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#27
Abandoned warehouse, provisional base of the whitehats:


Spike grinned as he shut down the security system Riley
and his goons had installed when they moved into this
place. Oh, he liked that! Very much liked it.
Just because they thought they could disregard him for
not being able to hurt them directly didn't mean he had
no chance to get back at the fuckers. There had been one
taunting to many for him to pass this chance by.
Except, well, as a vampire badass he would have done it
anyway. They couldn't really expect him to change, did
they? Dru had been so fiendish to clean out his account
after their breakup. He had no idea what she did with
the money, nor did it matter much to him.
With a hundred thousand in the back he could get back to
the old world and start anew, but most of all he had to
get that bloody chip out of his head. He so needed to
kill again, his whole body screamed for the release. He
felt the call of the hunt in him any day and it was so
hard to stand it anymore.
He let the doors open and deactivated a camera as the
first of the vampires came close...first of many who had
ridden here in a number of delivery vans.
"Come on in, mates," Spike gloated. "Time to party!"

"Sure," the female leader smirked. "Welcome back to the
fold, old one. For whatever's left of you, without your
bite and all. Filthy little fangless selling out his
friends, huh?"

Spike snorted, ignored the humiliation and left the
building. As much fun as it would be to see his former
comrades faces when they realized two dozen vampres were
inside of their base - he had another apointment to
keep. And, looking at his watch, he would keep it.
One that was much more pleasing than to see Riley Finn
and his company of weekend warriors get beaten to death
and drained.
Besides, Spike had not taken their weapons away and he
didn't trust the Initiatice commandos at his back. Last
time he nearly had been shot twice and that was when
they really had needed his help...he had gotten stunned
more than enough by now.

"Willow," he rasped, "it's time to make you into a happy
woman...hope you ate your spinach!" He laughed as he
walked into the city, the smogg clear enough to make out
some stars in the young night sky. And glimpsed the full
moon up there. A wolf night.
Behind him the first screams began, soon to be followed
by the singing buzz of Initiative weapons fired and much
more screams. He had fulfilled his part of the bargain.
Okay, half of it.
Not that there was much else left to do.
The witch was just a personal thing, drenching her
clothes with a mixture of her old pantsies and his seed
would make the wolf so mad. She never even noticed.
He guessed sometimes in the night she would wake up from
her work on whatever computer project she had chosen
would be broken when her animal friend broke out of the
cage. She really should not have trusted his assurance
to have bolted the door properly or fastened all those
chains to the wall.
"Guess I forgot that one," Spike chuckled. So much for
them cursing him with a soul. Now for the real fun part.
He wished he could be there when the others learnt.
"And now forward to our really final reckoning, poof!"
Spike wondered what people thought when they designed
his chip. They didn't cover everything.
He might not be able to strike out against some human,
didn't mean he couldn't do any harm anymore. Adam had
been very helpful in assuring him that.
Oh yeah, Angel would be so surprised...


#28
Dave's bar:


