15 - The Last Glimpse of Dawn

#


“This does not look good,” Angel muttered under his breath, looking at the mass of shadows approaching them. The wraith-like creatures barely stood out amidst the near-total darkness that had descended over New York. Even Angel’s superior eyesight could only keep track of them when they moved. The moment they stood still they faded into the background, concealed amidst the regular shadows.

“Dawn, get behind me,” he heard Buffy whisper to the girl, who probably had no clue what was going on here. Angel doubted any normal human would be able to see anything in this darkness.

Angel carefully reached into his coat. While he had hoped for Buffy, Faith, and Dawn to get out of New York before they would have to face these creatures again he had not survived more than three centuries by being careless. The apparent city-wide failure of technology was but a minor drawback. After the events in the police building Angel had made sure that it would not hinder him much.

“Close your eyes,” Angel yelled, throwing something at the advancing shadows. A second later the world around them exploded into light, the phosphorus explosion burning away all the real shadows, leaving the demonic ones standing out with stark clearness.

The light lasted only a few seconds, but that enough time for Angel to start shooting, Buffy and Faith only half a second behind him.

Enchanted bullets struck the shadow creatures and ignited into flame, terrible shrieks shattering the silence around them as their attackers were transformed into living torches. The flames from the burning wraiths provided some light to the scenery, enabling Angel to pick out more of the attackers as they moved toward them, flooding forth from the darkness like a tidal wave. People screamed and started running as the carnage ensued, leaving their useless cars behind and running off into the darkness.

“Get Dawn out of here,” Angel yelled at the two Slayers.

“The damn car won’t start, remember?” Faith was standing close to her priced vehicle, Dawn huddling against the useless hunk of metal. Buffy was on the other side, pumping bullets into advancing demons with a calm precision that belied the feelings Angel received from her over the link.

“Ever heard of going on foot?”

More and more of the shadow creatures burst forth, heedless of their losses as Faith, Buffy, and Angel spread fire among their ranks. There were more of them than Angel had bullets. Far more. Most of the bystanders had gone into blind panic the moment Angel’s phosphor grenade had ignited, trying to run as the world around them became a maze of shadows and flame.

“Dive into the crowds!”

Faith plugged Dawn from the ground, Buffy by her side, and the two Slayers made a run along the edge of the river, following the path most of the panicked bystanders had taken. Angel, slamming his next-to-last pair of cartridges into his guns, was two steps behind them. The shadows surged to follow.

Without breaking stride Buffy took a number of torches from her rucksack, lighting them on the run. She threw the first torch to Angel, who had holstered one of his guns to conserve bullets, lighting two more for herself.

The first shadow to catch up with them fell victim to Buffy’s torch, the Slayer slamming the burning wood right into the center of the creature and sending it screaming into the darkness. More of their attackers caught up quickly even as they reached the edge of the fleeing crowd.

Faith was clutching Dawn close to her chest, ducking as she tried to disappear among the running people. Buffy and Angel spread out a bit, not wanting their presence to give Faith’s position away, yet not daring to abandon her either. Angel hated endangering innocents this way but they had no other choice. Dawn had to live or God alone knew what would be unleashed upon this city and the world.

“Over here, bed sheets!” Buffy waved at the shadows, trying to draw them towards her and away from Dawn and Faith. “Come and get it.”

The creatures were now hovering over the crowd, circling as they seemed to have lost sight of Dawn for the moment. Angel carefully picked them off with his gun, sending one after the other burning into the dark, but there still seemed no end to them. How many of these things were there?

Faith kept her head low, glancing up only occasionally to see the mass of dark wraiths hovering above them, some bursting into flames as Angel or Buffy took them down, but quickly replaced by new ones. They seemed confused, leading Faith to hope she had in fact managed to lose them. Running in the middle of a crowd of panicked people was not exactly her idea of fun, but it beat those bastards getting their filthy hands on Dawn.

The girl was shivering in her arms, quietly sobbing as Faith tried to shield her from this nightmare.

“Don’t worry, shorty,” the dark-haired Slayer whispered to her. “We’ll be out of here in a flash, never fear.”

Without warning the crowd parted in front of her, parted around a huge black shape like water around a rock. Faith skidded to a halt, as did most other people around her, looking at the giant in black armor that was standing a mere ten feet or so in front of her, his right hand holding a sword.

“Must be the Harbinger,” Faith muttered, trying to move behind a few other gawking people before he noticed her.

“Give me the girl,” the Harbinger growled, his gleaming red eyes seemingly focused directly on her. Had he seen her yet or was he just guessing, trying to draw her out?

Angel exploded from the paralyzed crowd to her left, immediately firing on the armored creature. The bullets struck the black steel and burst into flames, but seemed unable to do any harm. The Harbinger looked at the small dents in his chest plate, then back up at Angel.

“Why do you persist in trying to stop me,” the black giant chuckled. “Nothing can hurt me.”

“Care to wager on that?” Buffy appeared behind him and shoved the burning torch right into one of the armor’s shoulder joints, having spotted the small opening there. Flames exploded from the Harbinger’s eye slits as he convulsed, the sword dropping from his hand.

Moments later a human body fell to the ground, burning.

“Where did the sword go?” Angel looked around for the gleaming blade, but it had vanished in the darkness.

Some instinct made Faith turn around, certain that something had appeared behind her, only to see a huge black fist coming toward her face. Dawn screamed.

Then everything went dark.

#

Dawn’s scream caused Buffy’s head to snap around, just in time to see Faith crumble to the ground in front of the Harbinger’s huge black figure, Dawn tumbling from her arms and trying to run away. An armored fists reached out and caught her by the hair, drawing her in.

“Get your hands off her,” Buffy screamed, running toward him.

“The girl is mine,” the Harbinger growled even as Buffy barreled into him, taking them both off their feet. Dawn managed to struggle free, losing a few strands of hair in the process, but she had barely managed two steps when the shadow creatures descended on her.

“Down!” Angel appeared above her, fending off the wraiths with bullets and fire, his demon eyes blazing. Buffy was back on her feet, raining blows on the prone figure of the Harbinger that left huge dents in his armor.

“You won’t take her,” she repeated over and over as she pounded him into scrap metal.

“Won’t I?” The creature seemed to smile at her. A moment later Buffy was standing over a dead human body, the black armor gone without a trace.

“He’s gone again,” Buffy yelled over to Angel, who was busy protecting Dawn from the wraiths and running low on bullets.

“We have to get out of here,” he yelled back. “We can’t keep this up forever.”

“How accurate.”

The Harbinger appeared behind Angel, black armor wrapping itself around the body of a shocked bystander, the woman’s surprised and scared face the last thing to be swallowed up by black steel. Angel turned around, trying to keep an eye on everything at once, but was a moment too slow.

“Angel,” Dawn screamed as the Harbinger ran him through with his sword, the tip exploding out of Angel's back in a shower of blood. The vampire convulsed, more blood gushing from his mouth, before the creature tore out his sword and let him crumble to the pavement.

Buffy fell to her knees as the pain hit her, flooding across her link to Angel. When the building had collapsed on top of him he had had time to shield her, to close down their bond as far as it was possible and keep her from feeling the pain of crushed legs and broken bones. This time everything happened much too fast and Angel’s scream of pain resonated inside her head, tearing her thoughts to shreds.

She tried to get back to her feet, tried to find the strength to fight, but could only watch in horror as the Harbinger’s steel fist grabbed Dawn and threw her over his shoulder, walking off into the darkness as the girl screamed her lungs out, begging Buffy to help her.

A moment later they were gone.

“Dawn,” Buffy screamed as she crumbled to the pavement, pressing her face into the cold concrete. This could not be happening. She had promised Dawn that she would keep her safe, that nothing would happen to her. This had to be a nightmare. It could not be real.

This was not happening. None of it.

Angel managed to prop himself up on his elbows, shoving the pain away. Pain and him were old friends, he knew how to handle it. Shove it away into the darkness, feed it to the demon dwelling there, the monster could take it. Keep the pain away from the bond, spare Buffy the agony.

Only then did he notice that Buffy was in an agony all her own.

“Buffy,” he whispered, crawling over to her. They were alone one some kind of street corner, both the shadows and the onlookers gone now, only the flames of burning wraiths shedding any light at all. His wife was cowering on the pavement, only a few steps away from an unconscious Faith, and crying into her fists.

“Keep it together, please!” He managed to reach her, his hand touching her shoulder. She tensed under his touch, but physical contact strengthened the bond. He reached into her mind, appalled at the self-loathing and guilt he found there. Whatever the Watchers had done to bind the Slayer to Dawn’s bloodline, it had caused one hell of a mess inside his wife’s mind.

“Buffy,” he yelled at her, causing her face to turn toward him. Tears were streaking from her eyes.

“Dawn still lives,” he told her, grabbing her with all the strength he could muster. “He has to set up that ritual to kill her. She needs you strong, Buffy. She needs you to rescue her. Do you hear me?”

Buffy looked at him, her face filled with confusion and fear.

“You think she still lives?” Her voice trembled, barely more than a whisper against his cheek.

“We will find her,” Angel assured her.

He just did not know whether they would be able to do so in time.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16 - Darkness Ascending, Heroes Descending

#


Spike, Willow, and Tara were trying their best to reconstruct the pentagram Tara had drawn a few minutes before the collapse of the police station when darkness came to New York. The blinds were drawn in the hotel room they used as their base, so the first thing they noticed was the sudden failure of both the lights and Willow’s palm computer.

Tara gasped as the malevolent presence she had felt ever since coming to this city suddenly intensified a hundredfold, pressing in on her from all sides. Spike jumped to his feet and carefully glanced past the blinds, expecting to encounter daylight. Only there was none.

“I think we have a problem, witchy girls.”

“Tara?” Willow sat by her panting lover, whose eyes seemed focus on something far away. Cold sweat was running down her forehead.

“They are cutting us off,” the witch muttered, wringing her hands. “Cuttting us off from the light, from the warmth.”

Spike drew his com from his coat, but it was every bit as dead as the lights and the computer.

”You think the Slayers got the little bit out in time?” He looked at the two witches.

For a moment they all just looked at each other worriedly, then both Willow and Tara sprung up, grabbing their coats and swords, and hurried for the door.

“Yeah,” Spike muttered, grabbing his own coat and following them. “That’s what I thought, too.”

#

New York quickly descended into chaos. For anyone without preternatural night vision the darkness was completely impenetrable and no electric lights or any other kind of technology worked. Inevitably some people panicked. Other people though of non-technological means to create light, namely fire. More than once the panicked people and the ones playing with fire were one and the same.

By the time Spike, Willow, and Tara, the vampire leading the nearly blind witches by the hands, found their friends several buildings were aflame and hundreds of smaller fires had flared all across the city. Spike doubted that he would have been able to find his Sire in this chaos if they had not known which road the Slayers wanted to take out of town. New York was a madhouse and the flames turned the darkness into a blood-tinged twilight, the air filled with screams and the sounds of violence.

Spike was profoundly thankful that Wesley was not with them. Thinking of the old man stumbling around amidst this insanity was enough to turn even his bleached hair gray.

Buffy, Angel, and Faith were in the middle of a large crossing, the remains what looked like a few dozen burning black sheets surrounding them. Spike could smell blood, lots of it, and saw the healing wound in his Sire’s stomach. And then there was the bleeding cut on Faith’s forehead.

Before he even knew what happened he was by Faith’s side, taking a worried look at her wound.

“Are you all right, pet?” A second later he frowned, realizing how he was acting all of a sudden.

“Just a scratch,” Faith muttered, still a bit stunned and seemingly oblivious to his behavior. “That big armor freak took Dawn, though.”

“They have Dawn?” Willow and Tara came up beside them, their faces pale in the dim light of the flames. “Is she ...”

“She was still alive when the Harbinger carried her off,” Angel said, his arm slung around the shoulders of a very shocked-looking Buffy. “They will need to prepare that ritual before they can kill her. Which means we yet have a chance to rescue her.”

Buffy just nodded, her body like a coiled spring ready to snap at a moment’s notice, but having nowhere to direct all that pent-up energy.

“Willow, Tara,” Angel addressed the two witches. “Did you manage to reconstruct that pentagram?”

“Mostly,” Willow looked down, “but then all the technology failed and we lost the computer. No hardcopies either, I’m afraid.”

“Do you remember where its center is? That would be the most likely place for the final part of the summoning to take place, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess. The center was on 42nd street as I recall, somewhere close to the Avenue of the Americas. We weren’t able to pin down the exact position, sorry.”

Tara glanced around all the time, her arms wrapped around her body. The cold was pressing in on her from all sides and she wondered whether she would ever feel warm again.

“I ... I think if we can get to the general vicinity of whoever is casting this darkness spell I can home in on them.”

“Good, then let’s ...,” Angel began.

“They won’t be taking Dawn there,” Buffy looked at them all with wild eyes, appearing more like a panicked animal than anything else. Both Spike and the witches saw that Faith, having shaken off the effects of being knocked unconscious, was not in much better condition. “They will put her into that pentagram somewhere. It could be anywhere in New York.”

Angel realized she was right. He had only seen the pentagram Tara had drawn on the map for a minute or two, but none of the crossed-out points that signified a victim with the birthmark had been anywhere near the center of the conjuring circle.

“The crossed dots,” Spike suddenly snapped his fingers. “That’s where they’re taking her.”

“What?”

“I got a look at that pentagram when Red and Blondie reconstructed it, peaches. Those crossed dots, the ones with the birthmark, were always either at the points of the pentagram or where two of the lines crossed.”

“That still leaves us with ten possible locations, Spike,” Angel reminded him. “We don’t have the time to ...”

“No,” Tara interjected, managing to visualize the pentagram in her mind. “He is right, the intersections of the pentagram were always falling together with the crossed spots. Except for one place.”

One spot that was still missing a victim? The thought came to all of them at once.

“Where is that spot,” Buffy was all over Tara, grabbing the blonde witch by the shoulders. Tara almost flinched back from the look on her friend’s face. “Tell me, Tara!”

“Some ... somewhere near Central Park. It’s the northernmost tip of the pentagram. 59th Street, I think.”

“What are we waiting for then?” Buffy was on the verge of starting to run.

“Fuck,” Faith cursed, holding her back for a moment. “That’s more than halfway the length of the island from here. How are we supposed to get there in time without a car?”

“Can’t you teleport us there or something?” Buffy looked pleadingly at Willow.

“With that much black magic in the air we’d probably arrive in pieces,” the redhead told her friend. “But I think I have another idea.”

Angel followed her gaze and saw that they were only a block away from one of New York’s many zoos, quite a large one, too. And where there was a zoo ...

“Will,” he addressed his childe, “when was the last time you rode a horse?”

