Hopeless
Buffy and Andrew played round after round of rock-paper-scissors, so many in fact that the Raggoth demons standing guard
no longer slobbered like Pavlov’s dogs at the jangling of Buffy’s chains, dismissing the prospect of her trying to escape.
Instead, they stood at parade rest, barbed arms folded behind them, and waited.
Andrew had just beat Buffy’s paper with his scissors when she caught a flicker of impatience in his features.
Under her breath, she asked, “Are you worried?”
“Me?” he asked. He scratched his chin. “Nah. More concerned about Mr. Tentacles in the pit than Short Round outwitting
Ripper. Paper beats rock.”
Buffy nodded. Her belly fluttered with nervous little butterflies. “I never got that,” she said. “How does paper beat rock?”
Andrew rolled his eyes to the wall above her head and grimaced in thought. “Maybe it’s gift-wrapped?”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Buffy said. “Rock can still smash…”
“Nu-uh. It’s not a rock, so much as a present,” he countered. “Nothing big and scary about a neatly wrapped package.”
“Who would want a gift-wrapped rock?”
“You’re just mad ’cause I won,” Andrew said.
“Am not.”
“Are too…”
“Am…” Buffy felt the cement quake beneath her feet. She held out her shackled arms to steady herself. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
Another tremor rumbled through the floor, a distant thundering groan. This time, the Raggoths felt it. Simultaneously, their
heads lifted and their ragged ears perked up. Above them, the metal platform rattled and swayed like a ship in an unsettled
sea.
For a moment, they stood motionless, breathlessly waiting for another nauseating shift beneath them. Instead, a blinding
light split the high rock ceiling with a booming crack. Blue-white sparks rained down on them. All around them, alarms
sounded. Red warning lights pulsed to life at every door, and every computer panel buzzed to life. Andrew’s beloved
androgynous computer voice droned out an emotionless, “Warning. All personnel stand by for emergency orders.”
Andrew turned to Buffy. He gawked at her swollen belly and heavy chains with renewed horror.
“I have a very bad feeling about this,” he said.
Buffy glanced from him to the demons, all of whom gaped up at the radiant and growing crack in the ceiling like wide-mouth
bass that have been hauled up on dry land. Anything that could scare a pack of muscle-bound foulness was enough to also
scare her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m gonna have to agree.”
“Hold her up!” Willow ordered. Her words were ripped from her mouth in the intensified gale that wailed up from the portal,
but Maya obeyed. Willow was dimly grateful that her back was to the pit; she couldn’t see the horrors that she watched
reflected in Maya’s terror-stricken features. She focused only on the illustration before her. And on the knife, of course.
Willow cradled the book in the crook of her arm. She held the page as stable as she could in the mounting winds with the
fingers of her left hand. Dawn’s arms and legs had been done according to the ritual. They were riddled with dozens of
precise incisions, each a quarter inch apart.
And then Willow had done the arteries in Dawn’s legs. That had been the hardest part so far: hearing her scream, seeing the
blood do its work, knowing with certainty and she had just killed Buffy’s baby sister...
But it was almost over now. Dawn was dying, drop by drop. She’d lost consciousness after the first femoral artery went,
leaving Maya to bear the burden of Dawn’s weight. Now things would get really tricky. She had to cast the location spell she
and Maya had created. To do that, she had to wait until the apex of Dawn’s bloodletting, when half of her blood was spilled.
In short, right now.
However, she needed Maya to continue with the letting of the blood. Willow doubted the girl had that kind of strength.
Still, what choice did they have?
“I have to cast the location spell!” Willow yelled, over-enunciating each word like someone trying to communicate to a
person who speaks another language.
Maya nodded dumbly.
“You have to do the next part,” Willow screamed.
Maya craned her head for a moment, then shook it sharply. Willow scoffed. Were those tears in her eyes?
“If anyone should be crying,” Willow bit out. “It should be Dawn…”
“I’ll do the location spell!” Maya cried. “I will not…” but the words were swallowed up by the punishing winds.
Rage churned in Willow’s gut. “How dare you…”
Maya hugged Dawn’s body to hers, drying her eyes on Dawn’s shoulder. “Please, Willow!”
