At first glance it seemed to be some sort of hairless bear. Enormous muscles flexed as it barreled through the crowd; its growling, snarling, and grunting likely supplying evidence for intoxicated student minds to frame a narrative around.
But the horns—coupled with the fact it was sprinting on two legs—were a dead give away.
Fyarl.
Spike swore to himself. Buffy was already pounding down the stairs, party-goers scattering in a panic. Somewhere off in the distance he could hear more shouting, but not in fear; the clipped, in-control cadence of military personnel mid-quickfire response.
Bollocks!
Close on Buffy's heels, he watched as the demon crashed blindly through a wall. It swung back as Buffy followed it in, rearing up with a howl that his brain automatically translated to an extremely blunt, precursor-to-mucus threat.
In a complete surprise to himself, Spike hauled her out of the way, fist flying even before his brain could convince him not to.
His knuckles connected with the demon's upper nose and the impact of the punch juddering up his arm had him freezing in place, waiting for the inevitable shockwaves from the chip to fry his frontal lobe.
But nothing came.
"Hey…?" he blurted, blinking out of the stunned lack of pain.
The demon reared back, and he instinctively hit it again, a disbelieving chuckle escaping his lungs. "Oh, BRILLIANT!"
He caught the demon by the horns and it howled, the silver in Spike's rings hitting the nerve endings connected to its neck. It was an easy trick. One you learned quickly when working with Fyarl, unless you wanted to become a paralyzed snot-stain marking the concrete.
The demon's legs buckled. Its knees hit the floor, choking out a shocked snarl from behind bared teeth as its own hands gripped the base of its horns as Spike's fingers tightened.
"Yeah, that's right! Guess who's bad again," Spike crowed to himself. "Hey! I can fight demons!" he called over his shoulder.
"Yeah? So can I!" Buffy snapped. "And FYI I am really not your damsel in distress to pull out of harm's way!"
"Oh, don't pout!" Spike growled as the Fyarl made an ineffective lurch forward, trying in vain to push Spike's hands back.
"I was about to handle it!"
"Well, I'm currently handling it," he shouted back. "And just a heads up, sweetheart, it was about half a second away from sneezing demon slime all over you. So the words you're looking for are, in fact, 'Thank you, Spike, for saving me from an extremely expensive and ultimately useless dry cleaning bill'."
"Fine," she huffed without enthusiasm, seemingly unsure about the still-to-be-evaluated revelation of his less-than-entirely handicapped status as the demon attempted to buck Spike's hands off its horns. "Keep hold of it," she instructed after a pause. "I'm going to find one of those commando guys."
"You're just gonna hand it over to them?" Spike asked incredulously.
"Well, they obviously want it, and I don't have room for another house guest," she bit back as he glared at her. "Stay here."
"Fine," Spike huffed with the same lack of enthusiasm as he returned his gaze to the Fyarl in his grip.
"I come back to find you covered in demon mucus, you're sleeping outside."
"Whatever you say, luv," he snarked.
But he hadn't really been listening. He was instead staring intently at the back of the Fyarl's neck.
He heard the hitch of Buffy's skirt as she climbed out of the gaping hole in the room's wall, and he waited a beat until her footsteps had crossed the foyer. Keeping one firm hand on the demon's left horn, he raised his calf so his free hand could pull out the knife tucked down in his boot. He flicked the catch on the handle and the blade slid out.
"Okay, mate," he growled in Fyarl, low and sinister and quiet as the demon's eyes widened. "This is gonna pinch a bit."
Buffy made her way through the littered debris the scattered party guests had left behind, heading towards the shouting voices that were echoing across the quad.
But the unsteady dots of flashlights held by marching figures made her stall.
She stopped halfway down the path.
What am I doing?
I'm about to lead some super dubious soldiers right to the escaped vampire they've already kidnapped and experimented on once. Is that really what I'm doing?
She opened and shut her mouth, wrestling with the sudden indecision she knew she shouldn't even have. If they dragged Spike off along with Mr Snarly-Angry-Grunts that was one less vampire and one less demon loose on the Sunnydale population. In terms of good versus evil that was definitely a tick in the right column of whatever chalkboard watchers and council members measured success on.
Except things had stopped being that simple a long time ago, and she knew it.
Maybe Spike was an asshole, and maybe he always would be, but he couldn't bite anymore and that counted for something. She still hadn't explored all the depths of that something but there were depths and that was… important.
Besides you didn't just let your… your "enemy with good distraction techniques" get hauled away by mystery commando squads just because they had a perfect score of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Something crashed behind her. She half-turned, distracted, caught between the house and the lights moving closer—too close now for her to bolt back into the frat house and drag Spike out of there without being noticed.
And she could feel in her gut that these weren't going to be the ask-polite-questions-from-behind-the-guns kind of soldiers if they spotted anything running away from them.
