by Mel Odom
The rats continued squeaking excitedly.
It is only a minor demon. Pak-lah’s words echoed in Willow’s head. She hung onto them, trying to focus. She slapped away a rat that nibbled on Oz’s left ear, watching as blood trickled down his jaw from the slight wound. Then she reached into the small bag of herbs and witchy things she carried.
A rat ran along her arm, evidently intending to search out the contents of the bag. But when it reached the opening, it turned back.
Willow found the rat’s retreat encouraging. She pulled out a packet of agrimony, feeling the rats’ sharp teeth slice into her flesh. She poured some of the crushed leaves into her hand, then spread them over Oz and herself. Agrimony was used in spells to repel evil.
By the bright light of the cleansing moon,
I name you as demons.
With the cool shadows of autumn,
When all things must end so they may be born anew,
I drive you from my person.
I drive you from my friends.
I drive you from my home.
The spell swelled into being around Willow. She felt the electricity of it thrill through her. A rat lunged at her right eye, rotted yellow teeth closing in. She screamed, and a rattail caressed her lips.
“It’s okay,” Oz said, knocking the rat away before it could sink its fangs into her eye. Both of them looked like they were wearing fur coats.
In the next instant, the rats squealed in terror. They jumped from Willow and Oz, their fat bodies slapping the ground when they hit. Once they were on the ground, they wasted no time running away through the grass. Seconds later, they’d completely disappeared.
Willow wiped her lips. Eeeuwww! I’m never gonna feel clean again!
“You okay?” Oz asked, looking her over carefully, touching her face with his fingertips.
“You look terrible,” Willow replied. “I mean, not you personally, but all the rat damage. They kinda chewed on the parts that were already pretty banged up from the demons.”
“Yeah.” Oz looked at her. “Well, you look great.” He leaned in and kissed her.
Then they heard the gunfire.
Anxiously, Willow glanced back toward the green glow. “We’ve got to climb.”
“Okay,” Oz said.
She started up.
When they reached the top of the stack and stood on the last flattened car, she saw the lights of Sunnydale in the distance. If they lost here, the city might well be lost, too. She also had an unobstructed view of the clearing where Zhiyong was conducting his ritual.
Zhiyong stood at the altar near Lok and Jia Li, staring toward the area where all the gunfire was coming from. Jia Li struggled against her bonds, throwing herself repeatedly against them. Lok remained unmoving.
Willow wasn’t certain if Zhiyong had finished his ritual or if he was only distracted. He hasn’t sacrificed Jia Li or Lok. She gazed down at the thirty-five corpses circling Zhiyong and the altar. None of them were walking around, but she didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
Maybe he’s already finished, Willow thought, hoping that wasn’t the case. She laid out her herbs and brought out the candles she’d packed. She pulled the hair out of her face, feeling the matted blood in it, and calmed herself, seeking her center. Witchcraft worked best if the caster was calm.
Serene, however, was entirely out of the question.
“Once I light the candles,” Willow told Oz, “we’re going to be targets.”
“Got it,” Oz said, nodding, blood still leaking down his face. “Targets. Not good, but I can deal.” He held the short sword he’d chosen as his weapon.
After taking a deep breath, Willow lit the candles, then started to chant.
And some of the demons below started climbing up after them.
Oz set himself, waiting.
Xander thought he was fried. He dodged to the side as the lead liondog blew its fiery breath at him. The heat washed over him, almost hot enough to blister.
Shing turned, her sword whipping out and catching the liondog across the back. The blade cut deeply into flesh, muscle and bone. The liondog erupted into a snarling ball of fire, consuming itself as it burned.
When the second liondog leaped at him, Xander threw himself flat under it. As it went over him, he swung the double-bitted ax, cutting through the liondog’s midsection, reducing it into a flaming comet that passed over him.
By the time he got to his feet, Shing had dealt with the remaining liondog and it lay in a crumpled, burning heap.
