CHAPTER 18: INFERNO

We found you hiding, we found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands

But oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Hot and burning, in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies, blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes…

And your city lies in dust

            ~Cities In Dust, Siouxsie and the Banshees
______________________________________________

The wind died instantly. It did not subside, it simply ceased to exist the moment the circle was broken. The Scoobies lay scattered like broken dolls across the etched ground, and for a moment, everything was completely silent, the lack of sound almost painful in the wake of the howling wind.

Willow stirred, blinked and pushed herself to her knees, body aching with impact and the aftermath of the spell.

"Did it work?" she asked, her voice cracked with strain but eager.

"I bloody well hope not," Spike answered.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Faith groaned and pushed herself up off the ground. She had barely risen to her knees when she felt a searing force impact with her body and slam her back down.

"What the hell did you do?" Willow was beyond furious; Faith didn't need to see the witch's face to know that.

"Here now, back off, witch," Spike interrupted, and Faith could sense that he was placing himself between them, felt the displacement of air as he moved nearer to her. "What the bloody hell did you think you were playing at?"

The other Scoobies were regaining their senses; Faith could sense their movements as they came to and began to rise. The world seemed to tighten and contract around her, making it difficult to breathe, and it took her a moment to recognize the unfamiliar feeling as anxiety. Her nerves felt stretched to the breaking point after the events of the last few days, and it was all she could do to keep from bursting into laughter at the sudden realization that Spike's presence here was actually comforting.

"Bringing Buffy back!" Willow replied vehemently. There was a tone to her voice that suggested Spike was pushing his luck by even asking. "And this—this—" she couldn't seem to come up with a term offensive enough to describe Faith. "She probably broke the spell!"

It didn't sound as if Willow were going anywhere near sanity or stoicism anytime soon. Faith looked up then, wanting to see. If her end came here and now, she at least wanted to know how. Wanted to look the witch in the eye one last time.

"I'd say it's a lucky thing she did," Spike replied levelly. And he was calm, so calm. Faith wondered how he could be so calm. He tilted his head, looking at Willow with eyes of flint and fire, and a shiver ran down Faith's spine as she realized his calm sprang not from peace of mind, but from a rage so deep and terrible it could not be expressed in any other way without violence. "Did you really think you could pull this off? Wasn't that business with Joyce enough to teach you stupid gits that bringing someone back is never a good idea?"

The Scoobies were all looking at each other now, glancing around guiltily, their expressions easily betraying their worry. They hadn't gone into this blind, then. They'd had misgivings, but they'd done it anyway. Somehow, that made it all the worse… and yet she found herself commiserating with them, too. If it hadn't been for her dreams, would she…?

And then she understood everything.

It flooded through her like a river, washing her clean of confusion and doubt, leaving the plain of her mind empty and peaceful. The portal… Buffy's death, her call to return to life.

"They left this. Here. You take it."

It was as if all the tumblers on the lock of her mind had clicked into place and opened all at once, almost audible as the pieces inside her head fell together, the complete picture revealed at last.

The world side slipped and…

…she struck the center of the portal and she had a moment when she wished she had time to tell them not to be sad for her, that her mind was at peace now and she could finally rest, nestled safely in the arms of oblivion. That whatever sweet reward the afterlife could offer, it could not compare to this. She was one with her actions, one with her destiny, and in giving herself over to it completely, she found a freedom and peace she had never known existed. She opened her eyes and…

…raised her face to them, eyes imploring them to believe, to understand, already knowing what the outcome would be but needing to try anyway. Her voice locked in her dry throat, and she swallowed against the knot there.

"Listen to me." And for a wonder, they all did, heads swiveling to look at her with anger, contempt, and even mild curiosity. "I dreamed this…" she trailed off, lost in her thoughts, vaguely aware that now that she had their attention she was doing more to convince them that she was a lunatic than ever. "I…" How could she explain? "She… Buffy…" The simplest truth of all. "She's happy." She could sense them bristling against her words, hear them taking a collective deep breath to contradict her, and she hurried on. "She died doing what she thought was the right thing. She was ready to die. She wants to rest in peace."

