"Riley!" Xander squeaked, legs thrashing against the commando. Glazed eyes seemed to look through him. "It's me, Xander!"
A head-bashing jar might would have been useful right about now, Xander wished. The universe registered the wish and decided to have one last good laugh at Harris' expense. A black figure rose up out of nowhere.
"I don't mean to interrupt," and the figure surely didn't, because he didn't. The world grayed out at the edges of Xander's eyeballs. "But would one of you lovebirds tell me where the sodding hell I can find a good edged weapon? "
Xander flailed for air, for his snappy last words. "—Urn—" was all he managed. The vamp studied him with drawn, frowning eyebrows.
"Hold on a tic," Spike said as he slowly circled the pair. "Don't see it anywhere about." Riley's eyes bore into Xander's skull. He hadn't even turned his head to acknowledge the vampire circling them like a shark.
"—urn!— " Xander pleaded, at the end of his breath. To die knowing that at least he'd had a hand in screwing royally (maybe even ohgod ohgod universe pleaseplease please killing!) the vampire's evening of mayhem, Xander thanked the universe for small favors.
"Riiiight." Spike sucked in his cheeks, drawing his face into one of those ridiculous grimaces that made Xander burn to stake him right then and there.
Maybe the vamp was thinking, maybe he was just enjoying the show. The world Star Wars side-wiped to black. Dying, the very last thing that occurred to Xander, not as fun and glitzy as the movies made it look.
***///***
Oh yes, Spike thought to himself, he enjoyed this show very much. He watched as the pile of ash that had been Dracula until a few moments ago frothed on the wine-red carpet. Tendrils of smoke bubbled out of the ether. Yellow, scaly and reeking of sulfur, they reached out greedily for his blood. The vampire demon, incarnate.
Spike was enjoying himself so much, he decided that he might just have to smash the ceiling timbers of the banquet hall into their composite atoms after he took care of the business at hand.
He hefted the axe into striking position as he searched for sure footing. Step by step, sure footing whisked him in the opposite direction from his opponent. As he regrouped, still moving in the same backward motion but with a different phrase than fleeing like a pillock in mind, Spike's foot snagged the chain.
"Not bloody likely," he chuckled, thanking his luck. A swift kick sent the torment chain into the center of the boiling, recorporealizing vampire-prince. The demon's scream rocked the floors. A gale-force hurricane of pure pissed off demon rose from the floor.
If he had to pinpoint the moment for posterity--the primal scream of the swirling yellow mass is about when Spike decided fleeing like a pillock wasn't a bad strategy.
He turned his back on the demon, and took off at full tilt down the hallway. Rich tapestries, paintings, candelabra and end tables flew by as he ran. The breath of the demon seared his back. The hallway branched in at a T-junction, and Spike threw himself down the right corridor without thought. His feet beat a frantic rhythm into the ground. The sound of his running feet lapped at his mind until, lulled by the passing minutes, hours?, his body began to fatigue.
"Dracula's got himself a bloody good get-out-of-jail free card. Remind me to ask him how," Spike panted. He was winded. Wasn't that the same tacky skull-shaped embroidery that he'd passed only a minute ago? Hadn't he already pithily derided that particularly tasteless portrait of Dracula? The hallway snarled back around on itself like a bloody maze on repeat.
The hallway branched again. Decision time.
He bounced from foot to foot. The demon was on his heels, on his heels with sulfur and brimstone, it was in the hallway and it was here. Spike slashed at the air. The axe stuck something solid and exploded into a shower of sparks.
This flashy reanimation shtick, this mobius strip hallway, this exploding enchanted weaponry bit—not an inch of it was Spike. Back against the wall, with only fists and fangs—that was the language Spike spoke. In his duster, his shoulders hunched down, looking up into the threatening emptiness of the castle, he looked like no bruiser. But looks or no, brawling's what he'd done well enough to keep himself in beer and bints for a hundred and twenty years.
He struck out wildly, fists glancing blows off some invisible, stinking mass. His arms slashed uselessly through the air. His feet fell back into a defensive stance, and he raised his elbows to form a guard.
