Chapter 29
Buffy leaned against the balcony railing watching Angel and Spike walk back and forth. "No sign of Lindsey." Spike said.
"Look for plans." Buffy said.
Angel opened the doors to the apartment and walked in. "Well, I'll be damned all over again." Buffy walked in behind her husband and found Eve sitting in bed, wearing a man's button-up dress shirt. She clutched the sheets to her body to cover herself and recoiled toward the headboard.
"Don't touch me." Eve said.
"Hiding out from the senior partners, Eve?" Buffy asked. "How many sick days do you get before they dock you?"
"What do you want?"
"Fred's dying. Some mystical parasite. Ring a bell?"
"No, I don't know what you're talking about."
"What about your boyfriend, luv? You got some wacky scheme brewin'?" Spike asked. "Sending coffins about?"
"You three stay away from me."
Buffy leaned in close to Eve and stared straight into her eyes. "Look, Eve, this happens quickly or very, very slowly. Ready?" Eve nodded. "A sarcophagus. Older than anything we know."
"Lindsey and I had nothing to do with that. I'm not lying. I-I'm not. Have you.... heard from him? About him?"
"Oh, this is truly poetical." Spike said.
"You're not saying what we need to hear." Angel said.
"Why would we do anything to Fred?" Eve started to stand up. "Why would we even care about her....?"
Buffy punched Eve back onto the bed and Lorne walked in, saying, "Ooh. That was a knuckle-buster. Here's the thing, Eve: You're going to sing for me, and I'm going to read you right now. And here's one more thing: Winifred Burkle once told me after a sinful amount of Chinese food, and in lieu of absolutely nothing, 'I think a lot of people would choose to be green. Your shade, if they had the choice.' If I hear one note.... one quarter-note.... that tells me you had any involvement, these three won't even have time to kill you. Oh, and anything by Diana Warren will also result in your death.... well, except 'Rhythm of the Night.'"
"I wanna help. I swear to you. I've got nothing against Fred."
Buffy lifted Eve to her feet harshly by her arm. "Say it.... with a song in your heart." Eve sighed and began to sing. "Pretty as a picture. She is like a golden ring."
"She's clean." Lorne said.
"You've been wrong before." Angel said.
"Yeah, and I might be now, but she reads clean. Her future's not too bright, but...."
"What do you mean?" Eve asked.
"Well, nothin's written in stone.... Lately..... but, uh, if I was about to face your future, I'd make like Carmen Miranda.... and die."
"Wait. Please. Are you going to tell the senior partners where I am?"
"Hell of a bargaining chip." Spike said.
"No, they can't help you. I mean it. If you're talking about a sarcophagus that doesn't match anything in our records.... there's nothing that's not in our records except what came before. The old ones."
"The original demons. Before human kind. They were all driven out of this dimension." Angel said.
"The ones that were still alive. But long before that, they were killing each other all the time, and they don't die the way we do. Wesley may not know it, but his source books can conjure up anything, not just our own stock. Tell him to look for the texts that are forgotten, the oldest scrolls. You need to find the Deeper Well."
Buffy looked at Lorne and he nodded. "Take a shower." Buffy tossed Eve back on the bed and walked out with Angel, Spike, and Lorne.
***
They all sat in Wesley's office listening to what he and Dawn had learned. "It's called Illyria, a great monarch and warrior of the demon age murdered by rivals and left adrift in the Deeper Well." Dawn said.
"Which is what?" Angel asked.
"A burial ground, a resting place of all the remaining old ones." Wesley said.
"This one ain't restin'." Gunn said.
"No."
"I don't think this is just an infection." Dawn said. "Fred's skin is.... hardening like a shell. I think she's being hollowed out so this thing can use her to claw its way back into the world."
"That's speculation. Either way, she dies."
"Do we have any chance of finding this Deeper Well?" Buffy asked.
"I already have. It's in England, in the Cotswolds. That's the location, to the inch."
"That's near Giles." Buffy said.
"Lorne, tell Harmony to prep the jet." Angel said. "We can be there in 10 hours."
"You can be there in 4." Knox said. "We have really good jets."
"It will have a guardian, maybe several." Wesley said.
"I say bring em on." Buffy said.
"How do we know goin' there's gonna do squat?" Gunn asked.
"The Deeper Well is almost like a prison for the dead." Wesley said. "If something gets out, it's written it can be drawn back from the source."