#

Ten minutes later they had acquired four horses from the stables of the zoo, driving the nearly panicked animals up the Broadway at their top speed. Angel and Spike each rode a horse, Tara sitting behind Angel and clutching his waist. The other two horses carried Buffy and Faith, the latter had Willow behind her.

“Willow, Buffy, Faith,” Angel yelled at them. “You find and rescue Dawn.” As if he could have stopped them, he mused. “Tara, Spike, and me will pay a visit to the center of this pentagram and try to lift this darkness.”

Willow nodded, the two Slayers barely giving a sign that they had so much as heard him. Both of them were completely focused on rescuing Dawn and Angel doubted they had really needed any directions to find her. They drove the poor horses without mercy, their gazes like searing fire in the gloom surrounding them.

Angel was not sure that it was wise to let them go without either Spike or himself along as backup, but they had limited manpower to work with here. Faith and Buffy would do whatever it took to rescue Dawn, that much he was certain of, and Willow could hopefully keep them from doing anything stupid in the process. The witches were not happy at being split up, he could see that, but he wanted at least one person fluent in magic along on both teams.

Unfortunately this left him with few alternatives. He could only pray that it was enough.

They parted ways when they reached the Avenue of the Americas, Buffy, Faith, and Willow pressing on along Broadway towards Central Park, the others veering off toward the center of the pentagram. Tara, holding onto Angel’s waist for dear life, was trying to home in on the source of the darkness.

Close, yet still far away. Where was it? So close and yet ... downwards.

“Stop!” Angel immediately brought the horse to a halt, the animal rearing back as he pulled back the reins. Tara climbed off the horse and wandered around for a moment, Angel and Spike keeping a lookout for any sign of danger.

Looking up Tara studied the building they stood in front of. Bryant Tower, the newest and tallest addition to New York’s skyline. Didn’t Magitech have an office in there? She was not quite sure, but the building was known even to non-New Yorkers.

“Is it in there?” Angel had walked up to her, gun in hand, painfully aware of how little he had left in the way of bullets.

“Not in there,” Tara muttered, dropping her gaze. “Under there.”

It took them five minutes to get inside, partly due to the fact that some scared people had barricaded themselves in the lobby. Another ten minutes passed until Tara found something that Angel was sure was not part of the building’s specs.

A broad stairway, lit by a seemingly endless number of torches, leading down into the gloom.

“You get the feeling we’re in the right place, mate?” Spike looked at Angel, his own guns at the ready.

“I get the feeling we have a lot of stairs ahead of us.”

As fast as they dared the three people began their descent.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17 - Twilight’s Last Gleaming

#


Wesley had returned to his hotel room just in time to watch the gathering darkness from his balcony, watch as the light of sun was locked away from the city, to be replaced only by the crimson glare of fire. For long minutes the former Watcher could do nothing but watch in rapt fascination as civilization gave way to fear and violence, turning New York into a madhouse.

Everything inside him was screaming to go find his friends, who would no doubt be giving their best to fight this evil, would spare no effort to save all the people who now found themselves locked in shadows. His mind knew, though, that he would only hinder them. He had fought the good fight for a long, long time, but he was only human.

Sighing he walked back into his room, lit by a single candle he had managed to find in the maid’s closet just down the corridor. No, the only thing he could do to aid his friends now was to try and find out more about the thing they would be facing. He had no idea how to get any information he might find to them, seeing as he did not know where they were or even whether they were still ... he chased those thoughts away.

As more fires sprang up outside Wesley buried himself in the Watchers Council database, skimming through lore and knowledge accumulated over the course of a millennium and more. He was not feeling very hopeful, seeing as it had taken him days to find even what little information he had been able to give Angel and the others earlier. Had that really been but a few hours ago?

When he eventually did find another document pertaining to present circumstances he was surprised. Though, after reading through it, not pleasantly so.

“Here follows the account of Briar Matthews, High Prophet of the Council, and the revelation regarding the threat of Golgotha:

“It comes out of fire and shadow, striding across worlds like a titan, leaving pain and destruction in its wake. I name thee Devastator, devourer of worlds. As its shadow falls over our people the darkness shall consume all that is pure and decent, reducing man to animal, spreading violence and hatred like plague.

“A thousand worlds it has consumed, but they could not silence its hunger and craving. Its shadow now falls on our world and the sons of man shall tremble before it.”

Wesley read on, learning that Briar Matthews had died mere minutes after he had uttered these words. By that time the Slayer had already gone out to fight the Harbinger and the Council then mobilized all the knights and warriors loyal to their cause to aid her. Together they defeated it, preventing the coming of Golgotha, at least for that day.

Today, though, there was no army of knights in sight, only a city full of frightened people and his friends. With another sigh Wesley realized that he had no way of getting this new information to said friends. Would it make a difference anyway? He knew that Angel and the others would give their best, even without knowing what kind of threat Golgotha really was.

A thousand worlds it has consumed ...

Wesley went back out on the balcony and watched the city burn, praying to whatever gods might be listening that this world he had sworn to protect would not be number 1001.

#

“There!” Faith’s yell caused Buffy to look where her sister Slayer was pointing. They had ridden their poor horses almost into the ground, their hooves bleeding from the hard concrete of the streets, but they had finally reached Central Park. In the light of the fires Buffy was able to see the movement of shadows.

And a single small figure, crucified to a wall at the park’s edge.

“Dawn!” Her scream seemed to drive her horse to one final effort, jumping over the low fence surrounding the park and galloping right into the middle of battle. Dozens of shadows surrounded Dawn, who was screaming and sobbing for all her little lungs were worth. She was still alive.

With a ferocity that almost frightened her Buffy tore into the shadows. The primal force that had touched her, the Slayer, was fully unleashed, all of its strength focused on obliterating those that threatened Dawn. The world around her was reduced to enemies and allies, all her senses going into overdrive as she moved on pure instinct. Swinging the two torches they had improvised like swords, she was setting the living black sheets aflame wherever she found them.

Faith and Willow were half a step behind her, Faith lost in the same fighting madness as her sister Slayer. The two of them fell into rhythm, moving almost like a single entity, and the shadows were all but helpless before them.

Willow wielded her dragon-forged blade with deadly accuracy, glancing cuts more than enough to unleash dragon’s fire on her enemies. The shadows screamed as half their number went up in flames during the first few seconds.

“We’re coming for you, Dawn,” Buffy yelled at the young girl, fighting to reach her through the mass of opposition. The shadows tried to rip her back, slashing at her with claws of darkness, trying to strangle her with invisible hands. None of it touched her, she barely noticed them. They were nothing but obstacles, things that had to be removed in order to reach Dawn.

“Buffy!” Dawn saw her, a flicker of hope appearing on her face.

#

“Incoming!” Spike’s yell shattered the silence. They had gone down what Angel estimated to be several thousand stairs and there was no bottom in sight. Something else was, though, namely a mass of shadow creatures erupting from below them.

“We are close,” Tara murmured, holding her sword tighter. The blade was already humming, the fire enclosed in its steel responding to the magic unleashed by its twin. Willow was fighting, Tara knew, and it looked like she was about to join her.

“One way or another,” Angel said, jacking a fresh round into his gun, “we have to reach the bottom of these stairs.”

“No prisoners then,” Spike nodded. “Fine by me.”

Then the shadows reached them and the three warriors launched into battle.

#

The Harbinger stood in front of the Ring, stolen eyes closed as he basked in the power of his master. Soon now. Very soon. The power of the cursed sorcerers was all but spent, its last ember would be snuffed when the life of the girl ended. Her soul would flow into the pentagram, her very essence empowering that which she had been born to keep imprisoned.

The irony was so very delicious.

A shadow appeared beside him, whispering. The enemies were coming, they had found his stronghold. The Harbinger just smiled. Let them come. They would arrive in time to see his master walk the Earth, to tremble in terror as its shadow fell upon them all.

“Mere minutes now,” he whispered in his stolen voice. “In the dark of this night you shall burn like a star.”

Suddenly something else drew his attention. Someone was trying to disrupt the ritual. The girl, they were trying to save the girl.

Moments later a dead body fell to the ground, black armor vanishing into nothingness, and the sword of the Harbinger streaked away into the dark.

#

Buffy’s heart skipped a beat when she saw one of the shadows raise a gleaming knife above Dawn’s head, preparing to thrust it into her heart.

“No!” She was too far away to stop him.

The air shimmered and the knife glanced off an invisible barrier, falling away into the night.

“Get to her,” Buffy heard Willow call. “I can’t keep her protected for long.”

The Slayer redoubled her efforts, thrusting the enemies aside as if they were the lifeless sheets they so resembled. The shadow beside Dawn had recovered the knife and was going for another try. Then she finally broke through and dove at the wavering darkness, one of her torches still in hand.

The shadow went up in flames, screaming as the fire devoured it.

Buffy came out of her frenzy and realized that the area around Dawn and herself was free of the shadows, only burning remains scattered across the ground told of their presence. Faith was fighting the few stragglers, using everything from her lighter to burning tree trunks as weapons, quickly finishing them off. Willow lowered her blade, panting heavily from the exertion, and relaxed the force shield she had conjured up around Dawn.

“Dawn!” Buffy was by the girl’s side in a heartbeat. She was strung to the wall with ropes, none of that unbreakable magic that had bound the other bodies. They had arrived in time to stop the ritual.

“Buffy,” Dawn whimpered, fresh tears on her cheek. Tears of relief.

“You’ll be safe now,” Buffy stroked her hair, one hand ripping off the ropes. “No one will hurt you again, I swear.”

For a long moment nothing mattered except holding Dawn in her arms, the girl clinging to her with desperate strength. Angel was a faint presence at the edge of her bond, sharing in her relief at Dawn’s safety, letting her know that they were close to breaking into the center of the pentagram. They would need more help, though, meaning Buffy, Faith, and Willow better get moving soon.

In a minute, Buffy resolved.

During the battle it had not mattered to any of them that the ground around the proposed sacrificial site was littered with bodies. The shadows had cleared the area of human interference, not caring about the lives of those they snuffed. The darkness was hiding most of the bodies from prying eyes, sparing Buffy and the others the gruesome pictures.

It also prevented them from seeing the sword that suddenly appeared in the hand of one of the dead bodies. A body that began to move once more.

#

Angel had just discarded yet another group of shadows that had tried to stop them, spending yet more of his precious bullets, when he gasped and stumbled.

“Peaches?” Spike was by his side in a heartbeat, looking around for any lurking shadow that might have hurt him. Only there was none.

Angel screamed as pain flooded into his bond. There was physical pain, a hard and unexpected blow to the back of his head – not his head – shortly followed by an anguish that threatened to tear even his dead heart to pieces. Angel fell to his knees, breathing heavenly, tears streaming from his eyes as he muttered something under his breath.

“No,” Spike heard as he held his Sire and friend. “Please no!”

Tara saw him, saw the turmoil flooding into his aura, and then felt something move deep below them. Something had just changed. The air was filled with a terrible pressure, as if a door had burst before a shock wave, power spilling up the stairway and hitting her like a steam train.

Tara held on to the railing for balance, trying to breathe as malevolence the likes of which she had never even imagined threatened to swallow her whole. A stench was creeping up the stairway, the stench of roasting human flesh and boiling blood.

“We’re too late,” she whispered, her face white as a sheet. “We’re too late.”




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18 - Now Arriving in New York City

#


It all happened so fast.

One moment Buffy was hugging a crying Dawn to her chest, overwhelmed with joy at having come in time to save the girl, the next she heard Faith yelling something and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

There was a noise behind her, a shadow falling over her. Buffy tried to turn around, raising her arms to defend Dawn, but she was too slow. The huge figure of the Harbinger struck, his sword slicing through the air towards Buffy’s neck. Wild instinct made her move, she threw her body down and to the side, and instead of slicing through her throat the sword glanced off the top of her head, the impact sending her sprawling, stars exploding before her eyes.

“Dawn,” someone screamed. Faith?

“She is the last,” the Harbinger growled. Buffy saw him raise his sword once more.

“No!” The air around Dawn was shimmering again, Willow pouring her magic into a force field to protect her from the killing blow. Faith was moving toward them, but more shadows appeared without warning, swarming on her like ants.

“Thus does our enemies’ plot fail.” The sword sliced through Willow’s force field without even slowing down and Dawn’s scream fell silent.

#

“Dawn is dead,” Angel muttered, getting back to his feet. Buffy’s pain and anguish was pouring into him in huge waves, almost drowning out his own thoughts, but as much as he wanted to take her pain, to comfort her, there was no time for that now.

“We’re too late,” Tara repeated, staring down into the darkness with wide eyes.

“Not yet we’re not,” Spike dragged them both with him, going further down the stairs. “Maybe that magical barrier thing failed but that doesn’t mean they’ve had the time to make good on that yet. Get your butt in gear, peaches!”

Angel realized he was right. Whatever had bound this mysterious Ring the Watchers had talked would fail with Dawn’s death, but the Harbinger would hopefully need some time to use it to complete the summoning ritual.

Pushing all of Buffy’s pain and fear aside, closing down their bond as far as he could, he joined his two friends as they ran down the stairs.

#

In a cavern deep below Bryant Tower the artifact known simply as the Ring stood silent in the dark. For over a thousand years it had stood like this, quiet and impassive, surrounded by an invisible barrier that would keep man, demon, and god away from it, sealing it for the sake of the world. The barrier could only be seen in the light of the flames, when the crimson glare reflected off it, twinkling like a thousand little stars.

Then the stars went out.

#

When the finally reached the bottom of the stares the air around them was thick with moving shadows, slashing and tearing away at them from all sides. Angel had spent all his bullets, now fighting with torch and knife, channeling all the demonic rage he always kept suppressed inside him into his assault. A dozen and more wounds covered his body but he did not slow down.

Spike was by his side, covering his back. The bleached vampire used his final bullets for all their worth, firing them at the thickest concentrations of shadows, where the unleashed fire spells could do the most damage. His ancient leather coat was ripped into so much shreds, his pale body bleeding where the creatures had cut him open, but William the Bloody pressed on.

Tara was the one most effective against the shadows, though. The blade Firefang burned them even with the slightest touch and the blonde witch used her magical prowess to conjure dozens of small witchlights, little more than tiny balls of flame normally used for lighting one’s way, but they proved devastatingly effective against the shadows.

Before them stretched a vast cave, an underground cathedral of dark rock and glimmering fire. They could not see more than a few yards in every direction, but they all felt the malice pressing in on them from somewhere ahead. They all felt that they were approaching the center of the darkness.

#

New York was in flames. Most of the people were either out on the streets, driven into madness by a force none of them understood, or huddling in the dubious safety of their homes, hoping that the insanity and the violence would pass them by.

