When the Gates of Fire are sealed,
And the last Line falls,
If the first truth is revealed,
Then the Shadow calls.
Spike remembered the old prophecy that he had read as an undergraduate in Cambridge as he dragged the unconscious Slayer as quickly as he could through the dark labyrinth of tunnels beneath St. Petersburg. The history student that still occupied a part of him could appreciate the irony of using the old Tsarist escape tunnels to outrun the very mystical enemies, belief in the likes of which was one of the most notable features of Romanov decadence. Had they read the prophecy, he wondered to himself, pausing long enough behind a small shaft of pure white sunlight that pierced the barren darkness, assuring himself that they were not being pursued, though he knew that the other three vampire lords would not rest until the Order War had been, at last, resolved.
He fingered the cut on his cheek gingerly, where he had been caught by a jagged shard of flying stone. The destruction that he had unleashed on the rotting lair of his former lover had been less than total, but it had been enough. Though the others in that room could have survived the brief shock of sunlight before they instinctively went for cover, he knew that so ingrained were those instincts that they were too powerful to ignore. Vampires operated during the day, yes, and he better and perforce more practised than most, but night was their time. That meant that he had at most seven hours before they each recommenced the hunt.
If Buffy, or whatever it was that she had become, did not restart it first.
He knew the way to the filthy basement that he had been using, and would have been able to find it even if in the depths of the kind of agony that Drusilla had, so briefly, inflicted on his Slayer, but he was unsure about whether or not to return. Drusilla knew where it was and, though he was sure that she would be the most reluctant of the three to strike first, the inherent weakness of Aurelius as embodied in her, fighting against her nature as the Ancient heritage was, he could not rule it out, even in his increasingly rare moments of optimism. Hefting the Slayer again, who made not the slightest murmur as he carried her, barely noticing the weight, he turned south instead.
The room that he had so forlornly occupied in the depths of his despairing absence from the Slayer was grimy, fitting the mood in which he had found himself while vainly attempting to curb some of the more elaborate impulses of the insane vampiress that he had loved with every fibre of his being for more than a century. It was dark, lit only by candles that he fumbled with shaking hands to light. Laying the unconscious Slayer on the filthy pallet that he used as his bed when sober enough to find it, he tried to still the shaking in his hands from both the tension that he had felt and the agony in his side, taking several attempts punctuated by muffled cursing to do something so simple as light his zippo. He had taken it from the body of a dying Italian soldier in the trenches of the Great War after the disastrous rout at Caporetto in 1917, and it had seen both much use and more blood. He had used it once to fire a brothel whose madam had once refused him entry, and had treasured it ever since. As the candle spluttered into life, he doubted that he would ever include that story in his repertoire of anecdotes suitable for his Slayer.
Turning, he grimaced with the shooting pain in his side, seeing her face, framed perfectly by her golden curls, illuminated by the poor light of the candle. He knew that she deserved better, though the faint burn mark on her face from where the sun had hit told him that she would be lucky to see such natural light again. He knew something of the legends of the Order War, knew what was required to bring about its end, and knew that a human Slayer was not part of those requirements.
'Thoikaris,' he murmured softly as he looked at her, removing his coat slowly and tossing it carelessly into the corner, beside several empty bottles that reeked of stale vodka. He barely noticed the scent before, but now more than ever he was aware of the kind of surroundings that his girl deserved.
'You bloody stupid bastards,' he told the damned spirits of his forebears, the fury melting from his voice as he realised the futility of cursing the blind short-sightedness of the vampires of ages past. Still, it rankled.
It was enough that he had been refused the validity of his affections by the naiveté of the girl on whom he had bestowed them, but it was infinitely worse that as that refusal had vanished with the pangs of long absence that their reciprocation would be torn from him by the ghosts of past conflicts which he would not himself have bothered fighting had he been alive at the time. It was enough that he had to endure the madness of his former lover and temper the insanity of her power-crazed dreams without knowing that he had been so perfectly manipulated by Drusilla to lure the Slayer here.
A tear fell from his eye as, for the first time since he had been turned, he allowed himself to weep without restraint. The picture of his tiny, dead, daughter, a daughter that he would never see, haunted his mind. A child that he had been conceived by the grace of God, fruit of a union that His church and their tools would see erased from history if they ever got a chance. He wondered at the panoply of enemies that he had managed to accumulate over his relatively short life. Surely Patricius himself, oldest vampire yet living, had fewer than did he, one of the youngest Masters of his time.