Faith stumbled onwards as the first explosions rocked
the old building, dragging Harmony along. Her legs hurt
like hell, not to mention her belly and chest, but she
needed the legs now. The bony claws stuck inside of her
like harpunes and they hurt her more as she moved wild
instead of sitting down and getting them out.
No time.
Xander appeard at her side, helped to dragg the dead
weight of Harmony along. For the moment Faith was not
even able to answer why they bothered, it would have
been more effective to drop her and leave her behind.
She just didn't get the idea in time as they ran down
the way to the emergency exit into the back alley.
Around them the building began to collapse. Stairs and
elevators were down, power shortened out. Waterpipes
fell empty and the sprinklers were useless.
Which was the whole point of the setup, Faith thought.
all made so that a) people got caught in the place,
leaving those in the know of the exits in the advantage
and b) nothing was able to stop the quick spread of the
fires. Fires which torched the old building like a dry
woods in the heat of summer, spreading like wildfire.
Vampires usually did not react so well to flames.
She only guess at what the minions in the club and the
others thought when they found themselves in hell. A
maze of corridors and stairs and dead ends, flames all
over the place and smoke thickening...the sounds of
distant explosions as part after part of the place
collapsed on them.
Xander had spent his pasttime aquiring the essential
bombs and detonators and setting the whole scheme up.
Just in case it ever got necessary to have a cover in
their backs.
Probably not everyone's best idea of a fire insurance.
Originally it should go on without too many casualties
but somehow people forgot where to go as they panicked.
Faith never saw many when they burst out of the secret
door into the alley and then onwards, there were sirens
nearby. Firefighters and the police came.
As well as the spectators and bloodhounds from the media
with their helicopters overhead. Faith just hoped they
didn't attract any undue attention now as they vanished.
A vampire so exhausted he almost keeled over and fell
to a deathlike sleep, an unconscious cheerleader and
herself, a walking wreck...
She bit her teeth together to hold the laugther back.
She was in the mood for mad, hysterical laughter and
tears of blood. For she was alive, still alive!
>From all the hopeless battles she had faced this one was
the most unreal. Big guy just shoved in the disk and
then he keeled over. Maybe he got a stroke or something.
She would have to ask Harmony for that. Behind her a
series of new detonations made her ears ring.
Part of the house collapsed.
What a party, she thought, wondering that she never even
had guessed about this outcome. She had thought they
would die in there, when that thing had sent his claws
into her body and mauled her so bad she was helpless.
Nasty surpirse, that.
Bet that never happened to B! Faith thought. It better
not or she would lie in hospital for a damn while. In
the best case.
Overhead the moon shone through the thin cover of clouds
and smogg. Couldn't hope for rain to help fight the
raging fire tearing down the big old building.
Pity for the club, she had liked it there, Faith thought
distanced from her present situation. Even if the town
was so bloody boring and she never got to kill anything
but time.


#29
Some basement of a safehouse of Angel, turned over into
a provisional wolf-holding area:


Cordelia figured she should have known something was up
when Willow suddenly got to jump and run out. Something
or the other that concerned Giles and Buffy, but she
could have heard wrong. Something of an emergency that
might involve the Watchers, though.
Angel and Doyle were out and so she was the one whom
Willow called to step in for her. Typical. She could
have a nice night of sleep or whatever in her bed but
she had to sit here, in this crummy basement and in this
uncomfortable chair.
Unable to fall asleep for the howl of the mad animal
in the holding cage behind her, unable to stay truly
awake for exhaustion and boredom.
She wondered what the crap she was doing here. Oz in his
wolf state was unable to break free of that door and who
would even think of opening that door?
Noone in his right mind would!
Cordelia yawned and read the book she got. Imagine it,
her wasting time reading a book in high school. The loss
of face would have been unbearable. Well, perhaps before
she entered research parties at the library.
All those books with the icky pictures and whatever sort
of scriptures on the sides. Most of it in long dead and
very foreign languages.
She wondered how it came that Xander was able to read
that much crap in six languages and make sense of it and
all the while failed at his exams.
She wondered more about how she could make th bitewounds
in her shoulder vanish. Even after the pain was gone and
the scarring process was long over they still were there
and she just had to touch them to feel aroused. And have
the image of Faith draining her in her head.
Horror, fear, disgust and arousal mixed in.
"God, that's so sick!" Cordelia whispered. She got off
on touching the spot and she got nightmares. Next she'd
dream of how it would be when Faith came to claim her.
"I'm getting sick."
She yawned again. Wondered how she could get back at
Faith. Maybe ask Giles. Or Willow, better Willow. If
there was a spell or potion to make that thing vanish.
She wondered what made Oz act so loud, he had not been
like this when she and Xander made out in the library.
Maybe something between him and Willow didn't work out?
Then there was a loud sound.
A door torn of its hinges banged on the ground.
Cordelia could only look up and have her mouth go wide
open, her brain told her to scream and run. She was
unable to lift a finger as Oz jumped at her. She got a
close up view of his talons and claws, way closer than
she ever wanted to get as his teeth tore into her flesh.
The first thought she had was of scars, making all her
beauty go away and make her into a hideous cripple.
The second thought was: scrap it he's killing me oh
shit he's killing me...
Which he did, and then he ran off. Leaving her to die
with the mangled body that was left after the werewolfe
had torn off her jacket none to gently and ripped it
to bloody shreds.
Cordelia was long unconscious by then.
The only mercy that there was to the whole act.
She never saw the werewolfe run out and howl against
the moon, vanishing in the huge city area.


