Jezebel Screamed, a scream that reminded Dawn of ancient predators, of the saber-tooth cat and the bull mammoth. Blood frothed out of her mouth along with the scream, turning that beautiful face into a twisted mask of fury.
Her hands scrabbled at her back, trying to get a grip on the stake and pull it out. But it was buried to deep. The throw had been a good one.
"Faith." Dawn whispered.
She was standing at the edge of the clearing, framed by oak trees. As Dawn watched, she took a step toward Jezebel, and then another; lithe stalking steps filled with deadly purpose.
And she was angry. Dawn would have run from the look on her face if her muscles hadn't been frozen. She had never seen such menace so barely held in check.
"Get . . . away . . . from my sisters," she said almost breathing it, with her eyes never leaving Jezebel's as she took another step.
Jezebel screamed again, but her hands stopped their frantic scrabbling. "You idiot! We don't have to fight! I told you that at the house! We can ignore each other!"
Faith's voice was no louder than before. "Get away from my sisters." Dawn could feel it inside her, a swell of Power like a tsunami. She continued, so softly that Dawn had to strain to hear her, "Before I tear your heart out."
Dawn could move after all. She stepped backward.
"I told you!" screamed Jezebel, frothing. Faith didn't acknowledge the words in any way. Her whole being seemed focused on Jezebel's throat, on her chest, on the beating heart inside that she was going to tear out.
Jezebel picked up the unbroken sword and rushed Faith.
In spite of all the blood, the dark haired woman seemed to have plenty of strength left. The rush was sudden, violent, and almost inescapable. Dawn saw her thrust the sword at Faith and shut her eyes involuntarily, and then opened them an instant later as she heard the flurry of wings.
Jezebel had plunged right through the spot where Faith had been standing, and a black raven was soaring upward while a single feather floated down. As Dawn stared, Jezebel's rush took her into the darkness beyond the clearing and she disappeared.
Dread silence fell in the wood.
Dawn's paralysis broke slowly, and she first stepped, and then ran to where Buffy lay. Buffy didn't open her eyes at Dawn's approach; she seemed unconscious. Dawn knelt beside her. And then she felt a sort of horrible calm creep over her, like someone who has been swimming in ice water and at last feels the first undeniable signs of hypothermia. If she hadn't has so many successive shocks already, she might have fled screaming or dissolved into hysterics. But as it was, this was simply the last step, the last little slide into unreality. Into a world that couldn't be, but was.
Because it was bad. Very bad. As bad as it could be.
She'd never seen anybody hurt like this. Not even after the last time Jezebel had attacked Buffy. In that state of dreadful calm she looked up to see a flutter of wings blur and shimmer in the moonlight. Faith stood beside her, and she spoke collectedly and rationally.
"Will going to a hospital help?"
She didn't seem to hear Dawn. Her eyes were all black, all pupil. That barely leashed violence, that sense of ferocious energy held back, was gone. She knelt and touched the blond head on the ground.
"Buffy?"
Dawn shut her eyes.
Faith scared, she thought. Faith's scared-Faith!- and oh, god, I don't know what to do. There's nothing to do-and it's all over and we're all lost and Faith is scared for Buffy. She isn't going to take care of things and she hasn't got a solution and somebody's got to fix this. And oh, God, please help me because I'm so frightened and Buffy's dying and Willow, Spike, Xander, and Conner are hurt and Jezebel is going to come back.
She opened her eyes to look at Faith. She was white, her face looking terrifyingly young at that moment, with those dilated black eyes.
"Jezebel is coming back," Dawn said quietly. She wasn't afraid of Faith anymore. They weren't a Slayer turned Balancer and a seventeen-year-old witch with out powers, sitting here at the edge of the world. They were just to sisters, Faith and Dawn who had to do the best they could.
"I know," Faith said. She was holding Buffy's hand, looking completely unembarrassed about it, and it seemed quite logical and sensible. Dawn could feel Faith sending Power into Buffy, could also feel that it wasn't enough.