'Don't wake for a while, pet,' he breathed quietly, though she moved barely at all. She was still breathing, that at least was something, though he wondered whether it was reflexive on her part. Her heart, though, that was the problem. Occupied though he had been by simply trying to keep them both alive and away from the others, in agony he might have been, but he was not so focused on escape that he had missed the aching silence from her chest, where once her heart had beat in glorious defiance of all those that would have seen her dead, all of those that she had buried.
Hours later, hours spent in bitter struggle against the urge to seek the one form of solace that had kept him going all this time in the company of his Dark Queen, hours spent filling the small chamber with the acrid scent of cigarettes to burn the eyes of anyone foolish enough to disturb him, he watched her stir against the ropes in which he had bound her as gently as possible. He disliked visiting the reminder upon her of what Drusilla had done, but it was necessary. He knew for a fact, with an instinct that went beyond any suspicion, that she would attack him without hesitation when she did regain consciousness. The call of blood demanded it, he knew. He could feel it in his bones, with everything that he could sense, could feel the summoning that was being sent forth from the north. That he knew what it was was all that allowed him to resist it. He also knew that others across the world would not be so fortunate.
Spike watched Buffy slowly open her eyes as she pulled unconsciously against the ropes with which he had her securely tied. It almost broke his heart to so soon remind her of the torture through which he had allowed Drusilla to put her, but he knew that even that was not enough protection. The Slayer, he was sure, did not have the strength to break through the triple layer of rope in which he had bound her, but he was almost sure that it was not his Slayer that was murmuring softly, as if awakening from an unpleasant dream. The burns on the side of her face were healing rapidly, but not so rapidly that he could not tell their origins. He had endured such burns often enough in his time to know what it was that they represented.
'William?' his love spoke groggily, lifting her head slowly, as though pressed by the weight of a mountain. Her golden curls fell lankly around her beautiful face, half-hiding it in the candlelight.
'Slayer,' he said coldly, taking a cigarette and lighting it slowly, his eyes never leaving her face, though it was not this time with adoration that he watched. Rather, he scanned her with all the wariness of a deer watching a lion. He knew, this time, who was the predator and who the prey, and he disliked being on the opposite side from that to which he was accustomed. 'Fully awake yet?'
'Not quite,' she answered in an expressionless tone that he had not heard her use since the first few hours following her unwanted resurrection at the blind hands of her alleged friends. 'But I'm getting there. Its been so long, after all.' She raised her head at last, pulling carefully against the ropes that tied her down, testing them for weaknesses.
'Buffy,' her sweet voice repeated, rolling the two syllables as though tasting them, and twisting with disgust as though her palate were offended by it. 'A perverted accident of history, Slayers. Did you know that, scion of Aurelius? Do you know the origin of your lover? Of what attracts you to her? I wonder would you have been so ardent and noble in the chase had you known.'
'It wasn't her sweetness and light, you thieving bastard,' Spike snarled at the creature in front of him. Though he knew that it was not his Slayer who was speaking, it was difficult to see and hear her without thinking that it was her.
'Probably not. Still, I wonder that some small part of you does not still yearn for what you know is beyond you through the limitations of your nature. This Slayer's memories indicate that this was not the first time that your grasp exceeded you reach.'
'Do you want me to have to beat you out?'
'You couldn't if you tried. You lack the strength and you lack the conviction. I was there when she won all of the battles that you lost, I was there when she met you first, when you lost your first fight to a Slayer. I was there when you couldn't kill her for the first time, and I was there when she first decided that she couldn't kill you. Do you seek to make me believe that you will risk that?'
'That and more to bring her back.'
'It will take more, it will take a miracle, and God has turned his face from this place now, to et this finally end. Your Slayer is cast into the ether, William. A life for a life, a soul for a soul. You know the rules as well as I. She cannot come back unless I let this go, and I will not. I have waited two and a half thousand years for this. You think that I will let it go because of the lovesick delusions of a child? You know me little.'
It was the expression in her face and the last words that she used, that made him feel as though he had suffered a particularly brutal blow to his chest. Not needing breath, he had forgotten what it was like to be winded, and was not forcibly reminded.
