The Sacrifices
Chapter 22: Transportation
The leafless, misshapen trees were casting funny shadows on the ground. There was a big hole and piles of dirt and big rocks next to it. Halfrek, Anya and Buffy stood in an eerie trio over a prostrate form as Xander drove up. The only thing that made the picture less ominous was the dark haired, dark skinned little baby in Buffy's arms. Seeing that the kid was decked out in a dirty pink outfit, Xander considered it very thoughtful of people to color code kids like that. All he had to worry about was the dreaded, gender-neutral yellow.
"You guys are a mess. Did you roll around in the dirt?" Xander asked seeing the state they were in - especially Anya and Buffy. Their clothes were ripped in places and marked with dirt.
"Yes, yes we did," Buffy told him more deadpan than was necessary.
"Ok, one mud-wrestling fantasy coming up," Xander quipped. He didn't really have mud-wrestling on his mind right then. Maybe later.
Walking over, Xander saw that the body on the ground was Spike. Xander decided to ignore all the questions that came to him about that as he turned to Buffy and the baby she was holding. The kid had on one dirty, little, white sock on her foot.
"Hey. It's the other sock," Xander said pointing at it.
Buffy tickled the bare foot.
"What is this? We just got rid of a baby," Xander objected.
"It's another baby. This one is a girl. And I'm not giving her back." Buffy must have been joking, but her tone made Xander worry a little. Buffy looked serious, standing firm in defense of all that was cute and pink and girly.
"So you guys need a ride?" Xander asked as he looked from Buffy to Anya and Halfrek.
"We need to get Spike in the trunk of your car before the sun comes up and fries him." Buffy spoke in a whisper and it was catching, even Halfrek was doing it.
"You don't know when to quit, do you?" Halfrek said, shaking her head and brushing her curly hair off her shoulder with her dirty hand.
Xander opened the trunk and moved some things out of the way. Buffy laid the baby on the back seat. The kid was looking kind of sleepy. Buffy said soothing words to her before she went back to Spike. Halfrek was poking him with the pointed end of her shoe.
"So what happened?" Xander asked standing a little back from the fun.
"A cave in." "A wish." Buffy and Anya said simultaneously.
"Both." Buffy explained.
"Someone wished for a cave in?" Xander asked looking at Anya. He wasn't going for an accusing stare, but Anya didn't seem to get that as she glared back.
"Spike did. I guess. Sort of," Buffy answered him.
"That crazy mixed up vampire. What will he think of next?" Xander joked.
"Nothing by the look of him," Hallie answered.
"He wanted to be released," Anya said very seriously.
"I'm sure that makes some kind of sense. To the insane and the vengeance demons," Xander finished with a look at Anya and Halfrek.
"Don't try to explain it to a layperson, Anyanka. He will never understand," Halfrek said in her usual way, scornful of all things Xander.
"A layperson," Xander repeated noticing how much condescension Halfrek managed to put into the word. She might as well have said dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks person.
"Not a vengeance cognoscenti," Halfrek explained haughtily, reminding Xander why he didn't like her so very much.
"Anya thinks he wanted to not be insane any more or to end his suffering or something. And you know how wishes are," Buffy said as her eyes flicked to Anya like she couldn't help it.
"That's the solution, a lobotomy by avalanche?" Xander asked looking right at Anya.
"Well obviously," Halfrek rolled her eyes.
"He's a vegetable?" Xander asked looking from Spike's mangled skull to Buffy to Anya. He couldn't read Buffy's expression. It was blank with a hint of something underneath she wasn't letting through.
"But he isn't unhappy. And if he is still insane, he is very quiet about it." Halfrek smiled down at Spike with his open, staring eyes. Then waved her hand in front of his face with no result. She looked up at the others and beamed.
"It was that big, jewely rock thing. It grants wishes. Spike got a hold of it," Buffy continued to explain.
"Oh," Xander said when he realized Anya wasn't responsible for the wish granting.
Anya rolled her eyes when she saw from Xander's apologetic look that she was exonerated. Xander noticed she hadn't bothered to explain that part. Like she didn't care what he thought. And she probably didn't.
Buffy motioned for Xander to help her carry Spike.
"Wiley Coyote of vampires. Every one of his plans screws him over worse than the last," Xander said as he took a hold of Spike's feet. They felt kind of loose, like they were broken. It was pretty sickening. But not as much as his head - the way parts of it were sunken in, pieces of scull missing. It fell back when Buffy easily pulled him up by the arms.
To Xander, he seemed heavy. No surprise, he was dead weight after all. But he wasn't all the way dead - his body wasn't a pile of dust. That was the only proof. Now that he couldn't sit up and smirk, there was no difference between Spike and any other corpse.
Buffy was looking behind her to see where she was going. Xander wanted to call a time out, take her aside and tell her to dump this garbage or maybe something a little more diplomatic. 'Don't tie this thing around your neck like a dead albatross from that really long poem in English class.' Yes, he was going to bring up English literature. Why let a hard-earned, high-risk high school education go to waste? Instead, he was helping her load Spike into his car.
As they put him down inside the trunk, Xander wondered what this thing was they were moving around. He couldn't figure out if it was just an empty container. He even had to fight the urge to feel sorry for this thing, limp and smashed. But bottom line, he didn't wish him well. Add a defused Spike into the equation and everyone is a little bit safer. Better living through brain damage. He just had to wait for Buffy to catch up with his wisdom and figure it out. He didn't want to make it worse for her. It would keep. He didn't really know what she was planning anyway.
Buffy seemed OK, but she was closed off in that patented Buffy way. She had a stubborn look, and he didn't know what she was thinking behind it, except 'not now, Xander '. So he kept quiet. Well if Buffy needed a silent companion, he could get her a nice, quiet plant.
