The Scoobies were caught up in the heat of the battle. Combat sounds cleft the nightly silence and sent any other careless human ignorant enough to venture into Kings Road turning around and fleeing into the opposite direction. Giles and Xander eliminated hordes of advancing vampires, firing burning bolts at them with their crossbows. Luckily, they had been ambushed nearby the watcher's car, and they had managed to open the back trunk to get hold of their weapons before the demons attacked with full force. Xander could feel his heart throb in his throat, the adrenalin feeding his veins sharpened his senses till his finger on the firing mechanism had become short-wired with his sight; any object moving gracelessly in the darkness that he couldn't identify as one of his friends, gets a flaming wooden stake right through its heart. He had just sent a maliciously grinning female vamp back to the Never Never in a scattering cloud of glowing cinder, when he caught sight of Willow. The witch had also a crossbow in her trembling hands, but wasn't using it. She backed up instead, threatened by a duo of vampires, one tall and skinny with long greasy hair, the other short but bulky with his upper lip pulled up, bearing his fangs in sheer malice.

Willow stepped back warily, her heart fluttering in her chest like a brittle butterfly caught in a net. She was in panic, and didn't know what to do. She had tried to fight the demons in the only way that she had considered natural to her, which was by using magic. She was a full-fledged genuine witch, she knew what she was capable of if she set her mind to it and put her will into her spells. She should be able to blast these terrible creatures from the face of the earth, prevent them from harming her or any of her friends. So she muttered the Latin words over her lips, fixated her will on one single thought, an image of both of her attackers hurled away by a gush of wind and blown twenty feet into the air. She summoned the energy of her spirit, the fuel to power this spell, and transferred it into something substantial, something real, a hurricane to save her from the advancing demons.

But nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

Willow whimpered as both demons drove her with her back against the car, their lumpy features showing full mockery as they observed and sensed her fear. Shocked with the notion that she was as helpless as a kitten, she became partly paralyzed and her legs neglected her desperate orders to take a run for it.

What are you doing Rosenberg? Do something! Quick! Use the crossbow! Use the crossbow!

Willow obeyed her panicky inner voice and raised her weapon that she had almost forgotten all about, and aimed it at both of them by swaying it from one vamp to the other.

"Don't come any closer!" She said, voice trembling. "I've a got weapon and I'm not - "

She squeaked as the bulky vamp whacked the crossbow out of her hands. The wooden bow was sent flying over her shoulders, and landed at the other side of vehicle, out of her reach.

"You were saying, little girl?" The vampire scoffed, his face so close that Willow could smell his cigarette, alcohol and fried union breath.

Okay, that didn't work. But-but you still can scream right? Call for Buffy! Call for help! Call for help NOW!

But Willow believed that she had a better idea. She just couldn't believe that she was this useless, this easy to get. The spell, it should have worked. A wind spell was almost one of the easiest enchantments to perform. She must have done something wrong in her haste. She must try again.

The spell had to work, or else she was no longer the powerful witch she needed herself to be, but the soft and reliable nerdy girl of high school that was ignored by everybody. An useless nobody.

Instead of doing the sensible thing, her mouth started muttering hardly pronounceable words, her was heart wavering with fear, hatred and self loathing, all of that she pushed far back in her mind to concentrate on the irresolute spell that just seemed unwilling to catch that spark of ignition.

When both demons charged at her, their fangs bare and bloodlust blazing in their eyes, she closed her own and wished herself dead for failing again.

She was surprised to hear the vamps crying out in pain instead of herself, and as she opened her eyes, she was just on time to see their flesh burn away in ashes and tumble to the ground in two neat little cones.

Xander was standing twenty feet away from her, using his crossbow to clear out the area around the witch to secure her safety. Willow had just sucked in a couple of breaths to put her mind together when another vamp hurled himself at her in a blur of exposed fangs, grabby hands and yellow, blood thirsting eyes. She screamed, when Buffy pulled her away from danger and took care of the demon, kicking it full in his chest and sent him crashing into a streetlight. She turned towards Willow.

"Will, whatever is going on in your head, snap out of it! This isn't the right time!"

Buffy pushed a stake into her friend's hand and continued her fight. She swirled around, facing two vamps attacking her from both sides at once. She jumped up, booted the right one in mid air, and used his body to push herself off into a spinning kick and hurled the left one down as well.

She landed on her feet, pulling a fresh stake out from underneath her belt.

"Okay you lumpy bastards, which one of you want to go first?"