She cocked her head to the side in a gesture that was more reminiscent of him than it was of her. 'I see that the truth was not long in escaping you,' she observed analytically, like a naturalist observing hitherto unsuspected behaviour in the object of her study. 'Perhaps I have underestimated the last bastard remnant of a once-proud line.'
He inhaled deeply, relishing the feel of the tar in his dead lungs, reminding him of what he was. Now, more than any other time since he had realised the depths of his feelings for his Slayer, he needed to remember.
The first glimmer of feeling entered her face as the smoke surrounded her, a brief flicker of distaste. 'Unpleasant habit,' she observed.
'Been out of the loop for a while, haven't you?' he drawled, though ice was crawling through his veins.
'Not so long that some things have not changed, some things that never will. The predictability of the weak is a constant throughout history, among our kind and humans alike. And you are weak, William the Bloody, scion of Drusilla of the line of Aurelius. Weaker than you know.'
'Not so weak that I can't stop you from getting what you need to end this,' he shot back, tossing the cigarette aside furiously. The faint orange glow flew through the dim light in a perfect arc to his left, then slowly faded amid the detritus. 'Not that weak, and not quite that stupid. You don't have control yet, not as long as Buffy is still alive. Patricius can use all the power that he has, but she still needs to die before you gain total control. She is in there somewhere, fighting. I can feel it. I was around Angelus long enough to know what that feels like, to sense that kind of conflict.'
She chuckled, though it was mechanical, like the attempt of a robot to simulate the sound. 'You think that I don't have the strength to keep her down? You think that I have waited two and a half millennia for this chance to fail because of the insignificant strength of a girl barely past puberty? You underestimate me far more than I ever did you if you believe that.'
'She doesn't know who or what you are,' Spike answered. Ordinarily, he would have tortured the demon into submission, into retreating from the pure agony that he could inflict if he so desired, but he knew that he could never do anything like that to Buffy, even to her body without her soul within it, not as long as there was a chance at her restoration. What fools love makes of us all, he observed to himself darkly. It was always the worst weakness of any warrior.
'And you flatter yourself that you do?' the demon observed contemptuously, curling Buffy's lips in a way that she would never have managed herself.
He drew a deep breath, drawing on all his memories of the legends that he had once learned so eagerly before realising, to his present chagrin, that it was pointless to live by the moth-eaten words of a few insane prophets. Would that he had paid more attention when it was in his power.
'Thoikaris, childe of the First, sire of the Third Order, Queen of the Night,' he declaimed, obscurely satisfied to see its eyes widen fractionally at the extent of the knowledge that it had obviously thought lost. 'Instigator and loser of the Order War, cast out by the combined efforts of Kornokalen, Patricius Quintus Eranus and Qui Ch'i. Left to rot in the ether until the end of time itself. Most powerful vampire in the history of our kind. A dark legend. If we had children, you would be in the stories told by parents to frighten them into submission.'
This time a laugh, and a real one, but darker than any that the Slayer could have managed, deeper and more resonant. The light itself seemed to flicker through the small room, as though the candles shied away from the sound. 'Indeed,' Thoikaris observed. 'You might do well to remember what that means, child. You may be the Slayer of Slayers, the youngest Master of your generation, the most feared of your line since the death of Nest, but beside me you are but a whelp, not yet weaned from your mother's teat.'
It was humbling to be so dismissed by one whose verdict was irrefutable, but he would not let himself be swayed by rhetoric, nor would be allow himself to be distracted. He could feel that it was yet many hours before sundown, so he knew that he still had time to finish this, to bring his Slayer back.
'I may be all that and more,' he agreed, swallowing the pride that had seen him achieve all that Thoikaris so easily dismissed, 'but I'm still the one that has you bound and waiting for the resurgence of my Slayer. She will fight back. She will beat you.'
Again, that dead laugh. 'I, who was beaten only by a coalition of the most powerful of our kind ever to grace this world? I, who even then was not fully defeated? I, who alone of those now existing remembers the genesis of our kind, will be defeated by a human child, a mortal, a Slayer?' The last was invested with such overwhelming contempt that Spike shuddered. 'You make me remember humour. It has been too long since I have laughed.'
