“Gettin’ close now,” Spike whispered as they turned a corner. Buffy’s muscles tensed.
The sewer reeked and the floor was slippery. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, something dark and frantic fluttered up from the floor and into their faces. Buffy started to lash out at it.
“Wait, it’s”—Willow gave a nervous laugh—“just a pigeon.”
Buffy lowered her hand and squinted in the dimness and saw that Willow was right. The startled pigeon flew up to ceiling level and squeezed out through a storm drain into the sunlight above.
“Isn’t it kind of weird for a bird—,” Dawn began.
Buffy took the toothpick from her mouth and held up a hand for silence. “Hate to interrupt such a perfect John Woo moment, but listen.”
They all heard it, a muffled yell repeated every ten seconds or so. Giles straightened his glasses. “I believe that’s—”
“Xander!” Anya said.
They all ran the final twenty feet to where a three foot square opening yawned at chest level in the sewer wall. On the floor beneath the hole, a heavy, square lead plate leaned against the curved wall.
“You sure it’s not an air duct?” Dawn asked. “That’s really the entrance?”
Willow gave a kind of shrug with her eyebrows. “The one and only. Your tax dollars at work.”
Again, a muffled yell came, from the direction of the opening this time, and louder than before. Buffy turned away from the hole and started issuing orders. “Spike will take point, and I’ll go in after. Giles, I need you to be Boost Guy. Help Anya, Willow, and Dawn get into the hole, then bring up the rear so—”
“Stop her,” Giles said.
Buffy whipped back toward the opening only to find that Anya, holding the Slayomatic in her injured hand, had already scrambled inside and was crawling through the concrete tunnel.
“Bloody ’ell,” Spike said, and heaved himself in after her.
Tucking the unlit wooden torch under one arm, Buffy launched herself into the opening. She thought of telling Spike to hold Anya back, but it was too late. The short tunnel came to an end, and Buffy tumbled out a foot above floor level into a gigantic room, dimly lit by emergency lamps. Spike was helping Anya to her feet, and Buffy sprang up to an alert fighting stance.
“Take this.” Anya shoved the Slayomatic into Spike’s hands and looked around to get her bearings. Willow, Dawn, and Giles made their way into the room and stood by Spike.
The room looked almost completely empty at first. Against the wall stood rows of tri-level bunk beds without mattresses. The bunks were made of the same gray-enameled government-issue metal as the empty supply shelves and the old battered desk on the far wall. The chamber was twice as large as the basketball court at Sunnydale High had been. The surprisingly chilly air smelled of dust and mold… and death.
Across the room Xander was lashed upright to the pole of one of the bunk beds, wrapped in uneven light-colored filaments that made him look like an inept silkworm trying to spin a cocoon. His head moved slightly and he let out a groan. He looked up, saw his friends, and tried to shout something around the gag that bound his mouth.
Anya and Buffy ran toward him. Xander shook his head and frantically darted his eyes in the direction of the ceiling several times. Buffy looked up and saw that the ceiling seemed to be carpeted with something dark. Something that moved. “Giles?” Buffy said. Giles held up his flashlight and played it across the upper portion of the shelter to get a better look.
Hundreds of miniature vampires dangled upside down like tiny bats from the ceiling.
“You tramp,” Anya said, shocking Buffy anew. “Get off of him.”
Buffy looked back at Xander and saw a golden-haired fairy in a sheer green dress appear. The fairy crawled up the back of Xander’s head to the top and now stood in his brown hair, surrounded by a confident golden aura. “Queen Bee, I presume?” Buffy quipped.
Mabyana lifted a delicate hand and waved it high in the air. In unison, the creatures overhead released their hold on the ceiling and plummeted like black rain toward the floor. The Scoobies were in the trap and the battle had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sounds of heated combat erupted everywhere in the room, but Anya’s eyes were glued to Xander. Surprise number one was that the descending hordes of vampire fairies avoided Xander and Anya completely. They attacked everyone else, though, and drove Buffy backward from Xander by sheer force. Anya threw herself toward him, ignoring the pain in her wrist and the two minivamps in her boyfriend’s hair, and began to tear at the tangle of string that bound him.
