Chapter 14: Shattered Crystal
Spike turned away abruptly at the sound of the scream to see a panicked rush over at the far side of the dance floor. People were knocking each other over, shoving their way through other terrified dancers, all attempting to flee the imminent danger from above.
“What the.?” Buffy began.
“Bloody hell!” Spike exclaimed as a second crack split through the ceiling, and the chandelier plummeted downwards, crushing the good dozen people that still hadn’t escaped its path.
“Oh god.” Buffy had just noticed the chandelier’s precarious position as it fell. Instinctively, she pushed her way back through the horrified spectators, Spike at her side, forcing her way to the site of the destruction.
Just as they broke through the inner circle of the gawking crowd, Spike froze in his tracks. Blindly, his hand reached out to capture Buffy’s wrist in a viselike grip.
She turned back to look at him and found his face the most ghastly pale thing she’d ever seen. Her gaze shot to where he stared speechless, and her own heart caught in her throat. At the far side of the wreckage, just barely visible was a head of long brunette hair that was unquestionably Dawn’s.
“No,” Spike gasped in a weak voice.
Buffy’s attention snapped to at that, and she yanked back on his arm. “We’ve got to help her!” she exclaimed, half dragging him with her as she circled the wreckage of shattered crystals.
It took Spike a moment to even realize that Buffy had said something and they were moving once more, but then the desperate urge to save his little sister took over and he dashed off towards the fallen form, leaving Buffy to chase after.
She rounded a pile of broken glass and circuits to see Spike kneeling before Dawn’s fallen form, pulling the twisted wires off of her body. Buffy saw the blood and leapt to worse conclusion, not even noticing that her sister had been technically clear of the crash site.
“Dawnie.” she whimpered in horror, her eyes tearing.
And Dawn groaned and pushed herself up. “Remind me not to go all heroic again,” she instructed Spike, helping to pull the young woman she’d pushed free of the danger zone to her feet.
Spike’s face remained grim as he continued to clear the broken glass out of the pair’s way.
Buffy was too overjoyed at her sister’s survival to even notice. “Oh god, Dawnie.” She caught her startled sister up in a tearful hug before inspecting the cut on her forehead. “W-We’re going to need to get that stitched up, and we should check for-“
“Buffy,” Dawn cut her off with a little laugh, “it’s all right. I’ve had much worse.”
Buffy took a deep breath and tried desperately to remember that her sister was an adult and a demon hunter, and she really didn’t need Buffy to fuss after her well being anymore. It seemed to be a nearly impossible habit to break, though.
“Sorry,” Buffy said with a deep sigh. “Just very relieved.”
Dawn gave her an affectionate smile and a quick hug, anyway.
Spike rolled his eyes. “Hate to break up the sisterly bonding,” he said, handing the woman Dawn had saved over to a concerned Lena, “but that was the stupidest thing ‘ve ever seen you do, Bit.” He scowled over at her. “Next time you maybe wanna run away from the fallin’ missiles?”
Dawn gave him an irritated look that said all too clearly to put this off until later. “Why did it fall?” she asked, turning to more pertinent matters and she and Buffy carefully tiptoed out of the shattered remains.
“Not a bleedin’ clue,” Spike shook his head, staring up at the fractured ceiling.
By now, the ballroom crowd had completely surrounded the wreckage. Xel had located another survivor and was helping him free of the disaster site. Following Spike’s lead, many of the onlookers had turned their heads upwards as well, marveling at the deep rips in the plaster and wondering what could have caused them.
The Haunting, master of timing as it was, took that moment when all eyes were upon it to act.
Slowly, the crack in the ceiling began to ooze a deep blackened red. At one second the substance appeared to be viscous blood and the next a swarm of moving creatures, insect legs vibrating so rapidly that they appeared as thick as liquid. The red ooze spread outward from the cracks, covering the ceiling and dripping down the walls, reaching ever closer to the helpless humans below.
Fresh screams echoed through the audience, and the stampede began anew. Dawn found herself jostled through the crowd, shouting out in vain that if they all just calmed down they’d be fine. She turned back to try to find Spike and Buffy, but the inexorable flow towards the door was unstoppable, and she quickly fell beneath it, locking her arms over her head for protection as she tried to make it back up to her feet.