'Its been too long for you for anything,' he shot back. 'Your time is passed, what you are used to is long gone. Do you know anything about the world the way that it is know? The kind of creatures that have slipped through the void since you were last here? The kinds of demons that you would have to face and vanquish if you wanted any of your old power? I'm only the least of them.' He grabbed her by her hair, not forgetting who was inside but unable to resist. In a life of unceasing violence, as a means of expression and a part of his identity as much as any memory, sweet or bitter, that he held, it was all that he had to express himself. She looked at him with interest, despite the pain. If she moved a millimetre, his Slayer would lose some of her exquisite locks. 'You are finished, woman. I don't know how you got back, what Patricius did, what he meant to do or even why you would wish to return. But I know enough to know that I won't let you, that I want my Slayer back and that there is nothing that you can do to stop me if I really want you out. I'm betting that in two thousand or more years you don't remember what it is like to fear something but, if you have any instincts at all left from when you last saw the stars, I will teach you to fear me.'
Thoikaris wrenched away from him, a look of pure hatred in Buffy's green eyes replacing the contempt that had occupied them but moments before as she learned that there were at least a few things left in the world to respect. 'You think that you can force me out?' she spat, twisting Buffy's perfect voice into a vicious parody of what it was. 'You think that you have the power?'
They heed the call from the halls of ice,
They come to make the righteous weep,
Thousands to die as part of the price,
Of the bitter whirlwind they would reap
She relaxed against the ropes as she saw the struggle being waged within him as he heard the call, the summons that was nearly impossible to resist. Drusilla, though he could not hear her voice, was calling to him and all of the surviving Masters from the Order of Aurelius to come and reinforce her in preparation for the final battle that would be waged her in the city of forgotten empire. He knew the nature of the call, the primal urge to respond coming from deeper within him than he would have thought possible, and felt all the raging instincts that had served him so well over the years push and beg him to respond. The struggle could not be concealed, for it consumed all that he was. As the call went out from the Winter Palace, to the north, he stumbled back away from his Slayer and clutched his head with both hands, crashing back into the broken glass of the bottles that he had used to ease his pain, sending shards of green and clear glass everywhere in a hail of razor sharp splinters. He allowed nothing to escape his lips but a moan that he could not control.
Not that it mattered.
Her voice penetrated even that, so attuned were his senses to its beloved sound. 'You feel the Call, child,' she said dispassionately, as though carefully analysing the behaviour of a crazed insect. 'You cannot resist it. She is your Sire, and more than that she is the Lord of your Order.' Thought his eyes were closed and what light had flickered through the small, cluttered room had vanished when his fall had smashed the only lamp, he could sense the smile on her face as she said it, a smile that Buffy herself had never directed towards him, locked together as they had been in a vicious cycle of hate and need. 'You think that you can overcome millennia of what makes us what we are? That you can blithely disregard the call to arms for a final end to this? Powerful though you may think you are, your power pales in comparison to that.'
It was all that he could do to force the words from his throat. There was no feeling of pain, nothing of discomfort, not yet, just the siren call of the damned, calling him to battle, beckoning with infinite lustre. He could almost feel himself being physically dragged, though he resisted. 'Then you're in trouble, bitch,' he snarled at her, rising with difficulty then stumbling back against the debris behind him. 'What's to stop me from killing you and ending one of the threats to Aurelius?'
'Your nature, and that of the call,' she answered him imperturbably. 'You have no choice but to go to Drusilla, as all of the rest have no choice but to go to Quintus Eranus or Jur'Khan Chung. It is woven into you to obey without question.' He could hear her lip twist. 'Or initiative.'
'Not me,' he grunted, and rose with immense difficulty. Now he could hear his Sire, as he could hear her countless times in his head for a century, though with none of the love that she had at least pretended for him, only the stern voice of immense authority. Come to the Winter Palace, come to me, obey the call of the Order. It has been written, so let it finally be done.
'Not bloody likely, Dru,' he whispered so that even Thoikaris, oldest of the Four, could not hear.
He pushed himself up from his crouch, doing his best to close off the irresistible voice in his mind, drawing him in. 'You are stronger than you look, child,' Thoikaris observed, without much surprise. 'The memories of your Slayer are extensive, and they do speak to your mental strength, though I would have thought that the weaknesses inherent in -'
He cut her off with all the impatience that he had ever felt in an existence not noted by most for restraint. 'I know that you're in there, love.'
Buffy was swimming in a sea of oblivion, trapped within the phantoms generated by both her own memories and those of the demon that had possessed her. In one moment she saw the look of naked terror on the face of her sister as she jumped from Glory's platform, in the next the fear that she felt when faced by the seemingly unlimited strength and power of the Master.
