Chapter Eighteen
----====Spike====----
I looked out from the bridge as a small army of wheezing, menthol-stinking DH's rushed out of the woods. More of them piled out of trucks that shot down the lane stopping short of the bridge. Presumably the big bosses didn't want to lose the vehicles in case the barrier came back up. The cannon fodder was a lot more expendable.
They looked like cannon fodder too - these buggers weren't the corporate all brains-no brawn, or the gangsta all brawn-no brains types that had been after us. These blokes were kited out in camouflage, and a tattoo in the centre of their foreheads. There were bleeding hundreds of 'em.
The lead one shouted, "Get out of the way. This doesn't concern you. We just want those interfering bitches."
I shouted back, "Never gonna happen. Suggest you turn yourselves round, and stop bothering the nice ladies."
Looked like we'd ended up in the middle of the Witches' own little problem.
The plus side was that it meant that I could do my bit to say thanks for their help. The negative side was that there wasn't any way this lot'd be pulling their punches. I wasn't worried for me, but I was for my humans - they break all too easily.
The other negative bit was that it looked like I was up against the DH equivalent of the cast of Zulu. I just hoped it was the one with Michael Caine and not the one where the redcoats got massacred. Only, if it was the Caine Classic - and hey, good-looking blond Londoner in the leading role had to be a good omen, there was no way we were going to be singing 'Men of Harlech' after slaughtering the opposition. I might be guilty of many things, but being Welsh is not one of them.
The river wasn't that wide, but it was wide enough that the DH's had to the use the bridge to get across. A bridge is a natural bottleneck. You get a natural bottleneck; you can break plenty of enemy necks, or this case, noses. If I'd have stayed behind at the river, I'd have run the risk of being outflanked, and that was not an acceptable option. It would have been totally acceptable a few weeks back, especially if it had just been me against the slavering hordes, all fists and fangs - would have been a good way to go out. Now I'd got real mates to look after, and some good women that had opened their home and their hearts to me, and there was no way in hell I was going to fail - again.
I shouted out, "Wes, if you've got your mobile, call the girls. Tell 'em we've got enough DH's coming to re-enact the Somme if they don't get the barrier back up, and sharpish."
He yelled back, "They'll be away from the phones in a deep trance!"
Giles head shot up from where he'd seemed to have gone into himself, and said, "Try anyway. One of the acolytes might be around, we have to warn them." Then he continued, "And we have to do what's necessary to protect them."
Right then, the first wave of DH's hit me. I spun, fists flying, a whirlwind of destruction - and it tasted as sweet as the Hurricanes I'd drunk on Bourbon Street whilst listening to the Blues. My demon exulted in the noses smashed, the heads I tore from bodies in hated fatigues, and the crack of faces against my Doc Martens. I got splattered in blue gunk as DH's dissolved at my feet.
I was an engine of destruction, but I was still me. The demon loved it, but wasn't in control. The soul felt comfortable as the hand of righteousness, and joined in with the demon to fight that evil. The peace I felt inside as the two forces worked together, to do something I do as well as almost nobody on earth, was bloody marvellous.
It certainly wasn't peaceful outside.
The DH's screamed as they rushed me in the centre of the bridge and met their doom. I felt like Horatio on the bridge, or the Anglo-Saxon bloke, whose name I can never remember from my Oxford days. Though I didn't aim to follow their example to the dead conclusion. I'm already dead, so I hoped that would fit the literary parallel, without any need for dust.
Wes shouted at his mobile as nobody apparently picked up, and when I spin-kicked, I saw him looking round for weapons or anything he could use as one.
Giles stood murmuring something to himself - which I thought very odd. I thought ol' Rupes would have jumped in fists flying and an enormous grin on his face. He looked grim and much taller than he should have.
Then he raised his hands, and the woods on the opposite bank caught fire.
The hills were dying with the smell of menthol - baked menthol. At that point, the woods were still full of hordes of DHs rushing to their doom at my fists. When the trees went up in flames, so did they. The flaming cold-cures that weren't consumed by the flames veered away to the river to put themselves out. When they tried to do it, Giles shouted, "Back." The burning DH's flew back into the burning, falling trees and died screaming.
I was rushed by the remaining forces, which came from the trucks.
Hands grabbed and tore at my clothes as they tried to pass me to get at Giles. It didn't do them any good as I ripped the hands off and used them to smash in a few more noses. The wooden bridge was sopping wet and slippery with blood and blue gunk by this point, which dripped through the cracks in the boards and sizzled into the river.
The sheer weight of DH's pushed me back a bit, but it worked out well as the planks there were less slippery and I got a better footing. I could tell that I was getting battered, and that I'd be a mass of bruises and probably some broken bones in the morning, but in the joy and peace of the fight, I didn't care, and I didn't really take it in. In the crush of bodies, I managed to smack enough heads together to create some room for a truly superb spin kick on the front wave. I knocked some into the bridge and others into the water. It gave me the room to see my friends.