Both vampires got back on their feet and charged, Buffy waited till the big lumps were only a nose-length left away from her, then she suddenly ducked and the two morons banged into each other under much loud swearing. Buffy looked up from her crouched position, caved in between the two large vamps like a skinny football player locked between two sturdy opponents, only they weren't really wearing any protective helmets here. Perfect for an uppercut. Buffy's fist connected with the jaw of one of the vamps, the impact shattered the bone and knocked the demon from his feet. She swirled, her twirling locks thrown into the other demon's eyes, blinding him temporarily. Buffy caught this opportunity to drive her stake straight through the vampire's heart and poof; the evil bloodsucking fiend was no more.

I have to remember this for one, Buffy thought, Slayer with a short cut twirly hairdo, twice as deadly.

She made quick work of the other vampire with a series of kicks, punches and eventually the jab with the stake on the right place. It wasn't as effective as her newly invented twirling hair maneuver, but it did the trick. The dust of her last victim had not settled yet, or another company of angry vamps presented themselves to fight the Slayer to the death guided by their almost stubborn eagerness and stupidity.

Buffy wasn't the kind of person who could easily break someone's heart, so she helped these vamps out and continued to send them back to hell, one by one.

The night was young, and although there seemed to be a continuous stream of attacking vamps replacing the dusted ones, she wasn't even breaking a sweat yet. Her muscles seemed to relax instead of straining as she danced her dance of death among the dangerous creatures, her heartbeat fastened, her skin buzzed with energy and her feet were a fast as lightening. She had been inactive for a whole month and it was time to stretch those slaying muscles again. The rush coming from each impact of her blows, each well out- maneuvered, successful dodge, told her that she loved it. She was made for this.

The Slayer was so caught up in combat that she didn't notice that the some of the vamps retreated and vanished in the shadows. She also didn't see the group of demons stalking around the group of humans, pouring a dark liquid substance on the road. They worked fast and efficiently, using buckets filled up to the rim with the obscure fluid to create a large, closed circle around the Slayer and her friends. On four corners of the ring, four demons knelt down simultaneously and bit open their wrists, dripping blood on the black asphalt. Their lips moved as they uttered a string of words coming from a language that had been dead for more then a century. Dipping in a finger into the small puddles of blood, they drew markings on the ground, symbols of mystical power that started to glow as they threw their alien words out into the cold night air.

Buffy and the others didn't notice that there was something fishy going on till it was already too late.

The demons waiting in the shadows started to chant in unison. Their voices monotonous and low, their mantra vibrated the air like an airplane engine roaring to life. The words were lost, but the sounds were there; rhythmical, enticing and dangerous. It surprised the Slayerets, and most of the demons that were still in the circle made use of their distraction to get out of there. The loud humming increased in ferocity till it became a roaring racket, loud enough to scatter the windshield and side windows of Giles' car. The ground itself was shaking as if struck by an earthquake.

"What's going on?" Xander yelled, grabbing on to the car's roof to steady himself. Frowning, he asked. "Is this another apocalypse I don't know about? Why didn't you guys tell me that there was another apocalypse?!" Giles swayed unsteadily on his feet, but still held on to his crossbow that he had aimed at a particular large vamp lurking at him. He seemed in control of the situation, till his spectacles slid down his nose and he became almost as optically challenged as his pupil was a month ago.

"Oh good Lord, this is clearly not going to work." He muttered, before he raised his arm and tried to shield himself as the demon charged at him, fangs bared.

Giles pulled a stake out of one of the many pockets in his jacket, and slammed it into the heinous creature's heart. It burnt into a cloud of ashes raining down on his face and suit. He coughed, breathed-in vampdust irritating his lungs.

"Buffy! Xander! Willow! Get into the car! I don't know what they are trying to do, but for some particular reason, the vampires are retreating. Getting away from us on purpose, which possibly means that we are in some kind of real danger here. We have to get to - We -" Giles wheezed, caught in a sudden coughing fit.

"Gotcha." Buffy answered and pulled the watcher by his arm towards the vehicle. Giles' hand slipped into his pockets to find the keys. "You know, you really should let me drive. Let me get a couple more of them killed on our way out." Buffy opted in a half joking kind of way. The Watcher had found his car-key and held it in his right hand as far away from his pupil as possible. "Not a chance." He muttered.

Xander had already opened the frontseat door and was brushing off the shards of glass from the seats using his crossbow when Willow suddenly yelled at him.

"Xander! Get away from the car!"

He looked up in surprise and saw a gang of demons throwing flaming bottles at him. He leaped away on time and the generous serving of Molotov cocktails landed on the frontseats, where they exploded, creating a wave of cindering heat and destructive flames.

The quaking finally stopped and the Scoobies gathered swiftly to move away from the burning Citroen before the flames would eventually reach the gas tank and blow the old timer up into bits of smoldering metal.

"Guess that's the end of the road for Giles' smelly old French car." Xander joked, he caught the disapproving look the watcher was giving him and added swiftly. "Not that it was a bad car of course. If you could ignore the jammed gear, the rumbling outlet, the dead cat smell in the leather, yeah, I'd say it was still quite drivable and I for one offer my sincere condolences for its tragic lost."