"Would a hospital help her?'
"A little maybe."
"Anything that helps at all we've got to try."
Buffy whispered. "NO."
Dawn was surprised. She'd thought Buffy was unconscious. But her eyes were open now, open and alert and smoldering green. They were the only alive thing about her.
"Don't be stupid," Faith said her voice hardening. She was gripping Buffy's hand until her knuckles turned white. "You're badly hurt."
"I won't break my promise." That immovable stubbornness was in Buffy's voice, in her pale face. And Faith opened her mouth again, undoubtedly to say that Buffy would break it and like it or Faith would break her neck, Buffy added, "Especially when it won't do any good."
There was a silence while Dawn fought with the raw truth of this. Where they were now, in this terrible place beyond all ordinary things, pretense or false reassurance seemed wrong. Only the truth would do. And Buffy was telling the truth.
She was still looking at her sister by blood and her sister by shared destiny, who was looking back, all that fierce, furious attention focused on Buffy as it had been focused on Jezebel earlier. As if somehow that would help.
"I'm not badly hurt, I'm dead," Buffy said brutally, her eyes locked on Faith's. Their last and greatest struggle of wills, Dawn thought. "And you need to get Dawn and the others out of here."
"We won't leave you," Dawn intervened. That was the truth; she could say that.
"You have to!" Buffy didn't glance aside, didn't look away from Faith. "Faith, you know I'm right. Jezebel will be here any minute. Don't throw away your life. Don't throw away their lives."
"I don't give a damn about their lives, only yours and Dawn's," Faith hissed. The truth also, Dawn thought. There were only two lives Faith cared about here, and neither were her own.
"Yes, you do!" Buffy flared back. She was hanging on to Faith's hand with just as fierce a grip, as if this was a contest and she could force Faith to concede that way. "Tara had a last request; well, this is mine. You have Power, Faith. I want you to use it to help them."
"Buffy . . ." Dawn whispered helplessly.
"Promise me," Buffy said to Faith, and then a spasm of pain twisted her face.
For uncountable seconds Faith simply looked down at Buffy. Then she said, "I promise," quick and sharp as the stroke of a dagger. She let go of Buffy's hand and stood, turning to Dawn. "Come on."
"We can't leave her . . ."
"Yes, we can." There was nothing young about Faith's face now. Nothing vulnerable. "You and the Scooby's are leaving here permanently. I am coming back."
Dawn shook her head. She knew, dimly, that Faith wasn't betraying Buffy that it was some case of Faith putting Buffy's ideals above Buffy's life, but it was all too abstruse and incomprehensible to Dawn. She didn't understand it and she didn't want to. All she knew was that Buffy couldn't be left lying there.
"You're coming now Dawnie," Faith said, reaching for her, the steely ring back in her voice. Dawn prepared herself for a fight, and then something happened that made all their debating meaningless. There was a crack like a giant whip and a flash of daylight, and Dawn was blinded. When she could see through the afterimage, her eyes flew to the flames that were licking up from a newly blackened hole at the base of a tree.
Jezebel had returned. With lightning.
Dawn's eye darted to her next, as the only other living thing moving in the clearing. She was waving the bloody lance she'd pulled out of her own back like a gory trophy.
Lightning rod, thought Dawn illogically, and then there was another crash.
It stabbed down from an empty sky, in huge blue-white forks that lit everything like the sun at noon. Dawn watched as one tree and then another was hit, each one closer than the last. Flames licked up like hungry red goblins among the leaves.
Two trees on either side of Dawn exploded with cracks so loud that she felt rather than heard it. A piercing pain in her eardrums. Faith shielded her eyes.
Then she shouted "Jezebel!" and sprang toward the dark haired woman. She wasn't stalking now; this was the deadly race of attack. The burst of killing speed of the hunting cat or the wolf.