"You don't know that!" Willow spat, moving around Spike. "How could you know that?"

"Will…" Xander's voice now, quiet, also imploring.

"What?" she snapped back at him, her accusing eyes falling on him with righteous anger.

But they would never know what, exactly, because that was when Faith saw the vampires coming down the hill toward them.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

"There's too many of them," Faith said, her words clearly directed at Spike.

He gave her a sidelong look, glanced up the hill and then looked back at her. "Time to go", Spike said, pulling Anya to her feet.

Xander rose, helping Tara up, and there was a moment of hesitation as Willow glanced around helplessly.

"No," she pleaded, her voice bereft of anger now, filled with a wistful longing, with broken hope.

Faith jumped to her feet, steadying herself, and then drew her stake. "This party's over." She grabbed Willow's arm with her free hand, her eyes meeting the witch's for a brief instant. Willow shook her off and Faith the still saw anger there, and hatred, but it was lost now, buried beneath the confusion of everything that was happening.

"But… Buffy…"

"It didn't work," Spike said sharply. "But if you want to stand here and start the feeding frenzy, go right ahead." Willow gave him a small look of surprise and hurt. His expression didn't change, and they could all tell that he meant it; he'd had enough, and if Willow didn't run now, he wasn't going to help her.

They took off running into the night.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

They fought their way through smaller groups of vampires as they fled, Faith and Spike leading the assault, Xander and Anya just behind them, Willow and Tara backing them all with what little magical power they could still muster, and at last they escaped into the sewers beneath the town.

Everyone was completely silent as they hurried through the tunnels, the only sounds of water dripping, heavy breathing and rustling clothing. When they reached a particular crossroad in the tunnels, as unremarkable and indistinguishable as the rest of the tunnels they had passed through, Spike paused at last, glancing upward as if to make sure of where he was.

"The Magic Box is right down the street from here."

Glances all around, the shuffling of feet, and the almost audible sound of weights shifting in the minds of the Scoobies.

Willow cut Faith a black look as the others began to ascend the ladder to the streets above.

"You. Both of you," she said, including Spike in her gaze. "Do you realize what you did tonight?"

Spike looked at Faith, she looked at him, and as one they looked back at Willow with a light shrug and a nod, consciences so clear it was almost an arrogant gesture.

Infuriated, she stepped toward them. "You, I get," she hurled the words at Faith. "Wouldn't want Buffy back to step all over your glory as the one and only Slayer—"

"I told you—"

"—but you," Willow went on, spinning on Spike. "I don't get. I thought you loved Buffy."

"I do," he said quietly.

Faith shot him a startled glance, eyes widening as a few more pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

"Then why?" she asked, plaintively, almost desperately.

"Were you prepared to face Buffy coming back as some mindless shambling thing?" he asked menacingly. "Did you even think about that? Were you prepared to take responsibility for sending her back to whatever heaven or hell you pulled her out of? Could you," he asked, stepping so close to Willow that she had to fight the urge to back away from him, "have put a knife in her heart to set her free again? Or cut off her head?"

"But it wouldn't have—"

"Or, let's say you did bring her back all right. What if she didn't want to be here?"

Willow seemed struck speechless by the very thought.

"Did you think at all, witch? Or did you just decide that you knew best? Got your little group of Scoobies to roll over and do whatever you said?"

Willow threw up her hands almost defensively and spun away from them. "I try to do the best thing for everyone and—You know what? I don't even know why I'm bothering. You're both… evil anyway!"

"Evil people who saved your ungrateful little lives tonight," Faith added, her eyes narrowing to slits as she challenged the witch.

"Oh, and that balances out all the scales, right?" Willow met her gaze with equal ire, and Faith thought Willow might actually be gauging whether or not she could take her after all the energy she'd expended tonight.

Tara, who had been hovering nervously at the bottom of the ladder, waiting, moved from her place at last. "Come on, Willow," she said, tugging at the witch's shirt.

Reluctantly, Willow allowed herself to be drawn away, stepping back. "This isn't the end."

"Count on it," Faith shot back, sneering.

With a last angry look, Willow turned and climbed the ladder.

