Summary: In a land divided and at war between man and demon, what happens when one does the unthinkable and falls for the enemy?
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own the BtVS and AtS characters. There is no intention of copyright infringement or monetary gain in the borrowing of characters. They are used only for entertainment purpose.
Previously on Enemy Mine: Willow comes to several realizations. The Slayer's group and the Specialist's group prepare for going into the Shadowlands and they meet Jenny who sheds light on several situations.
Ch 10 Belly of the Beast
Sunlight struggled to break through the thick, gray clouds that covered the sky. Whatever muted light passed through, the heavy canopy of the forest diluted it even more, transforming the area into one of dusk in daylight and impenetrable dark at night.
A group of seven passed through, their motions undetected even among the unnatural stillness of the forest. Steadily they moved deeper into the Shadowlands as ghosts, their presence cloaked.
The energy was chaotic, swirling around in random patterns. Almost like spider webs, Tara could practically feel the strands of energy like sticky webbing, trying to ensnare and tangle. It was taking all her concentration not to lose focus into her surroundings and keep the intricate cloaking spell in place. She had underestimated the pull and disorder of the Shadowlands and greatly feared of the spell crumbling that was keeping the others and her from being detected. As she had explained before, she had to monitor each and every one of her team members to be able to cloak them but the disturbing energy in the Shadowlands was pulling, sticking and tangling into them, making her task a hundred times more difficult.
'Oz,' she said telepathically to the team member that led them, 'You need to try and track Willow as quickly as possible. '
Because of the manner that they had all gone in, they had been temporarily linked to be able to communicate with one another without alerting the enemy in case the spell failed. Everyone 'heard' Tara, but it was the urgency she conveyed that caused a ripple of unease throughout the group.
'What is it Tara?' asked Wesley, knowing full well that it was dire if it made the normally calm Wicca incredibly fretful, sending out her emotions like cold ripples through the link.
'The Shadowlands' energy disturbance is much greater than I expected. I won't be able to hold the cloaking spell for long.'
'Crap,' came Xander's response.
'How long?' asked the Slayer.
'Two, three hours at most,' said Tara, trying to calculate.
'That's one hour in and one out and the other for rescuing Willow,' said Oz, not pausing in his quick strides and not allowing the others to fall behind. His pace increased. 'That's cutting it too close.'
'I know,' agreed Tara gravely.
"All right then, everybody move it. We have a time constraint now," ordered the Slayer as everyone picked up their pace.
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Oz suddenly stopped the grueling pace that he had set, making everyone else jerk to a stop, disorienting them for a moment by the sudden shift of motion or lack thereof.
'What's the problem?' Buffy asked Oz. She had taken her position in the back of the group to cover their path knowing full well that Oz could protect them in the front.
'I'm not sure,' he said, cocking his head to the side as if listening for something and then picking up his head to sniff the air around them. He looked around the forest and then back to his group. The spell was designed to cloak them from seeing eyes except each other. Behind him and to the right stood Cordy, her hand resting on the hilt of her word. Beside Cordy was Xander holding a special Council rifle with a silencer that packed wood-tipped silver bullets that exploded on impact, filled with a mixture of holy water, garlic and other components deadly to various demons. Behind him was Tara, flanked by Giles and Wesley who were carrying crossbows. Buffy was the last, protecting the rear. She held a sword out in readiness but everyone knew that the numerous stakes she had hidden away in her body were always only seconds away from being able to be used.
Seconds after the werewolf's eyes snapped to the Slayers, and before he could give warning, the woods exploded in a frenzy of action.
'Heads up!' the Slayer shouted as countless of vampires jumped down from the trees they had been perched on.
'It's an ambush!' shouted Cordelia.
'Not possible. We're cloaked. They don't know we're here,' responded Buffy.
A vampire jumped down from a tree too close to Tara, sideswiping her and making her stumble back into Giles who quickly held her steady with one arm. The Wiccan gritted her teeth as she forced herself not to lose concentration.
'It's a trap!' barked Cordelia as she pulled out her sword from its scabbard, ready to cut down the enemy.
'No!' ordered Buffy, spying the Seer's intent as she also warily kept an eye on the enemy surrounding them. 'You'll give away our presence!'
'Buff?' Xander asked worried. 'What do we do now?' The numerous vampires were sniffing and scanning for them. Two passed on either side of Xander who barely had time to shift sideways before they could stumble onto him. The one that had inadvertently sideswiped Tara was looking for her, for what it had touched.
The group shifted and moved, doing their utmost to elude them.
'Oz, how far?' asked Buffy.
The werewolf stood still, ignoring the presence of the vampires and used all his senses to detect their progress. Something up ahead was different, smelled different, made the wind sound different. 'Not far.'
'Close to the castle's perimeter?'
Oz scanned again to make sure. 'I'd say yeah.'
Buffy bit her bottom lip, as she quickly tried to think. They couldn't dust the vamps because that would only serve to alert the enemy of their presence. Being so close to the Aurelian castle meant certain death or possible capture and failure at any rescue attempt.
'Buffy?' barked out Giles as he and Wesley tried to maneuver Tara and themselves away from the seeking vampires.
Buffy searched around with wide eyes. They needed to get away undetected. . . But how?
'They're searching for us!' Cordelia pointed out, incredulous and with rising apprehension in her voice. 'How can they know we're here?'
'Can't be,' Giles told her as he maneuvered the Wicca and himself away from a vamp that passed too close to them. 'I can detect the spell that Tara is holding up and it is fully functional.'
'No, these vamps know we're here,' said Xander after he jumped sideways and then crouched when one vamp came at him and another swiped out his arm through the air.