Fight and flight both ruled out in a heartbeat, she committed to the only other option and ducked down behind a bush, curling into a tight ball just as military legs came to a stop on the other side.
"We've got to get new trackers," one soldier muttered and she could've sworn she'd heard his voice before. "The signal keeps blinking out."
"They don't work so well on things with a thick hide," said another, and her heart skipped several beats in a lurch.
Riley.
"Are you getting anything?" he continued as the first soldier thumped whatever equipment was making strangled beeping noises.
"It's cut out completely," the first soldier huffed.
"We've gotta find it, Forrest. Walsh will have our tags if we lose another hostile, and the last HST-Type Four didn't make it through the vivisection."
"Yeah, you think they'd be tougher, huh?" muttered Forrest absentmindedly, audibly adjusting switches. Click-click. Click-click click-click.
"Well it was a female," replied Riley, and Buffy caught the sound of velcroed pockets opening, more equipment being calibrated.
Forrest snorted. "How can you tell? One is just as ugly as the next."
A kevlar encased shrug rasped. "I'm assuming the pregnant ones are females, even in HSTs."
Buffy flinched, inadvertently rustling the branches next to her as revulsion swept over her skin like icy water.
They're… they're cutting open—
Oh my God—
"Sick," answered Forrest with an audible grimace. "I thought that thing Walsh pulled out of it was a tumor."
"Don't think the mommy would've screamed like that over a tumor," said Riley just as a surge of beeping burst from the equipment in his hand. "This way."
Their boots crunched on the gravel in front of Buffy, walking with speed towards the frat house.
Leaving Buffy shaking like a leaf in the undergrowth.
Oh no.
Oh God, Spike—
She made herself stay crouched for a few more seconds, waiting for the voices to become muffled, and then sprinted for the back of the house, locating the downstairs living room that she'd left Spike and the escaped demon in, keeping to the shadows as she pressed herself against the wall.
Riley and Forrest's voices were curiously clear, unmuffled as they made their way through the wrecked house, and as their flashlights swept the room she realized why.
The window had been blown outwards, reduced to glittering shards of glass littering the lawn in jagged sparkles.
Well… that explains the crash…
"Crap," she sighed, but a surge of relief flooded her gut.
No Spike.
No demon, but no Spike.
"Great. It's gouged out the tracker," muttered Forrest from inside the room, and a machine gun poked out through the curtains.
Buffy tensed.
"Heading through the woods probably."
"Shit," Riley swore, and a sharp whine from a handheld radio screeched. "Party Delta this is Lilac One requesting a response unit, HST at large in area forty-seven, copy."
An acknowledgement crackled back, and Buffy took a long breath in as the sound of boots crunched out again.
"This way," Spike grunted, beckoning the demon down another twist of the Sunnydale sewer network, heading away from campus and into the lower suburbs.
"Grateful," answered the Fyarl, and Spike nodded back. Talking in Fyarl was starting to make his throat ache but at least the sentences were short.
"Name?"
"Untor," the demon muttered back, his clawed hand crossing his chest to clutch at his bleeding neck.
"Pretty," Spike muttered to himself, glancing at the blood seeing down the demon's chest. He'd made a hack job of it but really conditions had been less than optimal. Probably have it out with Buffy about the ditch and run later, but couldn't be helped.
"Alone?" he asked in Fyarl.
Too late, he realized he shouldn't have.
The demon slowed, his footsteps becoming leaden behind Spike's hurried gate.
Spike turned, watching as Untor slumped against the sewer wall as though his legs had given way. He made a low pitiful whimper in the back of his throat, and Spike watched as tears slipped down the demon's face.
Oh… Bloody hell…
Alone, now.
But Untor obviously hadn't started out that way.
Spike cursed as the demon let out a choked wail—misery etched into his sinewy face—and clenched his back teeth in sympathy. Whatever he'd gone through, he deserved to howl about it. Scream about it. Maybe later, kill about it. Spike had seen enough of the inside of the initiative to know for certain the men on the other side of the glass deserved nothing less. And nothing quick either.
But right now, wallowing in grief in the stinking, festering sewers could get them both captured or worse.
Spike doubled back, and put a firm hand on Untor's shoulder, making sure to keep his silver thumb ring clear of the demon's skin.
"Move," he grunted as gently as he could in such a harsh dialect. "Hurt later. Move now."
Untor swallowed thickly, nodding, and pushed himself off the wall, trudging forward, though with less determination than before.
It took an hour for them to work their way through the twists and turns, until finally Spike recognized a bend up ahead.
"Here."
He climbed a set of steps, took a right and then a left, stopping at a large metal door with a circular helm handle. He twisted it sharply and pushed the door open, hinges screeching as he stepped into the pitch darkness beyond. He took a deep breath in as Untor followed him inside, clearing his lungs of the fetid sewer air, grinning as he surveyed the spacious crypt around them.
"Perfect."