Outside the black barrier that had enclosed the island of Manhattan there was a flurry of activity. Military units were gathering, trying to figure out a way to break through the darkness. Civilians were evacuated from the surrounding areas as fast as humanly possible.

Many eyes all over the world were on New York, for in some way they all knew that something terrible was happening there. Through some sense none of them was able to describe they could feel it, could feel that something monstrous and horrible was about to enter their world and that New York was its door.

So they watched, they waited, and they prayed.

#

“Over there,” Spike yelled, setting yet another shadow aflame. Was it his imagination or was their number finally dwindling? He had lost count of how many of these creatures he and the others had destroyed, had lost count of the pains raking his body from where they had torn away at him. He was dead, he could take it. The only thing that mattered was reaching ... that.

The writings of the Council had called it the Ring, an indestructible artifact that must never be used lest it bring the horror of Golgotha on them all.

“It sure is big,” Spike mumbled.

They were standing alone, the shadows either gone or regrouping for the moment. The Ring loomed directly ahead of them, a black arch of metal or marble that rose about twenty feet in height, strange and disturbing runes carved into it. Tara gasped, the very sight of the thing like a black claw gripping her heart.

“This is it,” she whispered. “We have to destroy it.”

Spike and Angel nodded, the latter reaching into his coat, taking out a couple of grenades he had preserved for this occasion. He had no idea whether the explosions would be able to destroy what twelve of the world’s greatest sorcerers could not, but if nothing else it would bury the thing below a few thousand tons of rock.

This was no time for finesse.

“Let’s do this.” Angel moved forward, grenades in hand.

“I don’t think so.” Without warning the Harbinger appeared before him, a cold body that had been lying on the ground, hidden by shadows, suddenly rising to be encased in black armor. Angel froze, staring the black creature.

“We will stop you,” he told him, carefully slipping the grenades back into his coat pocket. “We won’t allow you too succeed here.”

“Won’t you?” Below his black helmet the Harbinger seemed to smile.

The darkness around them came alive once more and shadows poured toward them, the wraiths coming forth from every crack and pore in the rocks, swarming them like ants. Spike noticed that there were indeed fewer of them now, but still more than enough to drive them back.

The Harbinger, seeing his enemies detained for the moment, turned toward the Ring. His master’s doorway, finally free of the accursed barrier. Everything was ready now. The pentagram was in place. He would have liked to include the final offspring in its magic, but it was not essential to its working. The lives of hundreds had flown into it. The fact that some of those lives were the descendants of the twelve sorcerers was but a welcome bonus.

Now only one thing was missing. The Harbinger raised his sword and walked toward the gate.

#

“He’s going to set that thing in motion,” Spike yelled over the screams of burning shadows. “Peaches, you have to stop him!”

Angel was closest to the Harbinger, who was standing in front of the Ring with his sword clutched in both hands. There seemed to be a ripple around him, as if the darkness itself was trying to move away from him.

“Tara,” Angel yelled at the witch. “Can you clear a path for me?”

There were still a lot of shadows between him and the creature and he was out of weapons. The torch had flickered and died, his bullets were spent, and he did not dare waste the grenades. Tearing into the shadows with his hands and the long knife he carried with him did not prove very effective.

Tara was defending herself as best as she could, calling a spell of light that made her flesh glow and sent the shadows cowering. Seeing the situation at hand she quickly made a decision.

“Catch!” Angel’s hand reached out by instinct to grasp the sword Tara threw his way. Firefang hummed as cold fingers closed around it, the blade displeased at being wielded by someone else than the one for whom it had been forged. Had Angel wrested it from Tara’s hand against her will the sword would have burned him. As it was he felt but a slight discomfort.

Slashing the blade in vicious arcs he cleared a space before him, sending the remaining wraiths screaming into the darkness where they had come from, opening up a path to his main opponent, who seemed oblivious to the battle going on behind him. Angel raised the dragonblade for a decapitation blow.

The Harbinger turned around and met him with his own sword, the two blades crashing together in a shower of sparks.

“You are too late,” the creature hissed, its eyes glowing crimson behind the helmet. “Your world belongs to my master.”

“Not yet!”

Angel remembered the many movies he had seen over the years, where sword fights would always last minutes without end, the opponents going back and forth. Real sword fights were not like that, not when people were actually trying to kill each other. They always ended within a few blows.

The Harbinger was the superior swordsman, which Angel realized quickly. But apparently the creature had yet to realize that he was a vampire and that only decapitation would kill him. So when the Harbinger thrust forward to impale him Angel allowed it to happen, hissing in pain as the sword buried itself in his side.

“You will not see the end of your ...” the Harbinger began, only to be interrupted when Angel, his opponent’s sword trapped, swung the dragonblade in a vicious arc and cut the creature’s head off.

The black armor vanished, a cold body falling to the floor. The sword clattered free of Angel’s flesh and a moment later Spike was upon it, nailing the blade to the floor with two knives from the seemingly never-ending supply of weapons he carried in his coat.

“That thing’s not going anywhere,” Spike nodded, pleased as he saw the sword struggle, trying to break free, but not succeeding.

“That takes the Harbinger out of the game,” Angel got back to his feet, ignoring the pain from the fresh wound. Being impaled twice in the span of a few hours was a poor record even for him.

For a moment the tension seemed to evaporate around them. There were no more shadows attacking from the darkness. Whether that was because they had finally reached the end of their numbers or just because the Harbinger was no longer around to give them orders they did not know, but it did not matter right now. It was over.

Then they all looked up as the Ring suddenly began to glow.

“This is not good,” Spike murmured, taking a step back.

“He activated it.” Tara’s voice was a frightened whisper.

The three warriors looked on in horror as the obsidian arch blazed in an unholy light, the symbols carved into it standing out in red flame. A humming filled the cavern all around them, growing stronger with every passing second.

Angel passed the sword back to Tara, picking up his own discarded knife. “Stand ready!”

“Whatever it is, we can take it,” Spike took up position beside him, eyes fixed on the portal forming before them. “Thing is only twenty feet high. We’ve faced bigger demons.”

A gust of flame shot out of the shimmering vortex, lancing straight up. The cave ceiling cracked above them, rocks raining down, forcing them back. The fire borrowed a tunnel right into the rock, blazing brighter and brighter.

On street level the few onlookers still around flinched back as all the windows on the bottom level of the Bryant Tower blew out at the same time, flames leaking from the ragged holes, the screams of the people still barricaded in the lobby drowned out by the roar. The windows on the first floor were next, only a heartbeat passing between the explosions. The flames climbed higher and higher, raining millions of broken glass shards down on the burning city.

The fire exploded from the tip of the tower and lanced upward into the black dome that spanned the island, fire and shadow mingling as the entire city was bathed in crimson light. On the shores of New Jersey soldiers and generals watched in awe as the dome began to glow from inside, many of them whispering prayers underneath their breath.

Then the black dome exploded into a million shards of darkness. More flames were pouring forth from the ruined spire that had been Bryant Tower, enlarging the fiery vortex forming above it with every passing second. Six million people looked upwards at the spectacle, frozen where they stood as the heavens above them were eclipsed by a whirlpool of fire, a giant disk of energy easily the size of a dozen football stadiums.

When no more rocks were raining down from above Spike, Angel, and Tara carefully stepped below the hole the flames had left in the ceiling of the cave, looking up. They could see right through the scorched interior of the tower, all the way up to the skies lit by fire.

All of them could see a dark shape moving in the flames, slowly growing larger.

“Or maybe we haven’t,” Spike muttered.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19 - From Fire and Shadow

#


Willow slowly managed to force herself back to full consciousness, shaking off the headache that was humming behind her forehead. She was not entirely sure what had happened, but she knew this kind of pain only too well. Magical backlash effect. One of her spells had been forcibly broken and the feedback had sent her reeling.

With a start she remembered what spell she had woven last. Dawn! The Harbinger had tried to kill her and Willow had tried to keep him away, trying to protect his intended victim with a force field. Then his sword had hit her field and she had been knocked for a loop. Did that mean ...

When her vision finally cleared she saw that it meant exactly that.

“Dawn,” she whispered, struggling to her feet.

About twenty feet in front of her Buffy was kneeling on the grass, her blonde hair matted with blood, cradling something to her chest. Something that did not move, something that was covered in blood, so much blood. Faith was kneeling by her side, staring at the thing in Buffy’s arms with eyes wide with shock, muttering something under her breath. Buffy’s body was shaking with sobs.

“No!” Willow managed a few shaky steps, bringing her closer to the two Slayers and the .. the thing. She had to think of it as a thing, otherwise ...

Dawn was lying in Buffy’s arms, her eyes open and staring up at Willow with supreme disinterest. The emptiness in those eyes was terrible to behold, staring out of a pale face sprinkled with blood. Willow found that her hands and knees were shaking, everything inside her refusing to believe that this had happened. They were the good guys. They were supposed to win, supposed to protect the people that depended on them. If they could not even save one little girl, then what ...

Willow’s thoughts were cut off when the city was suddenly bathed in a crimson glare, a hundred times brighter than the light of the fires. The witch looked up just in time to see the tip of Bryant Tower, tallest of New York’s skyscrapers, burst apart in an explosion that lit half the island. A lance of fire thrust upward into the black dome and shattered it, then reformed into a fiery vortex that seemed to cover the skies from horizon to horizon.

Something moved inside the flames, something dark and terrible. Willow began to scream.

#

“You’ve got a good 150 years on me, peaches,” Spike whispered without taking his eyes off the thing hovering in the sky. “You ever seen anything like that?”

Angel had indeed seen something like that before. Nearly forty years ago when he had stood in front of a portal created by the demon Akathler, who was preparing to swallow the world. Angel remembered looking into the flames, seeing the shapes moving on the other side of that fiery threshold, and knowing that he had to do whatever it took to keep the world safe from that.

Back then he had known how, even though it had almost cost him his life. This time, though ...

The two vampires and Tara were looking straight up through the shattered spire of Bryant Tower, looking at a sky in flames. Shadows were moving among the fire, shadows that were coming closer and closer. At their feet the sword of the Harbinger hummed with the unleashed energy, almost as if it rejoiced. It’s master was coming.

“We need to do something,” Angel resolved, shaking himself loose from the sight above. “Tara, let’s take a look at the Ring. Maybe we can figure out some way to stop this.”

The witch gave him a doubting look, but joined him nevertheless. Spike remained a moment longer, staring at the spectacle taking place above Manhattan island. He had not said prayers in more than a century. The last time had been a few short years after the return of his soul, when the pain had been so great that he had wanted to die. Never since then, though. Despite the fact that he had a soul he was also a demon and demons had no business praying to God.

So he was quite surprised to find that his lips were moving, uttering the words of a half-forgotten prayer taught to him by his father.

“God have mercy on us all,” he finished. Then he tore himself loose and followed Angel and Tara.

#

The military units stationed on the shores of New Jersey carried enough firepower to reduce the city to ruins several times over. The soldiers manning them had been briefed that some kind of supernatural event was taking place in Manhattan, something that had cut the city off from the rest of the world, something that might prove to be dangerous for the world as a whole. They also knew that, should it be deemed necessary, they would be ordered to use the firepower at their fingertips to destroy New York, along with its million of inhabitants.

Some of them had cringed. Some of them had even refused to take part in this. Others had just nodded, saluted, hiding their feelings of dread and revulsion deep inside. Most of them had prayed that this worst case would never come to pass, that the whole thing would be resolved peacefully.

Now, though, they all feared that they had been wrong.

The first anyone saw of the creature emerging from the fiery vortex was a pair of eyes. They appeared in the shadows, two slits of red flame the size of lakes. They beheld the world that lay beneath them, looked upon the banquet prepared by the Harbinger. Somewhere in the shadows something growled, a sound completely inhuman.

Golgotha was pleased with what it saw.

A moment later the shadows parted and something stabbed down from the vortex into the heart of the city. It was made from glistening scales, covered with fire, bristling with shadows and spikes. Like a giant tentacle it reached down and grabbed hold in the bedrock of the city, latching on to the very foundations of the island.

The soldiers stared at it, their brains refusing to make sense of what their eyes saw. Where the tentacle touched the ground the air itself seemed to dim, grow dark as if the very life was sucked from it. The shadows churning around it peeled off the scales and started spreading, separating into thousands upon thousands of wraiths, scurrying through the buildings like a plague of locusts, falling on the terrified people of New York.

The screams could be heard all the way across the river and finally snapped the soldiers out of their shock.

“Open fire!” No one was quite sure who had screamed the order, whether it was a general or a lowly foot soldier, but no one cared.

Moments later, even as a second tentacle reached down from the vortex, the thunder of weapons fire filled the air.

#

Something penetrated past the haze that had lowered over Buffy. She did not know how much time had passed since the world had come to a halt all around her, reduced to the bloodied form lying in her arms, consisting of nothing but pain and regret. She had failed. She had promised Dawn that she would keep her safe, that no one would be able to harm her. Only that promise was now lying in pieces at her feet, broken just like Dawn’s small body was lying broken in her arms.

She should have been faster, should have been stronger. The Harbinger was just another demon, she should have sensed its coming in time, should have been able to fend it off. Only she had not and Dawn had paid the price.

*Buffy!*

Was there someone calling out to her? No, could not be. Who would want to speak to a failure like her? The great and powerful Slayer, older and stronger than any other Slayer in history had ever been, and yet she could not even save one little girl. What use was she to anyone?

With a start she became aware of her bond to Angel once more, all but forgotten in the turmoil of the last few hours. Her husband’s love and support was flooding into her mind, his tender feelings trying to dispel that darkness that had taken hold inside of her. No, what was he doing? Did he not understand what she had done? She had failed to save Dawn, had failed to save the one she had sworn to protect. She did not deserve his love, did not deserve ...

He gave her no choice. The bond between them had originally been created to connect a master to his slave, to bind a vampire to his human servant. Neither Angel nor Buffy had ever used it for that purpose, had never tried to control the other via the connection they shared. Even now Angel did nothing of the sort, he just continued to pour his emotions into her. She felt his love, his need to let her know that she had done everything she could, that it was not her fault. She also felt his desperation. Something was happening, something even more terrible than that little girl dying in her arms. It was happening right now, all around her, and she needed to open her eyes.

Buffy’s eyes snapped open just in time to see the second of the giant tentacles burrow into the bedrock of the island, a sheer endless number of shadows peeling off from its flaming surface. She saw the two huge eyes looking down from the fiery vortex, looking down as if the entire island, the entire world was nothing but a delicious dish about to be consumed.

The Slayer inside of her finally reared its head again, coming out of the valley of despair Dawn’s death had banished it to. Yes, she had failed to protect the girl, but right now that did not matter any longer. She would grieve later, would grieve for the girl who she had felt so strongly for, but not now. Now the world was in danger and it was her job to protect it.

