“Buffy,” Angel whispered.
Giles screeched to a halt. Before the car stopped rolling, Cordelia and Willow were out and running to the rise above the sunken garden.
“Oh, my God!” Cordelia cried.
Silhouetted against a backdrop of fire, Xander and Buffy were fighting with swords. Metal clanged against metal as they savagely battled, hacking and slashing with every ounce of their supernatural energy.
Angel saw the three of them, waved, and began to run toward them.
“Willow! Cordelia! Help me,” Giles called.
They both ran back to the car and took large sacks from him. Inside Willow’s sack were salt, water, and white paper, all symbols of purity. Cordelia carried Claire Silver’s book and a printout of Sanno’s Incantation. Giles brought a white bandanna on which he had written the Chinese character for the Japanese word for the life force: ki. And the disk.
Giles joined the girls at the crest and began pouring salt in a sacred circle. “Cover it with the paper,” he said, and they quickly laid the pieces of paper inside the circle.
“They’re blowing away!” Willow shouted, grabbing at the sheets as they were lifted by the wind and went sailing toward the fire.
“Here. Use rocks,” Cordelia said, gathering some large pebbles and handing some to Willow. Impressed by Cordelia’s quick thinking, Willow did as she said.
Once the paper lined the circle, the two girls stepped out and Giles sprinkled the water over the field of white.
Then he stepped into the circle and lifted the bandanna to the east and intoned, “Oh, great ancestors of the lords of Japan, I call upon you to cast the spirits forth from these mortal beings!” Bowing, he put the bandanna against his forehead and knotted the ends.
Angel ran up to Willow. “What’s going on?” he asked, staring at them with a mixture of doubt and hope on his face.
“We’re going to get the spirits out of Buffy and Xander,” Willow explained. “Then we’ll bind them in the sword with the disk.”
“Great rulers, I call upon you to heed me!” Giles cried.
Xander rushed Buffy. She deflected his sword thrust and somersaulted over his head with a horrible, maniacal laugh.
“It’s not working,” Cordelia fretted. “It’s not working!”
“Yet,” Willow said hopefully.
Chirayoju faltered.
For a moment, Buffy felt as though she could break out of her prison and take her body back. She cried, “Yes!” and hoped that someone could hear her, sense her.
Help her.
* * *
Sanno looked at the crest of the hill. Willow swallowed as he seemed to stare through her at Giles.
“Mortals, do not interfere,” he said.
“I have the ward,” Giles told him. He held the disk high. “You can use it to bind the vampire and—”
“It is too late. It is unnecessary,” Sanno said, but his attention was focused on the disk.
“He’s lying,” Angel murmured to Giles. “He was pretty interested in that when Buffy had it.”
“Yes.” Cordelia nodded. “He’s lying for sure.”
“How do you know?” Willow asked her.
Cordelia smiled grimly. “Believe me, I know when guys are being bogus. And that is one Mountain King who is not telling us the truth.”
“Because it will bind him, too?” Willow asked hopefully.
They both looked at Giles, who murmured, “Perhaps. But we must get them out of Xander and Buffy before we deal with that issue.”
Below them, the battle raged.
CHAPTER 21
Giles shook his head and dropped his arms to his sides.
“It isn’t working!”
Angel stared at him, trying not to panic at the rage and helplessness that was welling up within him. All along, he’d been battling the feeling that he could do nothing to affect the outcome here. He’d fought at Buffy’s side time and again, and nearly always he had felt secure in the knowledge that he had helped. He was a vampire, after all. He was strong and very hard to kill. The perfect companion for the Slayer, in an odd way.
But all night long, as the battle raged, the despair had grown greater in him as each moment ticked past. As each of his attacks was brushed aside by beings far more powerful than he. Angel could do nothing. He had held on to one small hope: that he could keep Xander and Buffy from killing each other long enough for Giles to arrive with a solution. He’d done that.
And now . . .