Giles sighed.

"Please Xander, if you're trying to console me, please, do stop. Anyway, it isn't necessary, I'm already over it."

Buffy, running ahead of the group, looked over her shoulder and blinked in surprise.

"Really? I thought you loved that car and never wanted to get rid of it?"

"Well, he was getting rather old. Besides, I wasn't particularly looking forward to pick the pieces of human flesh out of the profiles of the tires after this was over."

"Huh." Buffy uttered, she turned her head again and slammed with her nose into something solid and invisible.

"Auw! Son of a -" She bit on her lower lip to swallow the pain in her throbbing nose. "What is this?"

She reached out tentatively, her fingers toughing a smooth, hard surface. It felt cold as ice but was as transparent as air. She traced it, and found its presence stretching out from side to side bending inward slightly, from all the way down where it melted into the road till as high as she could possibly reach.

"There is a wall here. An invisible one. Am I funny to think that this has something to do with that chorus of chanting demons and that miniature earthquake?"

"This must be somekind of a magical boundary, and those singing vampires were trying to erect this to keep up inside." Willow said, and looked down to search for any markings. "There! You see that line? I bet that's going all the way around us in a wide circle."

"Of course." Gilles uttered. "They were doing a protection spell for immortals, creating a barrier to contain mortal flesh." He lifted his glasses, and squinted his eyes. "I thought I kind of recognized the noisy chanting and the mysterious shaking part."

"Oh do please translate this for us common folk, you enlightened Watching One." Xander said dryly.

"The spell creates a barrier for humans and any other living creature that isn't immortal. It keeps them inside a magical ring, but immortal creatures like hell-gods and demons -"

"And vampires." Added Willow.

"Yes, vampires too, I'm afraid. They are able to enter the circle. Which means that -"

"We're stuck in some kind of weird cage-fight, only the heavyweight opponents can leave the ring whenever it pleases them and we're trapped in here with Giles' small French car about to go Kla-bloowey within cindering distance." Xander clarified, nervousness sounding through his voice.

"Well, yes, I guess that's a very crude way of putting it." Giles said, a bit irritated by their constant interruption.

"We have to get out of here." Buffy said determinedly. She faced the invisible wall and tried to punch a hole in it. Her fist bunched right off as the fabric give in a little with the impact and threw the total amount of focused energy back into her arm. Buffy was surprised; she had expected that, if her Slayer strength failed to break into the barrier, she would hurt herself badly since she clearly remembered the damage the solid structure had done to her nose, just by walking into it. Now, the whole thing seemed as bunchy and flexible as a beachball.

"It doesn't look good." She uttered, sucking a breath of hot air, as the blazing Citroen warmed the cold October night not far behind her.

It doesn't look good indeed. The vampires, knowing that the stake-party was trapped between the burning vehicle and the magical wall, advanced out of the darkness in which they were lurking. There were more of them now then even before the barrier was raised, and all of them knew very well that the tables were turned, not only because they outnumbered the Slayer and his group by ten to one, but also because they knew that they could shield themselves from their attacks behind the ring. Under these notions, the demons grew bolder and their attack became more brutal.

Ten to fifteen of them stepped in at once with white knuckled fists and murder blazing in their yellow eyes. Buffy and the Scoobies fought them as best as they could. The Slayer blocked a punch coming from one of the attacking vamps, grabbed his fists and twisted his arms around, intended to break them, but the demon jumped and rolled in the air, kicking her in her chest as he went. Buffy twirled around by the impact, and she used it to make a full spin to get back to the demon, and wreck his jaw with her fist. The impact made a satisfying cracking sound, and the demon staggered, howling in pain. Buffy raised her stake and was about to put the creature out if its misery, when it dove out of the circle, leaving her stake nothing but air.

"Dammit! You yellow coward! Come back and turn to dust like a real vamp!" Buffy uttered in sheer frustration. However, she didn't have time to go on complaining for long, another demon attacked her from the side, and once again, she fought the creature with punches and kicks till the moment was there where she found an opportunity to stake him. She grabbed him by his leg after a failed attempt of the demon to boot her.

"Okay, this time, I'm not gonna let you guys go away that easily. You wanne be part of the exiting world of wild cage fighting, be a least demony enough to stick around till the last round is over."

She raised her stake and got grabbed by the waist by a pair of cold, vampire arms sticking through the barrier. The demon outside the ring pulled her against the invisible wall, and her back slammed against the cold surface, sending pain waves through her spine.

As it turned out, the beachball had just gone solid again.

Buffy tried to push her way out through the interlocking limps, but the demon was strong and hauled her back again. She banged her head against the magical ring turned brick wall, and decided that using sheer force wasn't the solution for her problem.