What should have softened Willow’s heart froze it further. “Shut your mouth,” she hissed. But she stepped aside and
roughly shoved Maya to the edge of the abyss. At the same time, she gathered the limp, heavy body of Dawn against her
own. They faced out over the balcony’s edge, with Maya behind them, but Willow could see nothing beyond a few feet
because of the swirling chaos of dust, debris, and demons.
“Dawnie,” Willow whispered, trying to sound sympathetic through her impatience. “How ya hanging in there?” she asked,
feeling sick at the absurdity of the words.
Dawn’s head lolled back. “Buffy,” she sighed. And then, “Andrew.”
Willow nodded and swallowed hard. She cradled the book once more against her left forearm. Leaning Dawn against her,
Willow adjusted the dagger in her palm. The vital organs were next: liver, kidneys, stomach, spleen, followed by lungs and
heart.
Simple, Willow thought. Pin the dagger on the Dawnie.
“Hang on tight, Dawn,” Willow said. “This is gonna hurt.”
Xander understood how utterly idiotic their plan had been when the dire wolf bearing its demon rider sailed over his head. It
landed and turned, its blade-sharp claws carving furrows into the already scarred floor. The demon on its back could only be
described as resplendent, horribly so, with his shining black wings unfurled over his naked, well-muscled torso, the bony
protrusions jutting from his shoulders and forearms.
The demon raised his scimitar over his head, and recognition darkened Thellian’s features.
“Luxe,” he said, simply.
“Thellian,” Luxe answered. “Bien.”
Thellian pivoted slightly, gripped Xander by the shoulders so violently that his sword clanged noisily to the ground, and then
proceeded to drag him away from the conflict.
“Wait! What are you doing?” Xander shouted, flailing against the vampire’s unyielding grasp. He tried to dead-weight him,
but that only made it easier for Thellian to drag him like a rag doll. Xander watched in revulsion as Luxe raised his scimitar,
and the demons at his command poured through the rift in a dark cloud of rank demon flesh.
Thellian hauled Xander through the foyer to the far side of the ambulance that had demolished the front doors and ducked
beneath the cover of its dislodged front axle. He dropped Xander against the wheel and pinned him there by the throat.
“You have no clue how fortunate you are,” Thellian said.
Xander tried to wriggle free from the choke-hold, but it was useless. “I’m… supposed… to be… fighting,” Xander wheezed,
trying fruitlessly to pry Thellian’s fingers from his neck.
“No. You are supposed to be still. Now,” Thellian said, and Xander’s body went slack. Behind them, the battle raged, but
Thellian held Xander’s rapt attention in his depthless green eyes. Xander felt his heartbeat quicken under the vampire’s
fierce scrutiny, but his body refused to respond. It was as though the bridge of his thoughts had been blown up, and
command could no longer get supplies to his allies – his arms and legs.
“You should know that Willow chose you,” Thellian said, and then he paused, as if measuring Xander’s response.
“Chose me?” Xander said. Then his features clouded. “You mean, over you?”
A beguiling smile played along the curves of Thellian’s perfect lips. He raised his free hand and caressed Xander’s cheek with
the backs of his fingertips.
“No, dear boy,” he said. With a flick of one glass-sharp nail, Thellian slit Xander’s throat.
Dr. Chapman’s brain refused to reconcile what he’d just witnessed. He wished he had remained content to cower in the
back of the ambulance, wedged between Andrew and a cooler full of chilled blood. There he had been able to pretend that the
chaos he heard without was like a storm gale – a tornado, perhaps – and not loads of tooth-and-nail demon types.
But when he felt a thump against the front right fender, curiosity and a bit of blind stupidity compelled him to check it out.
It was not a demon but two men, and they were fighting. He recognized one of them, the one with the eye patch. The other
was… how could one describe such a creature? Later, Dr. Chapman could only produce one word to characterize the other
man, and that was sharp.
Though Dr. Chapman knew the eye-patch man, he found himself inexplicably rooting for the blond one. That was until he
sliced open the throat of the other, and drank his blood.
Actually drank it! Like a vampire!
Dr. Chapman flipped, and rightly so. He scrambled back into the hold of the ambulance, unlatched Andrew’s gurney and
plunged them both through the back double-doors. The ambulance had been wedged in an incline, and so the gurney trundled
out, struck the rubbled floor and toppled, spilling Andrew into the dirt.
