ONCE MORE PART TEN
The whole situation had gone vastly awry. Spike had set it up to be a clean operation, that if the Slayer had not fallen at the Bronze ambush she would clearly be blown sky-high or drained by her birthday surprise. Spike had consulted all the sources; he knew that having slain less than two vampires in the last two years would put Buffy unawares. He was wrong, of course, for as she stood in the newly falling rain beside Angel, rescued, Xander had made the wise move of leaving the heavy package out in the alley while he answered the front door. If Spike had had all his wits, or brains, about him at the time, he would have chastised the cake attacker in a very not-nice way, but as Rory struggled to gather the startled troops and wait for Spike's regeneration, the bomb went off.
"Oh my GOD!" Cordelia stumbled quickly to her feet and ran the other way, towards the retreating Willow. Caught unawares, all the smaller girl was able to do was hold on for dear life as they leapt to the other end of the roof, narrowly missing the huge ball of fire that spread blazing through the narrow space between the Bronze and its adjacent warehouse space. The curles of the flame tickled upward into the sky, inches from the edge where Cordelia and Willow had just sat. The two women lay on top of each other, Cordelia's dress covered in blackened ash, Willow confused and panting hard. When the fire appeared to be confined to a blaze hundreds of feet below, Willow wasted no time in grabbing two stakes from her jacket pocket and motioning towards the door for Cordelia.
"Let's go!" she called, throwing open the door to the second floor of the Bronze. Thankfully, somehow, the buliding had not gone up in smoke. The fire had been serious, though. All Cordelia could think about was ...
"XANDER!" The tall, preternaturally graceful promoter climbed to her feet, nearly tripping in her knee-high boots, caked in soot. She followed Willow down through the trap door, coming to the first floor just as Xander, covered in billowy black piles of what looked like whipped cream, raced back in through the front entrance, quickly slamming the door behind him. There was barely enough time to gather all their senses before Willow swiped the cordless phone behind the bar and quickly dialed. All were silent, the marrieds staring dumbfoundedly at one another in their current states.
"Hello? Yes, get me the Sunnydale Fire Department, please ... ... ... Yes, there's a fire! It's an emergency! There could be property damage if we don't get trucks over here soon." Willow grimaced. "No, nobody's hurt, thank God. Raging, definitely. Come right over, the address is ---"
Cordelia turned to Xander and hurled herself at him, hugging tightly, mixing her black with his. They held each other close. "It'll be okay," he whispered. "The club's fine. We're fine." He noticed the tears running down her cheeks and pulled her off him placing his hands around her chin. "Babe, we're gonna be okay!" He smiled, and she couldn't help but laugh, mixing whoops with tears. "We've got our lives, isn't that the most important thing?" She nodded, and he took back to rocking her as Willow got off the phone with the FD.
"They're on their way," she answered, nodding at them curtly. Then, businesslike demeanor melting: "What happened?"
"I should have known as soon as it happened," Xander replied, purposefully staring away from the two women. "I mean, it was a trap from the beginning. It was a bomb, one just big enough for me to bring into the club and get my face ripped off. Really, I guess, for Buffy to get her face ripped off."
Suddenly, Willow and Xander's eyes met above Cordelia's form. They both started for the door. "We have to - I mean, she's gotta be out there," mumbled Willow. Cordelia understood and followed her husband, uttering as few words as possible on the subject.
"Wait!" Xander interjected. "Got a stake on you?" Willow, hand on the doorknob, peered at him quizzically. "Let me," he added. Stepping in front of her and taking the weapon proffered by Cordelia, Xander took a fighting stance and gingerly cracked open the door, thrusting his body out into the threshold. Just as he had calculated, the female vampire, also dripping with the remains of Buffy's cake, lunged at him and was instantly impaled on Xander's stake.
"Let's go. Work to do." He motioned to a very confused Willow and Cordelia, who, save for a nervous backward glance from the Bronze's owner, ignored the mass of baked goods in the doorway and followed him out into the night.
*****************
Buffy heard the explosion as a far-off pop, a sonic boom in the distance. She backed away from Angel, stumbling, having forgotten how to hold her hands at her sides.
