The Borders of Night Start to Give, Chapter 21/26

[punch_kicker15]

Title: The Borders of Night Start to Give
Author: punch_kicker15
Rating: R
Characters/Relationships: Willow/Giles
Summary: A prophecy leads Giles to practice dark magic once again. This sets him down a dark path, and Willow may be the only one who can help. AU in which Willow’s magic training started earlier than in canon.
Word count: 47,533
Notes: Thanks to scratchingpost1 for generously offering a plot bunny that ate my brain, gilescandy and dragonyphoenix for looking over a very rough first draft and offering helpful suggestions and encouragement. Thanks also to the mods (red_b_rackham and traycer_ and other participants at het_bigbang for all of the help and hand-holding throughout. And special thanks to angelus2hot for some amazing art she created for this story.

Chapter 21

Seeing Red

Buffy

Buffy picked up the telephone, hoping it wasn’t yet another clueless telemarketer who wanted to talk to Joyce Summers. “Hello, who’s this?”

“Buffy, it’s Jonathan.”

The rush of fear when she’d heard that the invisibility ray could kill her returned, for a moment. “What do you want?”

“You have every right to be mad at me. But there's something you should know about Warren." His words prickled at the edge of Buffy's Slayer sense. This could be an important call.

"Ok, spit it out," Part of her wanted to ask him why he hadn't learned his lessons from the augmentation spell. At least Warren and Andrew were novices at fooling around with supernatural forces. Jonathan should have known better. But she bit her tongue. There could be time for that later.

She started with the easiest part of it. "Where's Warren right now? Our locator spells have him in New York."

"I think he's still in Sunnydale, but I don't know where. He's got a lot of explosives. If you try to break into his house, he might set them off."

Stupid humans with machinery. Things were so much easier with demons. Buffy suddenly wondered if Giles was right, and this really was something for the kind of people armed with body armor and guns, not stakes and holy water. But she had a gut feeling that there was something magick-y and maybe even demonic going on with Warren as well, and that meant that the police probably weren't equipped to hunt him down.

Since she didn't want to go all explode-y, it was probably best to try to catch Warren somewhere else.

She said, "Tell me everything you know about this armored car plan."

***

Willow

At the Magic Box, Willow flipped through her spellbook, trying find the best spell to disable Warren's orbs quickly. They couldn't risk Warren running back to his armored bunker.

Magic burrowed under her skin, and she suddenly felt as if the ground had lurched under her feet. Oh, Goddess, was the Hellmouth opening up already? Were they too late to stop The First Evil?

Buffy ducked beneath a table, and pulled Willow down with her. "Will, do you have any clue what that is?"

Willow closed her eyes and followed the energy. "There's some big-time magic coming from somewhere a little south of UC Sunnydale. I don't think it's a natural earthquake,"

The quake continued, with no sign of letting up. Willow glanced at the clock. Warren would be at the armored car in twenty minutes.

Buffy said, "Go. I'll handle Warren on my own."

Willow could borrow a car, but that might take time, and she didn't really have it. Not when Buffy might need some backup with Warren.

She'd experimented with levitation spells, but had never really flown great distances before. But there was no reason not to try it now. She thought about air molecules lifting her up, propelling her through the air. Her feet left the ground, and she floated towards UC Sunnydale, the wind whipping through her hair. It was exhilarating, like the greatest amusement park ride in the world.

When Willow reached the nexus of the magic, she drifted down, hitting the ground with a thump that shot pain through her ankles and knees. So much for a dramatic entrance. Clearly she needed to work on a more coordinated dismount.

Ethan was at the center, his hands directing the flow of energy. There was something strangely beautiful about the way his magic flowed.

But aesthetic appreciation could wait.

She called out, "Vincire--", and watched magic encircle him.

He said something too low for her to hear, and in an instant she felt her magic twisting back to her, like an electric shock, making every muscle in her body twitch. She fell to the ground, panting, and watched in disbelief as he stopped all of the chaos magic that was making the ground shake.

"You're leaving? What was all of that earthquaky stuff for?" It was a stupid, stupid, question. She couldn’t magic her way out of a paper bag at this point; there was no reason to goad him into coming back. Her stupid curiosity kept getting the better of her.

Ethan smirked at her, “I created a diversion. You fell for it.”

He fired up a jetpack, and it felt like his smug grin stuck around just a bit longer than the rest of him.

***

Xander

It was getting pretty old, watching his two best friends being put through the wringer over and over again.

First Buffy had come back from the armored car heist looking beaten-up. No matter how often he’d seen it, no matter how much he knew that the cuts and bruises would heal fast, it still made him cringe a little inside. Then there was the news that Andrew had been captured but Warren had escaped with a jetpack. (Xander had to fight a tiny bit of admiration for the coolness of that exit.).

Then Willow limped home, looking like she could collapse at any second. Xander wrapped an arm around her shoulders and helped her upstairs to her room, wincing as little sparks of magic burned his arm. He could only imagine how they felt to Willow.

Once she was safely in bed, Xander went back down to the yard to talk to Buffy. He tried to think of some way to make with the funny to take her mind off things. Usually, he could come up with a funny Anya story, but now, thinking of Anya just made him feel guilty and defensive and furious all at once. It probably didn’t matter. Buffy hadn’t really laughed at much of anything lately.

He settled on, “How’s Dawn?”

Buffy frowned. “Ok, I think. She hasn’t said anything about all of the crazy--”

Just then Xander had a weird instinctive feeling that something was wrong. He looked up, just in time to see Warren coming up to the house with a gun.

Everything seemed to happen all at once. Warren yelled something, and then shot Buffy in the chest. He fired off a couple more shots, then ran off.

Xander knelt down next to Buffy. Oh, god. Buffy couldn’t die again. He grabbed his phone and dialed 911.

***

Willow

Willow awoke, her head still throbbing. Something outside popped like a firecracker, so she got up to look out the window. There was another pop, and something burned through her arm. She looked down and saw blood dripping down her arm. The shock of it sent her falling backwards. Her head hit something hard, and the world went dark for a while.

When she woke up again, she was vaguely aware of a commotion outside. Xander was yelling something about Buffy being shot. There were sirens and some other people talking. She tried calling out, but her voice didn't seem to be working.

Sometime after the noise died down, she was able to open her eyes. There was blood everywhere. She tried to sit up, but her head was spinning and she felt like she was drifting away. The analytical part of her diagnosed: blood loss. She could be dying, and now no one was here to help her. She reached out with her mind, crossing continents, crossing oceans: Giles, help!

Chapter 22