Act III
"I can't even tell if he's still...uh...around, or not."
"Well, he's not breathing."
"Most vamps don't, hmm?"
Spike opened his eyes, blinked at the bright light of the flashlight.
"Are you alright?" Buffy said.
"Yeah," he rasped in response. He swallowed slowly. "Just...weak."
"What happened?"
He shook his head slowly, sluggishly trying to sit up. They helped him to a sitting position.
"She kept me locked up in Wolf-boy's old pen...stole my face. I'm assumin' the trick didn't hold up long?"
"Longer than it should have," Buffy said. "But no, she hasn't gotten to Jonathan yet."
Spike grabbed his head. "Head's bloody pounding."
"Did she...steal something from you? Drain you, or something?"
He gave her a strange look. "Don't know. Wasn't in my head quite right for a coupla days there. But I feel like a bloody rag doll now. Whatever she did to me knocked me for a good loop."
"How did you get away from her?" Xander asked.
"She hasn't been back to the cage in a few hours. We managed to pick the lock and crawl out."
Buffy and Xander exchanged a look.
"'We'?"
"Yeah. Me and a coupla vamps, a H'shai demon. Rum lot to hang around with for three days, I'm telling you."
"And all of you together couldn't manage to force the door?"
"No," Spike said, shaking his head. "Maybe there's somethin' to this draining business. We were lollin' around that cage like bloody newborn puppies in a basket."
"That must be it," Giles said a while later in the Summers living room. "She was keeping demons locked up so she could come back and forth any time she wished and...feed, as it were, on their dark energies. Could you tell if she was trying to a-accomplish anything else?"
Spike shrugged, cradling a mug of warm blood.
"She's not just going after Jonathan, now, is she?" Buffy said, looking at Giles.
Giles gave her a look of empathy and sadness. "It may very well be that she will not stop with Jonathan. She may not be able to. She is controlling these dark forces, but only to the extent that she is using them as she desires. Such a prolonged exposure may be warping her mind."
Buffy absorbed this in silence.
"It is hard to say at what point she will be unable or unwilling to turn away from the path she's chosen for herself," Giles continued quietly. "We may still be able to save her."
"This morning you were telling me that we might be able to save her, but that we have to consider the possibility that she's gone too far," Buffy smirked sadly, turning away to look out the window at the darkness. "Now it's the other way around. Not the kind of progress I wanted to make today."
"Buffy," Dawn said. "If there's even a chance, we've got to try to turn her back. We owe her that much."
"For better or worse," Giles agreed. "If we are all there together...then perhaps she will see how much she means to the world as she was."
The house began to shake. The lights flickered; somewhere in the house something fell to the floor and shattered. They all gaped at each other with fear and dawning comprehension. The quake ended as abruptly as it had begun, leaving them all breathless. Somewhere in the night a siren wailed.
"My...my God," Buffy whispered. "She's opening the Hellmouth."
"There are, at least in principle, several ways to open the Hellmouth," Giles said slowly. "The only similarity being the earthquake which precedes by several hours the event itself. The Master's way was long and very difficult, but it requires a minimum of resources. The ritual our Gvark demon friends used was more expedient, but it requires some sacrifices on the part of the performer of the ritual. I tend to think that Willow will choose neither."
"What do you think she's going to do?" Buffy asked.
"Here," Giles said, pointing at a page in one of his tomes. "The Ritual of the Pit. In actuality it's more of a spell than a ritual. The caster summons one of the demons of the pit, purebred, straight from the hell dimension beneath Sunnydale. In the effort to reach its new master, this demon crawls through the Earth's crust until it reaches the surface -"
"Opening the Hellmouth in the process," Buffy finished grimly.
"It requires enormous energy to focus the spell once it is cast. A specific demon must be called, and these demons are notoriously hard to control."
"What's she going to do with this beastie when it's done tearing her a new Hellmouth?" Xander said.
"I rather think she doesn't care," Giles said listlessly. "What happens to the demon once it is set free on the world is secondary in importance to her access to the Hellmouth, and the power it will bring her."
"What kind of power are we talking about?" Buffy asked, though she looked as if she wasn't sure she wanted an answer.
"Unimaginable," Giles answered, voice haunted. "With her innate abilities as a witch...the world would be at her command."
Buffy stood up. "Where can she perform this spell?"
Giles flipped through some more pages. "The first part of the spell can be performed anywhere. I suspect that the earthquake means that she has finished that. But to actually summon the demon, she will go to the thinnest part of the Earth that separates us from the hell dimension."
"The old school," Buffy said.
"Precisely," Giles responded. "This creature will then crawl up through the Earth's crust, resulting in a gash that will be her outlet...to all the darkness she desires."
"We're leaving," Buffy said, gathering up supplies.
"'We'?" Dawn said. "Is that an all of us together kind of 'we'?"
Buffy stared for a few seconds, finally nodded.
"Yippee!" Dawn shouted, then calmed down when Buffy gave her a look. "I mean, seriously, time to go...put a stop to this...um, madness."
"She was your friend, too, Dawn," Buffy said. "Don't mistake this for fun."
Dawn's face lost the excitement of a few seconds before. "I know."
Buffy looked at all of them. "We're going to try talk her out of this. We're going to remind her of how much we care about her. But if that doesn't work, and the odds are getting better that it won't, our job is still to stop her. I'm her best friend, but if it comes down to it, I'm going to kill her. It's not the Willow we knew. She's out of control."
They all nodded, faces pale.
"Spike?" Buffy continued, and the blonde vampire gave her a square look. "You up to some action?"
"Give me another mug like this, and I'll be ready."
Buffy nodded. "Load up."
They all stood up, picked up supplies, and moved toward the door. Buffy stopped Spike on the way out, making sure Dawn wasn't within hearing distance.
"I need you to take care of Dawn," Buffy said. "She's your responsibility. Can you do this thing for me?"
"Have I ever given you a reason to believe I wouldn't?" he replied.
Buffy shook her head.
"Then let's get moving, Slayer."
They pulled into the deserted parking lot beside the ruins of what had once been Sunnydale High School. Buffy got out, Spike and Xander just behind, Giles and Dawn in the rear. They could only stare for a moment.
"Steady," Buffy said, trying to remain calm just as she wanted the others to be calm.
But something was happening. They could all feel it, something crawling like ants over their bodies. Buffy could feel the hairs on the back of her neck straighten and stand away from her skin. She felt the instinctive desire to flee well up inside her, and repressed it with an effort. Lights flashed inside the old, decrepit shell of a building; noises came and went like a dicey radio signal, noises that sounded unnervingly like distant screams.
"Steady," she repeated, and started to walk forward. The rest of them followed suit. "Giles -?"
"I'm here," he said from the back, juggling a handful of books.
"The contingency plan is in place?"
"It's ready," he replied. "I might be better assured of the results if a more experienced warlock was on hand to -"
"Can't be helped, Giles," Buffy cut him off. "You'll do fine."
She imagined she heard another sound, a monstrous slithering, as if something impossibly large was moving through the ground beneath them. She hoped it was only her imagination for now. If she could help it that was the way it would stay for good.
"Enter, all those who seek knowledge," she whispered fiercely, then started to run.
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Act IV