“Slayer!” Spike called out in alarm, catching her as the two of them were shoved together and trying to force his way over to the clearing left by the fallen chandelier.
Buffy quickly released his aim and pushed her way through the crowd as well. Only their combined slayer and vampire strength allowed them to make it to the relative safety of the broken glass, despite the frenzied humans.
Spike gulped in a deep breath of unnecessary air and looked upward once more, frowning. “‘s not comin’ any closer,” he said right into Buffy’s ear so that he could be heard over the chaos of the crowd.
Buffy glanced up as well. The creepy red-black mass was still moving across the ceiling, true, but all its lunges at the crowd were feints, and in itself it hadn’t harmed anyone. “It’s driving them to try to kill each other.” she realized.
“For non-corporeal, it’s a right smart bugger,” Spike agreed, his face still inches from hers so that they could hear each other.
“What happened to Dawn and the others?” Buffy asked, concerned.
Spike shook his head. “And in this crowd, we’ll never find ’em.”
Dawn screeched as a foot crashed painfully into her side, and the breath was knocked out of her. She gasped desperately, trying to force the air back into her unwilling lungs while shielding herself from further human attacks.
A second kick caught her arm right where it was protecting her head. A stinging pain when all up and down her forearm at the blow, but it was far better than the alternative.
Then, much to her surprise, she felt a hand clasp onto to her uninjured arm and try to pull her upward. She went with the helping hand and soon found herself safely on her feet and gasping against the relative safety of the wall.
She watched, completely unamused, as the harmless effect of the red-black ooze ran up and down the wall beside her, trying to frighten her back into the danger of the crowd.
The room had nearly cleared now, although the bottleneck by the door was still jammed packed. Several fistfights seemed to have broken out among the guests as to who got to escape first. The Haunting proceeded to slide over the floor in the direction of the door, keeping the panicked frenzy to a maximum.
However, as the bulk of the throng had now passed Dawn by, she was able to turn her attentions to her savior for the first time. “Thanks,” she breathed out with lungs that still ached.
“It was nothing,” Rick insisted with his usual soft-spoken voice.
Dawn turned back to the room at large. She saw Veronica cowering under the piano, while Xel and Lena were behind the overturned champagne table. Buffy and Spike had sought shelter in the shattered chandelier, but now all the assembled demon hunters were free of the human stampede and were heading over to the war that had broken out by the door, trying to calm things down.
“Let’s go,” Dawn instructed, limping over to the doorway and still wheezing slightly from the blow to her ribs.
“Are you sure you are all right?” Rick asked somewhat skeptically, but he followed after her anyway.
“Fine,” she insisted in a tight voice before catching the arm of a woman at the back of the crowd, pulling her free of the pile up, and giving her a good shake to stop the ridiculous panicking shrieks she was making.
Rick caught her husband by trapping the larger man in a bear hug and pulling him back away from the crowd.
Spike, Buffy, and Xel were now helping to pull off members of the struggling heap as well, while Veronica and Lena had stayed behind to check on those who had been trampled under the stampede.
“Look!” Dawn demanded, getting right in the woman’s face and pointing her in the direction of the red blood/insect-like substance. “It’s just going ‘boo’. Calm down.”
The hysterical woman paid her words no heed and shrieked again.
With a roll of her eyes, Dawn released her hostage through the now-clear doorway, guiding her in the right direction to get to the parking lot.
She found an exhausted-looking Tucker standing in the hallway and panting heavily.
“Tried to guide ’em out,” he provided between gasps, “but some of ’em pushed right by me. Must still be runnin’ around in this place.”
Dawn let out a weary sigh. “Stay here and make sure the last few don’t get lost,” she instructed before returning to the now-destroyed ballroom.
Lena shook her head at the fallen form of the man she had been checking for life-signs, and Dawn called her over.
“There’re still people running scared and lost through the hallways,” Dawn provided. “Track them down and make sure they all make it to their cars all right.”
Lena nodded without any of her usual complaints and ran out of the ballroom to attend to the matter.
Dawn then turned her attention to where the few remaining guests were still struggling with their captors. Spike and Buffy released their hostages upon her all-clear signal, and the offended pair of guests stalked out with a huff. The man Rick was holding decided to be far less cooperative. The instant he was free, he turned on Rick and brought his fist right into the other man’s nose before running for the exit.
