Chapter 10
"Admit it, you bloody poof! We're lost!" Spike was mortified. If anybody found out about this.
Angel stalked off, taking first one blind turn, then another. "For the hundredth time, we are not lost!"
Spike stalked off after the rigid bulk of his Sire, grumbling, "And you're just making insane turns into dark tunnels because you know exactly where you're going. Right, sure! Whatever! God, this is so embarrassing. The great Angelus, tracker extraordinaire, lost in a labyrinth of seacaves. How am I ever going to live this down?"
"SHUT UP, SPIKE!!!!" Angel hollered, his booming voice bouncing off the ancient walls.
"Jesus, Angel! You wanna wake the dead?!" Spike whined, his ears ringing. He gingerly touched the delicate opening to his inner ear to check for blood from burst eardrums, grimacing dramatically. Angel graced him with an icy glare and started walking again.
The truth was, he didn't know where he was going, but Angel would rather die than let his impertinent Childe know that. He had a feeling deep in his gut he was on the right track, but he had no evidence to back up this feeling. He was following his nose without smelling the trail.
The attack came from out of nowhere. "Look out!" Spike hollered to Angel, but it was too late. A massive claw swept out of the dark at Angel's body, intent on slicing his torso in four.
Angel felt the movement in the air and leapt back, but he wasn't fast enough, even with his inhuman Warrior speed. The claw clipped him, throwing him violently backwards into the cave wall. Pain exploded through his human nerve endings as the unyielding rock met his body. Angel screamed. Blood was pooling under his wounded side where the claw had passed through fabric and skin.
"Angel!" Spike ran to his hurt Sire's side, feeling for the pulse that beat strongly in Angel's neck. "Oh fuck, don't die on me!"
Angel heard panic in Spike's voice. That wasn't good. If Spike panicked now, they would both die here today, and Buffy and Aurora would be at the mercy of his insane Childe and Sire. "William," he said, forcing the pain out of his voice. "Calm down. I'm fine. I'm not dying here today."
Spike sobered at the sound of his true name. He met Angel's dark eyes, his vampiric sight enhanced in the near-perfect dark, searching them for a lie. He found only determination. He found Angel. "Good. I don't want to get staked by your pretty wife for getting you killed," he quipped, trying to hide the fear and relief flooding through him.
"How touching. Would you two like to be left alone?" the heroes' demon attacker smirked, highly amused at the sight of a vampire fawning over a human.
Spike growled deep in his chest, his brow pushing forward as his canines elongated in his snarling mouth. His cerulean eyes glowed gold as his demon settled there, ready to fight. He reached inside Angel's coat, his movements hidden to the chattering demon behind him.
Spike's fist closed around the hilt of the broadsword concealed in the folds of the material. "Feeling left out?" he said, an evil anticipation for killing something making his voice sweet and malevolent. Angel shuddered at the sound, remembering hunts past and the cruelty this blonde vampire was capable of.
Spike focused his gaze on the demon, showing him his true face and smiled. "Let me rectify that."
He attacked, expertly sweeping the broadsword in an upward arc that caught the demon completely unawares. It howled as the blade penetrated and separated his scaly skin.
The blow was only meant to inflict pain, not to kill. Spike grinned, the demon under his skin cheering at the howl and stink of pain coming from his adversary. "There. Now you're part of the fun. Tell you what, let's make this even more fun. How about you shrieking like a little girl while I cut you to teeny tiny pieces?"
Angel forced the pain cascading through his side away. He pushed his feet under him and stood. The world spun a little, but came back into focus. 'I must be worse off than I thought,' he grimaced, seeing the pool of sticky red fluid at his feet. He gingerly touched the wet spot at his side. The wound wasn't oozing anymore, his body valiantly fighting to heal the damage.
The glint of steel drew Angel. His blood-coated fingers closed around the wooden handle of Spike's battle ax. Angel lifted the weapon, swinging and gripping it in familiarity, letting it become an extension of his powerful arm. "Mind if I join in?" he said, taking up his place at Spike's vulnerable right.
Seeing the darkly good looking man standing beside him, weapon hanging deceptively relaxed by his side, his immense frame equally deceptively relaxed, made a shudder of pleasure run through Spike's battle ready body. All that was missing was the feral predatory golden eyes and bared fangs identical to his own.
"You're Deh'ras, aren't you?" Angel asked, looking for confirmation of the facts he already knew. "You're the Raz'lah that's been stalking my daughter."
Deh'ras' face split in a hateful grin that revealed hooked, yellowed needlepoint teeth. "It's good you know who I am. I want my enemy, the killer of my brother, to know who will destroy all he holds dear and remove him from this plane."
"I'll take that as a yes then," Spike drawled. "These demons are always so melodramatic, don't you think? 'The killer of my brother', ooohhhh! Where do you come up with this stuff?" The more taunting Spike's tone became, the tighter Deh'ras' grin span. Angel was sure any second now his face was just going to split in two.
"You are nothing to me, little creature," Deh'ras spat, enraged. "You will know my wrath and tremble!"
Spike, being so purely Spike, rolled his eyes heavenward and, finding only the ceiling of rock above him, sighed, "See? Melodramatic. Can't you just shut up and fight already? Or are you going to talk us to death?"
The Raz'lah didn't wait to be invited twice. With a bellowing battle cry that bombarded the two Warriors from all sides, Deh'ras attacked.
Angel briefly cursed the bleach blonde's impetuous nature, before swinging into action, swinging the battle-ax's wicked blade to meet the charging demon's powerful legs. Spike leapt into the fight with a mighty roar, wielding the broadsword with deadly grace.
Deh'ras sidestepped the incoming battle-ax, only to feel the searing pain of his scaly arm being sliced open by the impudent vampire. He turned on Spike, lashing out with his wounded arm and catching his foe against the chest with a mighty fisted claw, sending Spike bouncing off the unyielding rock wall.
"Spike!" Angel called urgently. If the vampire was knocked unconscious, they would both die here tonight, Angel knew. He still remembered his final battle with Deh'ras' brother, Mah'lak. It had taken both his ensouled and soulless vampire selves to defeat the monster. This Raz'lah was younger and stronger than Mah'lak. Angel wasn't even sure he could be defeated with Spike by his side, but without him the battle was already lost.
Spike groaned. Stars floated in front of his now-blue eyes, the pain cascading through his head down his spine and into his toes from his brutal meeting with the rock. He stumbled to his feet, only to have his knees buckle under him.
"Spike!"
The vampire pushed himself up against the wall and forced the world to stop spinning. "Yeah," he groaned, holding his head. His inspecting fingers informed him he had a nasty gash on the back of his head that was slowly leaking blood down his neck and shirt. "I'm here. I'm up."
While Spike was stumbling around, looking for his equilibrium to return, Angel was fighting Deh'ras with everything he had. Angel, even though he was still blessed with his old vampire strength and stamina, was tiring. Blow after blow, cut after cut, and still Deh'ras kept coming.
"Spike, now!"
The blow blindsided Angel. Never shift your attention away from a fight. That was Rule Nr. 1 and Angel just paid dearly for breaking it. He screamed at the mortal pain of having his shoulder dislocated.
Deh'ras tried to push his advantage over the downed man. The demon lifted a massive rock high above his inhuman head, ready to bring it down on this mortal and ending his miserable existence.
Angel kicked out with his leg, his foot landing squarely on the demon's knee. Out of nowhere, another foot landed in Deh'ras' stomach as Spike connected with a perfectly aimed kick of his own.
Deh'ras fell.
"You alright?" Angel asked the bloodied vampire bending over him.
Spike grabbed Angel under the arm and pulled. The clipped scream the dark-haired man tried to swallow made him freeze. "I'm fine, but you're not," he said, quickly and skillfully assessing his Warrior-sire's injuries.
"Hold on. You know the drill," Spike ordered. Angel nodded and braced himself. The loud pop echoed through the caves as Spike popped Angel's shoulder back in. "Can you fight?"
Angel's vision cleared as the pain subsided. He nodded, "Yeah, I'm g…" His velvet brown eyes shifted past Spike's worried face to the glint that caught his eye. Deh'ras was towering over them, his broadsword held high and ready to strike.
"Spike, look out!" he screamed and pushed the vampire away from him as hard as he could, the broadsword slicing through air where Spike's blonde head was just seconds ago.
Fire spread through Angel's body, replaced almost instantly by numbing cold. He looked down to his midsection, his eyes growing large and his skin pale. His entire stomach was cut open, blood pouring out of him in gushing rivers. Somewhere far away he heard Spike roar in rage and Deh'ras howl in pain. The world was getting dark around the edges of his vision. He was dying. Angel knew this. He could feel his heart pounding slower and slower in his chest.
"Angel? Sire? Oh fuck!" Spike babbled, pressing down on the enormous wound quickly killing his human creator. "Don't you die! You can't die!"
"Will," Angel whispered. He wasn't capable of anything more than a whisper. "Will, tell Buffy I love her. Take care of my girls for me. Aurora…"
Spike was shaking his head in furious denial. "No! You are not going to leave me again, you fucking wanker!!!"
Spike's vampire senses picked up the slow, but still present heartbeat of the man dying in his arms. He didn't think. He just reacted, and prayed to whatever gods were watching he wasn't going to regret this. With swift precision, the vampire bit down hard on Angel's neck. He didn't have to take much to get the human body empty enough of human blood.
Then Spike opened up his own jugular and forced Angel's bloodless lips to his blood soaked throat. "Don't fight this, please. Don't leave me," he begged with the man he held tightly to him.
Pain knifed through Spike's body when Angel latched onto the wound in his throat and drank deep. The dying man, starved, sucked hard on the fount flowing into his mouth. With a growl emanating from deep within his own chest, Angel ripped at the cut, forcing the blood imprisoned behind Spike's skin to flow freely down his greedy throat.
Spike was screaming, the terrible pain of this invasion pulling at his undead heart. "Enough," he hissed, trying to dislodge the insistent hold Angel had on him. "Angel, stop!"
He pushed against Angel's broad chest, wailing when his skin tore even more when Angel's blunt human teeth released him.
Angel gasped, expelling his final breath through bloodstained lips. He fell back, his heart silent and dead, never to beat again.
***************
In her cage, feeling very alone, Buffy sat. The pain struck. The elder Slayer doubled over, grabbing her breast, clawing frantically at her heart. She gasped, sinking to her knees.
"Mom!" Aurora was by her mother's side and holding her, not knowing what was going on and terrified because of it. "Mom, tell me, what's wrong?"
"Angel," Buffy uttered on a harshly expelled breath. Her soul knew her husband, her soul mate, had died.
From above them, a joyous wail, a sound of pure pain and pure delight, resounded. Drusilla was dancing, swaying to the visions in her head. "Daddy," she lilted. "Daddy's coming home."