“Wow,” Xander said, looking at the three burning corpses, “crispy critters. It’s not just a breakfast cereal anymore.” Then the stench of burning liondog hit him and he thought he was going to be sick.
Gunfire sounded a moment later, instantly elevating in intensity.
“Buffy,” Xander whispered.
“Yes,” Shing replied. “We have no time to waste.” She took off running.
Xander gripped the double-bitted ax close to the head so it wouldn’t swing as he ran, and followed her as quickly as he could. She seemed to have an unerring sense of direction. They ran through the twists and turns of the maze of cars.
In less than a minute, they reached the clearing where Zhiyong and the altar to Sharmma were. Xander gazed at the altar, watching the smoke eddying above it, remembering Willow’s story about Sharmma appearing to her in the smoke and then swallowing her. The smoke was thick enough to obscure the moon and stars above it, but didn’t seem to hold anything within it.
“The statue, Xander,” Shing instructed. “It needs to be broken.”
Stepping over to a stone dragon statue, Xander swept his battleax up in both hands, then brought it crashing down. Sparks jumped when steel met stone, but the stone gave. Shattered, the stone dragon tumbled to pieces and the green light winked out.
Shing was already at the next one. She raised her sword and swung it down, breaking the stone dragon to pieces. The green light disappeared.
A mournful howl full of anger echoed over the clearing, drawing Zhiyong’s attention. He spotted Xander and Shing at once, then shouted for his demon henchmen.
Okay, Xander warned himself, we just popped up on their radar.
Some of the demons pulled back from the group blocking Angel and Buffy. Many of them threw their pistols aside, evidently finally out of ammunition. But they carried long knives and swords as well.
At the altar, Zhiyong returned to his chanting, calling on Sharmma, the only word Xander recognized. As he chanted, wisps of color suddenly floated up from the thirty-five corpses. The wisps looked flimsy, barely holding together in the breeze.
Then they coalesced, joining Zhiyong at the altar, whipping into a cone of whirling force that moved faster and faster. It turned into a dancing tornado and mournful howls came from it.
C’mon, Willow, Xander thought. Time to bring out all the witchy secrets and put the kibosh on this. Trying to think only good, positive thoughts about the situation they were in, he ran to join Shing. He gazed at the approaching Black Wind demons. Damn, that’s a lot of demons!
They’d planned on dividing the demonic forces and hopefully spreading them a little thin. They just hadn’t figured on how huge Zhiyong’s guest list would be.
Shing pulled out one of her pistols and shot the lead demon through the head, causing him to fall only a few feet short of her and trip some of the demons behind him, taking three others down. She holstered her pistol and took her sword in both hands, running at the crowd of attackers. Her blade blurred, then turned bloody.
Xander joined her, mostly finishing killing off the demons she’d left hacked to pieces but not quite dead. Blood covered him, feeling warm against his skin. But the dancing tornado seemed to suck the heat out of the area, turning it cold. He shivered and his teeth chattered, but he kept swinging, aiming at heads and throats, but mainly necks because the blade easily severed the spinal cords.
During one momentary lull, when they had to step back from th
e pile of melting demons Shing had dropped so they wouldn’t get caught up in them, Xander glanced at the direction Angel and Buffy were supposed to come through. He saw nothing except the thick knot of demons defending that area. Are they just held up? Xander wondered. Or is it worse?
“We need to break the other stone dragon statues if we can,” Shing said. Despite her battles and the aggressive manner she pursued, not a mark was on her.
The demons climbed over their dead comrades.
“Sure,” Xander said. “First chance we get.” Then he lifted his ax and swung again.
Chapter 27
“THEY’RE GOING TO BE KILLED.” Giles glanced at Cordelia. “Very possibly, yes. That’s what happens to Slayers.” Then he returned his attention to the large four-wheel-drive pickup that sat beside a small machine shop.
“If they get killed and we’re still here,” Cordelia commented, “there’s a good chance we’ll be killed, too.”