Rick fell backwards at the force of the blow, crashing into the far wall and slumping against it. The impact jarred his ever-present sunglasses loose, and they skittered across the floor, landing a few feet away.
Dawn instinctively ran over to him to check that he was all right. Unknowingly, she stepped between his searching hand and the glasses he was seeking. “Are you all right?” she asked, concerned, crouching down before him. “That guy must’ve hit you pretty hard to-“
And, at that moment, Rick opened his eyes for the first time.
And Dawn screamed.
* * *
Lena wound through the seemingly endless corridors of the Cascade Mountain Lodge, following the fleeting sounds of human footsteps. Despite the fact that she’d grown well-accustomed to this place during the two weeks she’d been here, the hallways seemed alien to her tonight, winding with a labyrinthine complexity that she couldn’t even begin to decipher.
She turned another bend and would have sworn that she was back in the same hallway she’d just left behind. She shook off the eerie feeling and ran the length of this hallway as well, demonic ears honed in on the sound of elusive footsteps.
At the next bend she practically collided with the lost pair of humans, and only her quick reflexes kept them from falling over.
“Help us!” the woman screamed, clutching at her husband’s arm.
“Follow me,” Lena instructed. “I know the way out.”
As if mocking her earlier perceptions, the inn corridors were in perfect order now, and Lena had no difficulty guiding the frightened pair of humans back through the lobby and out into the parking lot. The traffic was jammed, of course, but the insane panic of earlier seemed to have faded now that the humans had returned to the illusionary safety of their oversized pick-up trucks and SUVs. Annoyance was the prevailing motion now, and many horns were honked as impatient drivers tried to get through the bottleneck of the lodge’s parking lot.
“Do you know where your car is?” Lena asked the pair she’d found, wiping away the snowflakes that fluttered into her eyes. Apparently, Mother Nature had decided to add a touch of flurries just to make visibility an issue in an already chaotic situation.
“There!” the woman cried out in delight, pointing to a Ford Escort.
Without so much as a thanks, the couple ran off towards their car, leaving Lena to shake her head in distaste. She turned back to the inn, avoiding the path that still held clusters of chilly humans and trudging through the ankle-deep snow instead. She was grateful as ever that this pair of her slaying boots was also fashionable enough to have been worn to the ball. Otherwise, her feet would be wet and freezing.
She still felt a bit of a chill since she hadn’t bothered to retrieve her jacket and hurried back toward the building, arms wrapped tight around her body as she moved through the increasingly thick snow.
Thus it was that she didn’t see the small depression in the white cover until she’d already stepped on it and fallen through. She let out a little shriek as she fell, but the soft white flakes muffled the sound as well as any possible onlooker’s view.
With thud, Lena crashed to the hard earthen floor ten feet below, knocked completely unconscious by the fall.
And, in the blackness of the underground room surrounding her, slowly dozens of pairs of eyes began to glow a demonic red.
* * *
A pair of cold, lifeless eyes stared back at Dawn, blood red through and through with not even a division between iris and pupil.
Dawn leapt back in sudden surprise at the secret Rick had been keeping from her for so long, and his eyes, like red marbles, turned in their sockets, catching all the other stunned faces in the room before finally landing of Spike.
“Kayeri!” the vampire hissed in outrage, his eyes yellowing and facial bones grinding as he slipped into demonic form.
Rick’s eyes flashed with an eerie red light before he leapt up and quickly caught Dawn by the waist just as Spike lunged for him. He threw her into the approaching vampire, causing them to collide in a tangle of limbs, before he dashed for the door.
Spike screeched out in pain and clutched at his head as painful electric arcs shot through his brain, somehow managing to catch Dawn anyway and keep her from falling.
Buffy rushed to his side in an instant, supporting him even as she watched Rick reach the door.
There, he unexpectedly found Tucker and flung the other man aside before vanishing off down the corridor.
“What in god’s blazes was that?” Tucker exclaimed in confusion, pushing himself up off of the floor.
Veronica and Xel seemed to come to at this and helped him up.
“A Kayeri,” Veronica answered before turning a quizzical look Spike’s way. “That was a Kayeri?” she repeated, still surprised.
He nodded as the headache receded and brushed off Buffy’s attentions.