He sagged against one the tapestries. Spike spit out the words he'd said only a year before in LA, surveying the tattered corpse that was the busted-in warehouse and rent torture table. "Lone wolf." Yet another botch-job in a long line of botch-jobs. "Sole survivor." The sarcasm burned something fierce. "Look out, here comes Spike!"
All at once, the feeling hit him. He couldn't fight this and win. All over. Against the screaming need to go down fighting, his fists dropped to his sides.
Spike turned up his head to take in a bit more art, maybe make a few more quips at Hellbeast Drac's expense before he snuffed it. It was a hanging tapestry. The rich maroon and navy hues illuminated a woman examining jewels, the tamed unicorn and lion attending the maiden in the forest rather than rending her limb from limb. "A Mon Seul Desir," Spike said heavily. "Bloody figures." The maid, in red silks and fiery blond hair, was an antipode to his Drusilla. "Should rip the bitch's throat out," he advised the lion mockingly. "She ain't exactly ever going to be yours, mate." Pointed at the unicorn. "See this bloke? Fancy free. Strong forehead. Good teeth. He's the one waitin' for the dark princess at the end of this fairy tale." He knew. He'd seen. Bleedin' chaos demon.
So Spike did what couldn't remember having done in a century—he leaned against the tapestry in the quiet dark, smoked his last cig peaceably and waited for death.
Death returned the favor.
One heartbeat. Two. Skin hitting skin. A thin voice. The dull smell of blood oozing around broken capillaries on the skin's surface. And then something caught in his brain. This hallway didn't have any sense to it, aside from the solid wall against his back. Spike closed his eyes and let the tangibles cut through Dracula's illusion. Spike pushed his way through A Mon Seul Desir and found himself in a lit hallway, brimming with the acrid sweat, reedy dust, rich pine, sweetlovelyblood of the real.
He felt so relieved to see the two Scoobies locked in what he figured to be a thrall-induced death-struggle that he stubbed out the Last Cig.
"I don't mean to interrupt—" The lie made him smile, just a fraction as he watched the carpenter's eyes bug further out of his head. Harris flailed wildly against the sleeper hold, in little danger of dying. A little verbal sparring, a little chit chat. Savoring the small victory over the demon, the yellow nasty who was pissed and coming. Spike couldn't help himself. He vamped for the crowd. Big Bad, once again.
That's when Xander let it drop. "—urn!" he said with his last breaths. "—urn!" the carpenter repeated, like it was currency that would buy his life. A frown dragged itself across Spike's face, but he knew what was to be done. Harris passed out in the farm boy's arms. Once threat number current had been eliminated, Spike saw Riley's head snap up to acquire the new target.
"No," Riley said in steeled tones, eyes milky yet unfocused. His body jerked forward and tangled back on itself, a bit like watching a marionette catch in its own lines.
"Oh is that ever thrall," Spike said, conceding points to Dracula—"Blighter knows his mind control."
"Never Again," Riley said.
Spike squeezed his eyes shut as the soldier boy landed a fist on the bridge of his nose. Maybe thinking of puppies and Christmas might work to fool the chip when he jostled shoulders and stamped toes to nick wallets in the Bronze, but Spike knew he needed a new trick for the level of damage that he absolutely wasn't thinking of doing to a living human being, oh ho, of course not. Spike hummed a little tune through clenched teeth.
Soldier boy drove a knee into his solar plexus, landed a series of hammer blows to his ribcage. Blood hissed into his throat, setting his teeth so far on edge that he barely beat down the demon face. Relax, relax, sodding hell relax. Rolling his shoulders and neck like he was loosening up for a prize fight, Spike thought of the poncy lion from the tapestry. Golden-haired git with a goofy grin on its face as it waited hand on foot for the lovely maid in her encampment by the woods, the red of the maid's heart blazing in the deeper shade of the tent. Dumbfounded into holding the tress of her gauzy shawl. The lovely bint whom was obviously having none of what he offered because it was wrong—Spike's fist cracked Riley's jaw as he caught the underside of the skull with the building fury of a whip-fast uppercut. The chip lagged a moment behind, crying out in indignation.
"Stay down," Spike snarled, vamping out in pain. Half of his body became sluggish, then refused to obey commands altogether.