The doctor rushed forward, hoping to re-secure Andrew before attending to the newly-injured guy, who lay prone but still
breathing on the floor nearby.
Dr. Chapman saw a smoky, formless shadow rise up before him. What followed was a crunching sound and then darkness.
After the first wave of demons, William spared a moment’s glance at his dagger and wished that it was 36 inches longer.
Nifty as the Nephilim’s dagger had proven to be, reach was one thing it lacked.
He stood at the head of a mini-phalanx with Rachel at one shoulder and Giles at the other. They had lost sight of the others
in the swarm. It was like standing at the mouth of a cave at nightfall when the bats decide to leave their roost, only instead
of bats, it was black-limbed, leather-skinned demons with razor-sharp talons and fangs.
William sliced as many as could be sliced in the first minute of the onslaught as the demons clawed their way past and over
them.
“There must be hundreds plowing through the rift,” Giles shouted.
“And tens of thousands lying in wait,” William said. He glanced at Rachel, who held her broadsword as if it was a cross, and
she was warding off vampires instead of facing a multitude of demons. “Gimme that!” He snatched the sword from her, and
wedged her behind him before she had time to protest. Giles pressed his shoulder to William’s to offer what little protection
he could.
“Only thing we have going for us is that these demons are hell-bent on getting through the rift,” Giles panted. “And it’s just
a matter of time before they rip us apart.”
William slashed out experimentally with Rachel’s sword, hamstringing one stampeding demon and causing a grisly pile up as a
half-dozen trampled it under cloven hoof.
“One down, one million to go,” William quipped.
Giles chuckled darkly.
“Look, Rita’s on her way with the remaining Slayers. Says the British Army has called in that National Guard. All we need do is
hang tight till Willow gets that spell done.”
Giles scoffed. “Even if Rita arrives in the next five minutes, what hope do we have against this horde?”
About the same hope as Charles Gunn, William thought.
It was hopeless.
Despair swelled in him. But in that moment, he felt the steady beating of his heart and knew that Buffy was with him.
Everything was not lost. Not yet.
William gripped both weapons in his hands and closed his eyes. “Keep her safe, Rupert,” he said. And then with a feral snarl,
he leapt into the fray.
Jonathan blasted his way into Room 900, leaving a person-sized hole scorched in the reinforced steel door. He darted across
the deck, the silver cylinder of the Meltinator across his chest. Slowly, the Raggoth demons took notice and redirected their
collective attention to them.
But by then, Andrew held out lengths of Buffy’s chains, and before she could object, Jonathan had blasted them to atoms.
Buffy stared at them, then at the Meltinator, her mouth agape. “That is so cool!” she said.
Jonathan and Andrew, completely forgetting the demons and the blaring alarms, not to mention the spreading, blazing crack
in the ceiling, grabbed Buffy’s free hands and bounced, girlishly, with glee. Buffy cast a confused look at the Raggoth, who
seemed equally confounded.
“You like it?” Jonathan squealed. “I designed it myself.”
“I designed the ergonomically-sound handset,” Andrew chimed in.
“It’s awesome,” Buffy intoned, easing it from Jonathan’s grip. “May I?”
Jonathan shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Buffy turned to find the demons not-so-stealthily closing in on them. She shouldered the Meltinator and searched the base
for the trigger, but it discharged and sheered the head and shoulders right off the nearest demon. The remaining seven
Raggoth froze comically mid-stride.
“Oh,” Buffy said. “Touchy.”
“It’s a prototype,” Andrew conceded.
Buffy shrugged and hit the trigger again, vaporizing the next demon in line. “That’s for Angel,” she shouted. She hit the
trigger once more, making a puddle of the next. Jonathan tapped her on the shoulder, but she tabbed the trigger again and
again.
In seconds, Buffy had Meltinated all of the Raggoth demons. “And that’s for Spike,” she said, out of breath.
Jonathan patted her arm insistently. She spun, and they took an exaggerated step backward.
“What?” she asked. She reluctantly lowered the Meltinator.
“Angel and Spike,” Jonathan said. “They’re not dead…”
“Not dead?”
“It was a trick,” Jonathan said. “The Coven learned there was a double agent, so Warren pretended to crucify Spike to
save us.”