"That's our shot." Angel said.
"We'll keep working here, but, yes, I think it is."
"If nobody thinks it's too ridiculous, I'm going to pray." Lorne said.
"No, it's appreciated. Time is not on our side."
"Nobody's on our side." Spike said.
"Come on. Let's save the day." Angel said. He, Buffy, and Spike walked out.
***
Buffy paced the jet while Spike sat nervously in his seat. Angel glanced out the window a couple of times. He didn't much like flying. "I've never flown before." Spike said.
"It's not so bad." Angel said, gripping the armrests.
"Back to the mother country. Hey, after we save Fred, we should hit the West End, take in a show."
"I've never seen Les Mis."
"Trust me, half way through the first act, you'll be drinking humans again."
"Can't lose her, Spike."
"We won't."
"We lost Cordy." Buffy said quietly. "We lost Anya. I can't lose anymore."
The pilot came out of the cockpit. "Excuse me, Mrs. Summers, but you need to sit down. We've got some turbulence up ahead."
"I'm fine."
"It's for your safety, ma'am."
Buffy wheeled on him, her eyes flashing. "Go do your job and leave me the hell alone. I said I'm fine." The pilot looked frightened and went back to the cockpit.
***
Buffy, Angel, and Spike walked through a grove of trees in the foggy moonlight. "When is a door not a door? When it's not soddin'-well there." Spike said.
"Right there." Angel said. They looked at a large tree. "You wanna bet that's the entrance to the Deeper Well?"
"Either that, or Christmasland." Buffy said. Angel had a blank look.
"Do you ever have any fun?" Spike asked. Armored men wielding swords rushed out of the tree, growling.
"I'm about to." Angel said.
"And they even brought us weapons." Buffy said.
"Strategy?" Spike asked.
"Just hold my hand." Angel said.
Buffy stared at them. "Do you two need a moment?"
Spike raised an eyebrow, but reached out to take Angel's hand. He smiled slightly. "St. Petersburg."
"Thought you'd forgotten." Angel said.
Angel and Spike let go of each others' hands, dropping a length of wire between them. As the armored creatures approached, Spike and Angel stepped apart and pulled the wire taut. The demons ran into the wire, getting clothes-lined by it, cutting off their heads. Buffy, Angel, and Spike took the swords from the first demons and used them to fight off the next group of demons coming at them. There were a dozen of them now, but the three were fighting them off skillfully. After two more waves, Buffy and Angel finished off the last two.
"Is that all? We haven't even started!" Angel called.
A man appeared at the tree gateway and walked out toward Angel. "I'd say that's enough."
"Drogyn."
"Angel."
"You're the keeper of the well."
"Have been for decades."
"Well, who in the bloody...." Spike started.
"Do not ask me a question." Drogyn said. "If you ever ask me a single question, I will kill you outright. Don't think for a moment that I can't."
"He can. He would." Angel said.
"Huh?" Spike asked.
"You're here about Illyria." Drogyn said to Angel.
"Yes." Buffy said.
"Walk in."
"But how...." Spike started.
"I just said to you, not one moment ago, don't ask."
"Seriously. He doesn't like questions." Angel said.
"Why not?" Buffy asked with a smirk.
"He can't lie."
"Good reason."
Drogyn led the way into the Deeper Well holding a torch. Buffy, Angel, and Spike followed in the firelight. "I would never have thought you'd end up here, Angel." Drogyn said.
"I could say the same." Angel said.
"So, you two know each other." Spike said. Drogyn glared at him. "That was a statement. I already know that you do."
"I'll tell you as much as I can. The old ones were demons pure. They warred as we would breathe.... endlessly. The greater ones were interred, for death was not always their end. Illyria was feared and beloved as few are. It was laid to death in the very depths of the well.... until it disappeared a month ago."
"Someone took it from under your nose a month ago, and you didn't miss it 'til now? That makes you quite the crap jailer, doesn't it." Drogyn glared again at Spike. "Also a statement."
"Your friend likes to talk."
"So much, he's even right sometimes." Angel said. "The man I remember couldn't be stolen from so easily."
"The tomb was not stolen. It disappeared. I believe it was pre-destined to as part of Illyria's escape plan. And as for my not noticing." Drogyn extinguished his torch in a tub of water at the entrance of another chamber. "Well, my charges are not few."
