__One Long Night__
By B'cat



No one moved. Then Giles felt something very faintly at the edges of his senses. It was pain. Agony. Writhing and crying carried on the air. He felt Buffy by his side. She was radiating fear, her aura rippling with it, but once again he felt enormous pride in the young Slayer - she had still pulled her stake and it was rock steady in her fist. Amazing young woman.

“What do we do? Feed Spike to the ghouls?” Xander asked. Giles looked over at the young man, impressed to see, that through the shaking and sweating he was still meeting the threat face on. He was surprised to hear no retort from the vampire in question, even if he was terrified.

“Can you be sure he is all they want?” Giles said. “In this situation we can assume nothing. Right, Xander, Anya, clear a space here. Move the table.” There was only one action they could take that he knew might save them. There was no time and no way to gather enough information to make any kind of militant defence or attack. He simply had no idea who or what they were dealing with. If they survived this encounter he might get enough to work with. “Willow, Tara. Spell of Protection. Get the ingredients, my spell book too, it’s in the store room on the shelf. Hurry. Buffy, talk to me. Tell me what happened when these ghouls attacked Spike. Spike...” He looked around, spotting the vampire still rooted to the spot. “Spike!” He grabbed the terrified vampire by his bony shoulders and shook him. “SPIKE! Pull yourself together man. We need you.” Yellow eyes flitted across his face, then settled to meet his own gaze. The vamp nodded stiffly. Giles could feel the terror radiating off him. That was disturbing. Vampires were not easily terrorized, In fact he had never seen a vampire this frightened in his life. Not even when they got the occasional one who pleaded for his life before Buffy took it.

But there was something else... Hadn’t Willow and Tara said that Spike was infused with the camouflage spell that had been cloaking the blood? Well it was gone now. What did that mean? Perhaps he had used up all the Hell blood and the magic had run its course? The strange absence tickled around the edges of his understanding.

“Giles!” It was Willow and she had his personal Magius. It was bound in thick chocolate coloured leather and embossed with silver - a gift from Annie. He had been carefully adding spells, incantations and power words to its pages for decades now. Energy pulsed between the compressed pages. He released Spike and hurried across to retrieve it. Tara brushed by him and, in the space left by the table she began sprinkling out a huge circle of sacred white powder. It glowed silvery in the store light.

“Talk to me!” He commanded his Slayer and she snapped to attention from across the room where she had gone to peer out of the window. He could see the air between them rippling slightly. Little twists and whisps of colourless movement that reminded him a little of a bucket of worms. It prickled his skin, little pin dots of pain and hatred that flickered like starlight over his face and exposed forearms.

“When I entered the cellar,” his Slayer said, “the air was moving like it is now, only worse, much worse. It was hard to breathe. Hard to move. I tracked it back to the source.” She looked a little grey around the gills as she recalled it. Behind him Giles heard the familiar clacking of weapons on the moved table. “It was intense Giles. Like you’d imagine the inside of a microwave to be. And the air, the floor, the blood and the fridges were all...” She searched for words. “Dying. I know it sounds bizarre but they were all dying. It was as if the life was being crushed out of them.” She swallowed and darted a quick look out of the window again. “It was those ghoul things. I don’t know how I know, they didn’t move, they were hard to even see, but I know it was them. They didn’t even need to be in contact with Spike to drain him.”

Giles gripped the smooth oiled leather of his Magius tightly and tried not to let the horror show. It was much worse than he thought. These ghouls sounded like Hell spawn. The twisted, mutant offspring of Bael himself. To harm, let alone kill, the very essence of the elemental forces of nature took a strength and a degree of filth and darkness that he did not even want to think about.

“Giles?” It was Tara. She tugged at his sleeve and he realised he had zoned out in dread. “Everything’s ready.”

“Right.” He turned back to the ring and spotted Xander at the reading table. His aura was still flickering with fear at the edges, but its white gold brilliance was startlingly intense. He was priming a series of blessed crossbows with a familiarity and comfort that only deepened Giles’ black despair - that anyone, especially one hardly more than a child, should be so familiar with such items...