Something streaked through the sky and hit one of the tentacles in a blinding explosion, sending hundreds of the shadow creatures screaming into the twilight. A growl filled the air even as more missiles streaked toward the monstrous being from somewhere beyond Buffy’s view, blooming into miniature suns as they struck its scaly hide.

“Looks like the battle has started without us,” she mumbled, only now becoming aware of Faith kneeling in front of her, staring at Dawn.

Forcibly holding back yet more tears she gently lowered Dawn’s body to the ground and grabbed Faith with her blood-covered hands, shaking her sister Slayer until their eyes locked. Just like with Angel they barely needed words between them. There was a bond between them as well, a bond composed of the primal force they were both avatar to.

Faith snapped out of her haze, breathing heavily.

“Dawn,” she whispered.

“I know,” Buffy told her, wiping a tear from her face. “But now we have to save the world, Faith. You ready?”

Her chocolate eyes turned away from Buffy and took in the monstrosity hanging in the sky over New York, seemingly untouched by the destruction unleashed against it. They both knew that this thing was Golgotha, was the monster the Harbinger and its shadows had been trying to unleash. This was the reason Dawn had died.

“Let’s get the bastard,” Faith forced out between clenched teeth.

They both jumped to their feet, startling Willow whose eyes were fixed to the monster, dragging her along as they started running. Buffy did not know what they would be able to do against Golgotha, but that did not matter even in the least. One way or another it would pay for Dawn’s death. Oh yes, it would pay.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20 - About the Opening and Closing of Doors

#


“This definitely isn’t good, peaches!”

“Do tell!”

Spike and Angel stood side by side at the top of the stairway that led down into the cave, standing in what had been the lobby of Bryant Tower just a short time ago. From here they were able to see a lot more of what was happening above ground at the moment and neither of them liked it.

The sky was almost black with legions of shadow wraiths, more of them pouring out of the dimensional vortex with every passing second. Missiles thundering in from somewhere off the island set them ablaze by the hundreds, but there were always more to take their place and their high-pitched screams assaulted the two vampires’ sharpened senses.

Most of the vortex was filled with something that neither Spike nor Angel had words to describe. A thing of glistening black scales, flames dancing around it like a suit of armor, blazing red eyes gazing down on them with contempt and hunger, huge black tentacles reaching down and burrowing into the bedrock of the island.

“Golgotha, I presume,” Angel mumbled, looking up at the thing that was invading their world.

A missile exploded against the side of one tentacle, the fireball blooming like a miniature sun and evaporating several dozens of the shadow wraiths. The tentacle itself looked unharmed, though, apparently still digging deeper into the ground.

“Those missiles are not doing much good,” Angel mused, trying to spot their point of origin. “Whoever is in charge over there will soon realize that and switch to heavier ordnance.”

“Heavier as in nuclear?” Spike gave him a look.

“If all else fails.”

“Great! Do you think this is some kind of delayed payback for setting off that tactical nuke over Russia a few decades ago?”

Angel did not answer, just closed his eyes and tried to home in on his wife. Buffy had overcome the shock of Dawn’s death, at least for the moment, and was on her way here along with Faith and Willow. He could feel the fury that thundered through her, burning with the intensity of a star. Someone had to pay for Dawn’s murder and the thing filling their skies had gotten itself elected.

Now they only needed to find a way to do it.

With the shattering of the black dome the magic that had disabled all electronic equipment in New York had faded as well, everything was in working order once more. Angel took out his com and called to Tara, who was still down in the cave.

“Anything?”

He heard the witch utter a tired sigh through their connection, which was sizzling with static from the explosions and the unleashed energy of the vortex.

“Not much,” Tara confessed. “The Ring has gone inactive again after sending up that energy burst. I can still feel the power of the pentagram, though. It’s sustaining the vortex. With the number of human sacrifices in the conjuring circle it can probably keep doing so for hours, if not days.”

“Any way to disrupt it?” Angel looked at the tentacles that had burrowed into the ground. It appeared that Golgotha had some difficulties bringing its massive form through and would need a while to do so. If they could close the vortex before that happened they would cut the monster in half. Angel doubted even a city-sized greater demon could survive that.

“I am not sure,” Tara confessed. “If we can find a way to reactivate the Ring we might be able to create a second vortex. Overlapping the two dimensional gateways would certainly cause some kind of disruption, but right now I have no idea how this thing works, much less how to open a second vortex with it.”

Angel nodded. “Willow is on her way here. Maybe the two of you together can figure out a way to do this.”

“Maybe,” Tara said, Angel almost able to see her smile at the thought of Willow coming. “Now that the coms are working again I will try and contact some of our people at Magitech. Maybe they have an idea.”

“Give it your best,” Angel said. “We’ll try and find a way to delay Golgotha until you come up with something.”

He put away his com and noticed that Spike was giving him a look.

“What?”

“Please tell me you have a brilliant plan on how to accomplish that little ‘delaying-the-city-sized-monster’ thing you just promised Tara.”

“Not exactly a plan.”

“Thought so,” Spike nodded, looking at the nearest spot where one of the giant tentacles had touched down. “So I guess we just go over there and try hitting it a lot, hoping we can at least get its attention, right?”

“Got a better idea?”

“Nope!”

The thunder of hoof beats made them both look up just in time to see two horses brought to a stop in front of the building, the animals clearly close to panicking. Buffy jumped off her horse, closely followed by Willow and Faith.

With no clear idea how he got there Angel was by his wife’s side and closed her in his arms, holding her tight. He refrained from asking her whether she was all right, feeling the turmoil of her emotions across their bond. Nothing was all right at the moment, that much was apparent.

“Any good news?” She looked up at him, reluctantly letting go of their embrace. He could feel how worn out she was, could feel the anguish she had pushed down in order to function. None of them could afford to break down. Later, when all this was over, but not now.

“Willow, Tara is waiting for you below,” Angel told the redhead. “This vortex was created by the artifact Wesley told us about, the Ring. Tara thinks if we can somehow reactivate it we might be able to throw a wringer into Golgotha’s plans to enter our world.”

“On my way!” Willow whizzed down the stairs with a speed belying her age.

“Let’s hope the witchy girls are still as witchy as ever,” Spike mumbled, lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag.

“What about the Harbinger?” Faith’s face was a mask of rage and fury, her hands itching with the need to get a shot at the bastard who had killed Dawn.

“He is detained for the moment,” Angel told them. “We pinned down his sword when he abandoned his latest host body. Without a new form he is helpless.”

Both the Slayers looked like they wanted nothing better than to find that sword and break it into tiny little pieces, but they both knew that they had other problems to deal with at the moment. Much bigger problems.

“So what’s the plan?” Buffy looked at Angel and Spike. “You do have a plan, right?”

Spike smirked. “Of course. Plan B, right Peaches?”

“That’s the plan where we go over there and try hitting a lot, right?” Faith looked toward the nearest tentacle with blazing eyes. “Works for me.”

Angel’s com buzzed in his pocket. With a frown he took it out and looked at the display.

“It’s Darla,” he told the others, listening to the voice of his Sire at the other end of a bad connection. The shadow of a smile appeared on his face.

“What?” Buffy caught some impressions over their bond.

“It appears the Vampirium decided to move some troops of its own into position the moment the black dome went up. Darla was calling to ask whether we might need anything in the way of ordnance or reinforcements.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Tell her to stop the witty commentary and get her ass in gear!”

#

All bridges and tunnels leading towards Manhattan had been cut off by the black dome, leaving the island completely inaccessible to ground units. Contingency plans had been made, though, preparations had been completed during the hours the black dome had been up. Barely twenty minutes after the first appearance of the vortex transport planes began to drop armored ground vehicles onto Manhattan, along with the first battalions of special troops.

The air force was also beginning to join the fight, their primary mission to contain the shadow creatures that were pouring forth from the vortex to the island, allowing none of them to scatter and endanger other parts of America and, by extension, the world.

When Vampirium troops moved onto the scene and offered their support no one even thought of denying their aid. During the past few decades the military had learned to appreciate the value of preternatural soldiers and there were none better than the Tarakans. The grim vampires moved onto the island within minutes, brought across the river with boats or quickly swimming the distance at speeds no human could hope to match. A few of them carried large bundles of weapons and equipment, to be given to allies already on sight at prearranged rendezvous coordinates.

Thirty minutes after Golgotha’s first appearance resistance began in earnest.

“Okay, people,” Angel looked at his friends and allies, all of them now armed to the teeth. “Let’s welcome Golgotha to Earth!”

And deep beneath the ground two witches were doing their best to figure out a completely alien magical artifact in order to save the world.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21 - Welcome to Earth, Golgotha

#


Tara had her eyes closed and slowly moved her hand across the surface of the Ring, her palm hovering but millimeters over the pitch black surface of the artifact. Even though it was dormant now it still gave off a magical buzz that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight. She was not a trained Seeker, but over the years she had come into contact with quite a few magical artifacts and being good at aura reading she had gotten a feel for most of them.

This was not like anything she had ever sensed before. It was magic, yes, but so dark and alien that a large part of her mind wanted nothing more than to go and hide in a dark corner, her knees clasped to her chest, hoping that it would all go away if only she was quiet enough. It would not, of course. They could see that much through the hole in the ceiling, could hear it by the thundering of explosions outside.

“You getting all this?” Willow was speaking into her com, which was connected to their primary research team back in California. The tiny camera built into the com was trained on the symbols covering the black arch, feeding them directly to the people at Magitech and into some of the most powerful magically enhanced computers in the world.

“We’re cross-referencing with the Vampirium people and the old Watchers Council database,” a voice on the other end said. Frederic Messner was Magitech’s chief specialist for ancient languages and magical archeology. “So far we’ve picked up but a few of the symbols. I’m afraid they are not making too much sense yet.”

“Keep at it,” Willow looked over at Tara, who was still studying the Ring. “Anything?”

“It draws power from the pentagram,” Tara whispered, her hand still hovering over the artifact. “The power is weakening, though. In a few hours it will be spent.”

Willow did not need any help to figure out what that meant. Once the power was spent the only way to reactivate the Ring would be a new pentagram. New victims.

“Fred,” she spoke into her com. “We’re working on a very tight schedule here. A few hours at the most. Bring in whoever you need, spend whatever money you must, but find me an answer!”

“We’ll do our best,” Messner assured her, which did not sound all that assuring to Willow right now. Not with the entire cave shaking around them as something big exploded above ground.

Tara barely noticed, following some indescribably feeling that she was closing in on something important.

#

One of Golgotha’s giant tentacles had burrowed right into the center of Times Square and a troop of soldiers, both human and vampire, were doing their best to dislodge it. So far, though, they had not met with much success.

“I don’t fuckin’ believe this,” a soldier mumbled, having shot a missile from a rocket launcher into the thing, which achieved absolutely no effect. “Maybe we should try to spit at it.”

“Move aside!” Faith pushed the men out of her way, brandishing an enchanted sword on loan from the Tarakan enforcers. It was not as powerful as the dragon blades Willow and Tara carried, but she figured anything that could cut through the armor of a tank without even denting had to be good for something.

Maybe she should apologize to the very frightened tank commander later on for trying out the sword on his vehicle.

“What are you ...,” the soldier began, only to fall silent when he saw the blade in Faith’s hands glow in an eerie light. That, coupled with the murderous look in her eyes, vanquished any thoughts he might have had about stepping in her way.

“Watch your Aunty Faith now, little soldier boys,” the dark-haired Slayer said, running toward the tentacle. “This is how you deal with your typical city-sized demon monster!”

Faith swung the blade with all her might and struck the glistening black scales that rose in front of her like a wall. Fire erupted where the blade met the demon’s skin, a blinding explosion that left Faiths seeing spots and patting out some flames that had jumped onto her clothes. An angry red gash was visible where she had struck, some kind of black liquid oozing out of it and hitting the ground with a hiss like acid, setting the pavement on fire.

Though some part of her was feeling smug about having inflicted a wound, the rational part of her realized that it was less than a mosquito bite to a thing this big. Odds were it had not even felt it.

“Well, Rome wasn’t demolished in a day,” she mumbled and kept slashing at the tentacle, planning to put a sword like this on her wish list for Christmas. How come the Tarakans and the witches had all the best toys and she did not?

#

“Stand ready!” Angel looked at the Tarakans assembled behind him. Three dozen of them, all armed to the teeth. Buffy was hovering by his side, a bundle of sheer aggression that needed some kind of outlet. Well, he mused, they had plenty of opportunity for that, at least.

“Go!” Angel, Buffy, and half a dozen of the Tarakans sprang into motion, all of them carrying weapons from the Vampirium’s secret arsenal. Magical weaponry assembled over the eons, artifacts that occasionally surfaced in obscure history texts and some Hollywood movies, but no one ever really believed in. Angel was quite impressed with what Darla had brought together in so short a time.

A few dozen shadow wraiths were between them and the tentacle that had burrowed down in front of them, but they were quickly dealt with. The creatures’ strength rested mostly in their numbers and once you knew how to handle them they did not pose much of a threat individually. Moments later the eight warriors reached the tentacle and started hacking away at the scales with their weapons, quickly cracking open the hide that resisted missiles and artillery shells with ease. They opened a wound the size of several men and then jumped to the side.

“Fire!”

The other Tarakans carried the latest in techno-magical weaponry, opening up with an arsenal that could have won World War II single-handedly. Missiles that carried enchantments, bullets with runes carved into them, guided projectiles delivering spells of dark magic that would inevitably corrupt any person using it, but did absolutely nothing to cold, soulless circuitry.

All that firepower was poured into the open wound that Buffy, Angel, and the others had inflicted, striking directly at the black flesh that lay within. The tentacle shook with the impact and a tremendous roar filled the air around them.

“Think that hurt it?” Buffy looked up at the vortex above them, where the bulk of Golgotha had yet to appear. A moment later she shoved Angel to the side, quickly yelling at everyone to take cover.

Liquid fire spilled down from the sky, striking the spot where they had stood just seconds ago. The pavement vaporized in an instant, exploding shards of concrete rained down on the cowering vampires like lethal rain, ripping flesh and spilling blood. The tentacle still shook, but was now burrowing deeper into the concrete, taking the gaping wound they had inflicted below ground level.

“I don’t know about the hurting,” Angel got back to his feet, looking at the molten pavement in front of them. “But it’s a good bet we got it’s attention.”

#

General Thomas Fairbanks stood beside his command vehicle on the shores of the Hudson River and looked at the monster hanging in the skies over Manhattan. He knew that the world contained demons and beasts, things that would eat small children and tear grown men into little pieces. He knew all about vampires, werewolves, and dozens of other demons, had met quite a few of them, had fought both with and against them on numerous occasions.

