Title: The Sacrifices
Author: mispel
E-mail:
Summary: Everyone in the cave is in danger. Willow comes to Xander's rescue. The beast gets the cluster.
Spoilers: Early season 7
Disclaimer: I own no one and nothing
Feedback: Any comments would be welcome.
A/N: Takes place in early season 7, not long after Beneath You and Same Time, Same Place.
Previously: Anya failed to get the cluster away from Spike, and he made a wish. Dawn and Xander got stuck at the hospital.
The Sacrifices
Chapter 16: Upheaval
The ground shuddered. It caught Buffy off guard and she almost fell over. She looked around fearfully while the baby in her arms started to cry. Buffy shushed her absently as the shaking continued then grew stronger.
As the noise reverberating through the cave grew louder, Buffy notices the walls were getting sick of being walls and looking into a career change - maybe becoming sharp rocks that fall on your head. She took some quick, resolute steps toward the tunnel. She saw Harmony scurry out ahead of her squealing in panic. Buffy wasn't as fast. Before she reached the tunnel, pieces of the ceiling fell around her. Buffy was knocked to her knees.
"I am so out of here," Halfrek said. She was about to disappear when Anya stepped out of the tunnel. Anya pushed Harmony back into the cave and out of her way. Harmony ended up on her butt. She got up only to fall again. She gave up and crawled into the tunnel.
"You're going the wrong way, sweetie," Halfrek told Anya in a high anxious voice as Anya went past her unsteadily. Anya was making her way toward Buffy when she stopped.
As Buffy was about to get up, she heard it. An angry roar coming up through the earth. She turned to see dirt and rocks fly upward in an explosion. The noise was deafening. Something rose through the swirling dust and debris.
At first Buffy couldn't make out what she was looking at. Then the air cleared a little, and she saw dozens of thick snakes entwined and knotted together into one. The mass of snakes moved in unison heading toward where Buffy kneeled in front of Halfrek and Anya. Buffy scrambled to her feet but the cave floor moved under her keeping her down. She barely avoided falling with the baby who was howling. Buffy was about to set the child down and free up her arms for a fight when Halfrek barreled past her.
"You! This is all your fault!" Halfrek shrieked, lifted a sizable rock and hurled it at the snakes. The snakes spread out and the rock missed, but Halfrek was ready with another one.
"Time to go. Time to leave," Anya said as she pulled Buffy to her feet and dragged her toward the tunnel. Buffy saw the snakes that made up the Denekari beast knock Halfrek down and move toward her with their moths open, until Anya threw a rock at the beast, hitting one of the snake heads.
The snakes changed direction, moved as one to loom over Buffy and Anya. The snakes were close enough to be seen clearly. Their heads had no eyes. Each was as thick as a human leg. Very sharp teeth grew from the slits of their mouths. Anya punched one of them and all the snakes reared back. One snake head let out a scream then the others followed in a cascade of deafening shrieks. A horrible noise filled the cavern.
Buffy scrambled backwards toward the tunnel keeping a firm hold on the child. From inside the tunnel a voice could barely be heard speaking a stream of nonsense, "pretty things are useless things, shiny things are pretty things are useless things" over and over again.
Xander felt trapped as the doctor prodded him. He remembered to yelp in pain when the doctor tried to raise his legs. He heard that was key to faking a back injury. The doctor left.
It was not unlike a certain vision. How did it go? Him with a debilitating back problem. Buffy dead. That part he remembered. And that he came out of it determined not to let it happen. Xander also remembered the bludgeoning. It was a little creepy to be acting out any part of the scenario.
Xander heard noises from the hallway. He expected someone to barge in any moment and accuse him or arrest him. Just then the curtain parted, and Willow was standing there.
"Damn it, Willow!"
"What? There's no better place to have a heart attack," Willow said as she saw Xander clutching his chest.
"Back pain is my scam," Xander told her as he peered through the curtain to find people still milling around outside. He spotted his doctor talking to another doctor, with no thought to the fake agony Xander was in.
"Where's..." Willow started to say.
"Dawn's still around somewhere," Xander said as he ducked his head back in.
"You left..."
"I didn't leave her. We split up and she went with this old woman as a cover. Maybe she made it out," Xander said defensively.
"I was going to say you left the baby," Willow explained in an exaggeratedly soothing voice as she motioned toward the hallway. There she must have seen obvious signs that the baby had been returned.