Deluged by fairies, Buffy tossed down the wooden torch, dropped into a backward roll, bounced up, and did a tight spin, throwing off most of the flittering vamps that had clung to her clothing. She let out a dizzying spate of precise punches and kicks as she whirled. Without pausing, Buffy dug into her pocket and found the penknife there. “Anya,” she called, and threw the knife toward the girl. “Cut Xander loose. We’ll hold them off.”
Anya tried to catch the knife with her bandaged hand and missed. The knife clattered to the floor. She spent precious seconds fumbling around for it on the dusty linoleum. Xander shook his head and tried frantically to say something around his gag. “Got it,” Anya said, finding the small knife and flipping open the blade. There were still only two fairies on Xander: the queen and one of her henchvamps, which had crawled down Xander’s face and was trying to bite into the artery at his temple.
Xander shook his head, eyes wide with panic. He shouted something that sounded something like, “Eck, eck.”
With her free hand, Anya slapped the copper-colored fairy. It dodged out of the way and Anya’s hand connected with Xander’s cheek with a loud smack. “Eck!” Xander yelled again, darting his eyes upward as he had before.
Anya looked up to see Queen Mab repeatedly sinking her fangs into Xander’s scalp, not a deadly act but one surely meant to taunt Anya. The ex-demon decided to teach the Fairy Queen a lesson—one that she wouldn’t live long enough to forget. Pulling the butane canister from her jacket pocket, Anya lit the chef’s torch.
Xander’s wide eyes filled with panic, and he ducked as Anya brought the small torch up toward Queen Mab. The microqueen of the damned pushed off from Xander’s scalp and flitted up toward the ceiling. Xander’s head snapped up again and his eyes pleaded with Anya. “Eck!”
Anya turned off the chef’s torch, slid it back into her pocket. Believing she understood what he was saying, Anya nodded. “Yes, I want sex too, but we’ll have to get you out of here first.” She switched the penknife to her right hand cut through the gag of rope and shredded rags. She yanked the gag away and kissed Xander on the mouth.
He returned her kiss for a split second, then jerked his head back and said, “Desk, not sex. Up there.” She looked up.
Above them, suspended by a hodge-podge of string, shredded cloth, and rope was an enormous army-style metal desk that must have weighed three hundred pounds. When they entered the room, it had been hidden from view by clusters of dark fairy vamps, but now only a few of the creatures clung to the supporting strands, nibbling on them. Rope and string frayed, and the desk swung precariously. There was no time to think. Anya sliced through the bonds that held Xander to the upright post of the triple bunk, grabbed him, and dove onto the naked metal springs of the bottom bunk.
Just in time.
The rope holding the desk gave way and the metal behemoth swung downward. Two of the desk’s steel legs hit the top bunk, catching there and collapsing the bed to its second level. The main body of the desk and the other two legs arced downward like a two-ton wrecking ball, smashed into the side of the bunk, and then clanged to the floor exactly where Xander and Anya had been standing. Drawers popped open, and a few dozen pristine No. 2 pencils flew out and scattered on the floor.
Xander and Anya lay panting for a moment. “We almost got hit by a desk,” he said.
“It wouldn’t have been the first time,” Anya sai
d.
“Knew you missed me,” Xander quipped, “but I didn’t think you’d try to get me into bed this fast.”
Metal screeched above them. Anya grabbed Xander and rolled off the bunk out onto the floor. The upper two bunks collapsed onto the lower one.
“ ’Course,” Xander said, “always a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. And, not that I mind you being on top—”
Anya pressed her mouth to his and kissed him, longer this time. “You’re sweet.”
Xander grinned. “Probably just the donuts. But maybe you could untie me? I’m feeling a little pinned down here.”
Anya finished cutting Xander free from his tangled cocoon. Buffy paused in her fighting to help Xander to his feet. It felt good to be free again.
* * *
Back at Buffy’s house, Lucket tried to break free. Ignoring the pain in his gut, he grabbed at the wooden stake that held him down. He twisted and rocked it back and forth. He pulled hard with his deceptively strong arms. Three of his wings pushed him upward, but the fourth, the broken one, refused to respond. The wing might heal, given time. If he managed to escape. Other fairies might have given up, but as long as he was alive, he had a duty to help his queen, the enchanting Mabyana.