He had never seen anything like this, though. Not even close.

“General, sir,” his assistant came toward him. “It’s the president. He wants an update on the situation.”

General Fairbanks sighed deeply and checked the numbers flashing across the holographic display on his wrist. So far their losses had been minimal, as the giant demon seemed incapable of any great movement at the moment. The shadow creatures were the greater threat right now. Even though they could be picked off rather easily there was a sheer endless number of them and they swarmed over airplanes and armored vehicles like locusts, easily penetrating armored steel and slashing the soldiers within into pieces. At the moment they were still contained to the island and long-range fire decimated their numbers almost as quickly as they appeared. Almost.

Still, they had losses. What they did not have was anything to show for it.

“General?”

Realizing that his assistant was still waiting for an answer he looked at the younger man and came to a painful decision.

“Tell the president that we may have to consider the nuclear option.”

“Sir?”

“Having trouble with your hearing, soldier?”

“No, sir. I will deliver the message.”

General Fairbanks knew of the reputation he had in the service. Many called him emotionless. Hard as steel. Devoid of any human warmth. It was one of the reasons he often drew the tough assignments. The ones where a single man might have to decide between the fate of a few million civilians and that of the entire world.

Yes, General Fairbanks was a man who could make these kind of decisions if he had to.

And no one would hear him weep inside.

#

“Are you sure?” Willow looked at the runes in front of her, projected by the small holoscreen of her com. The minutes had flown by so fast and she knew that time was running out. They could feel the battle going on above them, could hear the screams. Golgotha was still hanging in the sky, still working its way through the vortex, but they feared it would not need much longer.

“We could double-check it, of course,” Messner said on the other side of the connection, “but I was under the impression that we do not have another few hours to do that.”

“You go the right impression,” Willow mumbled, finding her mouth dry and her hands shaking. Angel had called them a few minutes ago, wanting to know how far along they were. Things were going badly upstairs. No matter how hard they fought their friends were barely able to hurt the giant demon.

“All right!”

Willow shook Tara by the shoulder, bringing her out of the trance. “Messner and the others have cobbled together a spell that should activate the Ring. You ready?”

Tara hesitated. She had the feeling that they were missing something, something just beyond the edge of her awareness. Willow was right, though, they were running out of time. The power of the pentagram was weakening, feeding the giant vortex that allowed the giant demon access to their world. They had to do something while they still had the power to do so.

Tara did not want to think about what they might have to do if they failed and needed to power up the Ring with a new pentagram.

“Let’s do it,” Tara resolved, taking Willow’s hand.

The two witches closed their eyes and invoked the spell. Magic was thick in the air around them, invisible fingers brushing across the runes spread out across the arch of the Ring. Even through closed eyes they saw that some of the runes glowed, rippled, changed their shapes. Power poured in from above, a power dark and thick with the screams of human beings that had died in agony. They felt the pentagram carved into the island, felt the power of several hundred snuffed lives as it rippled around the Ring.

For a moment the ground seemed to give out beneath them, a weight so great that it ripped right through the fabric of space, threatening to tear a hole into their world and access another. The two witches gasped as power the likes of which they had never known brushed over their skins, danced all around them until they almost fainted from the smell of blood.

Then the moment faded. The Ring remained silent.

“Not good,” Willow mumbled, panting. “Definitely not good.”

Some feet away the sword of the Harbinger, still nailed to the ground, seemed to chuckle.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
22 - Is This Interdimensional Gate Thing Working?

#


Buffy and Angel were resting against the wall of a building, both of them tired and covered in sooth and ash. Most of the city was burning by now, both from the military’s continuous barrage against Golgotha and the demon’s flames, which had burned more than one of their allies to ashes by now. They had managed to inflict some wounds on the giant tentacles, but nothing more than scratches considering the size of their target. At best they were distracting it momentarily, nothing more.

Angel’s com chirped and he and Buffy saw Tara’s face materialize in front of them.

“I hope you have some good news, Tara,” Angel said, “because we could really use some right now.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” the hologram said, “but I’m afraid the news aren’t all that good. Our people at Magitech managed to decipher most of the runes and cobble together a spell to activate the Ring, but it did not work.”

“A mistake in the spell?” Angel ducked down when something exploded nearby, sending shrapnel in their direction. Golgotha had gotten a lot more aggressive since they had started fighting back in earnest and was raining liquid fire down on the city from above, where the bulk of its being was still safely tucked away inside the vortex. Maybe once it came out fully they would be able to harm it. Or maybe it would just spell the end for all of them.

“I don’t think so,” Tara shook him from his morbid thoughts. “Willow and I both felt the power building from the pentagram. It’s like there was something missing at the end, something like a final activation sequence. Angel, you were closest to the Harbinger when it activated the Ring the first time. Did you see anything of what it did, anything that might offer us a clue why our spell did not work?”

Tara’s image vanished in a hail of static for a moment as Angel tried to remember the exact events down in the cave. They had fought their way through the shadow wraiths protecting the Ring, closing in on the motionless form of the Harbinger, who had knelt in front of the Ring as if lost in prayer or meditation.

There had been some movement around the creature, he remembered, some kind of ripple in the darkness surrounding it. Concentrating on that memory Angel closed his eyes, reliving the scene. He had approached the creature from behind, had raised Tara’s dragonblade for a decapitation blow, only to have the Harbinger turn around at the last split second, meeting the blow with his own sword.

The sword.

“The Harbinger held his sword in hand when he activated the Ring,” Angel told Tara. “It seemed like he was thrusting it forward and met some kind of resistance that caused the air to ripple.”

The witch thought for a few moments, then nodded. “That could be it. Wesley said that the first battle against the Harbinger and his creatures ended when the Harbinger’s sword was captured. Maybe the sword is the final key to activating the Ring.”

“Great,” Buffy huffed, wiping sweat from her brow. The winter temperatures that had held sway over the city these past few weeks had given way to Hell’s own climate ever since the vortex had appeared in the sky. “So we only need someone picking up that sword and thrusting it into the Ring before the Harbinger wakes up and gives you a whole new outfit consisting of black armor.”

“She’s right,” Tara realized, what little hope had been in her eyes vanishing. “Whoever touches the sword will transform into the Harbinger.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Angel mused. “When we fought in the police station the sword could easily have jumped into my hand when I took down its first host body. Instead it took over Captain Trenor and attacked me again.”

Tara thought that over. “You think our Harbinger friend has an aversion to dead people?”

“No,” Buffy interjected. “When he killed ... when he killed Dawn he did it by taking over a dead body, not a living one.” The steadiness of her own voice surprised her. “He had no problems animating a corpse.”

“A lifeless corpse,” Angel added. “Not one that is already animated by both a soul and a demon.”

Buffy shook her head. “Angel, all this is speculation. You can’t honestly expect me to let you pick up that thing based on some wild theories.”

“You’ve got a better idea?”

“I know that your ‘I’ll risk my life anytime it’s possible’ approach went out decades ago. There’s this little thing called Vinculum Dies Noctis Cruentos, remember? Our bond? Whatever we do, we do it together.”

Angel nodded. The one great drawback of the bond they shared. Their life forces were bound together, for better or worse. Worse meaning that, should one of them die, the other would inevitably die as well. He knew that, should Buffy die, he would not want to go on living anyway, but there was always that tiny voice inside him that kept insisting that it was not right for her to feel the same way. That she should go on living even if he crumbled into dust. He had stopped listening to that voice a long time ago, but that did not mean it gone silent.

“We have to find a way to use that sword,” Angel insisted. “We’re running out of time.”

Buffy looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “We will find a way. Let’s go!”

#

Twenty minutes later they were back inside the cave, which did not really look at that stable anymore. The ground and ceiling were shaking with the violence unleashed above, explosions rocking the very foundations of the island. Golgotha’s tentacles did further damage to the city’s bedrock and it was only a matter of time until everything came tumbling down.

All four people present knew that.

“Ready?” Angel looked at the two witches.

“The spell does not take long,” Willow said. “The moment you pick up the sword we can begin.”

“Okay.”

Buffy looked on worriedly, even though she knew they did not have a choice. If Angel and Tara were right they needed the sword or all was lost. She knew that the military had orders to sterilize Manhattan if the monster could not be destroyed or driven back, so at the very least they were looking at several million lives in the balance. Maybe more if the greater demon could not be stopped by anything the military had to offer.

Even so she did not plan to bet their bound lives on a wild theory that the Harbinger would not be able to take over Angel. What they did know was that, no matter whether its host body had been alive or dead to being with, it always ended up dead. So they had taken all the precautions they could and prayed for the best.

Angel’s right arm was encased in an improvised gauntlet they had cobbled together from the shattered remains of a tank. Below the battle armor, bent into shape by their combined superhuman strength, his arm was wrapped with stripes ripped from his leather coat, offering additional protection. He would have little actual motor control, but it should suffice to pick up the sword and hopefully to control it should it struggle.

A struggling sword, Buffy shook her head. Even after nearly sixty years her life was not getting any less weird.

“No sense putting it off,” Angel smiled at her, clearly feeling her worry. “Let’s do this!”

She nodded, standing close by just in case.

Angel knelt down beside the sword, which was still nailed to the ground by way of Spike’s knives. It had ceased struggling a while ago, whether that was because it was pointless or because it had fulfilled its purpose was anyone’s guess. It was like picking up a needle with a thick winter glove, but Angel managed to close the steel fingers around the sword’s handle.

Seeing that he had as good a hold as he would ever have Buffy knelt down as well and ripped the knives free.

“Start chanting,” Angel called out as he rose, the sword shaking violently in his armored hand. Buffy could feel the tremors as if they were running up her own arm, could feel the sword struggle against Angel’s grip. The blade was starting to glow a dull red.

“Hurry!” Angel was straining against the power of the Harbinger’s sword, the battle steel that protected him beginning to heat up at a rapid rate. Buffy had to turn her face away, the heat emanating from the sword singing the ends of her hair from five feet away. Through the bond she felt that some of the heat was already penetrating past the steel and leather to Angel’s skin.

Willow and Tara had their eyes closed, their hands hovering over the obsidian surface of the Ring, the runes set into it beginning to glow as well. Magic was thick in the air all around them, causing the hairs on Buffy’s neck to stand up.

“This better work,” Angel mumbled through clenched teeth, forcing the sword closer to the artifact.

The air around the Ring seemed to shimmer and ripple, the surface of reality disturbed by the power building inside it. Angel barely noticed. His world was reduced to the sword bucking in his hand, the heat crawling up his arm. As a vampire he had a much higher tolerance for pain than just about any other creature alive or dead, but he needed all his will power to keep from screaming.

Drops of molten metal were falling to the cave floor.

“Now,” he heard someone scream at him, not able to tell who it was over the searing pain, but he knew what he had to do. Thrust the sword forward, thrust it into the rippling energy that surrounded the Ring and activate it that way.

With something very much like an agonized scream the steel fingers of his gauntlet snapped and the sword broke free of his grasp.

“No!”

Buffy was dazed from the pain she felt leaking across their bond, but her instincts were still working full swing. The world around her seemed to move in slow motion as she saw the sword break free from Angel’s hand, moving through the air as if wielded by an invisible warrior. Only a millisecond passed between Buffy’s realizing that the sword was arcing toward Willow and Tara and springing into motion.

“Buffy!” Angel was moving as well, the remains of his gauntlet breaking away from his arm even as he jumped, his good hand reaching out to deflect the danger that was approaching the two witches. Things were moving too fast for Willow and Tara too even notice anything.

Two sets of fingers closed around the hilt of the sword when it was less than a foot away from Tara’s outstretched hand.

#

High above the city two eyes the size of lakes snapped around to focus on the remains of New York’s tallest building, narrowing as the giant creature called Golgotha sensed that something important was happening.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
23 - For the Darkness Can Not Stand the Light

#


Buffy looked around, confused. What had happened? The last thing she remembered was the cave, Angel trying to pick up the sword of the Harbinger. What then? Something had gone wrong, the sword had broken free and ... she had touched it. She and Angel had both touched it.

“I knew one just like you,” a voice growled at her from the darkness that surrounded her on all sides. “A little girl touched by a power she could never hope to grasp.”

“You met a Slayer before, great!” Buffy’s voice betrayed none of her anxiety. Where was she? Where was Angel? “Are you going to bore me to death with your memoirs?”

The black armored shape of the Harbinger peeled out of the darkness in front of her, its crimson eyes the only source of light.

“You are a special breed,” he glared down at her. “I have seen so many worlds, but flesh like yours, suffused with such sweet power ...”

It leaned forward and Buffy knew that it was smiling underneath that black helmet.

“Possessing you will make me stronger than ever before.”

For a moment Buffy felt herself paralyzed with fear, images of what this creature would do with her stolen flesh. She felt the cold steel of the sword lying in her palm and memories not her own flooded into her mind. Memories of a thousand different worlds.

She felt her own feet, clad in black armor, stride across worlds that had been reduced to ashes, saw herself in the Harbinger’s armor as she ripped through the fabric of time and space to find yet another world to feed her master’s eternal hunger. Golgotha filled the sky, its gleaming red eyes beheld its most faithful servant, and billions of souls screamed in terror as they were consumed, their fear only making them sweeter.

“No,” Buffy screamed, shattering the memories. “It won’t happen! Your journey ends here! Your master will not get my world!”

The Harbinger chuckled. “You think you have any choice in the matter? Your battle is lost, Slayer. From now on you will serve Golgotha.”

She now saw the sword in her hand, saw the darkness rippling around her arm as the black armor slowly took shape. Cold crept through her body, an icy emptiness that threatened to extinguish everything that was Buffy Summers, leaving nothing but the flesh behind for the Harbinger to possess. She tried to let go of the sword, but her fingers did not obey.

“Don’t fight it,” the Harbinger chided her. “It won’t avail you anything.”

Buffy looked down at the sword, then up at the creature standing in front of her. The few times she had seen this thing take possession of a body had been in the midst of battle, but she remembered them well. It had never taken more than a heartbeat, the black armor spreading over the body and snuffing the life within faster than even she could react.

Not this time, though. The Harbinger stood in front of her, which was pretty much impossible if he was trying to take over her body right at this moment. She was no longer in the cave, even though she could not remember leaving it.

None of this was real.

“You can’t take me,” Buffy said, calm spreading through her body and chasing the cold away.

“I can,” the Harbinger insisted, towering over her threateningly.

“If you could you would have done it already.” Buffy smiled. “You wouldn’t need to coerce me into giving up.”

“Your flesh is MINE,” the creature thundered, its eyes blazing like stars. “Yield!”