'We need a distraction,' Buffy said, coming with the solution. She patted around in her body without taking her eyes away from the vamps around her. She could not use any of her stakes since their discovery would obviously expose her presence if not the ones of her team members. Only the Slayer and a few from Council Territory used those weapons delineating the Slayers' heritage and specifically designed to destroy vampires.
Her hand moved lower and then gripped the dagger strapped to her thigh. She didn't want to use the dagger. She really liked it but more importantly, it had been a present from Angel. On its discovery, Angelous would know of her presence. If these vamps were Aurelian and took the dagger to the General before they could rescue Willow, then who knew what could happen. The vampires would search for them in truth and put them on alert. Willow could be lost to them and they might get lost as well in the Shadowlands, just like another unfortunate casualty.
Then, as if by divine intervention or just plain dumb luck, the distraction that Buffy had wanted to create by throwing something far away to sound in the distance and get the vampires moving to search in that direction came unexpectedly in the guise of a Tronox.
To say that Tronox were dumb was to put it mildly. A lot of their shortcoming were because of their lack of evolved senses. They had horrid sight, abysmal sense of smell and pathetic hearing. If it weren't for their fast reflexes, their strong, razor-sharp teeth and their ten-inch claws, they would have become extinct a long time ago either by the hand of the humans or by other demons. Tronox looked like a cross between a very large wolf and a pig. They were mean and ugly and as far as anybody knew, held no use for anything.
When the vampires turned toward the sound, Buffy saw their opportunity of escape.
'Go! Move it!' she ordered.
The group moved as the vampires' attention was diverted to the intruder and headed toward Oz who was a few feet ahead of them. The snarling of the demons hurried them, expounded on their sense of urgency and shivered down their taut nerves.
Giles was practically supporting Tara with his arm around her waist as they hurried along, Wesley keeping close to them in protection.
They had only traveled a short distance away when Tara cried out and stumbled from the agony she was suddenly bombarded with.
'Tara!' cried Giles as she slumped against him, almost doubling over from the pain. A sweat broke out from her forehead as she gritted her teeth. Something or someone was trying to rip into her mind, her concentration, her spell. The struggle was placing tremendous pressure on her already precarious hold of the magic.
'Ca-can't hold it,' she barely wheezed. Everything was threatening to unravel. Even the mental link was fraying.
Giles' grip on her tightened. 'What? Tara? Tara!' She was shaking almost uncontrollably now and Giles had no choice but to sheath away his crossbow on his back and sweep her up into his arms.
'What's going on?' demanded Buffy.
'She's under attack,' replied Giles with a worried look on his face.
This couldn't be happening. There was no possible way that someone would know that they were there. 'By what?' she asked angrily.
Giles just shook his head, devoid of an answer.
In the front, Oz'face contorted in pain and his jaw opened wide in danger of transforming. A piercing whistle, soundless to the human ear sounded not too far from him.
'Incoming!' Xander warned just as the vampires from before came charging back with blood-splattered clothes.
The Slayer tried to move away from the charge but the nearest vampire moved right along with her and lunged. She fell on her back hard with the snarling vampire on top of her.
'The cloaking spell is disintegrating!' warned Giles as the vampires came at them. The group flickered in and out as Tara tried to hold the spell together.
Buffy managed to kick the vampire away from her and quickly got up. In one fluid sweep, she decapitated another vampire near her and almost simultaneously dusted the one that she had kicked away with a throw of a stake-holding hand.
Xander moved to protect Giles and Tara. Wesley had shot one vampire down and was trying to reload as quickly as possible. Sandwiched between Xander and Wesley, Giles had no choice but to trust in them to protect Tara and him.
Xander shot three vampires down as they tried to near the group and turned just in time to dust another that was coming behind Wesley. Wesley had reloaded and dusted the vamp that had taken the moment when Xander's back was turned to take the brunette down.
Cordelia was a fluidity of motion as her sword swished through the air and cut down anything that dared to come near her. She was closest to Oz and was trying to protect him. She had immediately noticed that something was wrong with him and tried to give him time to compose himself.
It seemed that as soon as one vamp went down, two took its place. The forest was becoming infested with Aurelian vampires and the new ones were armed. Cordelia had her hands full with two armed with swords. She ducked, dipped and parried as she tried to get an opening to kill them and not end dead in the process.
Meanwhile, the Slayer had used her stakes on as many vampires as possible but when the armed ones arrived she had to employ her sword. Her sword, unlike Cordelia's, did not possess the ability to kill the vampires unless she beheaded them, so her task was made that much more difficult; she needed to behead them or disarm them and then stake them.
'We must retreat!' cried Giles as he witnessed their plight. Tara's struggle was so great that he could feel the reverberations of the warring magics. It was inevitable that the entire cloaking spell would crumble. Whatever was attacking Tara was incredibly strong. They were surrounded by vampires and their plan, which had relied on going in undetected, had failed. They had no chance now of rescuing Willow. They needed to retreat before anyone of them got killed or captured.
Suddenly, Tara, who had wrapped an arm around Giles' neck, began to murmur something between gritted teeth and her hand unclenched and laid flat on the Watcher's shoulder. A current passed from the Watcher; he could feel it come from the Earth and flow up into his soles and through his body toward Tara.
'What did you do?' he asked her, worry and amazement coloring his voice.
'Time,' she mind-whispered; fatigue and pain clearly evident through the link. 'I've given us time.'
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To be continued: Ch 11 Clash
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A/N: You have no idea how difficult it has been to get this chapter done. RL (work, intercontinental trips, family, the stupid network, etc.) have really kept me busy. Got to say that your lovely reviews keep me going. Thanks!