“They’re not dead?” Buffy repeated.
“They’re on their way to rendezvous with Team Angel,” Jonathan said. “Operation Jabba’s Palace. Up high.”
Jonathan held his hand in the air. Andrew slapped it, and they savored their inside joke.
“They’re not dead,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears. “It’s not totally hopeless.”
As if in response to this, another rumble shook the ground, and the ceiling split further. The computer’s warning continued
to drone in its monotone, but suddenly seemed more insistent.
“Yeah, we should go,” Jonathan said.
They were running for the partially-disintegrated blast door when Dawn appeared, dressed in her white shift, her sable hair
hanging lank over her shoulders. She drifted through the still smoking doorway without acknowledging Buffy, Andrew, and
Jonathan.
Oblivious to the whirring claxons and warning bells, she floated toward the abyss.
Buffy caught up to Dawn and turned her.
“Dawnie,” she said.
“Hi, Buffy,” she answered, off-handedly.
Buffy ran a hand down Dawn’s arm. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Dawn tilted her head, as if listening to some distant music no one else could hear. “No. You’re not supposed to be here,”
Dawn said.
Buffy’s expression turned grave. “Dawn. I have to get you someplace safe. The ritual will begin and…”
Dawn slipped from Buffy’s grasp like smoke and moved once more toward the abyss. The ground tilted violently, slamming
them to the cold cement. A chunk of rock the size of a Coke machine broke free from the ceiling and tumbled with
accentuated slowness before disappearing soundlessly into the void.
“It’s already begun,” Dawn mumbled. “Don’t you see? I began it, and now I must end it.”
Buffy paced alongside her. “You began it? But, the Coven…” And then her knees went watery as she realized the truth with
horrified certainty. “Not you. Dawn,” Buffy said. “My Dawn.” She placed her quaking hands over her heart in a vain effort
to quiet her racing pulse.
Dawn looked back at Buffy, her dark eyes hollow and haunted. “Don’t you see what’s happening? The doors were opening all
around them, letting all the bad stuff in. She thought, I can close them, and I can save Buffy. She thought, I can do that,
because she once did it for me.”
“No. Dawn...”
“What was opened must be closed again, Buffy,” she said. Her gaze softened and she looked away. “I’m dying.”
Tears fell from Buffy’s eyes unnoticed. Dawn retreated several steps toward the abyss, then looked up at the tower above
them. She grinned an impish little smile.
“Ripper’s plan was to put you up there as bait for his monster,” Dawn said. “He’s on his way down with the Coven right
now…”
Buffy gripped Dawn’s shoulder again. “I’m supposed to save you,” she said, her voice small against the grumble of crumbling
rock.
Dawn placed a palm on Buffy’s belly. She brought her newly un-scaled eyes up to her sister’s, and again that smile played
across her face. “My turn,” she said.
Dawn turned and ran, her hair flying, and leapt into the abyss.
For a moment, Connor saw everything in sharp focus, suspended as though time had stopped. He saw Faith standing over
him, her face distorted in her grief, the Scythe in mid-swing. He saw Oz crouching nearby, his club raised to defend against
the myriad demons poised like a standing wave over their heads.
He saw William frozen mid-strike, his broadsword gutting one demon, the dagger plunged into the throat of another. Giles
was on the floor, weaponless, and Rachel was reaching for him, while Sabnock stood over them, his weapon raised to crush
them both.
His scope widened then, and he saw the chaos unleashed upon the world. Rivers ran with blood, fire rained from the sky.
Every person who ever died on unconsecrated soil rose up. Plagues of locusts were loosed upon the earth. The Hellmouths
had opened, and the world would be forever altered.
“You are the author of this destruction,” his father’s voice said in the back of his mind. But now he recognized it for what
it really was. Connor closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
The Scythe cleft Connor’s sternum and the blade struck his heart. Instead of splintering bone, though, he heard a
cacophonous torrent of breaking glass. A sphere of viridian light erupted from him, growing outward until it filled the shell of
Triumvirate, rocking its foundations and bursting into the night with the force of an exploding star.
As it imploded back upon itself, as Dawn drew her final breath, the portals opened by her blood were all at once closed.