He clamped his miniature perfect teeth together and yanked at the wooden toothpick again and again. He braced his feet beneath him and pushed up, straining with feet, thighs, wings, and arms. Finally the small wooden spear came free in his hands. Lucket staggered to his feet, struggling to gather his strength, and flung the piece of wood far away. Forcing himself to fly in spite of his broken wing, Lucket made a circuit of the room in what looked like a drunken flutter, avoiding the direct sunlight that streamed in through the window.
At last he saw his chance. The kitchen sink was still in shade. He landed on the kitchen counter, crawled beneath the shaft of sunlight, and threw himself down the drain. With any luck, he would soon see his queen.
* * *
Back in the storm shelter, pandemonium reigned. That, and holy water. With his spray bottle set to mist, Giles shot clouds of acid spray into the air that melted the delicate wings of the vampettes, who plummeted to the linoleum.
“There are too many of them.” Buffy picked up the wooden torch, lit it, waved it, and fried a few incoming.
Willow took a handful of powder from a pouch tied to her belt loop. She threw the powder high into the air and muttered a few words in Latin, wishing that Tara were here beside her, instead of tutoring David Wilson.
“What was that? What did you do?” Anya asked.
Buffy took the toothpick from her mouth and staked a minivamp that was doing a kamikaze straight toward her face. It burst into a cloud of glittering dust, mere inches from her green eyes. “Will that disable them, Will?”
“Not permanently,” Willow said, watching the spell take effect. Suddenly every fairy the powder had touched, probably two hundred in all, went into microscopic convulsions accompanied by tiny sharp squeaking sounds. With each convulsion, the fairies twirled or spun end-over-end.
“What the—,” Xander began.
“A sneezing spell,” Willow explained. “It’ll keep some of them busy for a while so they can’t all attack at once.”
Over near the entrance, Dawn had set her candle down and was using her butterfly net to scoop handfuls of non-allergic fairies from the air. She misted the net with holy water, and when she swung the net down with ten or so fairies in it, she quickly upended it over the potted candle, and shook. Three fairies burned in the candle flame. The rest ran frantically around inside a circle of garlic powder Dawn had sprinkled around the candle.
“Good work, Nibblet,” Spike said.
“Shake and bake, just like Mom taught me,” she said, pointing at the badly singed microvamps on the floor. Spike bent down and precision staked them with the toothpicks on his fingertips, careful not to touch the garlic powder.
Giles sprayed more holy water into the air and another handful of disabled fairies dropped to the floor. Several enraged wingless vamps threw themselves at his feet and crawled up his pant legs.
Suddenly Spike was there with the Slayomatic. He swung it lightly downward, killing six of the fairies with one blow. Giles shook his foot, and three fairies lost their grip and slid out of his pants leg. Spike tapped the Slayomatic again across the floor and across Giles’s shoes. Giles, still being attacked from above, sprayed again. Spike rolled away, shouting colorful curses. “Hello? Vampire here. Not the enemy,” he said, putting a hand up to his badly burned cheek. “Watch who you’re shooting with that stuff.”
“Terribly sorry,” Giles said. “Thanks for the assist.”
In pain and frustration, Spike swung the Slay-omatic overhead, dusting three minivamps in midair.
Anya and Xander fought their way over to the others. Buffy executed a flying kick that sent several flying vamps . . . well . . . flying, and stopped beside them, breathing hard. Several fairies approached from above, carrying a broken chunk of cinderblock, ready to drop it on Anya’s head.
“Look out!” Willow yelled.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Buffy reacted on sheer instinct. She dropped her torch. “Duck,” she snapped, bounding to the top of the nearest bunk bed, pushing off and nailing the cinderblock-carrying vamps with a flying kick three feet above Anya’s head. Buffy’s legs caught her with a shock-absorber landing just on the other side of Xander, and she bounced back to her feet, shaking her finger in the air. “Bad fairies.”
“Okay, fill me in,” Xander said. He lashed a fist upward at a cluster of approaching wingies. “What are the big guns?”