Anya, it seemed, had overcome one fear with another and had attached her rabbit’s foot to the end of a pike. She was otherwise laden with charms and protective items. Of all of the people in this room she alone could join with him in the appreciation of the situation. Despite her seeming lack of knowledge concerning these specific ghouls - she would understand the gravity of Buffy’s recount. Her shivering aura told him all he did not want to know. As he looked she picked up a stack of small projectile weapons and put them inside the chalk circle.

Spike was loading up the circle with bottles of holy water which was a testament to his fear (not to mention his desperation - he wasn’t sure why Spike thought holy water would work on ghouls). Giles had lost count of the number of times the vampire had gone out of his way to avoid even touching the glass of such containers in the past. He had also found Giles’ Gorinth Helmet and was wearing it, cheek guards flapping, at a jaunty angle. Its dull burnished glow made him look more pale than he usually was, even under all the blood and mud and grime that was smeared over his face. He was also still vamped out.

Willow was fussing over a small Incendius bowl that Giles would need, polishing it out where it sat in the centre of the ring. On a piece of black velvet she had neatly set out the small number of ingredients that were needed. Thank god for the young Wicca’s sense of order. Beside the bowl she had also found the time to light a small pouch of tinder. Ready made flame where shaking fingers might ruin matches. Very thoughtful. Once again he was impressed by the young woman.

“Right.” He said again as he followed Tara into the circle. The air around them now was beginning to swirl in strained, twisted and chaotic steams and the keening of its pain was starting to register upon even mortal ears. The smell of sulphur tainted it and burned his lungs. The floor beneath his feet, the bare concrete, was shivering and it vibrated against the soles of his shoes. He looked around at the shelves as he stepped into the ring. The magical and new age items were shifting. Almost as if they were alive and waking from a deep sleep. They twitched and moved. Painfully. Agonized and not knowing why. The hair stood up on the back of his neck.

Not long now.

“Everyone, into the circle. Hurry. I have to start the protection spell now. Buffy!” He called across to his Slayer. The young woman was shifting on her feet, still peering into the street. Even through the writhing of the air he could sense her eagerness to end the wait and fight. It was the power of the Slay and it forced immediate attention from the one experiencing it, he knew.

“Get started Giles.” She called to him without looking around.

“I can’t without you here. Once I start, you won’t be able to enter. Buffy - you can’t fight them. Not yet.”

The rest of the group stepped over the chalk boundary and found position around the wicca and he. Buffy, with one last lingering look out of the window, moved shadow-quiet across the room and stepped into the ring. Her agitation was plain. Once she was safely inside and had taken up position with one of Xander’s crossbows, cocked and poised to fire, Giles knelt behind the little Incendius bowl and opened his book.

Either side of him the wicca were poised and ready to deal out the ingredients and light the bowl. To his right, at the front, Buffy stood ready facing the door. To his left was Xander, hands rock steady around his crossbow as he copied the Slayer and aimed at the door. Beyond Xander, Anya, pike raised and rabbit’s foot dangling, was ready to cover the back entrance. And above him towered Spike. The ragged vampire was trembling with strain as he stood his ground. In his hands he held bottles of holy water, ready to protect the magia below him. His fangs were bared and shone dully in the light.

No one spoke.

There was no banter, no chatter, no pep talks. They could all feel the malice growing all around them, and the foul odour of the air, and the pain of even the inanimate was beginning to weigh on their bodies, their souls. He saw Xander flex his shoulders, a frown of horrified consternation on his face.

“Wait, what about the blood?” The boy suddenly said. His voice was muted, dulled, as if the air had suddenly lost all of its reverb. “I should get the blood.”

“Not on your life!” Spike spat through clenched teeth. “As much as the idea appeals, I’d really rather have you alive right now and able to fire that pointy thing than on my dinner plate.”

“He’s right.” Giles said. “We’ll have to take our chances and leave it. They’re coming!”

He began to speak.