Buffy and Andrew played round after round of rock-paper-scissors, so many in fact that the Raggoth demons standing guard
no longer slobbered like Pavlov’s dogs at the jangling of Buffy’s chains, dismissing the prospect of her trying to escape.
Instead, they stood at parade rest, barbed arms folded behind them, and waited.
Andrew had just beat Buffy’s paper with his scissors when she caught a flicker of impatience in his features.
Under her breath, she asked, “Are you worried?”
“Me?” he asked. He scratched his chin. “Nah. More concerned about Mr. Tentacles in the pit than Short Round outwitting
Ripper. Paper beats rock.”
Buffy nodded. Her belly fluttered with nervous little butterflies. “I never got that,” she said. “How does paper beat rock?”
Andrew rolled his eyes to the wall above her head and grimaced in thought. “Maybe it’s gift-wrapped?”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Buffy said. “Rock can still smash…”
“Nu-uh. It’s not a rock, so much as a present,” he countered. “Nothing big and scary about a neatly wrapped package.”
“Who would want a gift-wrapped rock?”
“You’re just mad ’cause I won,” Andrew said.
“Am not.”
“Are too…”
“Am…” Buffy felt the cement quake beneath her feet. She held out her shackled arms to steady herself. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
Another tremor rumbled through the floor, a distant thundering groan. This time, the Raggoths felt it. Simultaneously, their
heads lifted and their ragged ears perked up. Above them, the metal platform rattled and swayed like a ship in an unsettled
sea.
For a moment, they stood motionless, breathlessly waiting for another nauseating shift beneath them. Instead, a blinding
light split the high rock ceiling with a booming crack. Blue-white sparks rained down on them. All around them, alarms
sounded. Red warning lights pulsed to life at every door, and every computer panel buzzed to life. Andrew’s beloved
androgynous computer voice droned out an emotionless, “Warning. All personnel stand by for emergency orders.”
Andrew turned to Buffy. He gawked at her swollen belly and heavy chains with renewed horror.
“I have a very bad feeling about this,” he said.
Buffy glanced from him to the demons, all of whom gaped up at the radiant and growing crack in the ceiling like wide-mouth
bass that have been hauled up on dry land. Anything that could scare a pack of muscle-bound foulness was enough to also
scare her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m gonna have to agree.”
“Hold her up!” Willow ordered. Her words were ripped from her mouth in the intensified gale that wailed up from the portal,
but Maya obeyed. Willow was dimly grateful that her back was to the pit; she couldn’t see the horrors that she watched
reflected in Maya’s terror-stricken features. She focused only on the illustration before her. And on the knife, of course.
Willow cradled the book in the crook of her arm. She held the page as stable as she could in the mounting winds with the
fingers of her left hand. Dawn’s arms and legs had been done according to the ritual. They were riddled with dozens of
precise incisions, each a quarter inch apart.
And then Willow had done the arteries in Dawn’s legs. That had been the hardest part so far: hearing her scream, seeing the
blood do its work, knowing with certainty and she had just killed Buffy’s baby sister...
But it was almost over now. Dawn was dying, drop by drop. She’d lost consciousness after the first femoral artery went,
leaving Maya to bear the burden of Dawn’s weight. Now things would get really tricky. She had to cast the location spell she
and Maya had created. To do that, she had to wait until the apex of Dawn’s bloodletting, when half of her blood was spilled.
In short, right now.
However, she needed Maya to continue with the letting of the blood. Willow doubted the girl had that kind of strength.
Still, what choice did they have?
“I have to cast the location spell!” Willow yelled, over-enunciating each word like someone trying to communicate to a
person who speaks another language.
Maya nodded dumbly.
“You have to do the next part,” Willow screamed.
Maya craned her head for a moment, then shook it sharply. Willow scoffed. Were those tears in her eyes?
“If anyone should be crying,” Willow bit out. “It should be Dawn…”
“I’ll do the location spell!” Maya cried. “I will not…” but the words were swallowed up by the punishing winds.
Rage churned in Willow’s gut. “How dare you…”
Maya hugged Dawn’s body to hers, drying her eyes on Dawn’s shoulder. “Please, Willow!”