“Never!” Buffy reached out to the familiar humming of the bond, feeling Angel’s strength flood into her. “You can’t take me because I’m not alone.”

Angel appeared beside her, his hand also resting on the handle of the sword, their fingers interlacing around the cold metal. Without even asking she knew that Angel had just gone through the same scene as her, the Harbinger trying to convince him to surrender, to take control of his undead flesh.

“You have lost, Harbinger,” he said with the barest hint of a smile. “You can take a human, you might even be able to take a vampire, but you can’t take both of us.”

None of this was real, Buffy reminded herself. They were inside her mind, inside her and Angel’s mind, which the Harbinger was trying to extinguish. Only he could not. He was facing not one mind but two and if the decades had taught them anything it was the fact that together they were much, much stronger than apart, more than the sum of their parts.

Looking at Angel by her side she realized something else. It was not just the two of them. Angel was a dual creature, a human soul forever bound to a demon, and the demon was hovering behind him like a shadow, a jagged shape that looked nothing like the human shape it mirrored. Because of their bond she knew how often Angel found himself in conflict with the demon that existed within him, kept him alive long after time should have taken him. The demon’s urges and instincts, its hunger for human blood, its taste for pain and destruction, all these things Angel had to handle, to contain.

Not today, though. Today the soul and the demon were nearly in synch with one another, both of them furious with the Harbinger for trying to take their flesh and their mate.

“You can not resist me,” the Harbinger thundered, growing in size as he towered over them. “Your world is already lost!”

“We’ll see about that,” Angel growled at him, human eyes flashing golden. “Either way, you won’t be there to see it happen.”

The Harbinger screamed, darkness surging toward them from all sides, trying to smother them in black steel and cold. A long row of faces flashed in front of them, a sheer endless number of souls the Harbinger had snuffed in its long existences, bodies it had stolen to work its master’s will. More, they could feel the shadow creatures that were at the Harbinger’s beck and call, could feel them all around them.

They saw them and knew them for what they really were.

The darkness could not touch them. The power of their bond blazed around them, the vampire magic that bound their essence into one rejecting the foreign power that tried to tear them apart. The demon roared in defiance, their twin souls blazed brightly, and the Harbinger was pushed back.

Two hands, one warm and slender, one cold and casting the shadow of a claw, tightened around the hilt of the Harbinger’s sword, the darkness seeping from the steel unable to affect them. They raised the blade, moving closer to the giant shape of the Harbinger, who seemed frightened for the first time in its long existence.

“You can not prevail,” the creature screamed. “We have destroyed a thousand worlds.”

“And it ends here,” Angel said grimly.

“This is for Dawn,” Buffy whispered, her and Angel’s joint hands slashing the sword down in a vicious arc. The blade cleaved the armored form of the Harbinger in two, cutting through the black steel with barely any resistance. The creature howled as its own weapon was turned against it, crimson eyes flickering and dying.

Empty pieces of armor fell to the ground, the darkness shattering around them as they hit.

“Buffy?”

Willow and Tara looked at her with wide eyes, stared at her and Angel. The magic was still thick in the air all around them, the spell held in suspension by the willpower of the two witches. Right now, though, that willpower seemed on the verge of vanishing as both of them were taken with fright.

Buffy looked down and saw that she was clad in the black armor of the Harbinger, though without the helmet. Looking at the sword she still held she saw that, apart from her own armored fist, there was another hand encased by black steel, belonging to an equally armored vampire. Angel looked back at her, his eyes a soothing brown.

“It’s us, Willow,” Buffy told her friend. “We’re still here.”

“The Harbinger?” Tara looked back and forth between them, while her outstretched hands were still glowing with the power of the spell.

“I think it’s gone for good.” Buffy gave them a smile.

“It has left us with some interesting side effects, though.” Angel studied the suits of armor they were both wearing. The steel seemed weightless, yet solid, and did not hinder his movements in the least.

“I’d love to hear more about that,” Willow said, her voice strained, “but we can’t keep the spell going for long. So if you might ...”

Buffy and Angel started raising the sword again, both of them reluctant to let go. The Harbinger seemed to have been destroyed, but neither of them wanted to risk leaving the sword in but one of their hands lest the monster might return.

“Let’s get this over with!”

#

Spike and Faith had met up near the Bryant Tower, knowing that whatever Buffy and Angel were doing down in that cave might make the difference between life and death. Golgotha could be hurt, they had found out that much, but nothing they could do would inflict more than a mosquito bite. The military had increased their bombardment (probably working themselves up to using the really nasty stuff, Spike mused) but the best they had managed so far was to apparently cripple one of the tentacles. One of dozens.

Without warning the ground heaved beneath them, the entire island seemingly shifting to the side. They could see movement in the vortex hanging above their heads, the shadows churning and rippling as if the humongous creature up there was turning on its back.

Moments later they realized that it had not been a bad guess.

Golgotha was moving. They could still see very little of it except its tentacles and the giant eyes, eyes which now seemed focused right on them. Or rather on the building behind them. The ground shook again as they saw several tentacles pull out of the ground, toppling entire buildings as they snapped free. A deafening roar filled the air.

“Tell me I’m just imagining this,” Faith said to Spike, never taking her eyes off the monster above them.

“If you are then we’ve both gone batty, pet.”

The tentacles were moving toward them. All of them.

Spike remained frozen for another moment, then he quickly pulled out his com.

“Peaches,” he yelled into the receiver. “Whatever you’re doing down there, do it faster! The big guy is looking mighty pissed.”




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
24 - Made You Look


#

Even as the battle in New York was rapidly spinning toward its conclusion, Golgotha’s influence was spreading across the globe. Over a thousand years ago the prophet Briar Mathews had written that, as Golgotha’s shadow fell over the world, the darkness would consume all that was pure and decent, reducing man to animal, spreading violence and hatred like plague.

Golgotha’s shadow was now felt far and wide.

Even as millions of people were watching the news broadcasts of the events in Manhattan the malevolence was spreading. Arguments turned into vicious fights, small disagreements turned violent, sometimes lethal, in the span of a heartbeat. Crime rates all over the globe rose sharply as tempers exploded and the urge for violence became almost unbearable, an itch that most people found impossible to ignore, impossible not to scratch.

A decade earlier the wars in the middle east had finally come to an end as new technologies developed by Magitech had returned fertility to a soil that had become barren through centuries of soaking up blood and suffering. Now, though, ancient hatreds flared once more and former enemies took up their arms again, their minds overwhelmed by fear and rage.

Peaceful coexistence between human beings and the creatures of myth, be they vampires, weres, or more exotic entities, had been a fact of life for a full generation now. It all fell apart in a single night as massive unrest spread across America and Europe, which held the largest part of the world’s vampire population, the night lit by torches and bonfires, filled with screams and demonic growls.

In the office of the president of the United States a man sat in front of his desk and stared at the red button in front of him. Though the button had become superfluous decades before it had never been dismantled, still fully capable of fulfilling its original purpose.

The president looked at the button and wondered whether it would make a clicking sound were he to push it. He wondered very much.

#

“It’s working,” Willow forced out between clenched teeth, sweat running freely down her face. “The Ring is activating.”

The two witches were flanking the Ring now, hands outstretched, giving their best to harness the energies flooding in from the giant pentagram carved into the city while ignoring its bitter taste, the putrid yet intoxicating flavor of human sacrifice. Buffy and Angel, clad in the black armor of the Harbinger, pointed the creature’s sword right into the center of the rippling energy, the blade vibrating with power.

“How much longer, Willow?”

Angel’s com beeped and through a hail of static they could hear Spike’s voice, telling them to hurry because something was happening. Buffy frowned, unable to understand most of the words.

“What did he say?”

“Something about ...,” Angel began.

The ground beneath them shook once again, more violently than ever before. The entire cave around them groaned, screeching with the sound of shattering rock and shifting stone. Debris rained down on them from above, the edges of the hole the first activation of the Ring had caused breaking away.

“Keep up the spell,” Angel yelled at Tara and Willow, whose concentration was wavering. “We have to complete this or we’re done for.”

“Oh, shit,” Buffy mumbled, looking up through the hole and seeing the source of the disturbance.

#

Spike and Faith could do nothing but quickly bring some distance between them and the remains of Bryant Tower. A dozen of Golgotha’s tentacles shot toward the hollowed-out spire, black scales glistening in the light of the flames that played across them ceaselessly.

Spike yelled and leapt to the side as one of the giant tendrils swept right past him, missing him by less than ten meters. The pavement exploded beneath it, torn open by the force the greater demon brought to bear upon the poor city, erupting into a hailstorm of debris and violently displaced air that knocked Spike for a loop and sent him spinning into the side of a building.

Leaving an almost cartoonish outline of his body in the brick wall he crumbled to the ground.

“Spike!” Faith was by his side in an instant, kneeling down beside him to check for injuries. Spike was groggy, momentarily dazed, feeling the pain of several broken ribs, but could not suppress a cocky grin when he saw the worry in her dark eyes.

“Careful, pet,” he whispered hoarsely. “One could get the impression you still care.”

“Shut up and get back to your feet, idiot!” The sharpness of her words was in direct contrast to the smile on her lips.

They both looked up when their words were drowned out by the sound of screeching metal and concrete. Even in ruin the spire of Bryant Tower still reached high into the sky, but not for much longer. Golgotha’s tentacles wrapped around the building, effortlessly crushing the outer walls, crumbling the structure as if it was made from paper.

“Time to run,” Spike whispered. Faith could not hear his words over the sound of the dying tower, but really did not need to. Common sense was more than enough.

They jumped back to their feet even as the first pieces of debris rained down on them from above, chunks of the crumbling building flying every which way. The ground around them shook anew, almost knocking them over again, as Golgotha tore the tower’s foundations right out of the ground.

“Just when you think you’ve seen everything ...,” Spike mumbled. Golgotha was throwing aside the sorry remains of the tower with the same disregard a child might show for a broken toy. Even as Spike and Faith were running for cover as fast as their legs would carry them the circle of destruction grew, the tentacles digging deeply into the ground where Bryant Tower had stood but moments before.

For the second time in a single night Spike found himself saying a prayer beneath his breath, pleading with whatever god who might be listening to keep their friends safe.

#

All four people down in the cave involuntarily ducked as the ceiling above them was ripped away and more debris rained down on them. It was only due to their standing right beneath the large hole the Ring’s first activation had ripped that they were not crushed into powder when the rest of the cave collapsed, tons of rock coming down in an instant.

Angel was not sure how deeply below ground they were, but taking into account the many, many steps they had walked down to reach the cave he figured that it was at least 300 feet, probably more. It did nothing to protect them, though.

“We’re almost done,” Tara screamed at them over the calamity. “Just a few more seconds.”

The sword was bucking in Buffy and Angel’s joined hands, but this time it was not because of some malevolent force imprisoned inside it. The magical forces unleashed by the Ring surged through the blade and into their bodies, seeming to fill their veins with white-hot quicksilver. Buffy was struck by a piece of debris, a large cut on her forehead beginning to bleed, but she did not even feel it. The world was reduced to the Ring in front of them, now glowing with power about to be unleashed, and the sight that greeted them from above.

The hole had been widened, turned into a crater ripped into the heart of New York by a power not of this world, and a pair of blood red eyes were gazing down on them from the heart of a fiery vortex.

“Golgotha, I presume,” Angel mumbled into the sudden silence, disturbed only by the sound of settling rock and the humming of the Ring.

The greater demon growled, the sound ringing out across the city like a thunderclap, blowing out all the windows that had managed to remain intact until now. Black tentacles began to creep down into the crater and Golgotha itself was moving forward again, more of its giant form emerging from the vortex. Neither Angel nor Buffy could make out its exact shape; it seemed composed only of black scales, fire, and shadows.

They only knew it was coming toward them. Very quickly.

“Willow,” Buffy mumbled, “now would be a really good time.”

A few more breathless seconds passed as the tentacles crept closer, than the magic around them seemed to snap together into a coherent whole, a great pressure falling away.

“We’re ready,” Willow screamed at them. “Do it NOW!”

For a moment Buffy and Angel hesitated, caught in the spectacle above them, but then they acted. Thrusting the sword forward into the heart of the Ring caused the ancient artefact to activate, unleashing the power gathered from the pentagram once more. The runes set into the black arch blazed brightly, fire gathered in its centre.

“Eat this, you bastard,” Buffy cheered as the fire burst free, a huge gust of flame exploding straight up towards the greater demon, preparing to rip yet another hole into the fabric of time and space, preparing to rip Golgotha into shreds with the force of two overlapping dimensional portals.

A giant tentacle snapped up too quick for the eye to follow, right into the path of the flames. The power unleashed by the Ring struck the black scales and trailed off like water.

“What’s happening?” Buffy looked at Willow and Tara, who looked ready to drop any second.

“Golgotha is blocking the spell,” Tara groaned, her eyes tightly shut. “It knows what we’re trying to do.”

For a moment the world seemed to come to a standstill as the fire from the Ring strained against the power of the greater demon hanging in the skies above New York, then the black tentacle slowly moved down, pushing the flames back.

“It’s too strong!” Willow and Tara dropped to their knees, their faces warped with agony. “The power of the pentagram is almost spent. We can’t force it back.”

Buffy and Angel still stood together, the sword in hand, and gazed upwards. Golgotha was pushing back the flames. All its other tentacles had frozen into stillness, its strength fully focused on the battle at hand. A battle that the greater demon was winning.

#

Spike and Faith looked on from a safe distance, or as safe as any place in New York could be right now, and saw what was happening.

“This is not good,” Spike mumbled. “Not good at all.”

“No shit,” Faith added.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

25 - Army of Shadows, Pillar of Light

#


Buffy stared up, right into the searing eyes of Golgotha, eyes so big one could drown an entire army inside them. She felt Angel by her side, his hand clutching hers where they both held the Harbinger’s sword, and they both knew that they had to do something. Anything.

The power of the pentagram was spent. The Harbinger had killed hundreds of people to build it, had snuffed their lives like so many candle flames and poured their essences into this huge conjuring circle to focus his foul magic, all in order to summon the greater demon that now looked down upon them. They had been unable to prevent him from completing it. Dawn had died, even though Buffy had promised to protect her.

And now, when they needed this foul magic to work for them, it was not enough.

Thoughts shot through her mind in rapid succession. The old pentagram was spent, its power soaked up by the first vortex it had created. So build a new one. A few hundred lives to save the world. She banished that idea as quickly as it came. Even if they could ever make themselves do something so low, they would not have the time. Golgotha was here, momentarily preoccupied with fending off the weakening flames of the Ring, but it certainly would not wait idly while they tried to fashion some new means of destroying it.

No, they had to make this work. They would not get another chance.