“Yes,” Giles agreed distractedly. Besides having fourwheel-drive and sitting very high off the ground, the pickup had a snowplow-type assembly on the front that the Watcher assumed was used for pushing wrecks and scrap metal around. A rollbar backed the cab between the twin exhaust stacks.
“What are we going to do?” Cordelia asked.
“What would you like to do?” Giles tried the pickup door. It opened.
“Help, of course,” Cordelia answered. “If there was a way.”
“There might be.” Giles looked under the seat but didn’t find any keys. Then he looked in the ashtray and behind the sun visor. It’s going to have to be done the old-fashioned way. He dug into his pants for a pocketknife, something he tried to carry anytime they were on patrol. It came in handy for putting decent points on anything wood.
“They’re not shooting as much anymore,” Cordelia observed.
“They probably ran out of bullets,” Giles said. “In movies, firearms never need to be reloaded or heroes are allowed to carry an infinite number of clips and magazines. This is real life.” He pulled himself up into the pickup and slid behind the seat.
“What are you doing?” Cordelia asked.
“Absconding with this truck,” Giles answered. He stripped the plastic covering from the hot wires, then found the ones he wanted. He touched the bare wires together and they sparked. Then the engine rumbled to life with a throaty, powerful roar. “There.” The Watcher smiled.
“Where did you learn that?” Cordelia asked.
“I was not always a good boy,” Giles replied. “Are you coming?”
Cordelia raced around the truck and climbed in on the other side.
Giles glanced over his shoulder, over the huge propane tank and toolbox in the bed, then put his foot down on the accelerator. All four tires dug into the earth. Before he could stop the truck, he backed over a lowslung sports car sitting on the ground without tires.
Nervously, Cordelia pulled her seat belt on. “You have driven one of these before, right?”
“Not entirely like this.” Giles ground the gears, searching for first. “But one that should have been close enough.” He shoved the transmission into gear and let out on the clutch. The four tires grabbed hold quickly and shot the truck forward.
Giles steered with a little difficulty, amazed at how much power the truck had. They bounced across the potholes and the rough road, inadvertently slamming into stacks of cars twice. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m getting the hang of it.” He found a control he wasn’t familiar with, pulled it, and found that it moved the snowplow-like plate in front of the truck.
“I can’t see,” Cordelia said, “and if I can’t see, I know that you can’t see.”
“Just a small adjustment,” Giles said. He caromed off another stack of cars. The snowplow assembly dropped slightly, permitting him to see the way again. “There.” He peered through the darkness, then realized he had lights as well and switched them on. However, only one of them had survived the earlier impacts. He aimed the truck at the knot of demons working to get at Buffy and Angel.
Buffy and Angel had taken up positions within a culdesac made by metal stacks, unable to advance against the heavy demon troops. Zhiyong definitely wasn’t a man to go half-measures.
The demons turned and looked in Giles’s direction. He bore down on them. Then their eyes got wide and they turned to run. It was too late for several of them and they went down under the oversize tires. Others slammed off the snowplow blade, arcing up and slamming down on the hood behind it, leaving blood smears on and cracks in the windshield.
Giles braked to a halt in front of the cul-de-sac.
“Giles,” Buffy called incredulously.
“Not much of a cavalry, I’m afraid,” Giles responded. “But we are under some time pressure here.”
Buffy and Angel fought their way to the pickup.
Giles swore, watching as the demons regrouped, planning on taking advantage of the pickup’s immobility. The demons started for the truck, and some of them had found a few extra bullets.
“Duck!” Giles advised.
Gunfire took out a side window, spilling chunks of safety glass across Giles and Cordelia.
Someone pounded on top of the cab. “Go!” Buffy yelled.
“Hang on!” Giles yelled back, putting the accelerator on the floor. The tires spun for just a moment, then gripped and threw the pickup forward. The snowplow assembly smashed through the ranks of the demons.
Once through the thickest part of the demon resistance, the going got considerably easier. Giles steered confidently, aiming the pickup at the altar area.
Buffy stuck her head around the cab and by the window. “Hey, Giles, nice save. Mucho props.”