"I carried it in this duffel bag. Dawn was the distraction specialist. She has a fake grandmother. I have everyone convinced that I'm a workmen's comp scam artist slash drug addict. I was about to go look for Dawn," Xander said peeking outside again.
Willow absorbed the information.
"I better go find her. Xander, you need to get out of here," she said looking like she expected him to get himself arrested any minute.
"Can't. The place is locked down," Xander told her.
"They are letting some people leave. But they are questioning them first," Willow informed him.
"Will my pretty face get me out of here?" Xander asked and batted his eyelashes.
"No."
"Will your pretty face get me out of here?"
Willow just smiled at the complement.
"Well, so far Dawn has employed the pain in the ass approach. It seems to work," Xander said.
"Yes, but she has a natural advantage which we lost. We are not teenagers any more."
"We're still young and obnoxious," Xander protested.
Willow looked thoughtful for a minute and then told Xander to be ready to go. Xander knew that she could have had them out of here in two blinks of an eye or two twitches of the nose, if anyone felt safe about her using magic yet. The fact that they were not yet invisible or out of there, meant she knew it too.
The snakes snapped their teeth at Anya. Buffy picked up a rock and threw it at the nearest snake head, and the snakes turned to her. They lost interest almost immediately and turned back to Anya.
"You don't have anything it wants, honey," Halfrek said to Buffy.
Halfrek had better luck keeping the beast's attention. She got hold of a sacrificial knife. With a vicious blow, she stuck it into the thick body of one of the snakes. It turned to her. She stabbed it over and over again. The wounds only seemed to make the beast loud and unhappy. Anya was about to smash a rock into it when Spike emerged out of the tunnel with the cluster held high in one hand.
"You can have it back! It doesn't do anything!" Spike shouted.
The snake heads moved as one - their attention on Spike now. He pulled back his arm and threw the rock cluster at the beast.
The braided snakes parted. The heads fanned out at the top then came together again around the cluster. The cluster disappeared as the mass of snakes reformed around it. Things were still for a moment, then the beast snapped back and forth like a whip. Its heads knotted together almost like a fist, the thing flailed at one wall of the cave then the other.
Even without any eyes it was still doing a fine job of demolishing the cave. Big rocks started to fall threatening to block off the exit. The falling stones got closer and closer to hitting Buffy as she hunched over the terrified, crying baby.
The beast flailed around a few more times, bringing down more of the cave then slipped back down where it had come from. But the shaking didn't stop. Pieces of the cave ceiling fell all around. Dirt came down in clumps and more softly, dusting the air. Buffy coughed.
As Buffy was bent over the baby, she felt rocks hit her back and then Anya's hand guiding her toward the exit. A very large piece of cave landed near them, and Halfrek made some impatient noises as she itched to teleport out. When the next boulder hit the floor, Halfrek was gone.
Xander and Willow walked toward the exit, and on the way, they grabbed scrubs for Xander. He changed into them quickly. While he waited out of sight, Willow went over to sit with the people who were waiting to be allowed to leave. Some more patiently than others. A policewoman was questioning people off to the side. A policeman was searching the places where someone might hide, like the place between a wending machine and a large, potted plant where Xander was hiding. This gave Xander a slight feeling of urgency with a big, juicy helping of panic on the side.
Willow just seemed to be sitting there. Her back was even to the door. A middle ages woman with a bandage on her arm was fidgeting next to her, her blond hair styled in the passed out drunk bed-head fashion. Next to her a man in dirty jeans was half-asleep. Xander tried to look like he belonged there, in scrubs, but no ID, a fake orderly standing next to a big, fake tree.
The shaking brought down the ceiling behind them as Anya and Buffy entered the tunnel. Buffy climbed up with Anya's help. Spike was somewhere behind them. Anya kept Buffy and the baby from sliding back as the tunnel crumbled under them. Rocks were raining on them constantly. They were still too near the bottom when Spike stopped following. They looked back and saw him with his arms raised, as he held up the ceiling. The stone cracked between his fingers.
"That won't do any good," Buffy told him.
"We have to hurry," Anya said and they climbed up.
They could hear Spike behind them saying, "I'll hold up the sky."
The tunnel was falling apart. Large, jagged stones broke away and tumbled down. The tunnel closed behind them and Spike was gone. Buffy and Anya moved to try to avoid the same fate.
To be continued