Lightning caught her in midspring.
Dawn screamed as she saw it, jumping to her feet. There was a blue flash of superheated gases and a smell of burning, and then Faith was down, lying motionless on her face. Dawn could see tiny wisps of smoke rise from her, just as they did from the trees.
Speechless with horror, she looked at Jezebel.
She was swaggering through the clearing, holding he bloody stick like a golf club. She bent down over Faith as she passed, and smiled. Dawn wanted to scream again, but she didn't have the breath. There didn't seem to be any air left to breathe.
"I'll deal with you later," Jezebel told the unconscious Faith. Then her face tipped up toward Dawn.
"You," she said, "I'm going to deal with right now."
It was an instant before she realized Jezebel was looking at Buffy, and not her. Those electric blue eyes were fixed on Buffy's face. They moved to Buffy's bloody middle.
"I'm going to kill you now slayer, then find your daughter and do the same."
Dawn was all alone. The only one left standing. And she was afraid.
But she knew what she had to do.
She let her knees collapse again, dropping to the ground beside Buffy.
And this is how it ends, she thought. You kneel beside your champion and then you face the enemy.
She looked at Jezebel and moved so that she was shielding Buffy. Jezebel seemed to notice her for the first time, and frowned as if she'd found a spider in her salad. Firelight flickered orange-red on her face.
"Get out of the way."
"No."
And this is how the ending starts. Like this, so simply, with on word, and you're going to die on a summer night. A summer night when the moon and stars are shining and bonfires burn like the flames the Druids used to summon the dead
"Dawn, go," Buffy said painfully. "Get out while you can."
"No." She could wait and let Buffy die this way, instead of by Jezebel's hands. It might not seem like much of a difference, but it was the most she could offer.
"Dawn . . ." Buffy whispered.
"Don't you know who I am, Pixie? I've walked with the devil. If you move, I'll let you die quickly."
Dawn's voice had given out. She shook her head.
Jezebel threw back her own head and laughed. A little more blood trickled out, too. "All right," she said. "Have it your own way. Both of you go together."
Summer night, Dawn thought. The solstice eve. When the line between worlds is so thin.
"Say good night, sweetheart."
No time to trance, no time for anything. Nothing except one desperate appeal.
"Tara!" Dawn screamed. "Tara! Tara!"
Jezebel recoiled.
For an instant, it seemed as if the name alone had the power to alarm her. Or as if she expected something to respond to Dawn's cry. She stood, listening.
Dawn drew on her powers, putting everything she had into it, throwing her need and her call out into the void.
And felt . . . nothing
Nothing disturbed the summer night except the crackling sound of flames. Jezebel turned back to Dawn and Buffy, and grinned.
Then Dawn saw the mist creeping along the ground.
No-it couldn't be mist. It must be smoke from the fire. But it didn't behave like either. It was swirling, rising in the air like a tiny whirlwind or dust devil. It was gathering a shape roughly the size of a man.
There was another one a little distance away. Then Dawn saw a third. The same thing was happening all over.
Mist was flowing out of the ground, between the trees. Pools of it, each separate and distinct. Dawn, staring mutely, could see through each patch, could see the flames, the oak trees, the bricks of the chimney. Jezebel had stopped smiling, stopped moving, and was watching too.
Dawn turned to Buffy, unable to even frame the question.
"Unquiet spirits. Victims of evil," Buffy whispered huskily, her green eyes intent. "The solstice."
And then Dawn understood.
They were coming. From across the river, where the cemetery lay. From the woods, where countless makeshift graves had been dug. The unquiet spirits, the victims of evil. A supernatural host answering the call for help.
They were forming all around. There were hundreds of them.
Dawn could actually see faces now. The misty outlines were filling in with pale hues like so many runny watercolors. She saw both men and women, even children. A man with a wound in his stomach, a woman with bite marks in her neck. A small figure, child size, with dark holes for eyes and a doll in her arms.
