Xander walked through the sewer, looking at his GPS readout. "This is it. This is the back. This is where we start." He turned on two large lamps and put them up high so they illuminated the area. "We got all the tools, right," Xander asked.
Willow carried a large duffel bag. She dropped it and its very heavy contents. "Three trips, but we got it all. Xand, couldn't you have carried more, seeing how this is your gear and you're the man and I'm still sick and not even at full strength?"
"I carried on the first two trips."
"I carried on all three," Willow responded.
"This time I had to spot the location. That's essential. We dig up the wrong area, we got nothing."
Willow gasped for air and wiped the sweat off her brow. "Explain to me again how you're going to take the Temple down. This is barely enough TNT to blow up a tree stump."
"I told you I could only scrounge up 20 pounds from the warehouse. You can't just walk off with large quantities of high explosives. Besides, it's not how much you have. It's how you use it." Willow snickered. Xander realized his unintentional entendre. "What I mean is, even if I had 500 pounds, I couldn't just blast through thousands of cubic feet of solid dolomite. The key is to create cracks around the perimeter of the walls. It's like you're standing on a frozen pond, and someone saws a circle through the ice you're standing on. You fall through."
"Did you get this idea from Loony Tunes? It sounds suspiciously like something Bugs Bunny once did to Elmer Fudd."
"I don't joke about construction."
"Technically, this is destruction."
"The point is, I take my work seriously. Everything goes as planned, the back half of that building will tumble down towards these empty sewer pipes. The Temple will split in two, and the world will be saved, yet again, by me."
"I have to take some credit for that one since by refusing to end the world I did play an essential role in saving it. However, I don't think you can defeat these guys by telling them I love you.' But it would be funny to see you try."
"I'm not the one who tells vampires I love them. Demons, ex-demons, future demons, witchy women, sure. But not vampires."
"Witchy WOMEN! Alexander Harris, is there someone you haven't told me about?"
"Well, Amy did briefly have a thing for me, but we had a fight and she turned Buffy into a rat and I realized it could never work." Willow realized he was joking. Xander got out a large, diamond-tipped saw.
"What am I supposed to do," Willow asked.
Xander got out a third lamp. "Hold this up to where I'm cutting." He went to work slicing through the rock.
Directly above them, Manu and Rama were getting to work. The walls and floor were covered in geometric designs, and the ceiling was gilded in gold leaf. It shimmered in the magical light. The Twin Masters sat facing each other in the middle of the rectangular space. To the left and right of both of them were groups of four columns. They sat on what appeared to be invisible benches. In the back of the room was an altar table flanked by four columns. The vampires had already made sacrifices and performed spells at the table. Now they began the endgame. After some chanting, a small point of red light appeared in midair between them. "Gyre, gyre flicker and fire, make your turn, and the world shall burn." The red light expanded sideways to form a hollow cone. Then it disappeared, and a blue point of light appeared in the center of the bottom of the cone. From the perspective of the altar, the red light expanded to form a circle, and then collapsed in on itself to form a blue point where the red point had been. Rama and Manu smiled. "There's our baby," Rama announced.
Patrick relit his torches and entered the Sacred Grove behind Buffy. The Grove was circular, 150 feet in diameter, with the Temple in the center. Buffy and Patrick entered at the front, about 50 feet from the doors of the Temple. They did not see any vampires. Buffy knew an ambush when she saw one. She looked around at all the pine trees. Perfect cover for an ambush. But the Mausoleans were lying in wait on top of the Temple roof. While Buffy scanned the trees, she had her back to the Temple. A vampire leaped down and kicked her from behind. She fell on her face and turned over to look up. The vampire tried to punch her. She rolled out of the way and kicked the vampire in the knee. Then she scissored her legs to get up. She tried to kick the vampire in the chest. He backed up about ten feet, as if afraid.
He was just setting her up. A second vampire leaped from the roof and kicked Buffy in the face. She flew back and fell down. Both vampires moved in to do more damage. Patrick ran to help. But the third vampire leaped out and kicked him in the back. He fell on his face and let go of the torches, which landed on the grass a few feet in front of him. This started a small fire, which scared the Mausolus. It also scared Patrick, because the flames were less than two feet from his face. He scrambled to his feet and ran away so that the flames were between him and the vampire. It was February, which was neither the hottest nor the driest time of the year. The flames quickly died down, and Patrick reached in to grab his torches as soon as possible, first degree burns be dammed. He then lit the grass in an arc in front of where he stood as a defense against the vampire. Patrick moved a safe distance back from the brush fire.