When the manhole cover slid back into place, Faith shook her head and swallowed against the bitter taste in her mouth.

"Well. That's done," Spike said, giving her a questioning glance, almost as if he weren't sure.

"Yeah." She scuffed her boot toe along the grimy surface of the concrete floor. When she didn't move, Spike tilted his head at her curiously and she raised her eyes to meet him. There was something about this that seemed all wrong… something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

"How did they know?"

"The vamps?" he asked, dark brows rising. He snorted a laugh. "You cast a spell that powerful, you might as well take out a billboard ad with a big neon arrow. 'Witless, stupid humans, here'."

She nodded then, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked down at her dirt-encrusted boot.

"Second thoughts?" Spike asked, as if the idea had just occurred to him.

"No. I know I was right… what I said." She shook her head, unruly hair falling back into her face. "I just… I wish she were here, you know?" She asked the question almost defensively, as if daring him to counter it.

He looked at her a moment, and then lowered his head, nodding.

"I know."

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

She exited the tunnels near where Spike said her house was, climbing the rungs to the surface in blessed solitude. She hadn't realized what a toll the evening had taken on her. The night of dancing and college boys seemed very far away, and she found herself thinking only of how good it would feel to fall into bed and rest her weary, bruised bones.

Angel almost dying and then the… sex… and then gone, the Scoobies aware and hating her, Buffy's almost resurrection, Spike's annoying yet imminently helpful and thus more annoying stalker-like tendencies, vampires, the new big bad, the as yet un-deciphered scroll, the Council's watchful eye and potentially harmful tendencies… the worries and problems piled up as she named each of them.

No wonder Buffy was happy to get out, she thought cynically, shoving the manhole cover aside.

She rose cautiously into the cool, California night air, stake at the ready.

It was then that she smelled the smoke.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

She didn't stop to think. She didn't have to. Chalk it up to the Slayer instinct for trouble, the intuition for the nature of danger. And even if you discounted all of that, there was still the law of averages to consider, and she was experienced enough with averages to know that they rarely came down in her favor. She didn't question it. She simply knew where the smoke was coming from.

For more times than she could count in the last few days, she'd run as if her life or someone else's depended on it. Each time, she'd been certain of the worst. Each time, she'd escaped somehow, mostly unscathed. And now she was running again, bone weary and infinitely tired of running.

She had a feeling that this time, she wasn't going to be so lucky.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Flames licked the support beams of the house, dancing and devouring eagerly over the wooden surfaces. The fire was in all its power and glory, the superiority of nature over the illusion of human mastery. Dark forms stood out in stark contrast to the brilliance of the light, blacker than velvet against the yellow-white glow. Even from where she was, still several houses away, she could tell that they were vampires. Their handiwork done, they were fleeing the scene.

They were coming right at her, all menacing fanged grins and raised fists, but she only had one thought.

Oh God, Ms. H.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Afterward, she could never quite remember the sequence of events, or even all of them.

She knew she had twisted and danced through the vampires, slaying any that came within reach of her stake. She remembered the tall, handsome one, who had broken several of her ribs with one incredible punch, remembered that she hadn't been able to stop him as she fell to the ground, all the breath driven from her lungs, fire in her chest and in her brain. She remembered stumbling to her feet, staking another on her way into the flames, the startling clarity of his shocked expression before he burst into ashes.

Like an animal, she raged against the flames, the primitive functions of her brain kicking in during the lapse of rational thought. She would have fought it, this primeval force, would have killed it if she could have, but all she could do was cough against the acrid smoke that filled her burning lungs, flinch from the flames that came too close to her body.

Against all instinct for survival, she made her way into the fiery wreckage of the house, the smoke coiling in wicked tendrils around her mind, hazing her vision and graying out her thoughts. A burning timber collapsed and she ducked beneath it, bright orange embers shooting out in a showering spray, and for a moment, beyond the overwhelming scent of burning wood, she could smell her own hair burning. She smacked at her head in annoyance, killing the tiny, deadly flames that sprang up in her tresses.