#30
Angel Investigations office, LA:


Buffy could not say what angered her more - her own
stupidity or her blindness. But, having a team of
Watchers come back from a scouting at Dave's bar and
tell her Adam had gone in before the whole place blew
up, was sort of a wakeup call.
Then there was no response when she tried to phone
Riley. Which shouldn't be. He had some communication
gizmo, hadn't he? So she sent someone to look what was
going wrong at the Initiative's hideout while she and
her folks went to pay Angel a visit. Time to get some
real answers out of her brooding former love interest.

Which brought them face to face with two vampires locked
in a deadly duel and this time it was serious. Spike and
Angel tried to kill each other and had devastated the
whole office, managed to wound each other but none was
going down yet.

"What the hell is going on here?" Buffy demanded to know
and thought she should have asked that way ago. For she
did not know. "You, stop that fight! Or I will dust both
your sorry asses!"

"Wanna see that, Slayer," Spike gloated as he threw
angel away from her and managed to rip a gun from his
sleeves. A little pistol. "See ya in hell, blondie.
Bye bye, peaches, we'll finish this another day!"

Buffy could only stare incredulously as Spike shot her
and stagger back when the tiny bullet hit her chest.
Everyone was just that stunned they also didn't react as
Spike threw the other obect into the air with his left
hand, something hidden inside his torn duster and only
Angel moved in time to catch it and throwed it out of
the window. The same one Spike ran through to jump out
and fell. Seconds short of the fiery explosion of the
grenade.
Buffy panted for air and thought her whole chest was on
fire. As she got up, seeing the concerned faces of
the Watchers, Giles was there and told her to lie back.
They would call an ambulance, she shouldn't move.
Buffy coughed and smiled.
"Must be my lucky day," she rasped and ripped her blouse
away to show them the bullet stuck in the cross she wore
around her neck. Almost directly over the heart. "What
the, cough, cough, was, cough, Spike, cough, that old
son of a...cough groan up to? Cough cough!"

Giles and the others just stared,e specially Willow who
went from screaming madly to tears of joy. "You...!" the
former librarian chocked out, speechless. Just glad she
still was alive. "Right. What is going on here, Angel?"

"Not so much," Angel answered, looking out of the
remains of the window. The explosion had shattered all
the glass in the house anyway. And would mean he had to
answer several serious questions by the police. "Spike
sold us out. He came here to kill me."

"How could he have shot you?" Willow whined, trembling.
"I thought his chip prevented that sort of thing."

"Unfortunately not," Angel stated the obvious. He was as
clueless as them about it.

Except that Buffy suddenly jerked and called out for
Riley. The silence...Spike had been in their house, he
had an invitation...if he turned coat he was... "Uh my
god, RILEY!"

It was already too late, of course. All they could do
was to motor over and pick up the pieces. See the
carnage and find the warehouse to be burned down. With
noone in there being still alive.
Though, some of the soldiers still were alive. If one
could call it that. They had run out of the fight, left
their wounded behind and their fighting comrades alone.
Something that broke their spirits for all times and
would drive most of them to suicide very soon. They
weren't of much use to anyone left, the three man who
made it through the assault.
Riley was one of those who had not run.
He died in the flames as the warehouse burned.
He died a hero...but he died and left her alone.
They had relied on their security system to warn them of
anyone entering the building but somehow that system had
failed. With Spike being in the building shortly before
the attack there wasn't so much reason to wonder why.