Giles jumped. “Please do give me some kind of warning before you do something like that.”
“Sorry,” Buffy replied. “Willow and Oz are in position.” She pointed at the car stack ahead, indicating the two small figures on top of it. Willow sat in the center of the stack while Oz beat back the demons that climbed the stack to get to her.
“Yes, well, we had hoped she’d be able to start her binding spell to tie the guei to their corpses before Zhiyong had united them.” Giles pointed to the swirling tornado dancing above the altar. “Because that’s definitely what that is.”
“We’ll work with what we’ve got,” Angel said through the hole in the back of the cab’s rear window. “Get us as close to Zhiyong as you can. When he goes down, maybe the rest of this will go away.”
Giles nodded, steering directly across two of the miners’ corpses and leaving only mangled bones behind.
Without warning, a demon who had obviously been hanging onto the snowplow after being hit pulled his head up above the blade. The head folded back, and the demon spat his barbed tongue through the front windshield, exploding safety glass in all directions.
Buffy jabbed the demon with her halberd, spiking the creature through the head and twisting violently enough to break the neck. The tongue turned into a long line of glob as the demon slid down the snowplow blade.
Incredibly, Zhiyong stood his ground beside the smoking altar. Giles drove straight for the man, avoiding Willow’s friend and her brother lying on the ground. No matter what, at least breaking the altar should have some effect.
Then Zhiyong raised his hand and gestured at the pickup. In the next heartbeat, a wall of undeniable force slammed into the pickup, blowing all the glass from the windows and stopping it dead in its tracks.
Giles peeled himself off the steering wheel, amazed that he hadn’t killed himself. The safety belt had probably saved his and Cordelia’s lives. He struggled to breathe, noticing that Angel and Buffy had been thrown forward, sprawling out across the hard-packed earth only a few feet short of Zhiyong.
Rabid screaming reached Giles’s ears. He glanced around and saw the remnants of Zhiyong’s demon army closing in for the kill. “Now this is going to be a problem.”
“So, Miss Summers,” Zhiyong said triumphantly, “we meet agai
n.”
Still winded from the impact against the ground, Buffy stood unsteadily and wiped the dust from her clothing. “Had to. Haven’t finished kicking your butt yet.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tasting blood and seeing the scarlet stain along her hand.
Zhiyong grinned. “Really, all this self-aggrandizing is foolish. You’re outnumbered and I control the life force of those thirty-five unfortunate souls who want nothing more than to take vengeance on those people who condemned them to their deaths, then didn’t allow them to be properly interred.”
“Of course, they’re going to settle for the descendants, and listen to what you want them to do.”
“Yes. A vengeful spirit will take that vengeance wherever it might. I’m in a position to channel that force.”
Angel groaned and staggered to his feet. He swayed uncertainly.
Buffy watched the tornado whirling, listening to the howling streaming from it. C’mon, Will. Be the spell, be the spell. “And I’m in a position to put an end to it.” She shifted her hands along the halberd. Then she saw Shing closing in on Zhiyong from the side.
Zhiyong grinned, pointing at the demons now running toward them. “Against the power and demons you see before you?”
“Yeah,” Buffy promised, watching Shing creep closer. “I’ve got you right where I want you.” At least, one of us does.
Zhiyong laughed.
Shing leaped at Zhiyong, her sword raised high above her head as she swung it at him in a move designed purely to decapitate him.
Almost casually, Zhiyong gestured toward her. She froze, hung in midleap. “You’re foolish,” Zhiyong addressed the swordswoman. “Given your very nature, you should have at least had an inkling of the power I would have over you at this time.” He gestured again and Shing blew backward like she’d been shot from a cannon.
Shing struck a pile of wrecked cars nearly two hundred yards away hard enough to kill a normal person. Shing staggered back to her feet. Metal creaked. She glanced up just in time to watch a ton of scrap cars come tumbling down on her. A huge cloud of dust belched out from under the fallen vehicles.
