The cavern was dark, deep, and overflowing with the bad.

Adrenaline rush, fear rush... Willow had it all. It was almost as bad as the day she threw up on Snoopy backstage after the ice show.

Only younger then, and having no idea weird creatures with heads far, far larger than their bodies actually existed.

As if to illustrate her point, a grunt and a squeal from such a creature echoed across the cavern. From her position behind a stalactite, Willow flinched; then an enormous, grotesque head spewing green blood from its neck sailed past her and landed splat into a bubbling mud pot in the bone-strewn floor. Overripe pumpkins came to mind as hot mud splashed from the cannonball splat. Willow ducked behind a large rock, covering her head with her hands, and did a quick warding spell to save her dry-clean-only top. Stupid, only go for the washables when one is on patrol with the Slayer.

Especially if one is trying to cut down on the magick use. Which I am.

She looked between her fingers as she rose, seeing only flashes of light in the yawning maw of shadow that was the entrance and egress to the huge cavern. That was where she had dropped their flashlight; it was on the ground, canted slightly toward the ceiling, and as Buffy battled whatever she had taken on next, their shadows danced like Bizarro World Fred and Ginger overloaded with caffeine.

Not a pretty sight, that, so Willow concentrated on conjuring a fireball to throw across the cave. But while she was putting her spell together, something smacked her over the head and sent her facedown in the muck. It hurt, and if there had been time she would have seen little birdies; but she had a lot of hours on her slayage clock and her reflexes were pretty good. Not as stretchy as the Slayer, but bendy still, she flipped over on her back and sent the three-quarters-formed fireball from her hand. It caught a hairy, hunchbacked demon in the face. Its skin began to sizzle as it staggered backward, shrieking and clutching its head, and then it slammed very hard into the wall.

Chunks of ceiling shot downward, and Willow flipped back over, this time taking a deep breath and clamping shut her mouth. She contracted into a ball and, pushing back onto her knees, she scuttled out of the range of the cascade, and plopped behind a boulder.

Catching her breath, she watched the demon's throes of agony as the flames ate up its face. Now she was thinking baked pumpkin pie. Its clawed feet twitched. Then, with one final roar, it bolted to a sitting position, froze there for a moment, then collapsed stiffly onto its side. It didn't move again. It appeared to be dead in the extreme.

"Yay," Willow whispered. She rubbed the back of her head as she held on to the boulder, feeling very wobbly. A knot was already forming just above the hollow at the base of her skull. She felt drained and incredibly sick to her stomach, but she could indulge her maladies later. She needed to help the Slayer.

Who is not here... Willow thought, confused. Then she realized that Buffy and her opponent must have moved out of the cavern and into the tunnel. The ground shook, and she felt a little better because the battle was still on, which meant that Buffy was still more or less okay. Then she realized that something that could make the ground shake that hard had to be really big.

Really dangerous.

Really able to maybe kill the Slayer.

"Buffy?" she shouted. Her own voice echoed the only answer she got. "Buffy? Buffy? Buffy?"

There was another quake; this time it seemed that the entire cave tilted. More chunks of ceiling detached, one narrowly missing her shoulder.

"Buffy!" she yelled again.

And still no answer except her own voice.

Buffy's good at the big battles. It's who she is and what she does, Willow reminded herself as she staggered backward, accidentally running into the remains of the headless demon. Day in, day out, she slays. And what I do... is what I'm not supposed to do. Magick. And, okay, I did a couple of small spells to keep the Slayer from dying... again... but that's magick for a good reason... so even Tara should be okay with that...

... if she knew... which she won't, unless Buffy narcs on me....

"Buffy!" she shouted into the darkness.

"Out of the way, Will!" Buffy shouted back.

Willow jumped to the right as an enormous demon with a ridged back and furled head shot backward into the cavern from the tunnel. It was a Riencosta, very bad, very evil. It was mostly a blur, its bulk too large for the watery beam from the small flashlight to fully illuminate.

Then Buffy came after it, and Willow thought, not for the first time, Wow. Buffy's got the moves.

With a fresh burst of strength, the Slayer made a rip-cord leap at an angle toward the monster, jamming her boot heel into its ear. She zinged backward, then leaped into the air again, executing a perfect one-eighty. As she landed on her right foot, the black leather outlined her quads as she pulled in her left thigh, then let the package explode into a sidekick that sent the Riencosta demon slamming across the chamber. As it hurtled through the air, the ridges on its back collided with and crushed a line of stalactites suspended from the ceiling. It roared in pain, then slammed into the wall.

The ground shook again as it landed. Another huge chunk of rock above its head vibrated free and landed on its skull. Willow distinctly heard bone crushage.

It roared once more and then collapsed, hopefully dead, definitely unconscious. Buffy smiled briefly, registering a moment of satisfaction at having taken it out. Then she saw Willow, and the smile faded.

That was not a good sign, in Willow's opinion, of her own physical condition.

"Willow, you okay?" Buffy asked, rushing toward the Wicca.