What should have softened Willow’s heart froze it further. “Shut your mouth,” she hissed. But she stepped aside and
roughly shoved Maya to the edge of the abyss. At the same time, she gathered the limp, heavy body of Dawn against her
own. They faced out over the balcony’s edge, with Maya behind them, but Willow could see nothing beyond a few feet
because of the swirling chaos of dust, debris, and demons.
“Dawnie,” Willow whispered, trying to sound sympathetic through her impatience. “How ya hanging in there?” she asked,
feeling sick at the absurdity of the words.
Dawn’s head lolled back. “Buffy,” she sighed. And then, “Andrew.”
Willow nodded and swallowed hard. She cradled the book once more against her left forearm. Leaning Dawn against her,
Willow adjusted the dagger in her palm. The vital organs were next: liver, kidneys, stomach, spleen, followed by lungs and
heart.
Simple, Willow thought. Pin the dagger on the Dawnie.
“Hang on tight, Dawn,” Willow said. “This is gonna hurt.”
Xander understood how utterly idiotic their plan had been when the dire wolf bearing its demon rider sailed over his head. It
landed and turned, its blade-sharp claws carving furrows into the already scarred floor. The demon on its back could only be
described as resplendent, horribly so, with his shining black wings unfurled over his naked, well-muscled torso, the bony
protrusions jutting from his shoulders and forearms.
The demon raised his scimitar over his head, and recognition darkened Thellian’s features.
“Luxe,” he said, simply.
“Thellian,” Luxe answered. “Bien.”
Thellian pivoted slightly, gripped Xander by the shoulders so violently that his sword clanged noisily to the ground, and then
proceeded to drag him away from the conflict.
“Wait! What are you doing?” Xander shouted, flailing against the vampire’s unyielding grasp. He tried to dead-weight him,
but that only made it easier for Thellian to drag him like a rag doll. Xander watched in revulsion as Luxe raised his scimitar,
and the demons at his command poured through the rift in a dark cloud of rank demon flesh.
Thellian hauled Xander through the foyer to the far side of the ambulance that had demolished the front doors and ducked
beneath the cover of its dislodged front axle. He dropped Xander against the wheel and pinned him there by the throat.
“You have no clue how fortunate you are,” Thellian said.
Xander tried to wriggle free from the choke-hold, but it was useless. “I’m… supposed… to be… fighting,” Xander wheezed,
trying fruitlessly to pry Thellian’s fingers from his neck.
“No. You are supposed to be still. Now,” Thellian said, and Xander’s body went slack. Behind them, the battle raged, but
Thellian held Xander’s rapt attention in his depthless green eyes. Xander felt his heartbeat quicken under the vampire’s
fierce scrutiny, but his body refused to respond. It was as though the bridge of his thoughts had been blown up, and
command could no longer get supplies to his allies – his arms and legs.
“You should know that Willow chose you,” Thellian said, and then he paused, as if measuring Xander’s response.
“Chose me?” Xander said. Then his features clouded. “You mean, over you?”
A beguiling smile played along the curves of Thellian’s perfect lips. He raised his free hand and caressed Xander’s cheek with
the backs of his fingertips.
“No, dear boy,” he said. With a flick of one glass-sharp nail, Thellian slit Xander’s throat.
Dr. Chapman’s brain refused to reconcile what he’d just witnessed. He wished he had remained content to cower in the
back of the ambulance, wedged between Andrew and a cooler full of chilled blood. There he had been able to pretend that the
chaos he heard without was like a storm gale – a tornado, perhaps – and not loads of tooth-and-nail demon types.
But when he felt a thump against the front right fender, curiosity and a bit of blind stupidity compelled him to check it out.
It was not a demon but two men, and they were fighting. He recognized one of them, the one with the eye patch. The other
was… how could one describe such a creature? Later, Dr. Chapman could only produce one word to characterize the other
man, and that was sharp.
Though Dr. Chapman knew the eye-patch man, he found himself inexplicably rooting for the blond one. That was until he
sliced open the throat of the other, and drank his blood.
Actually drank it! Like a vampire!
Dr. Chapman flipped, and rightly so. He scrambled back into the hold of the ambulance, unlatched Andrew’s gurney and
plunged them both through the back double-doors. The ambulance had been wedged in an incline, and so the gurney trundled
out, struck the rubbled floor and toppled, spilling Andrew into the dirt.
