ONCE MORE PART EIGHT
There was only darkness. She thrashed, soundless, letting the putrid water wash over her like a film of death. Buffy came up to the surface, gasping for air, but soon submerged herself again in the muck, swimming as fast as she could. Willing herself to open her eyes in the water, looking for her entrance, she swam silently on. The night was not let into her path, but Buffy could feel it beating down on her, endlessly, like a bad, old dream. It was all she had feared it to be. And yet, deep down, somehwere she had told herself never to be, she felt wonderful here. She was the Slayer again. *God, how many times have I taken comfort in the thought that I'd never be doing this again.*
And there it was, looming in front of her. The black, shiny manhole she was to go through. It was at the bottom of the sea, however, ten feet down. So, kicking with all her might, Buffy forced her body down, down, down to it. Grabbing onto the handle to steady herself, she pulled harder and harder, sputtering until it came loose. And in a gaping flood of explosive water she was in. Quickly, Buffy hopped back onto the top of the concrete room she had entered, screwing the manhole cover back on without too much water getting onto the damp floor. *Let's not even think about how much muck you just waded through, Buffy.* She was focused on one thing, one task, one person.
The door was just where she knew it to be, a hugely serene slab of cold metal just waiting for her grand entrance. He had certainly increased security since her absence, that was for sure. Buffy stomped the excess water from her boots, shaking off her limpid dress, and rammed open the mechanism. It was almost too easy. She was inside.
The hall, the long, dark hall. She had been here before, yes. It was pitch-black, lit well by candles on the shelves on each wall. The tall doorways were the only divisions now; the doors had been ripped off for the sacrifice of privacy, no doubt, and each of the rooms was as black as the corridor. Only Buffy's increasingly sharp eyesight distinguished them for her. Impossible to see inside, however. But the sight wasn't what distinguished this hole. *Ewwwww.* The smell, a rotting pastiche of mold, garbage, and spoiled meat. The last stench came from old blood, and she was all too familiar with it. But there was something else, underneath the fear of the dark and the disgust of the fragrance. Her boots clicked across the stone floors without an echo, without a noise. She was so, so quiet. Because he was here. *He's with them.*
A voice! She came closer and closer. A mounting sense of deja vu reared its ugly head, and as Buffy fell to the floor she had a vision. A remembrance. *How I bled ... and still I love him ...* There was a slight disturbance, then a muffled cry of "Shut up". Buffy sighed soundlessly, resolving to slither across the dirty ground rather than take her chances with the most visible height of her shoes. Her stomach scratched against the gritty, black concrete, leaving traces of mildew and filth all up the perfect white dress. *Oh, well. I got dirty enough all over from the swim.* She swallowed her fear, continuing down the long hall towards the sounds, clutching feverishly at the two stakes she held. Only two. They would have to be used well. *They're in the throne room!* The one Buffy was most familiar with. It probably held a more inspired name than that, but it was surely the place where Spike reigned. The large chair he'd nearly killed her in. Yes, Buffy knew that room like the back of her hand. *Then, of course, there's always the gun. Thank you, Cordelia.* Hopefully the Bronze Queen wouldn't have needed her firepower; it would come to much greater use with Buffy.
She was there in a matter of minutes, at the mere cost of the probably gangrenous scratched and dirt covering her whole body. But he was in there, so it wouldn't matter.
The room was lit by candles which she could see from the entrance. The large steps leading into its main area were edging the back of Spike's huge chair. The 'throne'. Her senses were going wild, the whole room was becoming a huge blur. Buffy tried to shake it off as she wriggled her flat body through the entrance. *I CAN SEE IT.* Spike sat at the head of the room. In the wooden place of power. *Vampires are so primitive.* Rory, the warrior prince, knelt in penance before the master. And there, at the foot of the throne, was he. *HE.* The crowd of vampires assembled before Spike were reverent and ready. The time had come for another cutting of the traitor to be sent to the Slayer, and the kill lay prostrate below the master's dirty feet. His chest was open, bare, ready for the knife. They were thirsty.
But some force was with her. Buffy made it all the way across the first level of the room, drawing herself into a squat right behind the ostentatiously high back of Spike's chair. Strangely, she could see in the spinning recesses of her mind exactly where his head was. *Around his neck. Oh, God.* Adrenaline pulsed tangibly through her veins. Spike settled back in his chair, megalomaniac addressing his subjects.
"Silence! We are gathered here for a reason, brothers and sisters. A reason! I decreed the Slayer would see her pitiful lover dismembered. We have started. We planned a schedule." He laughed, piercing and awful, cutting through her heart. "But as I'm sure you know, I was never one to plan." The glint of Rory's knife reflected off the top of the ceiling. Buffy lost all capacity of life. There was no breath, no blink, no movement. The gun was out now, dull and powerful in her hand. She grasped it, getting no comfort. "So. Tonight. HE DIES!!!" The roar of the crowd was deafening, the chants beginning in an angry chorus of blood and murder and ... *oh ...* The laugh, the terrible laugh, rung in her deaf ears, bleeding he heart out.
And she rose, slowly and calmly, the rage of years tearing through her face, the pain of all demons releasing upon him. Buffy picked herself up in that moment, ever so slowly but surely, barely attracting notice until she was standing. Standing, straight up, in the view against the dimming fire of more than fifty vampires. The most powerful, the ones who had escaped her grasp. *They can never live another day.* The shock was audible, and as Buffy saw the back of Spike's neck tense she knew she had been discovered. Where there was once rejoicing, there was silent disbelief. The Slayer's ghost!
"I don't think so."
It all happened too soon, for the slow honey of her evening soon exploded into the same dirty, bloody water.
Angel, scrambling to his feet, stumbling towards her.
Spike ceasing his cackle and slipping in letting her sense his fear.
The hand of Rory halting any attack.
"This should help speed up the aging process."
The shot. The most perfect shot. It ran cleanly through his head, shattering the fragments of his dead skull into a billion of their own splinters, scattering the remains of Spike's head onto the floor.
The running. Her feet.
The running. His body, in her arms.
The flight. It was a nothing as it happened. Her life and her duty were scattered on those steps, weren't they?
The running.
The water, the muck and the grime against her skin again like so many old sins. And her oldest sin beside her.
The swimming. The echoes. The run the kill the cries the blood the death in the air in her mind in the music of the night and she could still hear it
THE SCREAMS!