Riley struggled to his feet, but Spike cut the legs out from under him with a low sweep. The git refused to stay down. Spike drove foot into his ribcage. Pain from the chip popped vessels in his brain; blood trickled out of Spike's nose as the chip convulsed. Riley moaned, pushing himself off the floor, breath shallow from what sounded like a cracked rib pushing on the lungs. Despite the mingled fun of beating soldier boy and migraine headaches, it occurred to Spike as the chip continued to howl in fury that the little hunk of plastic could treat him to a permanent vegetative state if it so desired.
Spike switched tacts. He collapsed to the floor. "Carpenter, wake up," nudging the unconscious boy with the back of his bloodied fist. If anything would piss him off enough to wake him, Spike figured, it would be the clammy hand of vampire on his precious self. Two fingers to the red marks around his neck. Heartbeat, yes. Consciousness, no. "So help me Harris, if you hid that sodding urn—I'm gonna—" The threat, empty of any real emotion, died in ragged breaths. No response. No defenses. And no urn. Spike shoved Harris' body away with a growl.
A blue oblong dislodged from the prone form's pocket, casting a weak blue pall over the almost comical scene of the vampire absently sucking on the trickle of blood from his nose, the soldier boy struggling to rise, the young man still as death and having the best time of any of them.
Spike nudged the blue oblong with his thumb. And then the walls at the end of the corridor exploded, blasting splinters of rock into his skin. One severely pissed off yellow-mist demon ripped straight through the hole towards their heads.
The formless demon expanded to fill the hallway, boiling the tapestries from the walls and blotting out the light as it sucked into itself everything the yellow tendrils touched. And it was nearly on them. They had, Spike featured, one chance. And he was betting it foolishly on the simple thought that had sidled into his head: like calls to like.
It took him less than a second to react.
"Game time gents." Spike slapped the blue oblong into Xander's limp hand. "Time to separate the men from the boys." He took Riley up by the scruff of his neck and clamped Riley's hand around Xander's wrist. "If you even think of letting go, your sodding Master is going to rip you limb from limb."
Riley eyes were the size of moons.
Spike fixed him in a killing stare. "You get me?" Riley nodded once and raised Xander's open fist into the air.
Bracing—or from a more accurate perspective, shielding his body with—the two humans, the blue stone was raised above Xander's head like a brave little gopher poking its head out of its burrow in the path of a John Deere steerable. Spike squeezed his head against his chest and drew the duster over like a lead blanket with the arm that still worked.
He didn't see the demon come up short against the oblong, twisting and distorting its maw horribly. He certainly didn't see the thing attempting to take human form, collapsing into a shining statuesque body that clawed the walls, the tatters of the black damask curtains, the floors, anything to keep from being pulled limb from limb into the stone. Spike felt the pull at his body, grabbing him, trying to rip the demon from his skin, his skin from his bones, his bones from the fabric of the world.
He didn't see it, but did hear the frightfully satisfying pop as the last bits of the yellow demon swirled into the cheery blue glow of the lekythos, recalled from wherever it had been to Harris' palm. From within the lekythos, below the threshold of hearing for anything non-vampiric, a drawn-out wail issued.
Edging the duster away from his face, Spike looked on. He was stunned that the gambit had worked. Every last finger, toe, and hair follicle was intact. Blood caking on his face, chunks of rock imbedded in his skin, stretched to the breaking point but intact. The hearts of the two humans pumped away.
Spike stood in the blasted remains of the corridor. The ceiling had been ripped clean off; the walls were shorn of ornament; debris abutted what remained of the doorway into the banquet hall. Reaching over to relieve the sagging column of Riley and Xander's arms of the lekythos, Spike realized that his trip down the Never Never Hallway hadn't carried him but ten feet from the door.
His fingers brushed the blue stone. The pull at his flesh and his teeth like he himself were being sucked atom by atom into the peaceful blue of the funerary urn. Spike recoiled. He stumbled back into a Brazilian Rosewood chest that he'd eyed to snag for his crypt when this whole mess was finished. He cracked the flawless finish and to his mind, putting the final touches on the exquisitely rendered ruin of the evening.
"Bloody hurrah for magic," Spike said, more than a bit sarcastically.