The power words flowed like honey from his lips and the wicca worked smoothly adding the ingredients to the bowl. The air was thickening around them. Spike made a strange half growl half choke above him. Then the thought struck - what if the evil destroyed the spell ingredients before he could use them. Dammit. He spoke faster, just barely keeping the appropriate timing and hoped the wicca could keep up.

* * * * *

The contents of the shelves began to writhe for real. The thundering of their motions as they jittered against the wood added a base line to the growing banshee squeal of the air and the crackling rumble of the floor. A box of tinder suddenly burst into black flame. Somewhere beyond sight a bottle smashed, and the juniper sprigs on the counter withered and died before their eyes.

Then the air turned heat-haze intense and Buffy had to squint to see. She tried not to choke on the malice laden air. Her finger tightened on the trigger as she stared at the door. Just come on already! Adrenaline scorched through her veins. The cross on her necklace burned sharp, bright and cold clean against her skin. Come on!

Giles continued to chant. Fast and precise. His voice played a sweet counter to the evil in the air and she clung to it as the pressure grew. Then the sound of a magical fire behind her - the spell was in motion. Immediately the intensity of the distress within the circle dropped. The weight lifted slightly from her arms and the crossbow felt lighter. And it wasn’t a moment too soon. A bottle of newts eyes on the shelf right near her head exploded and the glass splinter fallout bounced off the protective barrier of the circle.

Her watcher continued to chant. His voice steady and calm in the maelstrom of his shop. Items were falling, flying and exploding all over the room. The air roped and twisted around them, screaming - deafening and horrible. The stink was overpowering. The floor around the circle suddenly crackled and began to shudder and tear. Anya shrieked. The reading table was buckling beside her. Then it cracked, exploded, and stake sized splinters pelted harmlessly off the barrier.

“BLOODY FUCKING SHIT!” Spike yelped. His voice was hoarse with terror. Xander suddenly coughed, a hacking bark. She spared him a quick glance. Her friend’s face was pulled tight in a grimace and he was panting, sweat shining his skin. Fear seized her anew as she remembered how hard it had become for her to breathe in the cellar. Slayer strength had almost not been enough. Oh god... Xander glanced her way and managed to pull his lips into a grim smile. She could not return the attempted reassurance.

Buffy looked down at the three magic users as they tended the fire and continued to incant. All three were already breathless. Willow looked near to fainting. Anya, a little beyond Xander, was already leaning against her lover, her pike at half mast. Oh hell! Just come on and get it over with you fucking bastards. Hurry. She ground her teeth in frustrated dread.

Then suddenly they were there. Just there. The heat haze revealed the three whispy, black-flame ghouls as they materialized by the counter. The metal strong box next to the cash register suddenly crumpled and smouldered like heated plastic sheeting, revealing the blood bag. That goddamned blood bag... The Hell blood within it was calm and unperturbed by the hatred scorching the rest of the shop.

She fired.

Her arrow flew straight and true and instantly disappeared in the blur of tortured air that surrounded the ghouls. Useless. Despite the failure her action sparked a volley of arrows, darts and holy water from the circle. Everything disappeared and still the ghouls remained.

She watched in horror as the Hell God blood vanished from the bag. Fading into the haze. Eaten by the ghouls. The plastic bag immediately melted onto the counter. The cash register pinged, rang up a sale and promptly exploded (Anya rallied enough to give an outraged shriek!). Shrapnel pelted the magical barrier.

Then Anya collapsed. Xander dropped his crossbow and caught her with a cry of alarm. Then Willow. Giving one final shuddering gasp the red head toppled into Giles’ arm and slid off out of sight. Spike started lobbing the holy water like a grenades, as fast as he could. His arms were a blur.

“GILES!” Buffy screamed, totally at a loss of what to do. Her Watcher looked up at her, still chanting. He was gasping the words out now, so short of breath that his lips were turning blue. She could see in his eyes that he couldn’t help her, and that he knew he wasn’t going to last, but he was going to go down fighting. Dammit - no! Not like this, it couldn’t end like this. When the final hour came it was supposed to be a swan dive of glory against a foe whose name made the world shudder on its axis. They weren’t supposed to die like this! Not in anonymity, not like this... Buffy threw down the useless crossbow and searched frantically for something to use against the ghouls. There was nothing. Then Spike ran out of holy water.