Buffy, Angel, and Spike followed Drogyn into the chamber. They were standing on a bridge. When they looked over to see what the bridge spanned, they saw an endless pit lined with thousands of coffins just like the sarcophagus delivered to Wolfram & Hart.
"Bloody hell." Spike said.
"How far does this go down?" Angel asked.
"All the way. All the way through the Earth." Drogyn said.
"So, the coffin disappeared, teleported, but it was brought to us." Buffy said.
"Illyria was a great power.... so great that, after millions of years dead, somewhere on this Earth still has acolytes. It's been freed.... the demon's essence."
"Yeah. Why do you think we're here?" Buffy shot at Drogyn. Drogyn glared at Buffy. She looked royally pissed and decided to keep going. "And what's your favorite color? What's your favorite song? Who's the goalkeeper for Manchester United? And how many fingers am I holdin' up?" Buffy flipped him off. "You wanna kill me? I'd love to see you try. But right now, I don't have time for your quirks."
"The power to draw back Illyria lies in there. It requires a champion who has traveled from where it lies to where it belongs."
"You got three of those right here." Angel said, taking Buffy's hand.
"But I didn't know it was free. If we bring the sarcophagus back to the well, it will draw Illyria out of your friend.... and into every single person between here and there. It will become the mystical equivalent of airborne. It will claw into every soul in its path to keep from being trapped. Entire cities.... tens maybe hundreds of thousands will die in agony if you save her."
"No."
"That's madness." Spike said.
"This is a place of madness." Drogyn said. "I'll prepare the spell. Your choice."
Angel looked at Buffy. Her eyes were welling with tears. "To hell with the world."
"No." Buffy said suddenly. "We can't." She began to cry. "We can't kill all those people. I desperately want to save Fred, I do, but we can't lose all those people. We just can't." She took a step back and bumped into Spike. He touched her shoulder and she fell into him sobbing. "We can't."
"Spike...." Angel said.
"This goes all the way through to the other side." Spike said, glancing over the side of the bridge, still holding Buffy. "So, I figure, there's a bloke somewhere around New Zealand standing on a bridge like this one, looking back down at us. All the way down. There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known."
Angel touched Buffy's back and she turned to him. He held her tightly and fought back tears as he stared at Spike.
Buffy leaned against the balcony railing watching Angel and Spike walk back and forth. "No sign of Lindsey." Spike said.
"Look for plans." Buffy said.
Angel opened the doors to the apartment and walked in. "Well, I'll be damned all over again." Buffy walked in behind her husband and found Eve sitting in bed, wearing a man's button-up dress shirt. She clutched the sheets to her body to cover herself and recoiled toward the headboard.
"Don't touch me." Eve said.
"Hiding out from the senior partners, Eve?" Buffy asked. "How many sick days do you get before they dock you?"
"What do you want?"
"Fred's dying. Some mystical parasite. Ring a bell?"
"No, I don't know what you're talking about."
"What about your boyfriend, luv? You got some wacky scheme brewin'?" Spike asked. "Sending coffins about?"
"You three stay away from me."
Buffy leaned in close to Eve and stared straight into her eyes. "Look, Eve, this happens quickly or very, very slowly. Ready?" Eve nodded. "A sarcophagus. Older than anything we know."
"Lindsey and I had nothing to do with that. I'm not lying. I-I'm not. Have you.... heard from him? About him?"
"Oh, this is truly poetical." Spike said.
"You're not saying what we need to hear." Angel said.
"Why would we do anything to Fred?" Eve started to stand up. "Why would we even care about her....?"
Buffy punched Eve back onto the bed and Lorne walked in, saying, "Ooh. That was a knuckle-buster. Here's the thing, Eve: You're going to sing for me, and I'm going to read you right now. And here's one more thing: Winifred Burkle once told me after a sinful amount of Chinese food, and in lieu of absolutely nothing, 'I think a lot of people would choose to be green. Your shade, if they had the choice.' If I hear one note.... one quarter-note.... that tells me you had any involvement, these three won't even have time to kill you. Oh, and anything by Diana Warren will also result in your death.... well, except 'Rhythm of the Night.'"
"I wanna help. I swear to you. I've got nothing against Fred."
Buffy lifted Eve to her feet harshly by her arm. "Say it.... with a song in your heart." Eve sighed and began to sing. "Pretty as a picture. She is like a golden ring."
"She's clean." Lorne said.
"You've been wrong before." Angel said.