She stabbed the demon's upper arm with her stake, making a jab large and mean enough to rupture arteries, and the vampire holed and let go. She moved out of his reach and saw how on the other side, the demon staggered away from the circle like a wounded animal, licking his wounds while he kept his raging eyes on her. The vampire she had been fighting and intended to dust before was nowhere to be seen and at her back, the comfortable warmth had already turned into a searing heat, as the flames had now spread itself halfway across the car and would soon reach the gas tank.

Meanwhile, Willow had something of a panic attack. "Xander!" She yelled and tried to fire a bolt to hit the demon that had knocked the weapon out of her friend's hand and was now punching him in the gut with the brutality of a drunk, pissed off biker.

A boot kicked the bow out of her hands. Then a vampire outside the ring grabbed her by her legs and pulled. Willow screamed and fell, face down, with her nose smashing into the asphalt.

Xander tried to dodge, or fling a blow, or not to double in pain so the demon could prepare itself to give him another easy punch. He swayed his right arm back, putting as much velocity and power in his movement as he could give, and hit his attacker full in his face.

"Ha! Take that you bloodsucking piece of scum -"

He was cut short as the demon recovered with a simple swab to clean the blood dripping from his nose with the back of his hand, and then hurled another mean looking punch at him while exclaiming a raging roar.

Xander shut his eyes and expected to see a hell of a lot of stars and perhaps the unpleasant sensation of his guts being relocated inside his stomach, but instead he heard the groaning of a demon in pain. As he opened his eyes, the demon was swept up by a blur of bleached blond hair and flapping black duster, and for once in a very long time, Xander was pleased to see their vampire ally turn up in their company.

"Spike." Xander said, his voice still quivering from the pain after being used by the demon as a human punch bag. "Am I awkwardly glad to see you. We're in some serious trouble here."

"You don't say." The blond vampire scoffed and grinned. There was no sign of the big biker type that had redone his innards, which struck Xander as odd.

"Yeah, big bad mojo ring prevents us good guys from getting out, but the evil bloodsucking fiends like you can get in. They are nailing us with this. I thought we could still fight them since we still got the crossbows with wooden arrows, but apparently, in the totally rational world of black magic, wood is considered alive and therefore mortal. It can't get pass the barrier, and we can't kill the vamps outside the circle. Oh, and Giles' nostalgic car is about to explode." Xander sighed, desperate and looking at the vampire for help. "Things can't get much worse then this."

"Oh yes, they can actually." Spike said, blinking his eyes and sucking in his cheeks, before he threw a punch at the human, hitting him in his lower jaw and sending him reeling over the ground.

Xander tasted dirt and blood in mouth, as he struggled up and turned around, aggravated. "Spike! What are you doing you crazy son of a bitch! That fucking hurts!" Then he realized something, his eyes went wide and his mouth dropped, stunned as he was. Did Spike just hit him? On purpose? And he was still standing there, staring down at him wearing that stupid and content grin on his face without the chip giving him so much as a satisfying painful zap?

It was as if the blond was not only capable of hurting him now, but also could read his mind. Or at least the baffled expression on Xander's face, that was. Spike picked the bleeding young man up from the ground. His piercing blue eyes looking right into the human's dark hazel ones, as his grin widened into a vindictive smile.

"As I said whelp, things can actually get a hell of a lot worse." He morphed into game-face, his handsome features twisting and bulging till they became grotesque and fearsome, and the demon narrowed his yellow eyes at the human, a primitive growl running up its throat.

"What - What happened to your chip? Why isn't it working?" Xander yelped as he felt his feet lose contact with the ground and his whole bodyweight sagging down from the collar of his shirt on which the vampire had grabbed hold on him.

Spike chuckled maliciously; "God, you're not exactly the brightest idiot of the whole pack of idiots, are you?" and he shoved the human against the invisible wall, slamming his head against the solid structure a couple of times. Xander's head bobbed on his shoulders, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets as he was almost knocked unconscious.

"Broken already?" The blond vampire mocked. "Bugger, I knew I should have asked for a football for Christmas instead of a big fat middle aged wanker to throw against the wall. You're not even bunching back, only getting these funny little shapes in your head."

Spike felt a sharp edgy pain cut through his spine as something hard and ferocious connected with his back and launched him forward, away from Xander. The vampire lost his balance, but caught his fall by rolling over. He rolled back up into a crouching position, his features changing back into his own, glaring at the humans with a predatory look in his eyes.

"Are you all right, Xander?" Buffy asked. She swirled around to face the wicked bad vampire that had threatened her friend. "You know, your gonna be so sorry for thrashing him up like th-"

The rest of her pun caught in her throat as she finally saw who it was that she was facing up against.
 
 

TBC