The two vampires hit and kicked Buffy while she was down. She struggled to get to her feet. When she did, she grabbed both vampires and bashed their heads together. The she punched one with her left fist and the other with her right, the punches thrown simultaneously. Both staggered backward. Buffy went on the offensive. She gave one a spin kick in the stomach, then turned and blocked the other's punch. She kicked this vampire in the stomach, then leveled him with a right uppercut. She elbowed the other one as he came at her from behind, then kicked him in the head. The third Mausolus noticed his two Brethren were in trouble, and abandoned Patrick to join them. Now it was three-on-one.
The three approached with swagger to spare. Buffy realized she was in trouble. She slowly backed up towards the trees. When they made a move to surround her, she counterattacked, and punched the one on her right twice. The one in the center punched Buffy, and the one on her left kicked her twice. She went down. By now the flames had died down to embers, and Patrick could see Buffy's plight. He ran at the vampires from behind as they pummelled Buffy when she rose to her feet. He approached the one that was on Buffy's left, and threw the torch in his right hand at the vampire. It hit him in the back, setting his shirt on fire. The torch fell to his feet, and set the bottom of his trousers on fire.
Buffy was on one knee, trying to block the vampire's blows. They noticed one of their Brethren was on fire, and pulled back. Buffy hit the one on her right with a left hook, and the one on her left with a right hook. They went down for a moment. During that moment, Buffy looked at Patrick and held out her arms. He tossed her the other torch, forgetting for a moment how insane it was to throw a flaming stick at someone in order to help them. But she was the Slayer, and she caught it at the non-flamy end. The two vampires stood up. The third vampire was incinerated. Buffy held the torch in her right hand and smiled. They fled to the Temple's entrance to make their last stand. Patrick picked up the other torch, which was still lit, and looked around for any surprises. There were those three missing Mausolus.
Buffy slowly closed with her victims. "I've had a long night, and I really don't like you guys, so forgive me for dispensing with the pre-Slay banter." Then she chuckled. "You guys start out with the flying dino-demons and giant snakes and the big heavy metal-guy and the vanishing vampire and a phalanx of warrior vampire monks. And what's left? You two pathetic hairless Hari Krishna wannabes. That's all."
"Killing us will bring you no closer to success."
"You cannot stop our Masters," the other added.
"And even if all that's true, I'll still kill you for being so annoying." She swung her torch at one vampire, then at the other. As they avoided the flames, they were being driven further apart from one another. Buffy was actually using the same tactic the snake tried on Xander and Patrick, which was entirely coincidental. When they were far enough apart, Buffy closed with the vamp on her right. She held the torch over her head with both hands. As the vampire reached up to block it, she kicked him in the stomach, then the mouth, and the landed a spin kick to his nose. He backed away. She shuffled forward, ready for the kill. The other vampire charged at her from behind. She knew this, but kept looking straight ahead. She waited until the other vampire was right behind her. Then she thrust her right arm backwards, piercing the vampire's chest with the torch. Fire quickly consumed him.
She turned to face the last Mausolus. "And then there was one."
"There are other vampires on this estate, Slayer. They lie in wait, until you are weak. Lesser vampires than my Brethren. Mere scavengers. But I know when it comes to our breed you don't discriminate on the basis of quality."
"Didn't know your breed had quality," Buffy retorted. She threw a right cross. He blocked it. She hit him in the stomach with a left, then threw him over her shoulder. He hit the ground but quickly got up.
"So in your mind we're all equal," he told her, dodging a kick to his face and backpedaling. "Does that mean you want to spread you legs for all of us?" Buffy leaped in the air. The vampire moved out of the way of her flying kick. He punched her in the face. She hit him three times in the face. He staggered backward, still smiling at his little joke which Buffy had walked right into. She hit him in the face with a left and a right. He landed a right cross, blocked her left kick, and swept her right leg out from under her. He tried to kick her while she was down, but Buffy rolled out of the way and got to her feet. "I don't mean you want to spread for all of us at the same time. You're not that bad a girl, now are you?" She ran at him and hit him four times in the face. He kicked her in the stomach. She blocked his follow-up kick and hit him with a roundhouse to the chest. He fell on his back. She approached. He kicked her in the chin and vaulted to his feet. "Now I, myself, am a celibate vampire. But isn't that your favorite kind?" He saw the look of rage on Buffy's face and knew that he had landed a zinger to die for. In the long view of history, a Vampire killing a Slayer was commonplace. A vampire hurting a Slayer's feelings – that was far more rare.
Buffy ran at him and tackled the vampire, knocking the vampire on his back. While he was down, she hit him eight times in the face. This was entirely gratuitous, done out of anger. She picked him up and threw him into the side of the Temple. He stayed on his feet and staggered down the stairs towards Buffy. "You cannot stop us," he told her. She staked him.
"Did the cooltist try to rat us out," Pitt asked Ian with regards to the vamp's comment that there were other, non-Mausolus vamps nearby.