"Yeah, and I might be now, but she reads clean. Her future's not too bright, but...."
"What do you mean?" Eve asked.
"Well, nothin's written in stone.... Lately..... but, uh, if I was about to face your future, I'd make like Carmen Miranda.... and die."
"Wait. Please. Are you going to tell the senior partners where I am?"
"Hell of a bargaining chip." Spike said.
"No, they can't help you. I mean it. If you're talking about a sarcophagus that doesn't match anything in our records.... there's nothing that's not in our records except what came before. The old ones."
"The original demons. Before human kind. They were all driven out of this dimension." Angel said.
"The ones that were still alive. But long before that, they were killing each other all the time, and they don't die the way we do. Wesley may not know it, but his source books can conjure up anything, not just our own stock. Tell him to look for the texts that are forgotten, the oldest scrolls. You need to find the Deeper Well."
Buffy looked at Lorne and he nodded. "Take a shower." Buffy tossed Eve back on the bed and walked out with Angel, Spike, and Lorne.
***
They all sat in Wesley's office listening to what he and Dawn had learned. "It's called Illyria, a great monarch and warrior of the demon age murdered by rivals and left adrift in the Deeper Well." Dawn said.
"Which is what?" Angel asked.
"A burial ground, a resting place of all the remaining old ones." Wesley said.
"This one ain't restin'." Gunn said.
"No."
"I don't think this is just an infection." Dawn said. "Fred's skin is.... hardening like a shell. I think she's being hollowed out so this thing can use her to claw its way back into the world."
"That's speculation. Either way, she dies."
"Do we have any chance of finding this Deeper Well?" Buffy asked.
"I already have. It's in England, in the Cotswolds. That's the location, to the inch."
"That's near Giles." Buffy said.
"Lorne, tell Harmony to prep the jet." Angel said. "We can be there in 10 hours."
"You can be there in 4." Knox said. "We have really good jets."
"It will have a guardian, maybe several." Wesley said.
"I say bring em on." Buffy said.
"How do we know goin' there's gonna do squat?" Gunn asked.
"The Deeper Well is almost like a prison for the dead." Wesley said. "If something gets out, it's written it can be drawn back from the source."
"That's our shot." Angel said.
"We'll keep working here, but, yes, I think it is."
"If nobody thinks it's too ridiculous, I'm going to pray." Lorne said.
"No, it's appreciated. Time is not on our side."
"Nobody's on our side." Spike said.
"Come on. Let's save the day." Angel said. He, Buffy, and Spike walked out.
***
Buffy paced the jet while Spike sat nervously in his seat. Angel glanced out the window a couple of times. He didn't much like flying. "I've never flown before." Spike said.
"It's not so bad." Angel said, gripping the armrests.
"Back to the mother country. Hey, after we save Fred, we should hit the West End, take in a show."
"I've never seen Les Mis."
"Trust me, half way through the first act, you'll be drinking humans again."
"Can't lose her, Spike."
"We won't."
"We lost Cordy." Buffy said quietly. "We lost Anya. I can't lose anymore."
The pilot came out of the cockpit. "Excuse me, Mrs. Summers, but you need to sit down. We've got some turbulence up ahead."
"I'm fine."
"It's for your safety, ma'am."
Buffy wheeled on him, her eyes flashing. "Go do your job and leave me the hell alone. I said I'm fine." The pilot looked frightened and went back to the cockpit.
***
Buffy, Angel, and Spike walked through a grove of trees in the foggy moonlight. "When is a door not a door? When it's not soddin'-well there." Spike said.
"Right there." Angel said. They looked at a large tree. "You wanna bet that's the entrance to the Deeper Well?"
"Either that, or Christmasland." Buffy said. Angel had a blank look.
"Do you ever have any fun?" Spike asked. Armored men wielding swords rushed out of the tree, growling.
"I'm about to." Angel said.
"And they even brought us weapons." Buffy said.
"Strategy?" Spike asked.
"Just hold my hand." Angel said.
Buffy stared at them. "Do you two need a moment?"
Spike raised an eyebrow, but reached out to take Angel's hand. He smiled slightly. "St. Petersburg."
"Thought you'd forgotten." Angel said.