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "Oh, God." It wasn't swearing. It was something like a prayer.
Not that she wasn't frightened of them, because she was. It was every nightmare she'd ever had about Sunnydale come true. Like her last dream about Tara, when things came crawling out of the earth; only these things weren't crawling, they were flying, skimming and floating until they swirled into human form. Everything that Dawn had ever felt about Sunnydale at night that it was alive and full of watching eyes, that there was some Power lurking behind its waiting stillness was proving true. The earth of the Hellmouth was giving up its bloody memories. The spirits of those who'd died here were walking again.
And Dawn could feel their anger. It frightened her, but another emotion was waking up inside her, making her catch her breath and clench tighter on Buffy's hand. Because the misty army had a leader.
One figure was floating in front of the others, closest to the place where Jezebel stood. It had no shape or definition as yet, but it glowed and scintillated with the pale golden light of a candle flame. Then, before Dawn's eyes, it seemed to take on substance from the air, shining brighter and brighter every minute with an unearthly light. It was brighter than the circle of fire. It was so bright that Jezebel leaned back from it and Dawn blinked, but when she turned at a low sound, she saw Willow staring straight into it, fearlessly, with wide-open eyes. And smiling, so faintly, as if glad to have this be the last thing she saw.
Then Dawn was sure.
Jezebel dropped the stake. She had turned away from Dawn and Buffy to face the being of light that hung in the clearing like an avenging angel. Golden hair streaming back in an invisible wind, Tara looked down on her.
"She came," Dawn whispered.
"You asked her to," Buffy murmured. Her voice trailed off into a labored breath, but she was still. Her eyes serene.
"Stand away from them," Tara said, her voice coming simultaneously to Dawn's ears and her mind. It was like the chiming of dozens of bells, distant and close up at once. "It's over now, Jezebel."
"But Jezebel rallied quickly. Dawn saw her shoulders swell with a breath, noticed for the first time the hole in the back of the white blouse where the stake had pierced her. It was stained dull red, and new blood was flowing now as Jezebel flung out her arms.
"You think I'm afraid of you?" She shouted. She spun around, laughing at all the pallid forms. "You think I'm afraid of any of you? You're dead! Dust on the wind! You can't touch me!"
"You're wrong," Tara said in her wind-chime voice.
"I'm one of the fates! A Fate! Do you know what that means?" Jezebel turned again, addressing all of them, her unnaturally blue eyes seeming to catch some of the red glow of the fire. "I've never died. Every one of you has died, you gallery of spooks! But not me. Death can't touch me. I am invincible!"
The last word came in a shout so loud it echoed among the trees. Invincible . . . invincible . . . invincible. Dawn heard it fading into the hungry sound of the fire.
Tara waited until the last echo had died. Then she said, very simply, "Not quite." She turned to look at the misty shapes around her. "She wants to spill more blood here, create more evil."
A new voice spoke up, a hollow voice that ran like a trickle of cold water down Dawn's spine. "There's been enough killing, I say." It was an old man with a wound in his chest.
"More than enough," said another voice, like the boom of a faraway drum. A woman with bite marks in her neck.
"It's time somebody stopped it"-an old woman in rags.
"We can't let it go on"-the little girl with the black holes for eyes.
"No more blood spilled!" several voices took it up at once. "No more killing!" The cry passed from one to another, until the swell of sound was louder than the roar of fire. "No more blood!"
"You can't touch me! You can't kill me!"
"Let's take 'er."
Dawn never knew who gave that last command. But it was obeyed by all, man, woman, child alike. They were rising, flowing, dissolving into mist again, a dark mist with a hundred hands. It bore down on Jezebel like an ocean wave, dashing itself on her and engulfing her. Each hand took hold, and although Jezebel was fighting and thrashing with arms and legs, they were too many for her. In seconds she was obscured by them, surrounded, swallowed by the dark mist. It rose, whirling like a tornado from which screams could be heard only faintly.