“Uh.” Dawn began confusedly, “what’s a Kayeri?”
“Nasty li’l demons,” Spike provided, turning his concern in her direction. “Pick off human women an’-“
“I don’t care what it is!” Tucker cut in, annoyed. “It’s gettin’ away! Ain’t we going after it?”
Dawn nodded. “Go,” she instructed Tucker and Xel who both had jackets. “We’ll catch up to you.”
The two men ran off in pursuit of their former ally.
“And try not to kill him before we can talk to him!” Dawn shouted down the hallway after him, trying to bite down the conflicting emotions that were swirling around in her belly and making her feel slightly nauseous. “Veronica, grab your coat and go after them as soon as you’re ready,” Dawn instructed, already following Spike and Buffy in the direction of their rooms. “We’ll all meet up eventually.”
Veronica nodded and dashed off down the hallway to her room.
“Spike,” Dawn demanded as Buffy vanished into her room and Dawn opened the door to her own, “did you bring those tranquilizers with us?”
“They’re in my room somewhere,” he agreed.
“Good. Get them ready. I don’t want to do anything hasty until I know what’s going on,” Dawn agreed, grabbing her jacket and kicking off her dress shoes to grab her sneakers.
“He’ll go into the woods,” Spike informed her. “It’ll be the closest thing to home turf he can get.”
She tossed aside the shoes and grabbed her boots instead. “All right, meet me out there,” she agreed before taking off again. She crashed into Buffy in the hallway and instructed her to help Spike with the tranquilizers.
Buffy found Spike back in his room, riffling through a black duffel bag. “I’m supposed to help,” she provided breathlessly, still buttoning up her pink parka.
“Found ’em!” Spike declared in triumph, holding up a box of darts. “Can you load the guns?”
Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed to do just that, fighting back a yawn. “Are you all right?” she asked, fitting the first rifle with two darts.
“Fine,” he shrugged her concern off, looking for the other rifle.
“I mean, with the chip headache and all.” she went on.
He froze for a second at that. “Yeah.” he began a bit hesitantly, “the chip.”
Buffy let out a wide yawn and set the fully loaded tranquilizer gun down on the floor. “You find the other one yet?” she inquired.
He let out a frustrated snort and searched through another bag. “This is what I get for bringing so many weapons,” he complained.
“Mmm,” was Buffy’s lazy response. She was suddenly very aware of the soft mattress beneath her and the wonderful smell of Spike that permeated the sheets. It was all so.relaxing, and this was the first moment of peace she’d had since the disaster began. I’ll just lay back for a second, her mind insisted. Just to rest up before the fight.
“Got it!” Spike announced in triumph from where he’d been rooting through another bag. “OK, now we need to-” He cut himself off when he noticed that she’d fallen asleep. With a patented roll of his eyes heavenward, he approached the bed. “C’mon, Slayer,” he nudged her foot, “we’ve got nasties to kill.”
She didn’t budge.
He frowned. “Slayer? Buffy?” He gave her a rough shake.
Still nothing.
He crawled up on the bed beside her and caught her shoulder, forcing her to face him. “Luv?” he demanded, concerned.and then a huge yawn overtook him.
He tried to blink back the sudden, inexplicable sleepiness but found himself unable to do so. An incurable weariness took over his limbs, and his vision swam as his eyelids drooped.
“What the bloody.?” he yawned.
And then collapsed into a deep sleep right beside the Slayer.
A swirl of red light escaped both their bodies at that, and the fiery glow hovered about the ceiling for an instant, contemplating the situation. The glow descended upon their bodies for a second, and the next there was a bright flash and their clothes had both vanished, scattering themselves about the room.
At the sudden chill, Buffy curled her nude body into Spike’s, sighing contentedly as his arm slipped around her waist.
Satisfied at mischief well accomplished, the red glow vanished into the cracks of the lodge. Three down. Three to go.
* * *
“There you are!” Veronica exclaimed in relief went Dawn burst out of the inn doors. “We have to follow these footprints fast, or the snow will cover them up.”
Dawn nodded. “Buffy and Spike will catch up. Spike should be able to follow our scents.”
“Let’s go then,” Veronica said a bit less than eagerly, and the two women vanished into what was fast becoming a full-blown blizzard.