Wes had given up on the phone, and shouted to both of us that he'd run back to the house to get the ladies to wards back up. Unfortunately, just as he turned to do that, he slipped on a wet stone and fell over.
I head-butted a tattoo-boy, punched out one nose and elbowed out another. I spun around, and rinsed and repeated. The crack of noses breaking was pure poetry, and I laughed from the sheer joy of it.
Giles chanted louder and then shouted, "Incendio!"
The trucks exploded, taking with them more of the DH's.
I got knocked round to face Giles again by a roundhouse to the head that felt like it broke my jaw and certainly jarred a few teeth. I head-butted the bastard back, and saw Giles raise his hands, chant, and shout, "Rebound!" I felt the power punch its way through me, and force something backwards so sharply that it broke.
Giles collapsed.
With the fire, the explosions, and my not so little body count of blue gunk, it looked like we were staring in Zulu with Michael Caine, and not Zulu Dawn after all. The army of DH's had been decimated - no, actually more like almost destroyed, as 'decimation' is only one in ten dead. I remember some of my old school Latin - it's handy around witches and in the demon world, though I imagine my old schoolteachers would have had a fit at what some of those declensions were used for.
Two of the mentholated bastards I'd knocked into the water made it out on the Watchers' side of the river. They headed straight for the out cold, but still breathing, Giles. Bugger. I'd still got the last ten all over me, and stood no chance of getting to him on time.
I took out another nose and, in the momentary break, yelled out to Wes, "Incoming! Help Giles! Bit tied up here, mate." Then I landed a punch Ali himself would have been proud of. Not quite a rumble in the jungle, but definitely destruction in Devon.
I caught sight of Wes by the picnic basket, about twenty feet away from the DH's and Giles. I knew he'd never reach them in time as I knocked another one to the floor and kicked his face in. There was nothing more I could do. I'd already used up all the vamp speed in me and was running on fumes as it was. Fumes were still good enough for a roundhouse to reduce another DH to blue gunk. But I couldn't help Giles, and I was terrified of having to tell Buffy I'd failed her again and let him die on my watch.
Wes picked up the rock he'd tripped on and threw it straight at the nose of one of the two DH's about to slaughter Giles. Bullseye! One down, one to go, but he'd moved away from the riverbank towards the picnic area, and away from more rocks. There was a mustard jar still out, from when we'd been interrupted in packing up. He picked up the glass jar and hit bullseye again!
He checked on Giles as I elbowed, head-butted, punched and kicked the remaining DH's into a blue puddle on the bridge. Finally, I took out the last one with a forearm smash, and ran over to join Wes in checking on Giles.
I tried not to drip blue messes on Giles, since he'd only have made me clean his Barbour, and those things reek wet - with added demon gunk, I'd no plans to go there. But I got close enough to know he was only unconscious and not in imminent danger.
I turned to the younger Watcher, and gave credit where credit's due. "Nice throws, mate! Did the trick well and good."
Wesley made a small chuckle. "Thank you. I do like the odd game of darts every now and then. Great, uh, carnage."
I grinned. "Thanks mate. I enjoyed it, and, well, fight the good fight, right?"
He smiled distractedly, while continuing to check Giles for injuries. I looked round. On the non-coven side of the river, the woods were on fire, bits of flaming exploded trucks were everywhere, and a sea of blue gunk stained the land and the bridge.
Regan was going to kill us.
Well, hopefully not, since we'd just saved them, but we'd certainly not been too environmentally friendly in doing it. She was going to be even more pissed off if the fire spread across the river into their territory. We also needed to get Giles back on his feet and away from the fire and the scene of the big scary magics he'd just done.
I'd seen him do more magic on this trip than the last few years combined, but what he'd just done had left me gobsmacked; and not a little worried -- for him, for us, and what it might come to. I know magic and that it has consequences. Bloody well right it has consequences.
It took us a while, some shouting by yours truly, and a little shoulder-shaking, and concerned, "Giles!"ing from Wes, but we got him to come round, and to sit up. He took one look at the fire and said, "Bugger. Regan... kill me." He closed his eyes, then managed, "Help me up? Need to be standing. Can't do it myself."
So we did. It took us a while, some pain to my bruised flesh, and then he stood there, gathering himself. I wanted to move us all out of there pretty damned quick. There were loads of sparks flying in the wind. Vampires are very flammable, as I'd shown him when I rescued his arse from that vampire Tara'd pepped up that summer we lost Buffy.
Giles said, "To the river. Help me." So we did. He cupped his hands in the river, stood with the water still in them, and said, "Pluvio," as he released the water.
It pissed down with rain, drenching us to the very weary - and in my case somewhat battered - bone, and put out the fire.
Giles sagged back down and we caught him, supporting him on either side.
I looked at Wes and said, "Guess we'll have to come back later for the picnic basket. Better get Dad back home to beddy-byes."
Wesley smiled and said, "Good idea. But I want to check on you first. You look like you've been run over by a steamroller."
I laughed. "Later, mate; might take all night. Besides, you should see the state of the steamroller!"
Giles managed to mutter, "Pillocks."
So we staggered back to the house.