"What does it matter," Ian responded. "We're gonna get the Slayer anyway, when she's tired and weakened by all this fighting, right?"
"Never take on a desperate Slayer, Ian."
"So you're afraid of her?"
"I'm afraid of anyone who has noothing to lose."
Buffy bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to recover her breath. Pitt picked up his two torches, relit them, and stuck then in the ground off to the side of the Temple, for later. He paced around to deal with his nerves and tried to stay relaxed. "I think if the other three were around they'd have shown up by now," he told Buffy.
"I agree," she replied, standing up straight with her hands on her hips. She was sore all over from the pounding she had received from vampires and the Abraxas.
"Is this a normal night on the Hellmouth for you," Patrick asked, trying to lighten the mood.
"This more like a month of big scaries crammed into one night."
"Four hours of one night," Patrick replied.
"I'll say this for the Mausolus – they don't keep you waiting. Which is good, cause we don't have that much time."
"So now what? We wait for Xander's sapping operation to have its effect?"
"What's the time?"
"Half past ten."
"I got an idea. While we wait, I'll break in there myself."
Willow held the chisel up to the wall. Xander swung the sledgehammer. After twelve swings he stopped. Willow was relieved. Throughout the hammering, she flinched out of fear an errant hammer stroke would hit her head. Now that he had made a hole, Xander lengthened and widened it with a jackhammer. Then he looked around, checking his work. "Someone else has been tunnelling. WIth a jackhammer, it looks like. Sloppily, I might add."
"Were they trying to do what you're doing?"
"If they were, they went about it all wrong. The hole's in the wrong spot, extending in the wrong direction. It's actually going away from the foundation. Looks more like an access tunnel. Maybe some vamp's trying to connect this tunnel to another one, cut down on his subterranean commute time or something. Xander pulled out a longer chisel and handed it to Willow. She wedged it several feet into a fissure he had already cut. He hit it six times, trying to lengthen his cut to reach the foundation. "Looks like we got the back all set up. Now all we have to do is finish off the sides." He went back to his tools and found a large drill, the kind whose bit could bore holes in stone. "How much time I got?"
"An hour. Maybe a little more."
"Should be done in twenty. Have the charges in place in thirty."
"This had better work, cause I have a hot date with Zooey tomorrow night, and I'd hate to miss it on account of the world being gone." Xander was a little jarred by the reference to Zooey and the thought of her with Willow. He lost control of the drill and turned it off for a moment. "Sorry. Didn't mean for my lesbian talk to distract you from penetrating the Earth with that long, rigid instrument."
"That's okay. Wait a minute. Penetrating, long rigid instrument? Just what are you trying to imply?"
"Es un chiste, Xandy. Besides, don't you have a date tomorrow with Elise? It's Saturday, you guys ARE going out, so I figured"
"Dangit! I knew that in the midst of all this world-saving and giant snake-killing I forgot about something. Gotta call her tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow. It's been more than a week since I saw her last."
"Why so long?"
"We've both been busy. She lives 20 miles away, which for me is a long-distance relationship. And I guess I've been scared. I admit it. I look at my history, and I worry."
"Xander, I've told you before, you're not jinxed."
"Maybe not. But there is a pattern. One very painful breakup is an isolated event. Three is a jinx. But two is definitely a pattern."
"Xander, look at me and Buffy. All our breakups have been painful and involved bloodshed, plus the occasional loss of life. It's not you. It's this town. But Elise isn't from this town. And neither is Zooey."
"How are you two doing? You seemed worried the other night."
"I think she just wants some attention. And some hot, sweaty lovin'."
"Well who doesn't want some of that?"
"Looks like that's it for the vamps," Buffy told Patrick after she had caught her breath. "Only thing left to do is storm the Temple." She walked back to the trees and found a large rock 12 inches in diameter. She easily picked up the massive stone and carried it up to the bronze double doors. She slammed the rock into the spot where the doors met, and made a large dent. She hit it a second, third and fourth time, making the dent even bigger, and opening a gap in between the doors. With her fifth blow, Buffy forced the outer set of doors open. But almost immediately, the outer doors slammed shut again. A powerful blast of air knocked Buffy ten feet backwards. She landed on her back, still holding the heavy rock, the weight of which was absorbed by her ribcage when she hit the ground. She dropped the rock to the side and stood up. "Oh well. I'll just have to find another way." The dents she had made in the doors had disappeared.
"Buffy. Something's happening," Patrick announced nervously. The black pilasters at either side of the Temple facade had turned a glowing red. "I think you tripped its alarm system," he told her since the glowing happened immediately after she tried to break down the door. Something was coming out of the pilasters. Within 15 seconds, two giant red demons appeared. They were each about ten feet tall, built like grizzlies, covered in red fur. They had long claws and two giant sabre-teeth for upper incisors. On the palms of their hands were black quills about two inches long. Their heads were in no way bear-like, with flat noses, small nostrils, and a thin, elongated face. On top of their skull were two rows of small, hard green bumps which extended down to the back of the neck.
