Love In Vein: Book Two - Chapter 43

Buffy paced around the room, feeling like a fifth wheel as she watched everyone hard at work. She wished she had something to throw herself into; waiting for Spike to contact her was slowly driving her insane with worry. She couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds, every book she looked at she found the words swimming in front of her eyes as her thoughts dominated her.

She knew Spike would be okay, that with the ring on he was indestructible but she also knew that he had a tendency to make the most beautiful cock ups--ones that usually led to his near-demise.

“How’re you doing?” Buffy looked over Wesley’s shoulder as he scribbled down the calculations that Fred was hurriedly making, she couldn’t understand a word of it but she hoped they were making progress.

“It’s going well.” Wesley stopped writing for a moment to look up at her and immediately noticed how drained she looked. “Why don’t you get yourself some tea and sit for a while.”

Buffy shook her head. She couldn’t sit still, couldn’t allow herself to relax while Spike wasn’t present. She felt exposed, vulnerable to attack. She suddenly realised why.

Without Spike here, there was no one indestructible that could defeat the First if it chose to attack.

Pushing that thought away as though just by thinking it she would cause something to happen, Buffy moved across the room to Willow and smiled down at her.

“I’ve been through all these books, so far, nothing, nada, zip!” Willow gave her an apologetic smile.

“It’s okay, maybe you should try looking up there next.” Buffy nodded toward the restricted section and Willow looked wary for a moment before agreeing.

“You sure you won’t do as Wesley says and sit for a while, you’ve been pacing since Spike left and I’m sure he’s okay.” Willow gave her friend a concerned look.

Buffy shrugged. “I’ll be fine, just need to hear from him. He’s been gone for over an hour.”

“It takes a while to get to the school from here, plus he has to deal with those pesky Bringers.” Willow tried to get a smile from Buffy.

Offering her friend an unconvincing one, she flicked idly through the book Willow had been looking in for a while and then sighed.

“You’re sure nothing in here will do it?” She asked as she looked at Willow.

“I don’t think they’ll be powerful enough, Buffy. There are spells and incantations to make most things solid, but we’re dealing with a higher power here. I just want to find the most potent one I can, it’s not like we’re going to get to test it before the battle.” Willow closed the book Buffy had been leafing through and pulled another one toward her.

“I suppose you’re right, it’s not like we can ask the First to keep still for a moment while we test a few spells out on it. I don’t think it would like being our guinea pig.” Buffy shrugged and ignored the lead weight feeling in her stomach. She hadn’t thought about the fact that they would be going into battle blind, with a spell they couldn’t test and a portal that was based on calculations, and she knew how wrong those could go.

“Keep searching. I’m sure if Giles finds something then he’ll contact us. I wish he was there already, I seem to be waiting for everything these days and it’s starting to grate on my nerves.” Buffy slumped into the chair beside Willow for a moment and then sighed. She was well and truly sick of the build up to this battle now, it seemed to be drawing itself out and she hoped it would come to a head soon. Under normal apocalyptic circumstances, she could have launched an attack to get things started, but having a foe that was nothing more than a malevolent ghost made it a little difficult to do that. No, she had to bide her time and wait for her friends to be ready with the spells and weapons she needed in her armoury.

Only then would they go into battle.

“Magic.” Buffy said and found Willow and Tara looking at her.

“Yes, Buffy, that’s what we’re doing…looking up magic.” Willow smiled as she saw her friend hadn’t finished, her outburst had been a thought bubbling to the surface and breaking free.

“No, I mean, we need to find out where the centre of magical energy is, where it’s strongest. Then we’ll know where will be our battle ground.” Buffy looked at Willow and then Tara.

“Locator spell.” Tara offered with a small smile. “W…we could do one.”

“Locator spell?” Buffy looked confused.

“It uses a map, in this case it would be Sunnydale. It reveals demons, power, that kind of thing. We could probably change it a little so it will show us where there is the most concentration of magic.” Willow explained as she pushed her book aside.