"What - what was that?" He cocked his head, hearing the crackle of flames, and grabbed her by the arm. They shared a knowing glance for a moment. Both could sense danger better than love, lately.
"Come on!" Buffy ran with him, and in less than a minute they were at the Bronze, with enough time to see Xander stake his opponent and the three figures emerge from the club. Buffy ran towards her friends, waving her arms
"Guys! Over here!" They met up in the gutter of Main Street, no one ready to fully acknowledge how much they had worried about each other. There was an awkward pause before Willow rushed towards her oldest friend..
"Angel!" She sounded to him for all the world like the old Willow, the innocent and steadfast girl he'd come to trust so much over the years. Who held his guilt and molded it into friendship. Angel found his smile, stepping tentatively into a warm hug with her. "Are you all right?"
He nodded, moving her head away at Buffy looked on, embarrassed and ashamed to watch. "I - I'm fine," he replied, trying to cover the cross burn on his chest with his free hand. "Thanks to Buffy, that is." No one cared to respond. Buffy clasped her hands behind her back, a familiar gesture, trying to resist the urge to run away. She couldn't do it again.
"Cordelia. Xander." Angel extended a hand to his once-romantic rival, not even knowing how to greet the man's wife. Instead, they just stared, sight taking in and expressing what the spread of time and words could not. As usual, Willow presented the task at hand.
"Sunup is in almost two hours, I think. Angel, can you go back to your place? I mean, the fire department should be here any minute, and we --" She was interrupted by the sounds of blaring horns from just up the street. "Don't want any questions we can't answer."
Angel nodded, and as soon as they looked up he was gone. Buffy's mouth was still open. She wanted to tell him they could be waiting there, that he wasn't safe without someone, without her, beside him. But he was gone. She bit her lip and looked away from the spot where he'd just stood.
And before anyone could talk, a spray of bullets came from the roof of he opposite building, the same place where Buffy and Willow had been shot at earlier that evening. But this time there had to be more than one, for the direct rhythm of submachine guns hit the ground in multiples of three. There were so many!
"RUN!" cried Buffy, and they all started to sprint towards the Bronze, a straight, narrow line that darted in and out of the guns' path. In a narrow moment of escape, they stepped back over the cake and got inside.
"Guns," Willow whispered, her world shattered by this. If Spike was still alive, and a year older by the next day, he would soon be stepping up the attack. If they faced guns and bombs now, this was only the beginning.
"Thirty." Now Willow said it out loud. "Thirty."
"What?" Cordelia asked.
"Tomorrow, Spike will be thirty years old." The hacker turned librarian directed her comment to Buffy now. "He's still alive, isn't he?" The Slayer closed her eyes and shook her head quickly. Yes.
"There are thirty winners coming to the dinner tomorrow night."
"Willow, you're scaring me." Cordelia had planned this for weeks. The Sunnydale Women's Clubs were honoring prominent members of the community at their annual dinner, and as Xander was one of the honorees she had agreed to hold the party at the Bronze. "What are you talking about?"
"It's at seven-thirty. The invitations celebrate thirty years of the Club. Each person in encouraged to donate thirty dollars at the door."
Everyone knew what she was talking about. "I hope you have a formal dress," Xander said to Buffy, no trace of sarcasm in his voice. "One that's easy to move in."
And as the Slayerettes plotted, the room was cleared of all the vampires. Rory waited patiently. The gunmen had failed to take down the Slayer, but they had her on the run. Real weaponry was something she'd never known before. And even that didn't matter now, because Spike was one.
The soup of brain debris that Buffy had scattered about the throne room began to congeal. Piles and piles of muck coagulated gently into something larger, and larger, and larger. The thing now took on a life of its own, crawling back into Spike's head. He was still immortal, thank God. Only one year older.
When Spike stood up there was a wrinkle. One that had never been there before.
His scream of agony echoed through the lair and pierced the last trails of the darkness.
"SSSSSSSLLLLLLLAAAAAAYYYYYYYYEEEEEERRRRRR!"