Buffy was shattered.
Utterly shattered.
Her boyfriend, the man she loved, had DIED!
Because of her trusting Spike...what was she thinking?
If she had been thinking at all. It had seemed a good
idea at the time, make use of him and his condition.
A very dangerous idea.

The next blow came in the morning, when Oz came in after
he awoke in a park in the city. This being LA the police
just arrested him for public offense, walking around as
naked as a newborn. He called for them and Doyle came to
bail him out.
And Cordelia was in the morgue already...killed in that
basement. They found out Spike had sabotaged the door
and holding chains at Oz' cage. What made the werewolf
tore Cordelia apart was another matter unsolved as yet.
Oz certainly was lost over it and even worse broken than
Buffy was over Riley. He had killed a human, a friend!
Willow tried to calm him but failed and he ran away.
Everyone was looking for him but when they heard about
him next he was dead. Found a gun, a silver bullet and
shot himself in the head.
There was no end to the fall.

The one good thing Buffy learnt as she sat in the
spooky remains of Angel's apartment, clutching to a mug
of long since cooled coffee, was that Adam was dead. He
had met up with Xander and Faith and somehow they got
him...he was destroyed as the whole building went down
there.
Whatever remained of him and them was buried there.
That was if they had not managed to break away since
it was their bomb that caused the catastrophe. As so
many died there the media screamed for answers, and
politicians and city officials dcuked for cover as the
popular opinion came steamrolling at them.
Most really had no idea how whatever had happened had
happened. But try to sell that to the media. There were
all sorts of rumors about high level corruption, very
decadent pleasures in a brothel and worse stories of the
club. Most of which probably were true, considering the
demons hanging out there or running the place.
It was about to get worse when people failed to remember
details. Like the part two unknwon young people played,
being the silent partners of the man known as Dave. The
man who either jumped or was thrown from his penthouse
sixteen floors above street level.
So many nasty little details.
And the most crucial stuff would be left out, as always.

Buffy sat in between of the rubbish and only her Slayer
vision allowed her to see in the damp darkness the heavy
curtains Angel hung over the windows created. She saw
him and Doyle move around to look what could be reused
and what would be thrown out.
Finally she had enough of it.
"How can you do it?" Buffy asked hollowly. "How can you
behave like that after...after they died and...how!"

Angel stopped and grimaced, wondered what he could say.
It was the wrong time to admit he himself had worked on
making Spike a traitor, offering him all the opportunity
to make him fail. Trust a demon to choose the bad side
of things. "It keeps my mind away from things I do not
want to deal with."

She sucked in the air, trembled and gathered herself
again. Put the mug away to wipe the tears from her eyes.
"I...I don't know..."

"You don't know how to do it, I know," Angel said as
he sat down besides her. "What else is new?"

She sighed, stared at the floor and her knees. Yes, what
was new? "Defeat," she said. "The closest we came...you
and Faith turning coat, Miss Calender. Me dying. Xander
getting turned and away. But it never was...like this."

"I would not call it defeat," Angel said cautiously. "I
call it a victory."

"What for?"

"Adam's dead, Buffy. Spike sold us out. But to whom!"
Angel answered her. He did not like to lie to her yet
he did. It would be better for her if she never learnt
the whole truth. That he considered it to have gone
over very well, aside from the Initiative people. Adam
had surprised him there, if it had been Adam. "We know
there is only one way he was defeated and that is if
Spike has sold the disk to Xander and Faith."

"What?" Buffy rasped, paling. She had assumed Spike was
working for Adam. Not the horrible two. After giving it
a momentary once-over it was not even so impossible.
"How could he know if Spike wasn't his agent?"