All the memories that had plagued her dreams and her waking moments of contemplation, rare though more frequent as they may have been, were relived in such a vivid way that she may as well have been living through them again, only this time the shock and the fear were magnified tenfold by the regrets that she felt over all the failures that plagued her. The death of Jesse, so long ago and so nearly forgotten by everyone, was like an open wound. Her failure with Faith and the consequences of that, the deaths caused by her sister in blood in service to the only man to ever show her affection because of who she was and not what would have caused her to weep, if they had not been suddenly replaced by the anger and the grief that she felt when pummelling Spike in the alley behind the police station. Nothing of what was pleasant assailed her in mitigation, nothing of the love that she had felt for Angel before it was went crashing to hell, nothing of the security that she had felt with Riley, or the love that she felt for Dawn, countered the anger, terror and grief of all the worst things that had been forced upon her in her short life. All the negativity was condensed, and it pounded her.
Alone in the darkness of her own mind, she could not even weep for what she had lost. The clear blue eyes of her stillborn daughter, the product of the insanity of the attraction she felt for Spike before the purity overcame the filth, were the only things that she could see, the only things that relieved the darkness and the pain. The only relief from the years of torment was the brief flicker of unadulterated joy that she had felt after hours of labour.
And then it vanished, replaced the aching sadness she had felt both at the death of her daughter and the bitter knowledge that she was alive only to destroy, that she would never create.
Alone in the darkness, she could not weep.
Nor were her memories all of those that she suffered.
She was bound and gagged, tied down by both the numbers of her legions of enemies and the power that they had employed in their fear. In command of the legions of minions created only for this, stood the implacable enmity and boundless hatred of the scions of her brothers' Orders. For Akhenaton, long dead at her hand, stood Quintus Eranus, his expression watchful, cold as the grave from which he was not long sprung. For Aurelius, destroyed by his own thirst for power, stood Kornokalen, his massive arms folded over his bulk, silently directing the assault against the last of her loyal army. For Juonn'I, destroyed by the First himself for his arrogance, stood Qui Chi, his slanted eyes bitter and angry.
His fury was as the candle to the blaze next to her own at the malice of what they had done to Helena, all for the delusions of love felt by the youngest of the Lords.
'Nothing will keep from any of you,' she snarled as she thrashed against the enchanted chains. The Druids chanted in the background , the smell of their incense almost covering the delicious scent of fear coming from the other Lords. One of the lesser vampires crashed against the wall from the strength of her kick, but it was scant satisfaction.
Fear was such a … delicious … feeling. It had been so long since she had last felt it.
'Death will close even the heaviest door,' Kornokalen told her, his voice deep and resonant, as befitted the son of a warrior tribe, sired by Aurelius himself.
'Not this one,' she shot back, as a blue glow began to surround the Druids, lighting the darkness around them, so necessary for their spell, their chanting reaching a crescendo. 'Not me. With every passing of a generation, I will return. Your kind will never be safe from me.'
A look passed between Kornokalen and Qui Chi, one of dark suspicion. 'All of her descendents are dead,' the Han told the German. 'The Order of Thoikaris is extinct.'
'What about her human descendents?' Patricius asked from the shadows, his silver armour over red eerily reflecting the Druidic glow.
'They hardly matter, not as long as your lover is kept asleep,' Qui Chi told him. 'Our Orders are safe. Our kind will grow fruitful.'
Thoikaris/Buffy snapped the bonds of rope that were holding her with a snarl of effort with which she lacerated her wrist. The minions drew back in instinctive horror as the greatest and oldest of their kind was loosed, the scent of her blood filling the air. It took a bare second for the other three Lords to react, Patricius drawing his gladius with the smooth efficiency of the trained soldier, Kornokalen and Qui Chi rushing forward. But the darkness, total as it was through the necessity of the spell was being woven, hampered them for another second. It was just enough time.
Thoikaris/Buffy snapped the other ropes easily, though the enchanted chains on her wrists still bound her to the effects of the spell, were it to be completed. She leapt from the crudely hewn wooden table in one bound, landing with feline grace, her legs bent. Scanning the room, she sensed the three lords to be a moment away but, more important, she sensed the Druids, could hear their chants and sense the power emanating from them. It was enough for one last throw of the dice. She grinned. And moved like lightning.