The doctor rushed forward, hoping to re-secure Andrew before attending to the newly-injured guy, who lay prone but still
breathing on the floor nearby.
Dr. Chapman saw a smoky, formless shadow rise up before him. What followed was a crunching sound and then darkness.
After the first wave of demons, William spared a moment’s glance at his dagger and wished that it was 36 inches longer.
Nifty as the Nephilim’s dagger had proven to be, reach was one thing it lacked.
He stood at the head of a mini-phalanx with Rachel at one shoulder and Giles at the other. They had lost sight of the others
in the swarm. It was like standing at the mouth of a cave at nightfall when the bats decide to leave their roost, only instead
of bats, it was black-limbed, leather-skinned demons with razor-sharp talons and fangs.
William sliced as many as could be sliced in the first minute of the onslaught as the demons clawed their way past and over
them.
“There must be hundreds plowing through the rift,” Giles shouted.
“And tens of thousands lying in wait,” William said. He glanced at Rachel, who held her broadsword as if it was a cross, and
she was warding off vampires instead of facing a multitude of demons. “Gimme that!” He snatched the sword from her, and
wedged her behind him before she had time to protest. Giles pressed his shoulder to William’s to offer what little protection
he could.
“Only thing we have going for us is that these demons are hell-bent on getting through the rift,” Giles panted. “And it’s just
a matter of time before they rip us apart.”
William slashed out experimentally with Rachel’s sword, hamstringing one stampeding demon and causing a grisly pile up as a
half-dozen trampled it under cloven hoof.
“One down, one million to go,” William quipped.
Giles chuckled darkly.
“Look, Rita’s on her way with the remaining Slayers. Says the British Army has called in that National Guard. All we need do is
hang tight till Willow gets that spell done.”
Giles scoffed. “Even if Rita arrives in the next five minutes, what hope do we have against this horde?”
About the same hope as Charles Gunn, William thought.
It was hopeless.
Despair swelled in him. But in that moment, he felt the steady beating of his heart and knew that Buffy was with him.
Everything was not lost. Not yet.
William gripped both weapons in his hands and closed his eyes. “Keep her safe, Rupert,” he said. And then with a feral snarl,
he leapt into the fray.
Jonathan blasted his way into Room 900, leaving a person-sized hole scorched in the reinforced steel door. He darted across
the deck, the silver cylinder of the Meltinator across his chest. Slowly, the Raggoth demons took notice and redirected their
collective attention to them.
But by then, Andrew held out lengths of Buffy’s chains, and before she could object, Jonathan had blasted them to atoms.
Buffy stared at them, then at the Meltinator, her mouth agape. “That is so cool!” she said.
Jonathan and Andrew, completely forgetting the demons and the blaring alarms, not to mention the spreading, blazing crack
in the ceiling, grabbed Buffy’s free hands and bounced, girlishly, with glee. Buffy cast a confused look at the Raggoth, who
seemed equally confounded.
“You like it?” Jonathan squealed. “I designed it myself.”
“I designed the ergonomically-sound handset,” Andrew chimed in.
“It’s awesome,” Buffy intoned, easing it from Jonathan’s grip. “May I?”
Jonathan shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Buffy turned to find the demons not-so-stealthily closing in on them. She shouldered the Meltinator and searched the base
for the trigger, but it discharged and sheered the head and shoulders right off the nearest demon. The remaining seven
Raggoth froze comically mid-stride.
“Oh,” Buffy said. “Touchy.”
“It’s a prototype,” Andrew conceded.
Buffy shrugged and hit the trigger again, vaporizing the next demon in line. “That’s for Angel,” she shouted. She hit the
trigger once more, making a puddle of the next. Jonathan tapped her on the shoulder, but she tabbed the trigger again and
again.
In seconds, Buffy had Meltinated all of the Raggoth demons. “And that’s for Spike,” she said, out of breath.
Jonathan patted her arm insistently. She spun, and they took an exaggerated step backward.
“What?” she asked. She reluctantly lowered the Meltinator.
“Angel and Spike,” Jonathan said. “They’re not dead…”
“Not dead?”
“It was a trick,” Jonathan said. “The Coven learned there was a double agent, so Warren pretended to crucify Spike to
save us.”
“They’re not dead?” Buffy repeated.