“What do you mean it isn’t working?” Cordelia shrieked. “It’s got to work! You’re doing everything the book says to do! It’s got to work!”
Giles ignored her now. He had begun chanting the Incantation of Sanno again, as if repetition was going to make it suddenly work when it hadn’t been working before.
She stared down the small incline at Xander, slashing away at Buffy, fire burning from his hands and the wind making his hair sweep back off his forehead.
Cordelia didn’t know exactly what it was she had with Xander. But she didn’t want to lose him.
Not like this.
Cordelia Chase began to cry.
* * *
Without thinking, Willow stepped in close to Angel and reached for his hand. He clasped her fingers in his own without even glancing at her. Together they looked down at the two battling warriors, at the elements scorching and scouring the dead garden, and neither of them spoke a word.
Willow shivered and realized that she could barely recognize her friends from up here. They stood inside a circle, almost like an arena, made of blazing fire. The garden had long since given way to flames for the most part, and it was already starting to burn down to nothing but cinder and ash. There had been very little there to burn in the first place.
Xander and Buffy wore ugly, frightening masks, one white and the other sickly green, that shim mered just in front of their faces. Their bodies hadn’t changed, not really, but just the way they carried themselves, the way they moved, they didn’t look like Buffy and Xander anymore.
They weren’t Buffy and Xander anymore.
Willow was over it being her fault. She had to be. No way could she have known what was going to happen when she touched that sword, when she was “blooded.” And Willow had learned her lesson, no question about that. She’d learned that she should worry about being the best Willow she could be, and let Buffy worry about being Buffy.
If Buffy lived long enough to worry about being Buffy.
And that was it, wasn’t it? That was why her heart hammered in her chest and her stomach felt like a ball of ice. Because the lesson wasn’t over yet, was it?
It wasn’t her fault. But that didn’t make it any easier.
And she still felt useless.
Completely, and totally . . .
Willow stared at Xander and Buffy. Something was happening. Giles was finishing up his latest rendition of that radio-saturated top-ten hit, the Incantation of Sanno. And something was happening.
For a second, Buffy and Xander both faltered. The wind died. The flames fizzled. Then the moment was gone. Xander—Sanno—raised his sword and brought it down swiftly, but Chirayoju spun out of the way, using a move that Willow just knew the sorcerer had stolen from Buffy’s mind. She had had enough information stolen during her own possession to know what it was like.
It was over. But for that moment . . . that split second . . .
“Am I hallucinating, or did something just . . .” Giles muttered.
“Giles!” Willow shouted. “Do it again!”
Giles turned, opened his mouth to ask for elaboration, but when he saw the look on Willow’s face—on all their faces—he began the chant again immediately.
For a stunning second, Buffy was in charge. It wasn’t so much that Chirayoju was gone as that it had been banished far back into her mind, just as she was now.
The vampire sorcerer controlled her body again. But it was anxious now, unfocused. Confused.
Buffy liked conf
used.
All right, you evil SOB, she thought, let’s try this again.
The Slayer concentrated her energies, reached out, and gathered up all the things that made her the Chosen One, every personal moment, every intimate memory. They were her weapons and her armor, all the things that made her her. Her individuality was her strength. It hadn’t been enough before, when Chirayoju was filled with confidence, at the peak of its strength.
But she didn’t think it was at the peak anymore. Someone . . . Giles or Angel, maybe . . . someone was doing something to throw it off. And then there was that sword. Chirayoju was afraid of the sword, Buffy knew that. It had been trapped there before, and the thought of being . . .
. . . oh boy, Cheerios. I am so not going to be your favorite girl after this, she thought.
Gently this time, so that it would not sense her, she tried to glide upward, tried to inhabit her body. To see through her own eyes.
And suddenly she could see. Xander, with that ghostly face in front of his own, bringing that huge, razor-sharp sword around for another thrust.
“Chirayoju, you lose!” Buffy screamed with her mind.