One of the Druids screamed as she tore out his throat, the blood splattering on the unseen wall behind. Pushing him aside as he gurgled his last breath, his hands trying in vain to stem the flow of blood, she backhanded another, snapping his neck without effort, such was her strength.
'Finish it!' she heard Qui Chi shout urgently at the remaining three. He could smell the blood, and feel the death of the last. 'Finish it now!'
As she moved to the others, she heard their voices being raised to a feverish crescendo, the green blow from their implements illuminating the room in a sickly light. The other three lords grasped her from behind, holding her firm, though she thrashed. One of the minions tried to plunge a wooden taper through her chest, but it bounced harmlessly off. Patricius knocked the offending servant across the room with one blow that contained all of his formidable rage.
'Idiot!' he growled at the cowering vampire. 'If it was that simple, do you think that we would have had to go to these lengths?' He swung around to the remaining three black hooded men. 'Get this done, now!'
She was able for one last moment to wrench away from the iron grip of Kornokalen, able one last time to look into the hard eyes of the Roman. 'This does not finish here,' she told him, her voice dead as, at last, she accepted the inevitability of her defeat or herself and her Order. She felt the lassitude creep over her as the last three Druids exerted every shred of power at their disposal. 'As long as some of my blood is left in this world, something of me will remain. And that will be enough to thwart every ambition that you have.'
She finally slipped away, into the torment of oblivion.
'I know you are in there somewhere, Buffy.'
Spike.
She heard his voice from what seemed an eternity of distance away, as though she were in another plane, not merely trapped within her own body. It was scant consolation that she could still feel and sense everything that was happening to her, that she could still be aware of every aspect of her environment. For if she was not in control, there was no point.
But there was a greater prize, as she listened to his voice. One that had been given to her unwittingly by the hubris of a vampire Queen.
'Come on, love,' she heard him implore her, his voice as firm as ever. 'You know that you are stronger than this, stronger than her. Strong enough to chase me around the world, strong enough to defeat a God, strong enough,' his voice broke for a moment, then solidified again as though his moment of weakness was illusory, 'to bear out child and live with her death.'
The memories of the beautiful blue eyes of their stillborn daughter blazed through her mind, giving her the strength to fight the overwhelming power of a vampire who had been ancient when Rome was an unknown village on the Tiber. She could feel the resistance of Thoikaris' will, stronger than anything she had fought, imbued with the desperation of two centuries of waiting, and wanting nothing less than complete control, unwilling to concede even a sliver to the Slayer whose body she inhabited.
Still, Buffy fought. But, as she fought, she listened.
'What use is your Slayer, William?' Thoikaris crooned seductively. Had Buffy be able to shudder from the recesses of her own mind, she would have, for she could never have imagined her own voice having such overtly sexual overtones. 'One girl, barely twenty, claimed by two others before she even looked at you as a suitable mate? For the price of simple acceptance of the inevitability of my triumph, you could rule beside me. I, who was sired by the First himself, I who sired the greatest of the four Orders. I, who gave birth to the Slayers themselves? King and Queen, William. Lady and Lord. You could head Aurelius yourself, you ambition is great enough for that. What better means for the attainment of the revenge you so desperately seek against all of those that have thwarted you?'
'I never had much ambition,' Buffy heard Spike reply, but his voice was not as firm as it had been, not as hard.
'All you have to do id what you have always wanted,' she purred at him. 'One bite, a few drops of blood. This neck, William. The neck that you have never been allowed to touch. Even now, the bite of Nest, Angelus and Dracul overshadow everything the girl claims that she feels for you. Add to it, William. Add your bite above theirs. And see the world fall at your feet.'
Buffy could see Spike waver, his eyes flitting back and forth from her neck to her eyes, powerfully tempted. A sadness descended on her, though it merely redoubled her resistance to the power of Thoikaris. A vampire he was, and always would be. She could offer him at most fifty more years of happiness, and even that slowly turning to bitter anguish as she aged. Thoikaris could offer him an eternity of beauty and power.
But the Slayer would not let him make that choice for himself. She threw herself against the barriers erected by the vampiress, and for one moment, breached them.
'Spike, don't listen to her!' she cried with her own voice, the purity of it knocking back.