Time ceased to have meaning within the confines of the burning building, and she stumbled through the smoking ruins, heedless and uncomprehending, hardly remembering why she was there or what she was looking for. Still, despite everything, she managed to cling to her objective with a tenacity that would have impressed her Watcher, had she seen it.

Unfortunately, her Watcher would never see anything again.

She found Beatrice at the edge of the fire, near the bay window of the sitting room. Her body lay at an awkward angle, limbs splayed in a pathetic display of human frailty. Her fingers clutched at the loamy earth she had joked about turning into a garden, long furrows drawn out behind them.

Her head was gone.

Faith sank to her knees among the flames, stunned, no longer aware of anything else around her. The faces of Watchers past paraded before her in a mocking procession, and rational thought still escaping her, she knew only that she had failed. Knew it on the deepest and most intimate of levels.

There wasn't even any blood. She remembered that clearly afterward, and often wished she hadn't. The vampires had drained her and then taken her head as a trophy.

Defeated, her body gave out. She fell on her side, coughing weakly against the smoke that filled her lungs, and there was a thick, liquid sound to her coughing now, a sound that spoke of punctured ribs and impending death. She barely registered it. She felt her thoughts drifting away, carried on the smoke that rose from the bright flames all around her. This is it, then, some distant part of her mind thought, and she found now that the end was here, she welcomed it. The oblivion of death was preferable to the reality she faced now. So much easier to sink beneath the black waves that beckoned. Treading water was so hard…

She didn't know how long she lay there, senseless and on the verge of suffocation. Bright flowers of color bloomed behind her eyes, exploding in a vibrant fire that rivaled the blaze around her, purple, green, red, white. She struggled a moment toward the end, body instinctively gasping for air, mouth open wide, striving desperately to pull oxygen from the air. And then, for a moment, or for an eternity it seemed, there was only blackness.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

It could have been seconds or even hours later when she felt strong arms grab her and lift her, dragging her away from the heat of the flames, away from the harsh smoke and bright light.

"Come on, luv. Wake up."

The ground was cool beneath her, and she found that she could breathe again. Choking, she gave a rasping cough, spitting out stringy, bloody ropes of phlegm. Her stomach contracted in tight waves of pain in response, and she rolled on her side, vomiting up what little liquid still remained in her stomach. Retching violently, she curled up in tight ball of misery, dry heaves racking her body in rapid succession, sharp, impossible pain flaring to life in her head.

"You… should… have let me… die…" she croaked weakly.

"Well, there's gratitude for you," he said dryly, and she managed a guttural, choking laugh between retching.

Angel would have said she had to earn her rest like everyone else. Angel… Oh God, she wished he were here.

Reality returned for a brutal, rational moment. "Ms. H…"

"Yeah. I know."

"I… couldn't… save her…"

He didn't respond, picking her up in his arms instead. The lifting motion made her feel sick again, and she dry-heaved with a groan of disgust.

"Why… you helping… me?" she managed to get out, fighting against the waves of darkness that threatened to descend upon her.

"What else have I got to do?" he asked whimsically, and he might as well have been talking to the air for all she heard; unconsciousness had claimed her again.

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

He gathered her closer in his arms, shaking his head in disgust at himself. Might as bloody well turn in his black hat for a suit of shining armor. What was he going to do, anyway?

But he already knew the answer to that, didn't he? Only one thing to do, only one place to go. Her Watcher was dead, Angel was gone, and she'd be needing help. Great as he was on the battle back up, he wasn't much good for the kind of support she was going to need after this.

Bitterly, he thought on the events of the night. The damned Scoobies trying to resurrect Buffy against all common sense, Faith saving them from that horrible mistake and then being rewarded by their enmity and the death of her Watcher. He might not be crazy about the girl but she damned sure deserved better than that.

Distantly, he could hear the sound of sirens, the Sunnydale police and fire department, always a day late and a dollar short. "Come on then," he said tersely, turning and walking away from the deadly blaze.

"Let's go see ourselves the only Watcher left in town."


End Book One


________________________________________________________________

And that's a wrap for Book One, folks! Next week I'll be posting Chapter 19, which is a short epilogue/intermission that deals with some "in-between" things, and then that'll be it until the first or second week of January, when we begin Book Two.