Chapter 8 -- Oldest is Fate

The remaining minions shouted in dismay, then stood very still. The lions came around the library and sat down, watching them. Gang Long stepped on bodies and fallen statues as he came from the driveway. He stopped in back of the remaining group of minions, hissing faintly to announce his arrival.

Gavius, looking down at the dagger in his chest, moaned in pain. He fell on his side and curled around the knife. "Finish me," he whispered. "I can't stand the pain."

"Well, no, of course not," Anya said. "Pain hurts. Everyone knows that."

Spike came over and held his hand out to Buffy, who took it and rose to her feet. She walked over to her sword and picked it up. Her hand was still tingling, but it functioned.

"Put me out of my misery. It's the only humane action you can take."

"I'm a vampire," Spike pointed out.

"Don't let me suffer!"

"Ann, can I get my knife back?" Spike called over to her. Buffy was cleaning her sword on the robes of a dead minion.

"Give him his knife," Ann ordered Gavius. She was stretched out on the ground with an arm over her eyes.

"Ann," Giles said "Are you all right?"

"I will be," Ann said, sitting up. She froze a moment, listening. She sighed. "I have to report in," she said, and blinked out.

"And what are we supposed to do with these guys?" Xander demanded.

"I can take care of them," Gang Long said. "You may want to go inside," he advised.

"We'll wait a while, before you start a feeding frenzy," Willow told the dragon.

"All right. Couple of minutes?"

"At least an hour," the Witch said firmly.

"The noise that one is making is really annoying," Anya said, indicating Gavius.

"I can fix that," Gang Long said.

"Ann said we can't hit him again," Buffy said.

"I suppose that includes eating him," Anya said. "Too bad," she told the dragon.

Ann ported in. "I have to let you go."

"What!" Gang Long said.

Spike looked over at Ann: "Talk about snatching a stalemate from the jaws of victory. What are those feckless thugs thinking?"

Ann looked disgusted with something or someone and did not answer the dragon or the vampire. "You are declared persona non grata," she told the demon god on the ground. "Willow, we'll need to open a temporary gate, can you?"

The Witch swallowed. "Yes. If you can handle the coordinates and Tara can help with the energy."

"Tara?"

"I won't be able to keep it open for very long."

"Hear that?" Ann addressed Gavius and his minions. "Get ready. The gate opens, you go through. Whoever is left here when it shuts is eaten by the long and the shouyu. Understand?"

A bier appeared and Gavius was carefully place on it by some red robed minions. Other minions picked up the bier.

Ann glanced over at Gavius. Spike's knife left the god's body and appeared in Ann's hand. She checked that it was free of ichor and handed it back to the vampire.

Gavius looked at the knife, looked at Buffy's sword, looked at Ann: "When did you become a lackey of the powers that be?"

Ann have a short, unamused laugh. "Eldest of all is Fate, who rules both gods and men and who occasionally indulges in a very low sense of humor." She made no further response to the god, but bent to remove a flagstone from the center of the terrace, revealing a silver circle inlayed in the earth.

Willow looked at Tara, who nodded. Tara moved behind Willow and chanted softly. Willow brought her hands together about waist level, slowly spreading and raising them, until she seemed to be holding an invisible ball with a radius the length of her arm. Tara's hands came up to rest on Willow's shoulders. Willow's hands turned, palms facing out, and she pushed at the air in front of her.

A glowing ring moved away from her, growing larger and brighter. Ann caught it, rotated it and lowered it gently.

"Step through," Ann said, as the lower edge of the ring touched the silver circle set in the ground. The remaining minions, mostly red robed, but with a few black and brown robes among them, some carrying Gavius on his bier, silently walked through the glowing ring

When the last minion was gone, Willow brought her hands down and together with a very soft clap. She sat down suddenly on the ground. Tara bent over her, helping her to her feet.

"Gang Long, please bring me the picnic basket from the Mercedes."

"All right, Jingwu."

"Anya, put the safety on. No, let me." Xander removed the Uzi from Anya's hands. "There."

"That was fun," the ex-demon said. "I want to do it again."

"I'm not sure this was a good idea," Xander said.

"We smell," Willow realized.

"And we're sticky," Tara agreed. "Spike got minion blood all over us. My hair."

A car drove down the driveway. Gang Long, coming back as a boy, said, "A bunch of minions escaped. Shall the lions and I chase them?"

"Leave them," Ann said. "We can hunt them down later." She replaced the flagstone, covering the silver circle.

"I had the strangest image," Xander said. "The way the minions kept coming, I imagined them arriving in clown cars."

"Oh, that's scary," Willow said. "I never liked those things. Not clowns, clowns are OK, but I kept thinking the cars started out normal sized, then shrank around the passengers."

"That's awful. I'm going to dream about that, I just know it," Tara said.

Gang Long opened the basket and removed a bottle of Ann's champagne. He opened it and filled one of the crystal flutes. Ann took it and drained it. "Ah. That's better." Her hands were shaking less as she held the empty glass out. Gang Long filled it again. Spike handed Buffy a flute and opened another bottle. After filling Buffy's glass, he handed the bottle to Xander and took out the rest of the glasses. There weren't enough to go around, but they could share. Ann sipped her second glass and seemed much restored.

Spike opened another bottle and refilled Buffy's glass. He didn't give it back to her, but wet his finger and started to trace the cut on her cheek. She jerked her head away and glared up at him.