He reached forward with his hand, tentatively, as though afraid that the merest touch would send her spiralling away from him again. She was engaged within in a struggle harder than anything that she had ever fought with Thoikaris for control. She could feel the powerful vampire rage against the temporary mastery that she had been able to assert through the strength and power that had been leant to her unwittingly by Thoikaris' malice, but she knew that it would not last long. The fight was far from over.
But she could enjoy, at least for a moment that seemed to stretch, the feather light touch of Spike's cold hand on her cheek, his eyes full of wonder.
'Is she still in there?'
She felt herself being wrenched away again as the vampire queen batted her defences aside.
With timeless rage would she rise,
Her exile an error,
Through the bond of blood she dies,
By the black soul's terror.
'I'm still here, William,' she told him, pulling away from a touch that he too withdrew as though the very act of contact would sully him. 'I'm not leaving just because your petty little Slayer thinks that she can fight.'
'She's fought better than you,' he snarled at her, his face contorting with the fury that he felt. 'Come on, Slayer. Fight it.'
'Fight me?' she asked him with a laugh of pure malevolence. 'How can she fight me, when I am the origin of what she is? Do you know nothing of our lore? Do know nothing of from where the Slayers come? Or why she is the last?'
'I couldn't care less,' he shouted at her, his hand drawing back to hit before he remembered who it was he would be damaging, and not knowing in his frustration who it was he would be hurting. 'Do you think that its because she's the Slayer that I love her? Christ, I barely remember anymore what she is. I only care about who she is.'
Deep within, Buffy heard the words, and they gave her strength.
Thoikaris was ancient, and powerful, fortified by almost three thousand years in the mist, by the implacable determination for revenge and victory that had seen her through such a long time without seeming hope of seeing the world again with anything more than the slightest part of her power being passed around whenever a new Chosen One was called. The vampire queen had depths to her that Buffy could not begin to plumb, with reserves of strength so steeped in evil that the darkness was spreading its tendrils throughout her soul. And she was right. Their time together, albeit through the cold calculation of Partricius Quintus Eranus in thwarted revenge for the loss of his love of three millennia to Drusilla's malice, had taught Buffy from where it was the origin of her power had come. And why when she had died for the second time no new Slayer had been called. That knowledge should have crippled her, sending her wailing back to the oblivion that welcomed her like a lover whose ministrations were too long missed.
But another lover beckoned her, and it was to him that she chose to go.
Thoikaris' defences against her reared up like a black wall that stretched form ground to sky, from horizon to horizon, a barrier of pure force and power. Were she a soldier, Buffy would want all the artillery in the world to tear a hole in that wall and reassert control. But she was not. So, instead, she used the only force available to her, its source in the pure fury that she felt at what had been done to her, at the chances lost through her own hubris and arrogance, at the opportunities for happiness that she had let drift away through her mindless aggression in the darkness of a forgotten alley behind a police station.
And at the consequences of having the father of her stillborn child located half a world away while she was forced to bear the pain of it alone.
Again and again she battered at Thoikaris' defences, ramming into the wall in her mind with all the power and force that she could muster. Again and again, it threw her back, but she would not stop, not now. She was dimly aware of Spike's voice in the endless distance, but she could spare no concentration to listen to him. Nor could her enemy, so he was left talking only to the body of his love, while she struggled with a power that before she could only have imagined could have existed.
It bent, once, bulging inwards under the force of her assault. Pushed back, she tried again, summoning all of the memories that she could to give her extra strength.
Thoikaris, too, raged, but she was bearing the brunt of an attack that she could never have anticipated.
Again, it buckled. Again, it was repaired.
There. A breach. Once more, dear friends. She remembered the last time that she had heard a quotation from that most quotable of Shakespeare's works. And that, too, leant her strength.
She forced herself through the breach, battering aside all of the force that her primeval ancestor could muster. It was like wading though a marsh, but she did it, beckoned by the light beyond.
She felt Thoikaris slip away, back to the void from which she had been summoned. I will not be defeated so easily, were the last words that Buffy heard before she almost fell back into control of her own body, tied securely to the wall of a filthy room.
The tears slipped from her eyes as she Spike, looking at her, his head cocked to the side.
'Buffy?' he asked, his voice breaking.
It was then, for the first time, that she realised the cost of her triumph. And what a cost it was, the realisation of a fear that she had, as a child, held to be worse than all others before life taught her what fear actually was.
She felt Spike's cold touch, and knew that her skin was equally cold.