And with her mouth! The word came out of her mouth! She had her body again, before the vampire sorcerer even knew that she had taken over. It would toss her back quickly, she knew. But she only needed a second to do what she needed to do.
“Do it, Xander!” she shouted. “Do it!”
Buffy threw her arms wide, left herself wide open for the falling blade, and waited for the cold rush of its point sliding through her chest and toward her heart.
* * *
Xander had been submerged completely. The King of the Mountain had taken him over and driven him under so far he had not even been aware of his possession. For him, it had been like a particularly deep sleep.
Seconds ago, he’d awakened in his own body, staring at Buffy, who was bruised and burned and . . . healing before his eyes, even as fire scorched her again. He’d felt the weight of the sword in his hands, felt the aches of his own bruises as he let the sword’s point fall to the dirt so he wouldn’t have to hold it up anymore.
“Buffy,” he had whispered hoarsely, “what’s . . .”
And then the Mountain King had surged up within him again.
But this time Xander didn’t go away. This time he saw it all through his own eyes, though he was powerless to act. Powerless, that is, until the precise moment when Sanno began to bring the sword around into a thrust that would have cleaved Buffy’s heart in two.
In that moment, Xander Harris had all the power he would ever need.
“No!” he roared, and his muscles were his own again.
Too late to stop the thrust, he could only redirect it. The blade impaled Buffy through her lower abdomen, sliced cleanly through. It was the second time she’d been stabbed with that sword, Xander seemed to recall from a horrible dream he’d been living only seconds earlier.
But this . . . this was different.
With Xander’s mouth, Sanno, the King of the Mountain, screamed.
With Buffy’s mouth, the vampire sorcerer Chirayoju wailed in agony.
Xander tried to move, but he was frozen. His entire body was locked in place, the blade stuck inside Buffy and she wasn’t moving either. It was, he thought, in a weird moment of clarity, like being electrocuted. Some kind of weird energy danced from Buffy to Xander and back again, a circuit had been set up between them.
No, Xander couldn’t move his body, but neither could Sanno. Nobody was in the driver’s seat now.
* * *
Buffy felt the pulling start, felt a horrible urge as blood rushed to the spot on her belly where the sword intruded. It was sucking at her, somehow. Inside her mind, Chirayoju screamed again, and then she knew what was happening.
The sword was dragging the vampire’s spirit back to its prison. Dragging . . . but dragging at her as well. And if Chirayoju wouldn’t let go, it would take Buffy instead.
Yesssss! Chirayoju hissed inside her head.
I don’t think so, Myron, Buffy thought. You crashed this party, bud. I’m not going anywhere.
* * *
“Oh my God!” Cordelia cried. “Look at them! They’re, like, frozen, or something!”
“Buffy,” Angel whispered.
Willow tried to breathe. “This is bad.”
“Not necessarily,” Giles began, interrupting his chanting for a moment.
Angel saw Buffy move, just a bit. Half an inch. Obscured by smoke and what little remained of the fire. But when Giles stopped chanting, she—or Chirayoju—had started to move again.
When he turned on Giles, Angel was in full vamp mode.
“Giles, shut up and chant!”
He was relieved when Giles did as he demanded. He’d apologize later, if there was a later. For now, Angel thought he understood, just a little, of what Giles had been about to tell them.
“Come on.” Angel grabbed Willow and Cordelia by their hands and started running down the incline toward the burning circle of embers that had been a garden, once upon a time.
“Angel!” Cordelia pulled on his wrist. “Angel!”
“What?” He tugged at them both to get them to keep up with him.
“I’m barefoot!” she screeched.
Angel reached around and grabbed both girls around the waist. Then, one under each arm, he sprinted across the ashes into the circle where Xander and Buffy were still joined, paralyzed in their weird portrait of battle. Of murder.
“Willow, get behind Xander!” Angel barked, putting them both down. “Cordelia, you get behind Buffy. When I tell you to pull, pull on them as hard as you can!”
Willow frowned, puzzled. “But won’t that just start it all over again?” Willow asked.