“While you’re at it, are there any kinds of protection spells you two could do. Something that will at least give us a fighting chance against the Bringers the First will throw at us?” Buffy asked and smiled as the two witches nodded at her. “Don’t know what I’d do without you two.”

Buffy continued to smile as she stood up and walked over to Xander and Anya where they were leaning on the counter talking to each other. “Hey.”

“Hey, Buffster.” Xander greeted her and pushed the pad toward her. “Don’t suppose you want to order these things with Anya do you? Girls gone crazy, keeps saying we need mummy hands.”

“Mummy hands?” Buffy looked disgusted.

“Yeah, apparently they’re fresh…as in they have a life of their own.” He made his hand creep toward her on the counter.

“Eww…” Buffy looked doubly disgusted. “Count me out of that one.”

Moving away from them, she continued around the room, realising that the only people she hadn’t checked in with were Angel and Cordelia. She was just about to reach them when she froze to the spot and smiled.

“Earth to sex kitten, come in sex kitten.” Spike’s voice dove into her head and her smile turned into a grin.

“Took your time.” She replied and waited for his come back.

“Little difficult to chat right now. Trying to…hang on…fight my way through…” Spike sounded as though he really was trying to fight his way through the Bringers and she wondered why he’d contacted her if he hadn’t made it to the room they’d seen yet.

“You alright, don’t need help?” She knew she came off sounding bored more than anything.

“I’ll manage.”

“If you’re still fighting, what’s with the contacting me?”

“Thought I’d just drop in and say hello.” Spike came back and she smiled.

“Shouldn’t you be concentrating?” Buffy asked as she focused on his feelings and felt a dull ache in her side--clearly the Bringers were giving as good as they got.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be through in a jiffy, will drop you a line.” With that Spike was gone again and she realised that everyone was staring at her.

“Spike. He’ll have something for us soon.” Buffy told them and let her thoughts go back to her mate.


Spike growled as he swung the axe hard at the two Bringers that were approaching him. He’d lost count of how many he’d killed and it seemed that for each one he took down, another two took its place. He didn’t wait to see the bodies fall to the ground as he removed their heads, he just continued to go forwards, slicing and dicing as he went.

He was close to whatever it was they were protecting, and judging from how the number of them had multiplied since he and Buffy had last been here they must have discovered what the First had been looking for.

Bringing the axe up hard, he buried it into the stomach of one of the black robed figures, and then spun on the spot and brought it down on another. He listened to them as they slumped to the floor and then attacked the next ones as they tried to crowd him.

As one of them caught him in the ribs again, he lost the fraction of control he had on his temper and let his demon come forward. He roared at the Bringers as they swarmed towards him, threatening them and luring them in at the same time.

Kicking one in the shin, he punched another across the face before slashing a third across the chest. He smiled as he spotted the door to the room and continued to plough forward, fighting with everything he had as he moved ever closer to his destination.


Buffy almost jumped in her seat as Spike’s voice filled her head.

“Hello, cutie.”

“Find anything?” Buffy asked as her heart rate gradually returned to normal.

“Found something.” Spike replied. “Looks like a pentagram.”

“Pentagram?” Buffy wrinkled her nose up in thought and looked over at Willow. “Will, do a search for pentagrams on the web, see what you can dig up.”

“I’ll need more specifics if you want an exact match, like size, location…that kind of thing.” Willow said as she booted up her laptop.

“I’ll get the books on mystical and magical symbols, there might be something in them.” Wesley sifted through the books on the table and pulled out the appropriate ones.

“Spike? Can you describe it to me, I need sizes, where it’s sitting, stuff like that.” Buffy waited quietly for his reply as she watched her friends kicking into action, she smiled at Willow as she began to search for pentagrams and then looked at Tara and Wesley as they flicked through the books.

“I’ll do better than that, I’ll show. Just focus on what I’m seeing, close your eyes.” Spike said as he looked down at the large pentagram on the floor.