“Buffy - look out!” Tara’s breathless scream made the Slayer whip around. The ghouls were right at the barrier. Their hatred was pushing at the magic, forcing her Watcher’s strength to wither and die before her eyes. Heavy penetrating malice slowly pierced their little haven, sending wave after wave of pain to scald their skin and drive the last of the breath from their lungs. The weight of it drove her to her knees, her head started to pound and her vision was starting to grey out. Bastards. She bared her teeth at them and forced one agonized hand to her throat and wrenched free the cross. Using every last ounce of her dying strength the Slayer of the Sunnydale Hellmouth rammed the bright silver into the breach in the barrier.

Agony, unlike anything she had ever experienced before tore up from her hand and blasted across her mind. The utter evil, the hatred, burnt the tender tissues of her brain, her flesh. If she screamed she was insensible to it. Then it was over. Then she was over.

* * * * *

He sat behind some thick bushes across from the Watcher’s house and patiently kept the sound equipment aimed at the voices. The muzzle rubbed up against a branch and he winced at the magnified scratching. Bloody clumsy equipment! He held in a curse. If only he could have used something more subtle. A careful elegantly woven incantation would have been much more preferable to this irritating stiff metal construction. It would have been much more effective too. Unfortunately it also would have spelled his instant discovery for there was one inside that deceptively mundane dwelling that would sense its presence the moment he released the words into the air. So he sighed a put upon sigh and adjusted the dial on the microphone.

This was going to be interesting. Finally. After the incident in the shop he thought all had been lost. All his carefully worked experiment looked like it had been laid waste by the hell spawn he had inadvertently released. That would have been a tragedy of wasted time, so after waiting for 20 frustrating minutes, watching the silent hell blasted ruins of the Magic Box he had slipped down the street, moving in the darkest shadows as the night lightened into dawn. Good thing he had been so careful too. He had no sooner taken a dozen steps down the silent street than the remains of the door to the shop blew off its hinges and a man had stepped out. Correction, a vampire had stepped out. How odd: a vampire if you please! Some people were keeping ill advised company these days. The demon suddenly turned his head and looked down the street toward him, scenting the air, and he shrank into the shadow. He held his breath but all was well, and he remained undiscovered. The creature looked back into the shop.

Hmm, interesting. The scruffy looking vampire was carrying something: a small red headed girl. Breakfast perhaps? Then he thought, no, the girl was moving and hanging on to the Undead creature’s shoulder like he was her last bastion, her buoy on the rough seas that had just spent themselves inside the building. How curious, a tame vampire no less! That was one for the books... Then the Slayer moved out of the shop supporting a brown haired girl over the debris that had spilled onto the pavement. The Chosen One was followed in turn by a dark haired young man carrying another girl. Blond this time and unconscious by the look of it. He held his breath once again. Were there no others inside the shop? Where was he? Was he lost? Something like fear tickled his guts as he waited.

Ahha, there he was: the one he needed.

A tall man suddenly stumbled from the shop, turning to step back and survey the damage. In one hand he was clutching a heavy looking book. His free hand went to his forehead as he looked. The gesture was pure shock and dismay. Understandable really, the place was an insurance nightmare.

“Giles?” The Slayer spoke. Her voice was unconsciously commanding and compelled a reaction from the tall man. He immediately turned toward her, nodded and set a weary pace behind her as she turned and lead the battle scarred group down the street. That left the shop unguarded and he hurried down to record as much data as he could before the dawn contaminated the site.

Well, what a mess the place had been. The contents looked like they had been caught up inside a tornado, there was nothing left that had not been smashed, melted, crumpled, burnt, torn, burst or contaminated by the evil presence that still tainted the air. He wrinkled his nose. Ugh, sulphuric and oppressive. He sampled the air, took some of the scorched chalk from the obviously ineffective magical circle and bagged the Incendius bowl and its contents.

