With a growing numbness in his side, Spike realized Buffy was as good as out for the count. He would have to find a way to save them both, or at least get her to snap out of whatever spell she was under so they could at least go out fighting together.
A chant began to thrum though the masses surrounding them. The thugs on his arms and back pushed him up onto the platform, where a second dias had been revealed from behind the curtains.
Spike shot a glance around the room looking for ideas, but winced when I saw several cat-like demons bringing out bowls of entrails and other fresh looking organ bits. Writhing, and clawing at his foes, he did his best to stall, but the chains biting into his flesh left a futile despair growing in his gut.
"Oh really, like you really think this is a good idea - getting in touch with the first World? Sounds like a recipe for utter apocalypse if you ask me."
"Yes, it may result in the utter transformation of your World. But you and I shall live as Gods in it." The horace-creature's voice bellowed low.
"Gee, that deep voice of yours doesn't match the cheesy suit. Maybe you should go back to fashion school, bird brain." Okay, it wasn't his best, but thinking of witty comebacks while kicking and biting at the hoard of demons all around you wasn't exactly a piece of cake.
The bird-demon tilted its onyx head as if with mild curiosity.
"I certainly hope you're worthy of true eternity. Your companion at least understands the value of our gift to you."
Great, just what Spike needed, some demon trying to tell him how to spend of the rest of his accursed afterlife. But he decided to push it, hoping he might trip the demon up just a little.
"Right, and you sure know how to live it up in that snazzy tie - congratulations pal, you give eternal shame, a whole new shade of meaning!" Spike tried his best to free a hand to reach down into his jacket. If he could just get a stake or a weapon of any kind, things would be a lot easier, that is, relatively speaking. Preventing the apocalypse was never a cake walk.
"I would never have believed the prophecy, had I not seen it with my own eyes. When she told me you were one of the two chosen ones, I almost incinerated her on the spot," the sinister voice chuckled, wrenching undead sweat from the back of Spike's neck.
The creature continued to gloat, "Naive urchin of the night, mere shadow of the vermin they call humanity. Don't you know the power that will be released when your and her soul combine, annihilating one another without remainder? Why fight it."
"Trust me, I've fought worse. You're just one more psycho megalomaniac malevolent being on the long list of kills." Spike had almost got to the stake in his pocket.
"Ah, if only my prophetess could see you now, on the night of you imminent glory. A pity she is no longer with us."
Something cool was rubbed over Spike's forehead. Then down his cheeks, as he wrapped his fingers around the stake.
"Though absent, her ashes accompany us on this most special occasion. May the remains of our late vampire seer open the gate joining these two souls in perfect destruction."
"Dru." Spike lost his grip on the stake, and his eyes watched them wipe what could only be Dru's ashes over Buffy's still blank face.
Nausea overwhelmed him. Memories flashed through his feverish vision. Memories of Dru, of her eyes flashing over to a strange and studious Frenchman. His brown hair fell easily over a smooth forehead with face always buried in a book of Demons and hands always dusty from archeological digs. An unlikely warlock slipping daily into darker and darker portals—their guide...and then the accident.
Dru gone.
The horace-beast, the warlock turned demon, was busy chanting over Buffy. Spike only half registered the cut they drew across his girlfriend's chest. His mind was in a frenzy. With the power of absolute rage and panic pulsing through his veins, he kicked his feet free of their shackles. That bastard might have tasted Dru, but he was not going to have Buffy!
A demon approached him to restrain his feet again, and Spike caught the creature in a leg lock, twisting him so that the creature knocked down a whole row of his kin. Another two fell on his arms from the sides. Spike used his head to render both disorienting blows, kicked off a knife from one of their belts and maneuvered his legs so he could half wield the blade. The rest happened in a blur, but at some point the shackles on his wrists were off, the steak was in his hand, a blade in the other, and he was slaying left and right.
Over the crowd of demons falling on him to restrain him, he could see lights flaring up from the ceremony still centered around Buffy. The sound of moans, female moans, made his heart burn with alarm. Diving through the wall of creatures, he slid, in a typical Spike fashion, under unsuspecting feet, cutting a few ligaments on his way, and landed within sight and a few meters of a now glowing and partially bloodied Buffy. Blue veins were starting to appear over the bare flesh on her chest and shoulders, and the gray sickly color was slowly sliding up her neck and down her arms.
He could see the bird-demon brewing in the shadows beside her, reading in triumph from a now familiar book.
"Emmanuel, this ends here." Spike shouted, evoking visible shock in his interlocutor. At last the pieces were coming together, even if knowing who he was dealing with provided no guarantee of victory.