“Willow,” Buffy yelled at her best friend. “Is there any way for us to strengthen the pentagram again?”

The witch was down on her knees, deathly pale and looking ready to drop any moment now. For a moment Buffy was not sure whether her friend had even heard her.

“I don’t know,” Willow confessed, her voice barely more than a whisper. “The circle has already been closed. If we break it to add more power to it the entire spell could blow up in our faces.”

Great, Buffy swore under her breath. Needed more power, but could not get more power without risking everything. What were they supposed to do anyway? Had they not already done enough? Suffered enough? Dawn’s face swam before her eyes for a moment, but she shook it away. Not now! Please, not now! There was no time for her to break down.

They needed more power in the pentagram, but how? It was not as if they could just ask all the people who had died already to just rise and die again, so what ...

She stopped.

“Angel,” Buffy turned towards her husband. “Did you see that, too? Did you see the shadows when we fought the Harbinger?”

Angel nodded, he certainly had. The Harbinger had flooded them with images of its long, long existence, trying to beat them into submission by showing them all the worlds that had already fallen to Golgotha, no matter how hard they had resisted.

He had also shown them what happened to the people who had been so foolish as to fight against his master.

The shadow wraiths Buffy and Angel had been fighting this last week had, at first, numbered in the hundreds. Then, as the fight progressed, more and more of them had been destroyed by fire, reducing them to a mere handful for the battle here in the cave where Angel, Spike, and Tara had been seconds too late to stop the Harbinger from activating the Ring.

None of them had given that fact much thought after that, especially seeing as thousands upon thousands of the shadows had come through the vortex along with Golgotha, swarming across the city like a plague of locusts. Now they knew, though. The Harbinger had shown them.

There had only been a few hundred of the shadows here on Earth before the opening of the vortex. For the simple reason that only a few hundred people had died in the Harbinger’s pentagram.

“They are his victims,” Angel said. “All the people who died in order to summon Golgotha here.”

“Then these new shadows must be people from other worlds,” Buffy went on. “People, beings, whatever, whom it killed.”

Angel was confused. Buffy’s reasoning was logical, yes, but he did not understand why that realization seemed to instill her with a spark of hope.

“Don’t you see?” Buffy gazed at him intently. “The Harbinger controlled these creatures. We have his sword. Maybe we can gain control of them.”

Angel shook his head. “Even if we could, what would that avail us? I doubt even all of these creatures together could cause Golgotha much harm.”

The shadows had been lethal if they got into close range, but they were easily dispatched by fire. Golgotha’s entire body seemed to be covered in flames. Any shadow that approached him too closely would ignite in a heartbeat.

“I don’t want to use them to attack Golgotha,” Buffy went on, desperate to make Angel understand. “I want to use them to reenergize the pentagram.”

Angel thought for a moment, then shook his head again. “That won’t work, Buffy. They are already dead. How can they ...?”

“They are not dead,” Tara interrupted him, the blonde witch clinging to the failing spell by pure power of will.

“What?”

“They are not dead,” she repeated tiredly. “They are frozen in the moment of death. Held immobile on the line between life and afterlife. I can still hear their screams.”

“And if they’re not completely dead yet,” Buffy jumped on the thought, “they might just have a little power left to give.”

Angel looked back and forth between Buffy and Tara, then up to where the dying flames were struggling in vain to break the power of Golgotha. The sky, what little they could see of it, was swarming with the shadow creatures. Hundreds of them died every time the military lobbed a missile at the greater demon, they went up like mosquitos flying into a candle flame, but there were always more.

So many lives this thing had taken. So many souls crying out in pain.

“It’s worth a shot,” Angel finally said, strengthening his grip on the sword. “Let’s do it!”

“Hurry,” Tara whispered. “The power is almost gone.”

Buffy and Angel barely heard her, too concentrated on the magical weapon they held in their hands. The dark presence of the Harbinger was no longer there, but they could clearly feel something else. A link to the creatures that filled the skies above New York. The Harbinger had commanded them like an army, had sent them to capture and kill Dawn and hundreds of others. This connection was still there and Buffy and Angel poured all their willpower into it now.

It was a feeling similar to their bond, yet completely different. Their bond made them aware of each other to the point where they would cry out in pain if their mate was not there, extending their individual beings to encompass the other. This here was different. They also felt their minds extending, their awareness heightening until they could see, hear, feel all of New York, the city stretching out below them like a collection of broken toys, yet it was different.

The air around them was abuzz with the wraiths, thousands of them, and they could feel them move as if each of them was a part of their own bodies, thousands of hands that brushed across cold water, so many sensations flooding in that they almost got lost. They were not minds, though, not another being whose love and warmth reached out to answer them.

All they were was pain.

The shadows were screaming. All of them. All the time. Tara was right, they saw. They were souls, spirits, living beings that had been sacrificed on Golgotha’s altar and frozen in the moment of death by its foul magic. Like leaves floating on the surface of the Ethereal Threshold, the dividing line between the living and the dead, they were forever adrift and unable to sink. They existed in nothing but pain, so much pain.

The destruction of the Harbinger had disoriented them, Buffy and Angel realized, taken away the will that controlled them. They still fell on the city below, ravaged it as best they could, but their attacks were unguided, random. Entities that had been in pain for so long now struck out at anything and everything in the futile hope that it might lessen the pain for the span of a heartbeat.

Now all these shadows felt a new mind pressing in on them. No, not one mind, two. A guiding will that was unfamiliar, yet could not be denied. A will that told them not to destroy and ravage the world below them as once had been done to their own, but rather whispering to them of a way to save it. To spare this world the fate of a thousand others.

Some of the shadows had existed for thousands, sometimes millions of years. Their worlds had been torn apart by Golgotha in a time so long gone that not even ashes remained of it now, but even they remembered. Remembered what it was like to be alive, to live in a place that was not dead and drowned in darkness, did not consist purely of pain. They remembered what it felt like to love, to hate, to want revenge at all cost.

They remembered who had taken that world from them.

With a shriek that drowned out even the growling of Golgotha all the shadows turned to face the greater demon and whatever remained of their minds and souls blazed with hatred.

#

“What the fuck’s happening now?” Faith was looking at Golgotha, looking at the desperate battle fought by their friends right at this moment. She did not doubt for a second that the flames spewing forth from the crater where Bryant Tower had once stood were their friends’ attempt to go through with their plan, to reactivate the Ring and create another vortex that would tear the greater demon into shreds.

Only it did not seem to be working.

“We’re losing, pet, that’s what’s happening,” Spike said morbidly, the pain from his mending ribs completely lost amidst the despair pressing in on them from all sides. He figured that part of it was the influence of the demon above them, it was making him irritable and nauseous, but most of it was stemming from the realization that they were out of luck.

“I’m talking about that,” Faith said, elbowing him in the side. “Look!”

Spike bit down on the harsh comment about to spill from his mouth and looked where she pointed, seeing something very strange.

“Why are they all flying in a bloody circle?”

The shadow creatures they had been forced to fight off all the way over here had stopped harassing the city and were now forming what seemed like a giant formation. For a moment Spike was reminded of the many 20th century wars he had seen, skies filled with fighter planes that delivered screeching death by the thousands. What were they doing? Another, more organized attack run or ...

Without preamble the shadows suddenly descended on the city once more, plunging down like birds of prey, all of them at the same time. Spike and Faith ducked under the black mass falling down on them from above, but none of the creatures even got close. They struck the ground like bombs, only without the explosions, and vanished without a trace.

“What’s going on here?” Faith looked around. “Where did they go?”

Light sprang forth from the ground all around them, a glaring, crimson light that suffused the very air and forced them to cover their eyes. Even if they had been able to keep them open, though, they could not have seen what was happening all around them. The only ones who did see it were some of the airforce pilots circling above the city, suddenly out of targets except for the really big one.

The pilots had a few seconds to see the lights springing forth from the ground merge into a single, huge pentagram, carved right into the heart of the city, then they, too, were forced to cover their eyes.

The gust of flame springing forth from the crater of Bryant Tower tripled in size and exploded into brilliance.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26 - Now Leaving New York City (and Good Riddance)


#


“Take that, you bastard,” Buffy muttered, her eyes fixed on the spectacle above, Angel’s hand giving hers a reassuring squeeze.

With the added power of the shadows now added to the pentagram the Ring was humming with energy, pouring out a pillar of flame that ate its way through Golgotha’s tentacle. The greater demon still resisted, pushing against the flames with all his strength, but now the tide had visibly turned and the monster roared in pain.

“What’s that, big guy?” Buffy yelled up at him. “Is it hurting you? Not used to feeling any pain, are you? How do you like it?”

“It’s working,” Willow said, the witches back on their feet now and glowing with renewed energy. “We’re forming a second vortex.”

The entire island seemed to shake when the flames finally penetrated whatever power Golgotha put against them and the greater demon screamed in agony. Buffy and Angel flinched, the sound of this giant being’s pain almost driving them to their knees, causing their ears to bleed. They remained standing, though, and saw that they were indeed winning.

The flames were now brushing past the ruined stump of Golgotha’s tentacle and flooding into the existing vortex, causing the giant, swirling cauldron of energy to crackle and churn. Crimson lightning filled the sky all over New York and the vortex seemed to be growing in size.

Growing rather fast, at that.

“Uh, Willow?” Angel looked at the witch.

“What?”

“This second vortex will disrupt the first one and hopefully cut Golgotha in two, right?”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“Well, seeing as it seems we’re succeeding, I just developed a mild interest in what will happen to us and the rest of New York in the process.”

“What do you ... oh!”

Willow was now looking up as well, having been completely focused on holding the spell together until now. She, too, saw the flaming vortex growing larger and larger, the fires now almost obscuring the giant demon from view. Golgotha was growling and screaming still, its roar causing people all over New York to drop to their knees in pain, but Angel suspected the greater demon was actually no longer the primary threat.

“The two vortexes are beginning to overlap,” Tara said, looking up as well. “When they disrupt each other the unleashed energy will be enormous.”

“Meaning ... big boom?” Buffy looked back and forth between Willow and Tara.

“Very big boom,” Willow nodded.

“Do we still need to hold the spell together?”

Willow closed her eyes again, feeling along the lines of power they had unleashed, a power fueled by the pain and hatred of thousands of spirits that had poured their own essence into the giant pentagram. It was a power that left Willow feeling dirty and tainted, but it was doing its job. The Ring was channeling all that energy into the vortex and did not really need their help anymore.

“I think we’ve done all we can here,” Willow told the others.

“Then we should run!”

No one really wanted to argue with that. Unfortunately the cave had collapsed all around them and they all doubted that the staircase they had come down by had survived Golgotha’s ripping away the entire tower. Which left them with but one option. Climb up the crater.

Buffy and Angel both realized that at least one of them would have to let go of the Harbinger’s sword in order to do that. For a moment they hesitated, unsure what would happen. Was the malevolent entity really destroyed or just dormant, waiting for one of them to let go so that it could then overwhelm the one who was left alone?

Then they both smiled. Physical contact or not, neither of them was ever alone.

Buffy let go of the sword first, the black armor vanishing from her body in an instant. Angel considered just leaving the blade here, but decided against it. No matter what happened now, they would not make the mistake of leaving these dangerous things to be buried to maybe trouble future generations. The threat of Golgotha would end tonight. For good.

“How do we get up there?” Tara looked up at the hole. “I seriously doubt that ...”

“Anyone down there?”

The voice from above was very much familiar and brought a smile to Angel’s lips.

“Spike, you there?”

“You expecting somebody else, peaches?”

A moment later they saw the dark rectangle of a hover tank, slowly lowering into the crater from above. The military vehicle moved awfully close to the still-active pillar of flame, but managed to make it down to the collapsed cave ceiling in one piece.

“We can’t get any lower,” one of the soldiers steering the craft said. “They have to get in from here.”

“But how are we supposed to ...,” Willow began, only to be grabbed by Buffy and thrown nearly thirty feet straight up. The witch screamed in surprise, but she was safely captured by Spike and lowered onto the top of the tank before she had time to be scared. A heartbeat later Tara came flying as well, the look on her face almost enough to make Willow laugh.

Buffy and Angel leaped the height without any assistance. The hover tank trembled for a moment, needing a lot of power to stay suspended so high above any solid ground, but managed to slowly rise out of the crater again.

“We need to put some distance between us and that thing,” Angel pointed at the vortex,” and fast!”

#

The greater demon Golgotha was so old that it did not remember its own beginnings. It had awoken in a time beyond memory and known only hunger. It fed on fear and death, entire worlds not enough to sate its appetite for any length of time. In its own dimension the creature had annihilated all life, to be left alone to starve.

Then it had found the creature known as the Harbinger, who was able to cross dimensions and enable its master to do the same. With the Harbinger’s assistance Golgotha had found new dimensions, new worlds to consume, but still its appetite knew no bounds.

Now the Harbinger was gone. Golgotha had felt him die, had felt its only means of crossing the dimensions wither and fade. Still, this dimension it had entered was ripe with life. Maybe that would be enough to finally end its hunger, to sate that ravenous longing it had felt as long as its memory reached back.

It seemed that this was not to happen. The vortex, its entry into this new dimension, was collapsing all around it. Not even Golgotha’s power could save him from this, being ripped apart by two converging dimensional portals. Across its huge life span the greater demon had never, not once, considered the possibility of its own destruction.

Now it was forced to do so. Surprisingly enough it was not in any way frightened or furious. No, Golgotha actually found itself looking forward to this new experience.

It meant its endless hunger would finally cease.

#

The hover tank had sat down near the edge of the island, too low on power to cross the river. The military had erected a gathering point here, thousands of New Yorkers fleeing from their city and being brought across by every boat and hover vehicle that could be grabbed. One look told Angel, though, that the island was still full of people. People who would not survive the explosion of the vortex.

“We need to do something,” Angel said, jumping off the tank, the Harbinger’s sword still in hand. “The city will be destroyed when that vortex goes up.”

“You couldn’t come up with a less explosive plan to stop this monster, peaches?”

“I didn’t hear you volunteer a better plan, William!”

“We don’t have time for this, guys,” Buffy interjected. “Willow, Tara! Think you can put up a force field around this thing?”

Willow shook her head. “Buffy, it’s one thing to erect a force field to protect us from a collapsing building, but this ...”

“There they are!”

Buffy, Faith, Angel, Spike, Willow, and Tara turned around to see a large group of young women running toward them, all of them dressed in black and laden with charms and trinkets. They recognized the girl leading them.

“Selina?”

“See,” Selina turned towards the others, smiling smugly. “I told you I knew them. I even fought together with them against these shadow creatures.”

Turning to face Willow and Tara the young witch beamed. “I gathered the rest of our coven, thinking we might be able to help some more. But it looks like you already took care of things.”