"I should have expected more surprises," Patrick said as he picked of the two torches. He tossed one of them to Buffy. She took the demon to their left. Patrick tried to hold off and distract the one on the right for the time being. The demon stood upright, towering over Buffy. It swung for her head with its left and right paws. She used her torch to burn the quills on its palm, but got scratched on her left cheek by two of the demon's right hand claws. She moved in the kick it in the stomach, then quickly moved back out of range. The demon bent over and lunged at her face-first, coming at her with its six-inch long saber teeth. She moved back and to the right, avoiding the attack and giving the demon a little flame to its face. Buffy was backing into the Temple steps, and didn't want to get trapped. So she moved out towards the edge of the Grove, away from the Temple. The demon pursued slowly on all fours, letting out several quick, loud grunts.
Patrick held his torch upward and outward, waving it back and forth in a large arc, while moving around to try to confuse the demon. He believed that if he stood still he would be an easy target. At first the demon held back, following Patrick with its head but staying back from the flame. It stood on two feet, but its knees were bent and its back slouched over. Soon the demon stood straight up. It swatted at Patrick with its paws. He ducked and stepped back. When he saw an opening Patrick lunged forward and set the demon's stomach hair on fire. But the demon quickly put out the flames with the backs of its paws. It swung again, and the quills on its right palm punctured Patrick's left soldier like a dozen pins. The demon swung its left paw. Patrick flinched and tried to turn away from the blow, but his right shoulder blade was slashed by its claws. He backed away some more, using his torch to cover his retreat and deter a sudden attack.
Buffy's demon, which was down on all fours, leaped at her. She jumped in the air and landed on the beast's back. She plunged her torch into its back, penetrating the skin. The demon stood up and threw Buffy off. She slammed back-first into the Temple's wall about 12 feet in the air, tumbled down the stairs, and rolled down to the grass. The demon's back was on fire. But it wasn't as bad as Buffy expected. She lit him up good. Most demons would be covered in flame by now. But the flames had not spread, and the demon rolled on its back a few times to smother them. Buffy tried to ambush the supine demon, but it kicked her away. She gave up on fire, since these demons seemed pretty fireproof. She dropped the torch to the ground, stepped on its flame to put it out, and picked up what was now a 30-inch stake.
The demon charged towards her and stood on its hind legs, reaching out for her head with its saber teeth, as if trying to bite her head off. She stepped back and kicked it in the head. It swung for her head with its paws. Buffy ducked, lunged forward, and before the demon could react staked it through the heart. The demon vanished immediately. Buffy turned to look at Patrick. Rather than run away, since the demon could easily catch him, Patrick went for the demon's chest while it stood upright. This was smart, since Patrick was too close to the demon for it to swipe him with its long arms or bite him with its mouth, which was several feet above Patrick. The demon fell on top of Patrick. He stuck his torch against its belly, but the bulk of the beast's body weighed down on the torch and extinguished it. It also weighed down on Patrick. The demon tried to maneuver back a few feet to get its head down to Patrick's so he could devour him.
It was at this point Buffy turned her attention to this demon. She ran over, leaped on its back, and staked it through the heart. The long stake went almost completely through the demon. So when it disappeared, the point was inches from Patrick's body. Buffy quickly pulled it back. Patrick quickly rolled out of the way, so that Buffy fell on the ground rather than on top of Patrick. It would have been an accidental yet charged and intimate moment, the sort Xander or Spike or Riley or plenty of other men would have cherished – Buffy saving their life and falling right on top of them. But Buffy wasn't Patrick's type, so it would have just been awkward.
Buffy and Patrick slowly got to their feet. "Ever seen that kind before," Patrick asked.
"Nope. Can't recall any. And I'd remember a red saber-toothed grizzly with porcupine palms." She looked at Patrick and saw he was bleeding from two large wounds. "You're hurt. Is it bad?"
"Strangely, no. Hurts a lot less than getting slugged by the head Mausolus. Just glad the vamps are dead now that I'm dripping in blood. I'm practically vampire bait by now." He knew vampires were like sharks and could smell large quantities of blood from a distance. "At this point, after everything that's happened, I consider myself lucky only to be scratched and poked in a few places. How you holding up?"
"Good to go." She limped a bit when she walked from all the excessive pounding.
Patrick realized something. "There are four pilasters. We only saw two demons."
"So you think," Buffy began before being interrupted by screaming from behind the Temple.
"Buffy! Buffy! Where are you," Dawn was yelling.
"Dawn," Buffy screamed as she ran to the rear of the Temple.