"Stop that," she snapped, stepping back from him.

"Buffy?" Spike asked. "What's the matter?"

"Buffy," Ann's voice cut in, "what is the last thing you remember before this fight?"

"Diving through the hole in the sky."

"Nothing else?" Spike asked.

"Like what?" Buffy asked.

"Where you were, before today," Willow said, firmly grabbing Spike's arm.

"I was there," Buffy said. "Now, I'm here."

Spike looked down at Willow. He was the only one who heard her silent whisper: "Not one more word, Spike, or I'll turn you into a statue."

"No," he said, aloud.

"Yes," Ann said calmly, also aloud. She came to stand beside the Witch. "Claire said this was a possibility. Willow's advice is quite good, too, Spike. You should do as she says."

He looked at the Witch, then Ann. They were serious. Either of them could do what Willow had threatened; hell, Ann had, not once but three times. He looked over at Buffy, who looked back at him, annoyed and impatient. He looked back at Ann and Willow. "All right," he said. He raised the glass to them, drained it, handed it to Willow and walked away, toward the garage.

The driveway was completely blocked: Tara's Saturn was there, as were a strange Lexus and a Lincoln Navigator. There was no chance of getting the Viper out of the garage. Dawn was only half an hour away--he couldn't walk anywhere else. He went in the side door, up the back stairs. He locked the door to his room and poured the first glass of brandy.

***

As Spike walked away, Buffy glanced after him and demanded: "What's his problem?"

"He finds rudeness depressing," Ann Grove's cool voice answered her. "I find it intolerable. He saved your life three time in the last five minutes of the fight. A thank you might have been appropriate."

"Ann!" Giles said.

Buffy spun and faced her. Before she could speak, Ann continued: "Gang Long, please send the Watcher and the Slayer to Claire's house."

"Certainly," the boy said.

"Hey," Buffy started to say, then she dropped her sword again, the north terrace faded away, and she and Giles were standing in the front hall of Claire's house in Seattle.

Claire was standing in front of them, holding a open book. "Ah," she said, shutting the large book. "Excellent. Ann said I would have no problems unstoning you."

"She stoned us?" Giles asked.

"Not she, but you arrived in that state."

Buffy looked out the window. "What time is it?"

"Early afternoon. Ann was asleep until just now. Willow refused to wake her, saying she was exhausted. Let me see that cut, Buffy."

***

At Three Los Robles Road, Anya said to Ann: "I want to thank you for a lovely evening, and have I mentioned lately how much I like your shower gift?"

Ann looked over at Anya and laughed. "I'm glad you like the pots and pans, Anya. I'm sure if Spike or anyone saved your life and you'd noticed, you'd thank him." She picked up Buffy's sword, lying where the Slayer had dropped it. Slowly, she stabbed the point into her other hand. The sword went into her hand and did not come out the other side. Ann brought her hands together and when she lowered them, the Slayer's sword was gone.

"Are you mad at Giles, too?" Tara asked.

"No, but I'm too tired to deal with his questions, second-guessing, and general criticisms. I didn't want them here, and with that carload of minions still loose, they couldn't go alone to the house on Ravello; Claire can offer better medical treatment than I can right now, anyway, as well as a complete explanation. I'm taking a bath, then a nap. Tara, would you do the honors about breakfast, please?"

"Sure."

"Thank you. There's a lot of food in the butler's pantry, under stasis spells."

"After baths for everyone," Willow said.

"The red room is free, so is the west suite," Ann said. She turned the electric lights off. The east was paling. "Sort yourselves out. Willow, can I talk with you a minute?"

"Sure. I'll be right up, Tara."

"I'm taking the red room for us, Willow," Tara said.

"Fine," the Witch told her lover.

Tara, Xander and Anya looked at the mess of minion statues and corpses blocking the back door, and used the kitchen door to enter the house. Ann looked at Willow.

"How did you know?"

"When I picked up her cell phone. She had her hand on his thigh all through dinner, and she was playing footsie with him during the Scrabble game, too. How did it happen?"

"He put her in the west suite, she left there and moved in with him. Why did you stop him from arguing?"

"Dawn," the Witch said. "It would be Giles all over again, getting Buffy to agree to let Dawn still see Spike, if he got her mad by insisting they'd been lovers while she had no memory of that at all. Poor Spike."

"Yes," Ann agreed. "You have a fine heart, Willow, to go with your smart head."

Willow looked at Ann, then glanced away, then back. "Ann, err...are you a servant of the powers that be?"

"No. Leave it at that. Thanks for your help."

Willow looked at Ann for a moment longer, then went in.

The shouyu and Gang Long approached Ann.

"They wouldn't listen," Ann said quietly.

"The kuangmei learned much," the lilac lion said.

"And got away with what they learned," Gang Long said.

"Yes. My controllers turned this from a poorly planned and disastrous raid into a successful reconnaissance in force." Ann said. "Live fire training. If we face them again, next time will be harder, because of what Gavius and his advisors learned today."

"Why?" Gang Long asked, "Why did they make you let Gavius go? I mean, just because Ligulf is dead here for a long cycle, doesn't mean he's permanently dead in his home dimension, anymore than Glory is permanently dead there."

"It does slow them down a little," Ann smiled. "At least Ligulf and Glory should return there at about the same time. That may keep them all occupied."

The green lion growled.

"I can hope, can't I?" Ann said.

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