Buffy did as instructed and closed her eyes. A flash of an image in her mind made her gasp and she felt a little disorientated as the image moved--it felt as though she was watching a slightly jumpy movie.

Keeping her eyes closed, she began to describe what she was seeing to Willow and Wesley. “It’s a goat, Satan I guess. It looks like it’s set into the ground, like some satanic drain cover.”

She paused as Spike placed the axe down on it. “It’s pretty big, wider than the length of the axe. There are symbols on it and grooves, like it was designed to open.”

Buffy opened her eyes again and held her head as the world wobbled slightly and the Magic Box came back into focus. “Head rush.”

She smiled as Spike chuckled into her head. “Think I’ll see if there’s anything else and then I’ll be on my merry way. Let me know if you find something.”

“Okay.” Buffy replied and then turned to look at her friends. She hesitated for a moment before pulling a book towards her and helping--looking at pictures was something she excelled at.

After a few minutes of flicking idly through the book in front of her, Buffy was almost ready to kiss Wesley when he announced that he had something. She gladly pushed her book away from her and moved around the table to look over his shoulder at what he’d found.

She scanned the page until her eyes came to rest on the illustration.

“Seal of Danz…what?” Resisting the temptation to pout, she looked at Wesley for the correct pronouncement.

“Danzalthar.” He offered with a shrug--it sounded right.

“Look it up, Will.” Buffy glanced over at her and saw she was already one step ahead. Taking a deep breath, she contacted Spike again.


Spike arched a brow at the object Buffy had termed a satanic drain cover.

“Spike?” Buffy’s voice appeared in his head and he smiled. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, love.” He answered her and walked around the seal, looking down at it the whole time.

“It’s the Seal of Danzalthar, it’s basically a gateway to Hell.”

“So it’s the Hellmouth then? It all boils down to this?” Spike queried. “So what’s it do?”

“Wesley says that it’s a gateway, so I’m figuring things go in and they come out too…bad things.” Buffy emphasised the last two words and Spike got the feeling she was more than a little nervous about this new discovery.

“Any way to stop it opening?”

“None that we’ve come across yet, and we can’t even tell if the seal is active or not. There’s nothing more you can do there. We’ll add it into our usual patrol, keep an eye on it.”

“I’ll leave in a minute, just want to get a closer look, don’t want to miss anything that could be important.”

“Don’t be long.” Came Buffy’s reply and then Spike was alone.

Or at least he thought he was.

He hooked his thumbs into his jeans as he felt something shift in the room and didn’t bother looking up when he saw a pair of feet appear in his line of sight.

“Took you long enough.” He said as he kept his eyes fixed on the pentagram.

The First huffed and wrapped its arms across its chest as it assumed the form of Buffy.

“You seem to like that shape, it suits you.” Spike said as he finally raised his eyes to look at the First and watched it surveying the dead Bringers that littered the room--it looked far from pleased.

“I told you…warned you.” It set its sights on Spike and narrowed its eyes into a deadly look.

“Actually you told her, and we were bored, so we figured that since you took it upon you to give us a little Watcher massacre, we’d pay you back.” Spike smirked, keeping his cool as the First continued to glare at him.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” It sneered as it disappeared into the ether.

Getting the feeling that they shouldn’t have ignored the First’s previous warning about meddling in its affairs, Spike hurried to contact Buffy.

He felt panic rise up in him as he found he couldn’t get through to her and as he made for the door, pain burned inside him. Pushing himself forward, he kept a firm hold on the axe and tried to contact Buffy again.

“Buffy!”

Nothing but silence rang in his ears.

He continued to race towards the exit, pushing through the pain and trying to get to her as fast as he could. He was nearing the top of the basement stairs as he finally got a reply.

“Spike…” Her voice came through weakly and he could feel she was in a lot of pain.

“I’m coming, love…I’ll be right there…just hold on.” He sprinted down the rubble-strewn hallway and bolted out of the doors, hitting the pavement hard as he tried to get to her.

What she said next sent a chill running up his spine and he ran harder.

“Willow!”

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