"Who said he was not? Maybe a vampire talked, maybe...I
don't know," Angel said, putting it down. Hopefully she
did not want a close inspection of the issue. "What is
important is that Adam is just so much debris now! We're
finally rid of him."

"And...but what about Faith and Xander!? They're still
out there, at large."

"If they show up again we will hear about it," Angel
stated wisely. He was almost convinced they had gotten
away. Xander was nothing if not a survivor. But then,
there always was a little bit of hope, wasn't it? "Then
we can always deal with them. Don't look at it as being
just so bleak, Buffy. We are still there and in the end
WE are the victors by default...even if we would have
had it another way."

Buffy bit her lip, considering that. He was right, she
was still there and Willow and Giles. They had a lot of
remains from the Initiative, they still had agents and
the library and many baddies had been destroyed with
the club. Sunnydale was theirs again, their alone even
until the Initiative showed up again. Or the next big
badass came to challenge her. "It still is a bitter kind
of victory."

"Victory my not be everything but defeat is worse than
nothing," Angel quoted from his fontain of wisdom. Who
had said that? Some general in the age of Napoleon, it
might have been Wellington or not. Didn't matter much.
"Rest and heal, Buffy. Mourn for the dead and go on.
There will be another day."

"The day we get Spike?" she said, sounding more vicious
than he had ever heard of her. "Yezzz...there will be
another day..." She unconciously touched the cross with
the dent of Spike's bullet in it. There would be a day
and she would be the one to hold him then...and then he
would pay. Whatever it took, Spike would pay.
Remembering the pain Willow was in and the look she had
when she vanished in her room, holding her magic bag,
she didn't doubt the punishment coming for Spike.
She just wondered what curse Spike would get.
Looking at Angel a hundred years of torment were not at
all impossible. Or worse, if Willow began to play with
more magic...and she would.
But she wanted to administer her own retaliation, in
addition to Willow's. Hear him scream, feel how his
worthless bones broke. Make him beg for a staking.

Angel caught the spaced out look Buffy had and the cold
grip of fear was sensible on his heart. Spike was in
line for a very inventive act of vengeance...not that
he had not deserved all of it.
Angel was uncertain what would be if Buffy ever learnt
of his machinations. He had to admit he was surprised by
Spike being able to kill with his chip. Using a gun had
never been any idea of his, the demon wanted to do it by
hands anyway...and that was what they seemed to have
blocked.
In retrospect it was kinda obvious as Spike had been
able to fight demons. The Initiative's scientists had
needed something to determine when to make their thing
electrocute him and that something was the demon's
feeding lust. General mayhem was no part of the deal,
however.
What would she do if she learnt he had known before and
chosen to keep silent because it was all his plot to get
that damn disk to Adam?
The thing she would not do...congratulate him and kiss
him thankyou for it, certainly not. Rather stake him
after she flayed every skin from him, for starters.
Angel hoped she never would learn.
It was just a part of life. One lost friends...and one
gained new friends. Maybe even moved on. Maybe.
Cordelia, Oz, Riley and all the others...that had not
been part of his scheme. Casualties of the eternal war
against The Evil Of The World.
It did not make it any easier, though.
"Willow needs your help," Angel said softly. "And the
others, too. Be strong for them."

"I hate that," Buffy coughed, sunken into herself. A
picture of misery. "Why do I always have to be the
strong one? Why ME?"

A Slayer's lot, nothing else. Just a Slayer's lot.
All he did was to offer her whatever comfort he was able
to give, hugg his now vulnerable Buffy and she rested
against him readily. Was so close again it hurt, all the
old wounds broke open again. "You will always have
friends, Buffy. Always."

"I will," Buffy whispered. "Don't ever leave me, Angel.
I...I have to know that...at least one will be...left."

He held on to her and realized how very far away from
the wanted redemption he really was. Generations, and
the way would be littered with dead friends. Taken by
the enemy, fate and time if nothing else.