He had then followed the group to the Sunnydale hospital and lost them amongst the throngs of people inside the emergency area. Oh well, it could wait. He doubted that he would learn more until the little group had licked its hurts and had time to ruminate over events. And when they did he would be waiting and listening and gathering valuable data about what had gone wrong with his little venture. And wait he had. With patience and not a few cappuccinos. In the end he had been forced to wait over a day for his answers, but now finally he was going to get them.

“Hey that’s mine!” A young man’s voice echoed tinnily in the mike. “Get your own!” An exaggerated slurping sound and then an English voice responded.

“Here have it back then.”

“Eew!”

“Ooh diddums. What kind of a man do you call yourself, scared of a little spit?”

“That’s your spit, your dead cold undead corpse spit-” Aah, the vampire was there. An English vampire as well, how interesting.

“What’s wrong with my spit? Perfectly good spit. Bet it has less nasties in it than yours what with all your vengeance demon shagging.”

“Anya don’t say a word - and what Spike? Are you jealous that you ain’t the one doing the shagging? Oh man, I can’t believe I’m discussing vampire spit. I can’t believe I said shagging. Why am I even talking to you? Who invited him anyway, he caused all of this in the first place?”

“Ask your Watcher, he reinvited me in.”

“Yeah, what’s with that Giles? Got a surplus of weetabix or something?” Finally down to business. The Watcher would want to stop this nonsense and get down to business.

“Alright, let’s stop this nonsense and get down to business shall we. Spike get your feet off my coffee table.” An oof sound and muffled protesting noises. “Now - Spike get your feet off Xander – what was I going to say? Oh yes. As much as it is irritating Spike should be here in case I need to verify certain occurrences that I was not privy to.”

“Privy?” The young man again.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened and the reports by Tilea, the last Council member who tried to investigate the existence of a Hell God blood pool under the Hellmouth at Soarevale. If you remember he told of meeting a vampire, Bogdan, and his cryptic little message concerning the blood: Beware, for it always returns to the Master of Masters. To him and him alone belongs the Wine of Life, to him alone the Sire’s glory, to him alone the deepest, sweetest depths of the chalice of Baru. Beware of Shadows. They track. They seek. It always returns to the Highest of High.” The watcher sounded like he was chanting the strange quote from memory. Bizarre quote at that.

“Bogdan, I know him!” The British vampire again. “Mad bastard, he was. Me and Dru ran into him in Zurich once. Romanian right?”

“Yes.” The Watcher sounded surprised.

“Mad. Crazy. We went on a gourmet tour of the city with him and damn near got staked and burnt and covered in holy water all at once! We crashed this open air mass right, and I knew it was a bad idea but Dru really wanted an alter boy and-”

“Please, spare us the details.”

“You people are no fun. Oh, alright. Anyway, after the alter boy-”

“Eew, details, details!” A new voice, female, followed by a long suffering male sigh.

“Anyway, Bogdan decides he wants to thrall the entire congregation and sermonize during dinner, right. So here he is ranting away, going off on some bent about chalices and the blood of the Mighty One, blah, blah, blah and this mob arrives. Seems Bogdan had been doing some sermonizing down at the local pub right before we ran into him. We barely got out in one piece.” Laughter. “I can still see it: Dru trying to eat and run and this woman she’s got going “no, no put me down. Put me down! Murder! Murder!” And Dru trying to get her teeth in just to shut her up, but she’s bouncing all over the place and all she can get is a mouthful of ear! And.. And Bogdan’s running right after us still preaching and waving around this christening -” Riotous laughter, gasping peals of mirth and quite possibly tears. A smacking sound. “OW! Bloody hell Slayer!”

“Ah, and just what was the point of that highly disturbing and, on the face of it, totally unnecessary story?” Giles again.

“It was funny. God, you people need to get out more.”

“Spike, do not speak again unless you are asked. Buffy?”

“On it.” A sharp voice snapped. No more mirth from the vampire.

“Right, now, Spike did Bogdan ever explain this Mighty One or the chalice?”