Angel turned to meet her anxious gaze. “I’m going to be holding the sword. If Giles’s spell is working, which it seems to be, then maybe they’ll be trapped with it.”
Cordelia stared at him. “Maybe?”
“Just do it!” Angel said angrily. “It’s the only chance they’ve got.”
“Okay,” Cordy agreed instantly. “Just . . . Willow, be gentle with Xander, okay?”
Angel held the disk in his hand and stared at the odd inscriptions. He had no idea if this was going to work, but no time to worry about what might happen if it didn’t.
“Wait, Angel!” Willow wrung her hands and chewed her lower lip as she looked uncertainly up at him. “What if Chirayoju and Sanno are trying to escape? Won’t they try to go into you?”
“I’ve already got a demon in me, Willow.” He flashed her a self-mocking smile. “Remember? There isn’t room for another.”
“But what if the sword tries to pull you in, too?” Cordelia asked.
Angel didn’t want to think about that, and he didn’t reply. He glanced at Willow, who always seemed so fragile, and saw so much strength there that he vowed never to underestimate the girl again. Then he glanced at Cordelia, and he realized that the same was true of her. As annoying as she could be, it was mostly just the way she had learned to be. But inside . . . well, she was here, wasn’t she? Ready to do whatever it took.
“Ready?” he asked.
Both girls nodded.
“One . . . two . . . pull!”
Angel grabbed the blade, its edge slicing into his palms. Xander and Buffy were torn away from the circuit, falling to the ground with Willow and Cordelia. Angel felt the electricity of the magic surge through him, into him . . . tugging at him.
Chirayoju and Sanno were there, inside the blade, and they were fighting still. As they had been for millennia. As he figured they would be until the end of time. And he had no desire to join them in the land of their hatred, the world inside that blade.
Fighting the pull of the sword, Angel held it up by its blade and stared at the hilt. He took the disk and placed it back into the slot from which it had fallen. Just as he realized he had no way to hold it in place, he felt a sharp tug at his sleeve.
Buffy.
Really Buffy, this time. Weak, pale, trembling—holding onto the bloody wound at her belly, the wound which had not closed completely when Chirayoju had been yanked so unceremoniously from her body—but Buffy just the same. She held up to him a piece of cloth she had torn from the bottom of her shirt. Angel smiled and tied it around the hilt of the sword, holding the disk in place.
Still, the blade seemed charged with the hatred that lived inside it.
Buffy just wanted to sleep for about six months. That, and have somebody sew up the wound in her gut. Every inch of her felt bruised, the wound stung sharply, and yet, oddly, the places where she had been seriously injured before Chirayoju’s magic had healed her felt all tingly and new.
But it wasn’t enough that she’d been put through the wringer physically. She’d also ruined a brandnew top.
Then Angel looked at her, his eyes searing with his concern for her, and nothing else seemed important.
“I’m okay,” she said. “A quick trip to the ER, and I’ll be doing back flips in no time. Now, give me that,” she said, gesturing to the sword.
Angel handed her the heavy blade. Buffy held the Sword of Sanno with both hands above her right knee, took a breath, and then brought it down hard. Anyone else would have broken their leg. But Buffy Summers was the Slayer. The Chosen One.
The blade snapped in two.
“Now they’ll be fighting forever,” Willow said as she stepped up to where Buffy stood with Angel.
Xander and Cordy were right behind her, holding each other. “Sounds like another couple I know,” Xander said dryly.
So, he was back to normal.
“Angel.” Giles panted as he rushed down the hill. “Thank God. You did it. You saved them.”
“Buffy put the final kibosh on them,” Angel said.
Willow pointed at Giles. “But if Giles hadn’t kept chanting . . .”
Buffy reached out to Willow, took her hand, squeezed it, and then dropped it again. She looked around, got a bit dizzy, and held on to Angel for support.
“Looks like we all had a part to play tonight,” Buffy said. “If any one of you hadn’t been here, this might have turned out very differently.”
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