Until then he could do a plant impression. Whatever he said, his words would be coming from the other side. She was in a different place. And Xander didn't want to get into an argument while two vengeance demons were watching them like they were some kind of vampire balancing circus act.
Halfrek and Anya watched. Halfrek's head was to one side as she peered at the scene. Buffy and Xander turned to them when they were finished.
"Anya might need a ride," Halfrek said baiting her.
"I don't need a ride," Anya bit out giving Halfrek a warning look.
"I'd like you to come along, I need to know ... stuff," Buffy said while staring at Spike curled to fit in the trunk of the car.
Anya agreed and got into the back seat, next to the sleeping baby. Xander went to the driver's seat and let Buffy close the trunk.
"And I am off. Anyanka, I'll see you. Maybe a movie next week," Halfrek said and waved her hands in the air ready to teleport.
"Hallie, maybe you..." was all Anya got out before a white tendril appeared in the air, wrapped itself around Halfrek and took her away.
"Oh, no," Anya said as Halfrek was gone from sight. Anya slammed the car door closed.
"What was that?" Xander asked not sure what they just saw. It looked like a white string appeared out of nowhere and snagged Halfrek. Not the usual vengeance teleporting deal.
"Follow it," she ordered Xander. Buffy got in the front seat. Xander put the car in gear and drove over the bumpy ground in the direction that the white line had carried off Halfrek. Buffy reached back and Anya gave her the baby.
"I am so going to need new shocks," Xander complained as the car bounced over the rough ground.
"Not enjoying the offroading?" Buffy asked, Xander wasn't sure if she was talking to him or the baby.
"That way," Anya said pointing by sticking her arm out between the front seats.
"What was that thing?" Xander asked again. The white line was thin and it snatched Halfrek just as she started to disappear.
"A trap. It triggered when Hallie tried to teleport. We have to get to her fast. Xander, try pressing the gas pedal," Anya told him, her tone even more clipped than usual.
"Yes, dear," Xander joked, but it just wasn't funny considering.
Xander wasn't sure if they were going the right way in the gloomy landscape, but Anya told him to keep going.
"But she teleported before," Buffy pointed out.
"That was underground. There!" She pointed ahead of them to something Xander couldn't identify.
As they got closer, another white string came up through the air. This one seemed to lift up from the ground. It wrapped around the car. Then another did the same thing and the car stalled. More came up, and Xander could see them on the windshield, barely an inch thick. But the car wouldn't move until the strings started to drag the car toward a dip in the ground filled with dirty water.
Next to the well was Halfrek bundled up in white string with only one arm outstretched. She was holding onto something prickly growing out of the ground as the strings were trying to pull her into the water. The well was surrounded with a leathery, white ring that bulged and pulsed on one side.
"Hallie, hang on!" Anya yelled and rolled down the window. As soon as she did, the strings wrapped around her wrist and pulled her out the car window. The car was still wound with the white lines, but they stopped dragging the car - like they were no longer interest now that they had Anya. Halfrek lost her handhold and screamed. Before she was pulled into the water, Anya grabbed her. The white lines were wrapping around both of them, but Anya had managed to hold onto a tree.
"Hold the kid," Buffy told Xander and handed over the baby. Seeing that the white strings were all over her car door, Buffy climbed into the back seat and out the window that Anya had opened. She jumped out and tried to tear the white strings that held Anya. They weren't very thick, but they were sticky and they just stretched when Buffy tried to rip them.
"This stuff is like super tough chewing gum," Buffy complained struggling to tear it.
"You need something sharp," Anya yelled as she strained to hold herself and Halfrek against the force of the tendrils. Buffy looked at Xander and he pulled a sword from under his car seat.
"You have a sword under your seat?" Buffy said as she took it and proceeded to hack at the strings with it.
"You have a stake in your pocket," Xander shot back.
Buffy cut the lines holding Anya and Halfrek but they stuck to the blade threatening to make it unusable. New ones came up to replace them almost right away. They moved fast and Anya and Halfrek weren't freed.
"Get that thing," Anya said and motioned her head toward the bulge in the white ring around the water. "Stab it," she elaborated.
Buffy took only one step and she was tied around the ankles with the stretchy white strings. She fell over. She sliced the line. Then she rose and ducked immediately as a string flew at her neck. She kept low and crawled over to the ring. White lines wrapped around her legs, but she was close now.
Buffy raised the sword clumsily from her half prone position and plunged it into the thickest part of the white mass. The bulge deflated releasing a stinky, gray gas. The strings coming out of it shriveled and dried up. Anya and Halfrek broke them easily freeing themselves.
"It's like old dried up gum now? What was that stuff?" Buffy looked over at the well of liquid that definitely wasn't water. It was kind of yellowish orange and it had a sharp smell almost like vomit.
"They are snares. For us. These lines can reach out pretty far if a vengeance demon is detected in mid-teleport," Anya said and gave Halfrek an accusing look.
"I guess sometimes it's good not to have the full use of your powers," Halfrek said not sounding chastened.
"So, the Michila demons made this stuff?" Buffy asked while getting into the car to hold the baby. The car was now mostly free of the white lines. Xander went around to check on it.
"All of it. That liquid is the digestive juice we told you about. They secreted it and made the rest the way silkworms make silk. Kind of," Anya explained.
"It looked like silly string," Xander noted. "And I'm glad I won't have to chisel it off my car," he said noticing that he could just brush off the, brittle, dried up lines.
"Yes, that's what's important, not the two of us being slowly dissolved in acid till all that is left are two wish stones," Anya said giving him a bitter look.
Xander stood there uncomfortable for a while.
"So, who needs a ride?" he finally asked before the build up of tension killed him.
to be continued