“No.” Sulky voice. “We got separated pretty much right away. I thought the mob got him. Daft bastard. And no, I never heard about any of that stuff before or since then, I thought ol’ Bogdan was just nuts. I mean, every vampire knows about these mythical pools and all, but everyone always said they were just fairy tales.”

“Alright then.” Clearing of throat. “Here’s what I think. If you consider the almost narcotic effect this blood has on the Undead, and others associated with the demon world, it is rather surprising that these pools of Hell Blood have not been plundered and drained long ago. Something must be preventing that from happening. Now, by deduction it cannot be a protective barrier or some such that stops the blood being taken at all or there would be constant attempts to find it and breach it, fairytale or no. If that was so then there would be more in the texts. Repeated attempts would not go unnoticed. So that leaves the alternative that seems to fit our experience.

“These ghouls maybe the failsafe that guards the pools. Bogdan, in his little speech, refers to shadows. Shadows that hunt and seek. From the reading of the text I think that Bogdan was referring to these ghouls. If you think about it, it makes sense. They went after the largest accumulation first - the fridge of it at Willy’s. Then Spike. I noticed, when he arrived at the shop that he was not infused with magic any longer. It puzzled me at the time, I thought perhaps that the spell had dried up, but now I don’t think that was the case.

“Then the ghouls took the bagged blood at the Magic Box, and finally sought out Buffy and myself inside the ring. It all fits with the Council’s observations of a self limiting pattern of aberrant vampire activity at the time of Tilea. These ghouls must have taken it all back then, as they did this time.” A pause. “I, ah, admit that there might be some holes in my deductions but at the moment it seems the most reasonable theory.”

“That’s why they were so keen to breach the circle.” Another voice, female. “And why they just left like that.”

“They certainly were shadowy. And hunty.” Yet another female. “And hellish.”

Silence. Fascinating theory. A lot of merit in it and well thought out. He knew it had been the right choice to set up the Hell God pool experiment in Sunnydale. He always did have excellent judgement in such things.

“So, its not likely to be a problem in the future? So long as we contain the odd stoned vamp, the thing should always burn itself out.” The Slayer asked.

“Yes. It should. If I’m correct.”

“What about the magic user behind the camouflage spell?” A female again.

“Ah, now that is a real worry Willow. We should look into it.”

“<Yawning sound> Tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“Oh you’re not all going off to beddybyes now? The night is barely born. What about the Bronze? What about a boogy to work off the ghoul experience? How ‘bout it Slayer? - the night is fresh and so am I.”

“Spike - speaking.” The Slayer’s voice was threatening. Grumbling rumbled down the microphone. Then there was a series of goodbyes and shadowy figures were emerging from the house. The glow of a cigarette spotted the murky evening air, it moved away from the rest of the group.

“Hey Anya, nice rabbit’s foot.” Willow’s voice trickled down to him. Huh?

“Oh, yes. See Xander, I’m touching it now. See, all touchy touchy, no problem. So lots of orgasms tonight like you promised - ” And they were gone.

“Giles.” The Slayer’s voice in his microphone. She had not left and she sounded uncertain, almost fearful. “Are you going to tell me about the whole hell tainted beings attracted to and getting off on Hell Blood thing now?” Hello, what was this?

“Oh, you remember that part do you?” The watcher sounded a little apprehensive himself.

“What did you mean? That the Slayer is somehow hell tainted? Like Spike?”

“Good lord no!” A pause. “Not like Spike.”

“Not like Spike! Giles what does that mean?”

“Come in to the kitchen. I’ll put some tea on.”

“You’re not getting out of this with an English tea ceremony Rupert Giles!”

“That was hardly my intention Buffy. <sigh> I have a feeling that his is going to be another long long night.”

He lowered the mike and grinned. He would love to stay and hear the telling of that tale, but he already knew it and his plane was leaving in a few hours. He chuckled. Serves you right for not telling her sooner Ripper old son. Then Ethan stood, stretched the kinks out of his back and walked away into the night, amused and thinking thoughts of Hell Gods and the magicks that might ward off ghoul blood hounds. He yawned. Oh yeah, it had been one long night alright.

* * *