Angel and Spike let go of each others' hands, dropping a length of wire between them. As the armored creatures approached, Spike and Angel stepped apart and pulled the wire taut. The demons ran into the wire, getting clothes-lined by it, cutting off their heads. Buffy, Angel, and Spike took the swords from the first demons and used them to fight off the next group of demons coming at them. There were a dozen of them now, but the three were fighting them off skillfully. After two more waves, Buffy and Angel finished off the last two.
"Is that all? We haven't even started!" Angel called.
A man appeared at the tree gateway and walked out toward Angel. "I'd say that's enough."
"Drogyn."
"Angel."
"You're the keeper of the well."
"Have been for decades."
"Well, who in the bloody...." Spike started.
"Do not ask me a question." Drogyn said. "If you ever ask me a single question, I will kill you outright. Don't think for a moment that I can't."
"He can. He would." Angel said.
"Huh?" Spike asked.
"You're here about Illyria." Drogyn said to Angel.
"Yes." Buffy said.
"Walk in."
"But how...." Spike started.
"I just said to you, not one moment ago, don't ask."
"Seriously. He doesn't like questions." Angel said.
"Why not?" Buffy asked with a smirk.
"He can't lie."
"Good reason."
Drogyn led the way into the Deeper Well holding a torch. Buffy, Angel, and Spike followed in the firelight. "I would never have thought you'd end up here, Angel." Drogyn said.
"I could say the same." Angel said.
"So, you two know each other." Spike said. Drogyn glared at him. "That was a statement. I already know that you do."
"I'll tell you as much as I can. The old ones were demons pure. They warred as we would breathe.... endlessly. The greater ones were interred, for death was not always their end. Illyria was feared and beloved as few are. It was laid to death in the very depths of the well.... until it disappeared a month ago."
"Someone took it from under your nose a month ago, and you didn't miss it 'til now? That makes you quite the crap jailer, doesn't it." Drogyn glared again at Spike. "Also a statement."
"Your friend likes to talk."
"So much, he's even right sometimes." Angel said. "The man I remember couldn't be stolen from so easily."
"The tomb was not stolen. It disappeared. I believe it was pre-destined to as part of Illyria's escape plan. And as for my not noticing." Drogyn extinguished his torch in a tub of water at the entrance of another chamber. "Well, my charges are not few."
Buffy, Angel, and Spike followed Drogyn into the chamber. They were standing on a bridge. When they looked over to see what the bridge spanned, they saw an endless pit lined with thousands of coffins just like the sarcophagus delivered to Wolfram & Hart.
"Bloody hell." Spike said.
"How far does this go down?" Angel asked.
"All the way. All the way through the Earth." Drogyn said.
"So, the coffin disappeared, teleported, but it was brought to us." Buffy said.
"Illyria was a great power.... so great that, after millions of years dead, somewhere on this Earth still has acolytes. It's been freed.... the demon's essence."
"Yeah. Why do you think we're here?" Buffy shot at Drogyn. Drogyn glared at Buffy. She looked royally pissed and decided to keep going. "And what's your favorite color? What's your favorite song? Who's the goalkeeper for Manchester United? And how many fingers am I holdin' up?" Buffy flipped him off. "You wanna kill me? I'd love to see you try. But right now, I don't have time for your quirks."
"The power to draw back Illyria lies in there. It requires a champion who has traveled from where it lies to where it belongs."
"You got three of those right here." Angel said, taking Buffy's hand.
"But I didn't know it was free. If we bring the sarcophagus back to the well, it will draw Illyria out of your friend.... and into every single person between here and there. It will become the mystical equivalent of airborne. It will claw into every soul in its path to keep from being trapped. Entire cities.... tens maybe hundreds of thousands will die in agony if you save her."
"No."
"That's madness." Spike said.
"This is a place of madness." Drogyn said. "I'll prepare the spell. Your choice."
Angel looked at Buffy. Her eyes were welling with tears. "To hell with the world."
"No." Buffy said suddenly. "We can't." She began to cry. "We can't kill all those people. I desperately want to save Fred, I do, but we can't lose all those people. We just can't." She took a step back and bumped into Spike. He touched her shoulder and she fell into him sobbing. "We can't."
"Spike...." Angel said.
"This goes all the way through to the other side." Spike said, glancing over the side of the bridge, still holding Buffy. "So, I figure, there's a bloke somewhere around New Zealand standing on a bridge like this one, looking back down at us. All the way down. There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known."
Angel touched Buffy's back and she turned to him. He held her tightly and fought back tears as he stared at Spike.