"You can't kill me! I'm immortal!"
The tornado swept away into darkness beyond Dawn's sight. Following it was a trail of ghosts like a comet's tail, shooting off into the night sky.
"Where are they taking her?" Dawn didn't mean to say it aloud; she just blurted it out before she thought. But Tara heard.
"Where he won't do any harm," She said, and the look on her face stopped Dawn from asking any other questions.
There was a squealing, bleating sound from the other side of the clearing. Dawn turned and saw Willie, in his terrible part human, part animal shape, on his feet. There was no need for Xander's club. He was staring straight at Tara and the few remaining ghostly figures and gibbering.
"Don't let them take me! Don't let them take me too!"
Before Tara could speak, he had spun around. He regarded the fire, which was higher than his own head, for an instant, then plunged right through it, crashing into the forest beyond. Through a parting of the flames, Dawn saw him drop to the ground, beating out flames on himself, then rise and run again. Then the fire flared up and she couldn't see anything more.
But she'd remembered something: Willow, Conner, Spike and Xander. Willow was lying propped up, her head in Victoria's lap, watching. Conner was still on his back. Hurt, but not so badly hurt as Buffy. Xander and Spike were lying near each other.
"Tara," Dawn said, catching the bright figure's attention, and then she simply looked at Buffy.
The brightness came closer. Buffy didn't blink. She looked into the heart of the light and smiled. "She's been stopped now. Thanks to you."
"It was Dawn who called us. And she couldn't have done it at the right place and the right time with out you and the others."
"I tried to keep my promise."
"I know, Buffy."
Dawn didn't like the sound of this at all. It sounded too much like a farewell-a permanent one.
"Tara," she said, "can't you-do something? Can't you help her?" Dawn's voice was shaking.
And Tara's expression as she turned to look at Dawn, gentle but so sad, was even more distressing. It reminded her of someone, and then she remembered. The first Slayer. The First Slayers eyes had looked like that, as if she were looking at all the inescapable wrongs in the world. All the unfairness, all the things that shouldn't have been, but were."
"I can do something," she said. "But I don't know if it's the kind of help she wants." She turned back to Buffy. "Buffy, I can cure what Jezebel did. Tonight I have that much Power. But I can't take the slayer spirit from you."
Dawn's numbed brain struggled with this for a while. The slayer spirit. Then she understood.
"It's been too long," Buffy was saying to Tara. "If you did remove it, I wouldn't know what to do."
"Yes." Tara didn't smile, just went on looking at Buffy steadily. "Do you want my help, Buffy?"
"To go on living in this world in the shadows . . ." Buffy's voice was a whisper now, her green eyes distant. Dawn wanted to shake her. Live, she thought to her, but she didn't dare say it for fear she'd make her decide just the opposite. Then she thought of something else.
"To go on trying," she said, and both of them looked at her. She looked back, chin thrust out, and saw the beginning of a smile on Tara's bright lips. Tara turned to Buffy, and that tiny hint of a smile passed to her.
"Yes," she said quietly, and then, to Tara, "I want you help."
She bent and kissed Buffy.
Dawn saw the brightness flow from her to Buffy, like a river of sparkling light engulfing her. It flooded over her the way the dark mist had surrounded Jezebel, like a cascade of diamonds, until her entire body glowed like Tara's.
For an instant Dawn imagined she could see the blood inside Buffy turned molten, flowing out to each vein, each capillary, healing everything it touched. Then the glow faded to a golden aura, soaking back into Buffy's skin. Her shirt was still demolished, but underneath the flesh was smooth and firm. Dawn, feeling her own eyes wide with wonder, couldn't help reaching out to touch.
It felt just like any skin. The horrible wounds were gone.
She laughed aloud with sheer excitement, and then looked up, sobering. "Tara-there's Willow, too-"
The bright being that was Tara was already moving across the clearing. Willow looked up at her from Victoria's lap.
