as well?" Faith asked, walking down the centre of the street with a sultry sway to her hips as obvious as it was possible to be. "I mean that must have been a real embarrassment, having to go to the American government and ask for a pardon? Sure you'd rather I just disappeared, too, before I do anything else that might embarrass you. I mean, why'd you want us if you could have, say Kennedy, brand spanking new, fresh out the box and as gung ho as they make 'em?"

"Shut up!" the madman shouted. "This isn't about you. This is about him and the monster that murdered my mother."

There was a rasp of flint on steel just inches behind the lunatic's head, making him turn away from the watcher. Spike's features were illuminated in the darkness like a grinning effigy of the devil before he lit his cigarette and clicked the top of his Zippo closed, leaving all the humans with multi-coloured afterimages dancing before their eyes. In that moment of disorientation, Spike reached out and grabbed each of Wood's wrists, letting the red orange tip of the newly lit cigarette tumble to the ground as he pulled them wide with a cracking of bones. The screwdriver dropped from his opponent's hands and with his arms stretched to their widest extent, the grip pulling him into a less than upright position, Wood was defenceless against the head butt that broke his nose.

Spike loosened his hold and the man slumped to the ground, curling into a foetal position as he tried to simultaneously cradle two broken arms and a broken nose.

"What kept you?" Buffy's voice teased from near level with the alley floor. "We've got a wounded guy here."

Penny's handling of the DeSoto was slightly overcautious, being used to a smaller car with right-hand-drive and rather more visibility, but she still made decent time and turned up not too long after Spike had finished a second cigarette. Since the mini-buses were already occupied taking away civilians or ferrying those injured in the fight to hospital, they had been left with few options. Spike spread blankets over the cracked leather seats before Buffy helped the watcher in, the middle aged man nodding his thanks.

"You know where to catch up once..." Spike let his voice trail off. At one time the watcher's wound, having perforated the man's bowel, would have been a guaranteed ticket to infection and a slow agonizing death. Of course, medicine had moved on, and if the local hospital had still been operational it would have made all the difference but Spike still found it difficult to convince himself that the watcher wasn't another walking dead man.

Penny nodded. "If Wes hasn't left some sort of all clear message by the time I get out of hospital, I'll meet up with the other non-combatants. Otherwise, I'll see you at the reception hall."

"What about Wood?" Travers asked.

"Well, he's not bloody going anywhere in my car," Spike argued, almost blushing when Buffy gave him a look of disappointment. "You can't expect the guy he tried to kill to ride with him and Watchermum can't keep an eye on him and drive at the same time."

"He could ride in the trunk..." the slayer suggested. "If you sort of tied it shut so that he couldn't get out but so he could breathe."

"It all takes time, love, and that's something he hasn't got." Spike nodded to the watcher in the back seat. "Get him out of here," he told Penny. "An' don't worry about picking up any speeding tickets. If the cops stop you, you'll likely end up with an escort."

Buffy continued to argue her case after the car's taillights disappeared. "She could have taken him."

"It would have taken five or ten minutes to clear all the tools and weapons out of the boot and then God knows how long to work out some way to make sure he could breathe but not get out. He can go in the first minibus that gets back. Between a dozen of them, if we put him in with the youngest of the old guys, they should be able to keep an eye on him, what with him not being able to use his hands... or do much else other than breathe through his mouth."

"So what now?" Buffy asked, her eyes darting enviously to where she could just make out Faith and James in the distance, his arm around the slayer's waist as they headed back to watcher central.

Spike shrugged and gave a rueful smile. "Best if I stay here. That way I can be in place before the sun comes up. Figure you an' the others have a bunch of kids an' wrinklies to evacuate and a battle to organise."

Buffy rolled her eyes and looked as if she would have liked to argue, but instead she nodded to Quentin. "Figure you can make it back to the school on your own but make sure he gets handed over to the guys on guard and tied up first. Just remember it was you he wanted to kill." She slipped an arm through Spike's and began to walk toward the half-complete building. "I'll call the others in a minute, arrange a meeting for later. For now, I think we all need some time with our hunnies. Where d'you get the best view around here?" she asked.

Five minutes later the necessary calls were made and Buffy looked down at the sihouette of the darkened town from the highest scaffolding on the site. Spike stood at her back, his arms around her waist and his cheek against her hair and together she felt like they could face whatever was to come.

Giles choked and spat a mouthful of tea all over his notes. "You're what? B-but you said-."

"I know what I said. I was wrong," Lydia replied nervously, still unsure how Giles would react once he got over the initial surprise. "I guess it was all the being sick with the whisky."

"I see," Giles deliberately kept his tone dry and non-commital. "Have you decided whether you're going to go ahead with..."

"I-I thought you'd want me to keep it," Lydia sounded hopelessly lost and so unsure of herself that Giles couldn't do anything other than abandon his seat and his cold demeanour and take her into his arms.

"Of course I want you to keep it. I just didn't dare assume that with your career to consider that you would feel the same way. Quentin might forgive a minor rebellion but I doubt he'll be quite so agreeable once he finds out about this."

"So you're not angry?" Lydia half-hiccupped.

"I-," Giles gave a sigh and his voice softened considerably. "I might have been if you had chosen the other option. Intellectually, I support a woman's right to choose, but emotionally that doesn't make a whole lot of difference."

"I don't want to get married," Lydia added almost hesitantly. "Not yet, not just because of the pregnancy... but I think we've been doing okay on the living together front, so maybe we could sort of make that official?"

"You want me to move back to England?" Giles sounded more hesitant now.

"Or I could move out here..." Lydia rapidly suggested, as if she sensed his reluctance. "I could get a transfer and I don't have any family left... except for Quentin."

Giles choked and turned red again. Finally, regaining his breath he asked, "Quentin?"

"He was my grandmother's brother but we don't advertise the fact. It would be awkward. Of course, some people know, but..."

"Awkward? I can't imagine why, though it does explain his continued trust in you even after we began our relationship," Giles responded dryly before he gave the woman a reassuring smile. "But you would be willing to make a fresh start here?"

"I'd be willing to try. I might not be cut out to be a California girl, but I'd be willing to try. They do have some schools in the area that aren't built on top of a hellmouth, I suppose?" she asked with a teasing smile.

"Some, I believe. As for being willing to try, I can't ask for anything more." The watcher honestly didn't believe he could. Jenny had said that if Olivia had truly loved him she would have been willing to move. In many ways Lydia and he were still finding their footing and the latest news meant that they could both expect a steep learning curve, but if she was willing to take a chance on him he'd do his best to ensure she never regretted it. He only hoped she didn't start to look like her great uncle as she got older...