Willow smiled wanly and held out her hand. "I will be," she assured her friend. "Just a hot bath and a whole lotta--"

Then Willow caught a flicker of pale blue-white in the flashlight beam behind Buffy and shouted, "Wraith!"

Cued in by Willow's warning, Buffy pushed Willow away. Then she whirled around, bouncing-on-her-heels ready to face yet another assailant. There had been plenty tonight. More than usual on a Saturday night.

No rest for the wicked... not on my watch.

And I should know. I've died twice already, and I'm not even old enough to drink legally.

Sure enough, a phantom of tissue-thin membranes and half-decomposed bone whirled at her, a terrifying wash of terror and death, a hideous mask of decay and horror...

... yawn...

... and Buffy made short work of it. With a fist full of undercuts, she caught the thing in the center of its rib cage and thrust in and up. Each rib disconnected from the sternum with a sprong like a broken guitar spring, then flittered upward, a deck of shuffled cards let loose from the hands of a horribly inept magician.

"That'll teach you to mix up your similes and metaphors!" she boasted to the rest of the wraith as it clattered to the ground. "Or rather, mine."

"Another one!" Willow shouted at her, and Buffy nodded as the second wraith flew at her, determined to also die the final death.

"On it!" she cried.

"And you were probably thinking in similes!" Willow added. "Got it! Thanks!"

And she did get it, pressing her heels hard into the dirt and then springing at the creature, whose elongated face reminded her of the mask in Scream. The distorted mouth made a boomerang "V" as it tried to dodge Buffy's trajectory, but the Slayer made contact, rammed a fist into that mouth, and felt the entire creature crumble like a ceramic cookie jar of doom... leaving crumbs of wraith behind instead of chewy deliciousness.

She shook off the crumbs. Boots and black leather were a good battle-gear combination, even though she and the Willster had planned to catch a chick flick, not battle demons and monsters. Cheaper evening, this way. We could have dropped twenty-five bucks easy, if we'd bought refreshments.

She remembered watching Hindi TV together long ago, Willow offering a comment about making their own fun as they watched the heroine wailing about her podiatrist. Willow had been the fun-discovering Wicca tonight; it was she who had gotten bad vibey on the way to the Sun Cinema, way before Buffy's spider sense went a-tingling. Heeding her instinct, she and Buffy had followed the scent, discovering a rat's nest of the bad.

If those rats happened to be Rodents of Unusual Size.

"Curtain call!" Willow shouted, pointing over Buffy's shoulder.

Buffy spun around as a third wraith rushed her from the shadows. She took it on with ease; then, as soon as that one was down, she scrolled down to a club-wielding troll -- the green, flesh-eating kind -- and then the not-quite-so-dead Riencosta groaned and sat up.

Buffy assumed battle position, ready to handle -- make that manhandle -- both attackers, when a small glowing orb erupted from Willow's palm and smacked the Riencosta in the back of the skull. With an impressive display of green sparks, the demon's head erupted. The headless corpse flopped back onto the floor, and vast quantities of green goo burbled from its neck.

Another point for our side.

Willow looked pleased with herself. Buffy gave her a quick nod of thanks, snatched the troll's club from its grimy fists, and whacked it over the head with it. The troll snarled once, twice, and fell to its knees. Buffy gave it another whack at the same time that another ball of magickal energy whizzed across the cavern. It caught the troll in the face and then... no face.

Down it thudded.

Buffy reassumed battle stance and scanned the perimeter.

"And then there were none, finally," she said, lowering her arms. She and Willow were alone at last. Except for goo and bubbling mud. "Right? Seeing anything else? Feeling anything?" She gazed at her witchly bud.

"It's all good, except for the feeling anything," Willow announced. As Buffy looked concerned, she got herself up, dusted her hands together, and walked toward Buffy. "No rift in the force that I can feel, anyway."

"I had the troll, but thanks," Buffy said. She hesitated. "You didn't need to use up your energy, Will. I know all that... stuff... makes you tired."

Willow gave her a don't-try-to-coddle-me look and said, "I thought you needed help. It was just a couple of little spells. Or maybe six," she added guiltily.

"But I could have done it all my..." Buffy began, then mentally zipped up her mouth and pocketed the key. "You're right. I could have gotten overpowered," she added peppily. "And there you were, just like the Energizer Bunny, saving the day. Boom, boom, boom with the fireballs."

"The Energizer Bunny being such a scary thing," Willow said with her customary gentle wryness.

"Anya thinks so," Buffy retorted, and they shared a smile. "Seriously, thank you."

"It was nothing." Willow's voice was a bit strangled.

"I know... I know you're trying to... not use so much magick," Buffy said jumbily.

Willow said nothing.

They had just entered a different sort of dangerous territory, and Buffy knew it. Tara had recently left Willow because Willow was using so much magick. Willow hadn't even been able to go a week without trying a heavy-duty spell that had given everybody amnesia and almost cost them their lives. Willow was easing off, but Buffy thought she was still using magick when she didn't really need to.

But I'm not one to judge her, Buffy reminded herself. She can't stay away from magick, and I can't stay away from Spike.

Copyright © 2003 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation