"Step lively, children," Spike said drolly as he lit a cigarette. "We don't want to miss clean up detail."
The Pod squad resentfully fell into line behind Buffy and her gang. Once they stepped foot on the grounds of the abandoned soap factory the effect was almost immediate. Like an army of cockroaches, the creatures of the night came creeping out of their hiding places.
"Oh my God," Maria said, watching the glowing eyes come closer. She grabbed Liz's arm in a death grip.
Isabel had to stifle a scream with her fist. Max's description didn't even begin to describe the monsters that were surrounding them. Michael clenched his fist open and closed, getting ready to use his powers. Sheriff Valenti put a protective hand on his son's shoulder.
"Grandpa didn't even scratch the surface, did he dad?" Kyle whispered.
"Looks that way," the sheriff replied.
Spike, however, looked delighted. He was bouncing on his feet like a boxer before a fight.
"God, I haven't been able to kill anything in ages," he said.
Buffy stopped and looked all around her, assessing the situation with a dark glare at all the vampires. She separated her feet in a sturdy stance; she clenched her fists and drew them back.
"I'm not getting any younger," she said, and with that the creatures surged forward.
Isabel, Maria, Kyle and Valenti had never seen Buffy fight before. They were stunned by how someone so small could be so powerful. She launched one vamp with a kick to the stomach and turned and staked the one coming up behind her. They were floored when it burst into dust.
The rest of her friends were no less impressive. Tara and Willow linked their left hands together and waved their right ones in the air. The vampires charging them bounced back like they'd hit a wall. On one side of them Anya was waving a sword at another of the creatures of the night while on the other side Xander swung an axe and lopped off the head of yet another.
Spike gave a cry of delight when a few of the vampires finally turned their attention to him and the Pod squad. He threw himself into the fray with glee.
Buffy dusted a few more of her enemies and then she turned to Willow and Tara.
"Blast it!" She shouted.
The two young women put their hands in front of them and the door of the factory blew into a thousand pieces.
"Liz!"
Liz joined Buffy in front.
"This way," she said, and she led them inside. Thanks to Liz's earlier exploration Buffy knew where the vamps were hiding and made short work of them which allowed them to move quickly through the building. But as they got closer to the main warehouse they both became aware of the sound of music.
She was a January girl
She never let on how insane it was
In that tiny kinda scary house
By the woods
By the woods
By the woods
It caused a chill to slither down Buffy's spine. The music was an odd touch, not Darla's style at all. More like…She shook her head.
"It's meant to distract us," she said out loud. Liz nodded but the ephemeral voice singing was freaking her out.
Buffy and Liz, with their band of friends behind them, entered the main chamber of the factory. The hostages were all exactly where Liz had found them earlier, only now there was a strange apparatus erected in front of them. It looked like a catapult of some kind, with rows of stakes aimed directly at the chained up prisoners.
Darla walked up to it and ran her hand down the side lovingly.
"Ingenious isn't it?" She said.
Liz shook her head, she looked and sounded just like Agent Topolski but there was an evil aura around her that she could feel all the way across the room.
"That's not what I would call it, " Buffy said, approaching the vampire cautiously. Behind her back, Liz saw her carefully pulling a stake out of her waistband. "But sick and twisted come to mind."
"Ah, the cheerleader," Darla said. "It's been a long time. I see that you didn't age well at all."
"I'm not the one that will be blowing out a forest fire on my birthday cake this year. Not that you'll make it that long."
"You know, Buffy, I don't know why we're enemies." Darla replied, grabbing a switch on the machine. "We have so much in common. Both of us have died, both of us have been brought back to life, both of us are going to watch a man we once loved die."
Buffy snapped the stake out and launched it at Darla. The vampire backed up just enough for it to miss her and embed in the wall behind her.
"Your aim hasn't improved any, I see," She said, and she slammed the lever on the devise down.
"No!" Liz screamed, running toward the machine, expecting the stakes to launch at Max and the others.
"Liz, no!" Buffy screamed, running after her. She expected Darla to take Liz out but the vampire disappeared. They both reached the machine at the same time. The others followed them into the room.
"Liz, get out of here!" Max shouted, but Liz was too busy trying to lift the lever back up into its original position.
"It must be on a timer," Liz said, struggling with the lever.
Buffy tried helping her but the lever wouldn't budge. Then the stakes started to slowly ease back, preparing to spring forward at the hostages.
"Willow!" Buffy cried, hoping the witch could disable or disintegrate the machine. But as soon as Willow took a step forward an arrow landed at her feet. Then another. Everyone looked up and in the rafters, completely circling the room, were vampires. Most of them had stakes and arrows and other vampire killing weapons.
"That Darla sure likes the irony, doesn't she?" Xander whispered.
"She didn't want to leave anything to chance."
They turned and found Ethan Rayne blocking the door they'd just entered through. He was smiling smugly while two burly looking vampires stood behind him.
"She hates loose ends." He said, then the door slammed behind him. He turned and found the vampires gone and the exit shut, sealing him in with all of Darla's enemies.
"Apparently," Buffy said.
Then all hell broke loose.
Suddenly arrows were pouring down on them like rain. Vampires were leaping down, surrounding them. The machine was still ticking away and, as if to compensate for the noise of the battle, the weird music got louder.
Black-dove black dove
You're not a helicopter
You're not a cop out either
Black-dove black dove
You don't need a space ship
They don't know you've already lived
On the other side of the galaxy
Liz pressed her back against the machine, trying to turn it away from the hostages and that gave Buffy an idea.
"Xander!" She shouted above the din. She put her hands out and he seemed to understand. He pulled back his arm and sent the axe he was holding straight at her. She caught it like he'd tossed her a bag of chips. Then she turned and went to Angel. He lowered his head and she swung the axe, snapping the chains and freeing him.
"Help me move it," Buffy said.
He nodded and they joined Liz in trying to swing the whole machine away from the others. It slowly began to move, but not fast enough to make a difference. Liz looked around desperately, trying to come up with another idea, then she saw Isabel.
She and Liz's other friends were fighting off vampires as best they could but the vamps were concentrating their efforts on the people they knew were dangerous so the aliens weren't under such heavy attack.
"Isabel!" Liz shouted. "Isabel help!"
Isabel looked over at Liz just as Liz heard the springs in the machine draw back one final time.
"Now!"
Isabel put her hand out and the air crackled with the energy. The machine suddenly jolted and then it swung around like a revolving door, sending Angel, Buffy and Liz spiraling across the floor and the deadly stakes aimed in the direction of the battle.
"Hit the deck!" Michael cried.
Most of the Scoobies and the Pod Squad had seen the struggle with the machine so they dived for the floor. Most of the vampires had not. So when the air filled with the wood torpedoes half the vampires exploded into dust.
There was a moment of amazement, when most eyes turned to Isabel. Then the remaining vampires, most still in the rafters and well above the barrage of stakes, leaped back into action.
"Interesting friends," Angel said as he helped Liz to her feet.
"You have no idea," Liz said and she went running back to Max. She threw her arms around him.
"Um, hey," Cordelia said, "still chained to a wall here."
"Free the others," Buffy said to Angel as she swept the room with a purposeful look.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going after Darla." She looked up and the vampire was above them in the rafters, overlooking the scene like a queen.
Angel reached out and grabbed her arm as she turned to go.
"Be careful," he said. She smiled and nodded.
Angel turned and decked the vampire coming up behind him with an axe. The axe flipped in the air as the vamp went down and Angel plucked it out of the air and went to free his friends.
Buffy took a running start, took one leap to the top of the stake machine, and then another to the rafter next to Darla. The vampire didn't seem surprised or troubled. Instead, she gazed down at the chaos below.
"You've obtained some interesting allies." She said.
Buffy took a chance and glanced down. Her friends were holding their own but Liz's friends weren't doing as well. Isabel was repelling the vampires with whatever power she had but it looked like she was getting tired. Kyle and Maria were splashing holy water at everything that moved. The sheriff was swinging at any invaders with the sword that he'd been given. Michael looked frustrated as he fought with only his hands. Spike was trying to keep the vamps at bay and even stood back to back with Ethan in fighting them off. Which didn't surprise Buffy at all. Ethan hopped on any bandwagon that would save his hide.
"Call your army off," Buffy said, "or you're going to be dust and I guarantee no one will bring you back this time."
Darla looked at her and smiled.
"Good allies are a powerful thing," she said and that's when a carefully manicured hand wrapped around Buffy's throat from behind.
"Grandmother," a delighted voice cried. "You brought me a present."
"I asked you not to call me that," Darla said.
"Drusilla," Buffy whispered as the vampire's nails began to dig into her throat.
"Would you like a bite?" Dru asked Darla.
"Bite this," Buffy said and she lifted up her feet and sent them into Darla's stomach. Caught off guard, she stumbled backwards and fell off the rafter with an angry scream. Then Buffy knocked her head back into Drusilla's face, breaking the vampire's grip on her throat. She turned and faced the insane creature.
"You stole Spike from me," she said with a pout.
"Want him back?" Buffy asked, taking a swing that Dru backed out of the way of.
"Can you hear the music in my head?" She asked.
"It's not in your head," Buffy said. "You're playing it over the sound system."
"But the moon will soon be screaming."
Buffy shook her head.
"You do know that nothing out of your mouth makes any sense, don't you?"
"Because of my bad daddy."
Buffy swung and connected this time. Dru fell backwards, but she grabbed Buffy's wrist as she went down and they both went crashing to the floor below.
Angel had just finished freeing everyone but Max when the two women fell from the ceiling, still fighting like neither noticed they were falling through the air.
"Drusilla?" he said.
"What?" Liz asked, more concerned that Max was still tethered to the wall.
"It just keeps getting worse," he mumbled. He turned back to Max and Liz and broke the axe he was holding over his knee. "You're going to have to saw it off."
He'd used the axe to free the others because their hands were tied above their heads but Max was going to be trickier because his were tied behind his back. He handed Liz the broken axe, now a more manageable size. Then he turned to go aid Buffy but he found himself faced with six vampires.
Liz took the broken axe and positioned it over the chains on Max's wrists. Cordelia grabbed the other side and helped Liz saw. Gunn, Wesley and Giles found makeshift weapons and used them to help Angel protect the women while they worked.
Both Drusilla and Darla circled Buffy like a pair of sharks on a feeding frenzy.
Buffy had never faced them both before. Individually both Dru and Darla had almost killed her. Together, she was grimly aware, they just might succeed. She sent her fist into Dru's face but Darla caught her from behind and spun her in her direction. Then Dru's hands were grabbing her around the throat again as Darla closed in on her. Buffy gave a quick look around and everyone else in the room was occupied with their own self-preservation. She was wondering what would happen if she died three times. Would that really be her limit? But then someone grabbed Darla's shoulder and turned the vampire away from Buffy.
Darla snarled at the interruption and she came face to face with an athletic looking, dark haired, dark eyed young woman.
"Who the hell are you?" Darla demanded.
The young woman smiled with a dangerous glint in her eye.
"I'm Faith," she said, slamming Darla viscously in the face. "The vampire slayer."