"Hello, Love," She said normally, except that her voice was so weak.
Tara bent and kissed her. The brightness flowed again, encompassing Willow. And when it faded, Willow stood up on her own two feet.
Then Tara did the same thing with Conner, who woke up, looking confused but alert. She kissed Xander and Spike. She kissed Victoria too, and Victoria stopped shaking and straightened.
Then she went to Faith.
She was still lying where she had falling. The ghosts had passed over her, taking no notice of her. Tara's brightness hovered over her, one shining hand reaching to touch her hair. Then she bent and kissed the dark head on the ground.
As the sparkling light faded, Faith sat up and shook her head. She saw Tara and went still, then, every movement careful and self-contained stood up. She didn't say anything, only looked as Tara turned back to Willow.
Willow was silhouetted against the fire. Dawn had scarcely noticed how the red glow had grown so that it almost eclipsed Tara's gold. But now she saw it and felt a thrill of alarm.
"My last gift to you," Tara said, and it began to rain.
Not a thunder and lightning storm, but a thorough pattering rain that soaked everything-Dawn included-and doused the fire. It was fresh and cool, and it seemed to wash all the horror of the last few hours away, cleansing the glade of everything that had happened there. Dawn tilted her face up to it, shutting her eyes, wanting to stretch out her arms and embrace it. At last it slackened and she looked again at Tara.
Tara was looking at Willow, and there was no smile on her lips now. The wordless sorrow was back in her face.
"It's midnight," she said. "And I have to go."
Dawn knew instantly, at the sound of it, that "go" didn't just mean for the moment. "Go" meant forever. Tara was going somewhere that no trance or dream could reach.
And Willow knew it too.
"Just a few more minutes," she said, reaching for Tara.
"I'm sorry-"
"Tara, wait-I need to tell you-"
"I can't!" For the first time the serenity of that bright face was destroyed, showing now only gentle sadness but tearing grief. "Willow, I can't wait. I'm so sorry." It was as if she were being pulled backward, retreating from them into some dimension that Dawn could not see. Maybe the same place the first went when her task was finished, Dawn thought. To be at peace.
But Tara's eyes didn't look as if she were at peace. They clung to Willow, and she reached out her hand toward her, hopelessly. They didn't touch. Wherever Tara was being pulled was too far away.
"Tara-please!" It was the voice Willow had called her with in the dinning room. As if her heart was breaking.
"Willow," she cried, both hands held out to her now. But she was diminishing, vanishing. Dawn felt a sob swell in her own chest, close her own throat. It wasn't fair. All they had ever wanted was to be together. And now Tara's reward for helping the town and finishing her task was to be separated from Willow irrevocably. It just wasn't fair.
"Willow," Tara called again, but her voice came as if from a long distance. The brightness was almost gone. Then, as Dawn stared through helpless tears, it winked out.
Leaving the clearing silent once again. They were all gone, the ghost's of Sunnydale who had walked for one night to stop more blood from being spilled. The bright spirit that had led them had vanished without a trace, and even the moon and stars were covered by clouds.
Dawn knew that the wetness on Willow's face wasn't due to the rain that was still splashing down.
She was standing, chest heaving, looking at the last place where Tara's brightness had been seen. And all the longing and the pain Dawn had glimpsed on her face at times before was nothing to what she saw now.
"It isn't fair," she whispered. Then she shouted it to the sky, not caring who she was addressing. "It isn't fair!"
Willow had been breathing more and more quickly. Now she lifted her face too, not in anger but in unbearable pain. Her eyes were searching the clouds as if she might find some last trace of golden light, some flicker of brightness there. She couldn't. Dawn saw the spasm go through her, like the agony of Jezebel's stake. And the cry that burst out of her was the most terrible thing she'd ever heard.
"Tara!"
AN: One more chapter to go people, I think I cried a trillion tears writing this