“Spike has a blowgun,” Anya said, shaking a glowing aqua fairy from her head. Spike slid the Slayomatic across the floor toward Xander, and pulled out the blowgun.
“No, no, no, no,” Xander said, scooping up the Slayomatic. “I mean the grand finale. The big beef. How do we take these little suckers out permanently? You know, micro-Armageddon.”
Buffy absently delivered a punch and then a roundhouse kick to another batch of approaching fairies. “Plan. Right. It involves fire.”
Xander’s eyes narrowed. “You sure you have a plan? A.k.a., Slayerettes win, vampettes lose?”
“We brought weapons. We rescued you.” Anya hugged Xander. A trio of henchvamps flew in over-head.
Xander swept the Slayomatic upward and took out one of them. “Maybe it’s just me, but I’d be a bit cautious about that last assumption there.”
“Hate to interrupt your ladies’ tea,” Spike called from across the room, staking a fairy vamp in the air with one fingertip, “but we’ve got a war on here.”
Anya pulled out her chef’s torch again. Xander hefted the Slayomatic. Buffy sprang back into action—literally. She picked up her wooden torch, swung herself to the top bunk of the row of beds that lined one wall, held the torch high in the air, and sizzled a cluster of fairies that hovered twelve feet above the floor. She bounced, testing the springs. The metal coils held firm and gave a satisfying creak. She jumped high and sizzled every flying vamp she could reach with her torch. When her feet touched back down on the springs, she bounced up into a forward somersault and landed on the next bunk over.
On the floor Xander flailed with the Slayomatic, taking out five or so flying vamps with each pass. “Gee, at this rate, Sunnydale should be safe from microvamps in, oh, a year or two.”
Willow flung a handful of garlic powder into the air, repelling the fairies around her who had not already sneezed themselves out of the line of fire. The garlic-flavored vamps dropped to the floor, coughing and retching, and Willow knelt beside them. She took the pipe cleaners from her pocket, but saw no efficient way to make use of them. She secured a couple of toothpicks to her fingertips with the fuzzy wires and began picking off the lethal pests. “They’re cute,” she said, pouting slightly at the necessity of having to kill the precious miniatures.
“Cute?” Buffy echoed. She had a rhythm going now across the b
unk beds. Bounce, swing, sizzle, bounce, somersault to new bed, bounce, swing, sizzle.
“Yeah,” Willow said. She held up a cross as twenty bad fairies darted toward her. “You know, in an evil, ugly sort of way. And—and numerous. Let’s not forget numerous.” Most of the fairies flew away from the crucifix. Some of them simply swerved around it. “Sorry.” She batted two of them out of the air with the cross and was rewarded with a satisfying sizzle as they dispersed in a crackle of scintillating dust. “Ooh. Pretty.”
“Running out of ammunition,” Giles reported. A tiny vampire landed on his turtleneck collar and bit the bare skin just above it. “Blast,” he said, but before he could bring a hand up to swat at it, the microvamp dissolved into a puff of ash. Giles glanced to his side and saw Spike fifteen feet away, reloading his blowgun near the entrance beside Dawn.
Dawn swept her holy-water-dampened butterfly net through the air again and caught several flying monsters. “Is this what they mean by fly fishing?” she wondered aloud.
“Thank you, Spike,” Giles said.
“Don’t mention it,” said Spike. “No, really, I mean it. Don’t.”
“Yes, well, mind you don’t let any get away,” Giles said.
Spike looked down at the entry tunnel just as something small and glowing darted past him. Into the room. A silver-haired sprite with a broken wing and lavender clothing. “Bugger all,” Spike said. “Knew I should have offed that fairy when I had the chance.”
“It’s Lucket,” Dawn said, recognizing the tink.
Anya crawled along the floor with her tiny chef’s torch, dusting any minivamps that had been grounded by stunning blows or holy water. A line of them stretched to the wall of the bomb shelter, reminding her of a trail of oversized nightmare insects. She burned and staked and burned again. “Much more satisfying than chasing ants.” As she worked her way to the corner by the wall, Anya suddenly found herself face-to-face with Queen Mab and two of the queen’s vampy minions.
Little Things Page 13