Tara shook her head, amazed. It seemed that Selina’s good cheer was even stronger than the malevolent influence of Golgotha. The young woman’s aura was still as blinding as ever.

“Not quite,” Willow said, looking up the imploding vortex. “You might be able to help us yet.”

A bare minute later the witches were gathered in a circle, a dozen young women overflowing with excitement that they would be able to do magic with the famous founders of Magitech. Willow and Tara could feel that only some of the witches had the potential to ever be capable of more than simple tricks, but right now every bit of power would help.

“You think you can contain the vortex with their help?” Buffy looked at her best friend.

“Contain? No, there is too much power gathered there. We might just be able to redirect it upwards, though. Wish us luck!”

“Luck!”

The witches clasped hands, beginning to chant. Willow and Tara were tired, but the infusion of power into the pentagram had reenergized them somewhat. The younger witches were untrained, those that actually had greater potential unable to utilize it as of yet, but their power could be tapped if they were willing. Which they were, very much so.

The chant lasted several minutes while the vortex grew ever larger, now obscuring the night sky completely. The roars of Golgotha had faded just as its influence seemed to be receding. They did not know whether the greater demon had already perished or simply retreated into the last dimension it had inhabited. Right now none of them cared.

“Done,” Willow finally announced, breathing hard. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

Spike walked up to her, squinting his eyes.

“Really wish I could see your force field, red. You sure it’s up to this?”

“Sure,” Willow said, shrugging. “Only thing it has to hold off is a little rain, that’s all.”

The bleached vampire raised an eyebrow, even as the vortex erupted. For a moment they could all see a giant shape outlined against the flames, then the shape came apart as the flames exploded outward in all directions.

“I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, red,” Spike continued, his voice deceptively calm, “but that’s no rain. That’s a hail storm of exploding demon daddy that will cut us into tiny little pieces unless your ...”

“Don’t say stuff like that,” Willow chided him. “It’s rain because I say it’s rain.”

“What happens if you don’t say it’s rain?”

“Then we’ll get cut into tiny little pieces by a hailstorm of exploding demon daddy.”

Spike nodded, took a fag from his coat pocket, lit it, and took a deep drag. Looking at the approaching fire storm once more he exhaled and nodded again.

“Light summer rain,” he mumbled.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
27 - To Close a Door Forever
#

New York City
December 23, 2038 AD

#


No one was quite sure of the time, but some minutes or hours after the vortex vanished and the explosion spent itself against the witches’ force field the sun began to rise over the ocean, casting its golden rays across the devastation.

Spike and Angel, as well as the vampires from the Order of Tarakan and the other troops the Vampirium had sent, retreated into the safety of the shadows. The others, though, no matter how incredibly tired and worn out they were, raised their heads to turn their faces toward the light. It had only been two days in which the darkness of Golgotha had cast the city into perpetual shadow, but to them it had seemed like a lifetime.

“I never thought I’d be so happy just to see the sun,” Willow murmured sleepily, her head resting in Tara’s lap. “Think we can do a spell that will keep it up there for a few days?”

“I wouldn’t mind.” Tara smiled at her, leaning down to kiss her brow.

“You know,” she added after a while, “I was thinking about the magic we used to create that second vortex.”

Willow looked up at her. “Thinking what?”

“I was thinking we might be able to build one of those ourselves. Not to, you know, allow dangerous greater demons access to our dimension, but maybe as some kind of teleportation portal.”

Willow tried to think about that, but found that she was much too sleepy for any kind of coherent thought.

“Let’s talk about that once we’re back home, ‘kay?”

“Okay, Will” Tara tenderly brushed some stray locks from her face. “Let’s just rest for now.”

Moments later Willow was fast asleep, Tara smiling down at her contentedly.

Thousands of refugees were still camping out on the shores of the river, as large parts of central Manhattan were so much rubble and ruin now. Central Park was littered with the remains of broken buildings, many of the tall towers had collapsed and taken others with them as they tumbled. Still, some parts of the city had survived intact and even now the first working crews were already busy digging through the wreckage, trying to find survivors.

New York had taken a pounding, but the city had survived.

Buffy and Faith were standing at the edge of the river, looking at the dark waters slowly growing lighter as the sun rose. The two Slayers were both tired, worn out, left standing by sheer willpower. It had been a long two days. Angel stood a few feet away, safely in the shadows, and watched both of them with worry in his dark eyes. Spike was by his side, no longer able to mask his concern for Faith. Or simply no longer caring to.

A lot had happened these last forty-eight hours, Angel mused. Things that none of them had had the time to really work through yet, especially Buffy and Faith. He remembered what Wesley had told him just a day and half ago. How worried he had been about what might happen to the two of them should the worst come to pass.

The worst had indeed come to pass. They had saved the city, yes, maybe even the entire world. Right now, though, Angel knew that neither Buffy nor Faith were thinking about that. The only thing they saw was the one they had failed to save.

As the first rays of sunlight touched the waters of the Hudson the two Slayers turned around, looking at the two vampires standing in the shadow behind them.

“It’s over, right?” Buffy looked at Angel. “We beat this thing.”

“It’s over,” Angel nodded. “Golgotha is destroyed.”

Buffy nodded, sharing a look with Faith. Angel would not have needed his bond with Buffy to realize what was going through her right now, through both of them. For endless hours they had been forced to continue fighting, to do whatever it took to defeat Golgotha and push their human emotions to the side, bury them somewhere deep down.

Now the danger had passed.

Buffy walked toward her husband, but stumbled on her second step, Angel reaching out to catch her. His wife collapsed against him, shaking with sobs, tears running down her cheeks.

“Dawn,” she cried. “Dawn!”

“I know, beloved,” Angel simply said, holding her as both of them wept for the girl they had failed to protect. “I know.”

Faith and Spike did not exchange any words. It was rare that Faith allowed herself to show any emotions at all, it was not the kind of person she was. Today, though, things were different. No matter the fact that Spike and her were no longer lovers, no matter what they might become to each other in the future. For the moment it only mattered that there was so much pain inside her and the comfort of a familiar pair of arms close at hand.

For the moment two Slayers cried in the arms of two vampires and the rest of the world would just have to fend for itself for the time being.

#

When night fell once more Angel was standing on the edge of the crater where Bryant Tower had once stood, staring down into the darkness. The ground had been fused into glass by the exploding vortex, for a few blocks in all directions the city had been razed completely. Only Willow’s force field had saved the rest of Manhattan, channeling the brunt of the explosion upwards into the sky.

Angel did not know how many people might still have been alive here at that time, might have been caught by the flames they had unleashed. The death toll would take a long time to calculate and he did not care to learn its conclusion. They had done their best, that he knew, and thinking about ‘what if’s or ‘maybe’s would only give him more nightmares on top of the ones he was sure he’d have already.

All his friends were safe. Wesley had survived the battle, though he was a bit chagrined that he had spent most of the long night hiding out in his hotel room instead of joining the fight like he could have done in days past. Angel knew that some day not too far off he would lose his oldest friend to time, it was inevitable, but right now he did not care about that. Wesley was alive today, tomorrow would take care of itself.

Buffy and Faith were both out like a light after crying for a long, long time, their sleep guarded by Spike. In a few hours they would all fly back to California together for some much needed rest. Before that could happen, though, Angel wanted to make sure of a few things.

The Ring had survived the explosion. The excavation crews had discovered it only a few minutes ago, not a scratch to be found on its obsidian surface. Angel was certain that quite a few people would just love to study this thing, find out what made it tick, but in the last few hours he had made some calls to Cordelia and a few other high-ranking politicians who were friends or in his debt.

No matter what it took, they would destroy this thing, even if they had to launch it into the sun to do it. With the destruction of Golgotha and the apparent demise of the Harbinger entity Angel did not know whether these artifacts were still dangerous in any way, but he did not intend to take chances here.

He still carried the sword of the Harbinger with him. The black armor had faded when Golgotha died, leaving behind what now appeared to be perfectly harmless steel. Again, though, Angel would not take chances.

The Watchers had written that neither the sword, like the Ring, could not be destroyed. That had been at a time, though, when the Harbinger had still existed, when the power of Golgotha had still been prevailing.

Angel took out the sword, set it at an angle to the ground, and kicked.

The blade shattered like glass.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
28 - All the World to Watch Over

#

City of Angels
December 24, 2038 AD

#

Buffy sat on the stairs of the Hyperion Hotel’s lobby and looked out across the room. Over to one side was the door to the hotel’s large banquet hall, where everything was already set up for their Christmas dinner. They always held it here in the Hyperion, no matter that no one had lived here for the last six years or so. For a long time this building had been home to many of them and it held a lot of memories, some bad, but mostly good.

Spike and Faith were still upstairs, dressing for the dinner. Tara and Willow had called that they would be a little late, they were so busy hiding from assistants and corporate people bugging them about important stuff they had to do right now and with no delay that they had been forced to take a detour. Buffy’s mother, Wesley, and the extensive Chase family were due to arrive soon.

Angel was moving down the stairs, coming toward her. As usual he did not make a sound as he moved, but she felt him approach nevertheless.

“How are you, beloved?” He sat down beside her, slowly moving one of his arms around her slim shoulders and gently pulling her against his side. Buffy had spent most of the last day either sleeping or crying, he knew. For a moment Angel had even considered canceling their Christmas dinner, the wounds still too fresh for all of them to be in any kind of festive mood, but then decided against it.

Right now all of them needed to feel alive.

“A little better,” Buffy said, resting against her husband. “Not sure how long that will last, though. I still feel ... I don’t know, all torn up inside.”

Wesley and Angel had told her that the Watchers had bound the Slayer to the sorcerers’ bloodlines, wanting to ensure that the Chosen Ones of all ages would do their best to protect their descendants if Golgotha should ever return. Buffy did not know whether the fact that at least part of her feelings for Dawn had been mystical in nature made her feel better or worse.

“I keep seeing her face, Angel,” Buffy went on. “She was so scared. I promised I would protect her and then ...”

Her voice broken and her eyes shimmered with fresh tears.

“I know, beloved,” Angel said, brushing a soft kiss on her cheek. “I wish there was something I could do to make it easier for you, for all of us. The only thing I can tell you is that we’re not perfect, none of us. We can’t save everybody. We can only give our best.”

More than the words it was the bond between them that soothed Buffy’s pain, at least a little. She knew that Angel was hurting, too. She knew that, during that short time where Angel and her had taken care of Dawn, he had taken her into his heart as well. Almost as if they were a family, Buffy thought.

“You loved Dawn, didn’t you?” Angel looked at her. “Mystical bond or not, you loved her.”

Buffy simply nodded. She had loved that girl, no matter that she had only known her for a couple of days. It could not be explained and she saw no need to do so. She knew that, had Dawn lived, she would have done everything possible to provide the girl with as good a life as she could possibly give her in a world that had cruelly taken her parents away from her. Only now it would never happen.

“I feel so selfish,” Buffy admitted. “Dawn died and the only thing I can think of is how much I would have liked to take care of her, to provide for her. God, I knew the girl for two days, she just lost her parents, and I was having ideas about the three of us becoming a family. What kind of monster does that make me?”

“Just human, Buffy,” Angel said. “Just human. I know how much it hurt you when you learned you could never have children. Is it a miracle that you wanted to give your best for a child that, under whatever circumstances, had come to be in your care? If it’s worth anything to you, I think Dawn would have loved you, too, in time.”

“Time! How come the two of us have so much of it, yet we can’t even give a little part of it to a girl like Dawn? Or a girl of our own.”

“We all get the same, beloved. One life, for better or worse. But I think you are wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“We have given a lot of our time to others. People that would have died if not for us. Maybe you can’t give life to an unborn child, Buffy, but thousands, millions of lives have gone on because of you. I’m not just talking about Golgotha, I’m talking about the last forty years of your life. Never think that you have done too little for others, Buffy, because you have done more than any other person I know.”

Buffy closed her eyes, shaking her head.

“I just wanted to hold her in my arms and protect her, Angel. Was that so much to ask?”

There was no good answer to that question, Angel knew, so he said nothing, just held her tighter and let her feel his love for her through their bond.

After some minutes Buffy found her composure again, looking up into the dark brown eyes of her husband. “Do you think we will ever have a family of our own? Children?”

“I can’t promise you anything about children, Buffy, but never think we don’t have a family!”

He pointed toward the entrance doors of the Hyperion and an involuntary smile bloomed on Buffy’s face when she saw the people there.

“Puffy,” Francis Chase squealed, running across the lobby as fast as his little legs would carry him. His two siblings, Erica and Jason, were right behind him. The rest of the Chase clan were entering as well, smiles on their faces.

Buffy scooped up the little boy, who in turn hugged her hard enough to make her fear for her air supply. Erica and Jason jumped on Angel, demanding to see his ‘grrr’ face at once. Laughter filled the lobby and Buffy realized with a flash of guilt that she was actually joining in. How could she laugh now when just two days ago ...

“It’s all right, Buffy,” Angel told her softly over the heads of the children surrounding them. “It’s all right.”

Buffy swallowed hard, looking at the smiling faces of Cordelia’s grandchildren. They knew nothing of Golgotha or the pain of surviving when others did not. They only knew that tonight was Christmas Eve and that presents were waiting for them. They would spend time with mom and dad and their many friends.

Maybe it was okay to just be happy for a while, Buffy mused as she looked at them.

There was a deep ache in her heart and it would take a long time to make it go away, that much she knew. Maybe there would always be some pain, the torturous questions inside her mind whether she might not have done something different to keep Dawn safe, whether she had really done all she could that long, dark night.

Looking up she saw Wesley come in, a smile on his weathered face, a bag filled with presents slung over his shoulder. She knew that the former Watcher still blamed himself for the death of Kendra, her predecessor as the Slayer, even though he knew that there was nothing he could have done differently. She still remembered their first conversation all these decades ago, the one where he had pleaded with her not to listen to the Watchers and let her life be thrown away in a war against an enemy who did not even exist anymore.

To have a better, happier life than Kendra had.

Wesley’s doubts and nightmares did not keep him from living a good, happy life of his own and maybe all that Buffy could do now was the same thing she and Angel had done these last forty years: Keep the world safe for children like Dawn, children who deserved to grow up and live long and happy lives. They had all the world’s children to watch over.

Maybe that was enough.

“Merry Christmas, Aunt Buffy,” Erica said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Buffy smiled back at the little blonde girl. The ache was still there. Right now, though, it did not feel quite so bad.

“Merry Christmas, Erica,” Buffy said back. “Merry Christmas to all of us.”

Somewhere in the tumbling mass of happy children and adults Buffy’s hand found that of her husband and the world did not seem quite so dark a place. At least for a little while.