“They’re on their way to rendezvous with Team Angel,” Jonathan said. “Operation Jabba’s Palace. Up high.”
Jonathan held his hand in the air. Andrew slapped it, and they savored their inside joke.
“They’re not dead,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears. “It’s not totally hopeless.”
As if in response to this, another rumble shook the ground, and the ceiling split further. The computer’s warning continued
to drone in its monotone, but suddenly seemed more insistent.
“Yeah, we should go,” Jonathan said.
They were running for the partially-disintegrated blast door when Dawn appeared, dressed in her white shift, her sable hair
hanging lank over her shoulders. She drifted through the still smoking doorway without acknowledging Buffy, Andrew, and
Jonathan.
Oblivious to the whirring claxons and warning bells, she floated toward the abyss.
Buffy caught up to Dawn and turned her.
“Dawnie,” she said.
“Hi, Buffy,” she answered, off-handedly.
Buffy ran a hand down Dawn’s arm. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Dawn tilted her head, as if listening to some distant music no one else could hear. “No. You’re not supposed to be here,”
Dawn said.
Buffy’s expression turned grave. “Dawn. I have to get you someplace safe. The ritual will begin and…”
Dawn slipped from Buffy’s grasp like smoke and moved once more toward the abyss. The ground tilted violently, slamming
them to the cold cement. A chunk of rock the size of a Coke machine broke free from the ceiling and tumbled with
accentuated slowness before disappearing soundlessly into the void.
“It’s already begun,” Dawn mumbled. “Don’t you see? I began it, and now I must end it.”
Buffy paced alongside her. “You began it? But, the Coven…” And then her knees went watery as she realized the truth with
horrified certainty. “Not you. Dawn,” Buffy said. “My Dawn.” She placed her quaking hands over her heart in a vain effort
to quiet her racing pulse.
Dawn looked back at Buffy, her dark eyes hollow and haunted. “Don’t you see what’s happening? The doors were opening all
around them, letting all the bad stuff in. She thought, I can close them, and I can save Buffy. She thought, I can do that,
because she once did it for me.”
“No. Dawn...”
“What was opened must be closed again, Buffy,” she said. Her gaze softened and she looked away. “I’m dying.”
Tears fell from Buffy’s eyes unnoticed. Dawn retreated several steps toward the abyss, then looked up at the tower above
them. She grinned an impish little smile.
“Ripper’s plan was to put you up there as bait for his monster,” Dawn said. “He’s on his way down with the Coven right
now…”
Buffy gripped Dawn’s shoulder again. “I’m supposed to save you,” she said, her voice small against the grumble of crumbling
rock.
Dawn placed a palm on Buffy’s belly. She brought her newly un-scaled eyes up to her sister’s, and again that smile played
across her face. “My turn,” she said.
Dawn turned and ran, her hair flying, and leapt into the abyss.
For a moment, Connor saw everything in sharp focus, suspended as though time had stopped. He saw Faith standing over
him, her face distorted in her grief, the Scythe in mid-swing. He saw Oz crouching nearby, his club raised to defend against
the myriad demons poised like a standing wave over their heads.
He saw William frozen mid-strike, his broadsword gutting one demon, the dagger plunged into the throat of another. Giles
was on the floor, weaponless, and Rachel was reaching for him, while Sabnock stood over them, his weapon raised to crush
them both.
His scope widened then, and he saw the chaos unleashed upon the world. Rivers ran with blood, fire rained from the sky.
Every person who ever died on unconsecrated soil rose up. Plagues of locusts were loosed upon the earth. The Hellmouths
had opened, and the world would be forever altered.
“You are the author of this destruction,” his father’s voice said in the back of his mind. But now he recognized it for what
it really was. Connor closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
The Scythe cleft Connor’s sternum and the blade struck his heart. Instead of splintering bone, though, he heard a
cacophonous torrent of breaking glass. A sphere of viridian light erupted from him, growing outward until it filled the shell of
Triumvirate, rocking its foundations and bursting into the night with the force of an exploding star.
As it imploded back upon itself, as Dawn drew her final breath, the portals opened by her blood were all at once closed.
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal
Hopeless
This Is How the World
Will End
Run
The Angels Sing
Epilogue
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal
Hopeless
This Is How the World
Will End
Run
The Angels Sing
Epilogue