FIC: To Die by the Sword (1/?)

[PChazzman@xxxxxxx]

TITLE:  To Die by the Sword (1/?)
AUTHOR: Chazzman
E-MAIL: PChazzman@xxxxxxx  
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters in this story. They all belong
to Joss and the WB network. Please don't sue.
SPOILERS: Season 5.
SUMMERY: Highlander X-over challenge from  Hhdouglas.
RATED: PG
DISTRIBUTION: Just ask me, please...
FEEDBACK: Is very welcome.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:


To Die by the Sword

Chap 1

Knights of Byzantium lay hacked and slaughtered everywhere.  Their swords
flew in the air around Glory and Dawn, forming a deadly wall in front of the
mystical barrier that Glory had erected around herself and 'Her Key'.

Buffy looked in fearful trepidation as she waited for Willow and Tara to
complete the spell they were casting.  Glory's minions were also dead so
there was no one to fight.  A slash to Xander's stomach had been serious
enough that Cordelia and Anya had carried him off to the relative safety of
the corridor.  Giles, Angel, Wesley and Gunn were helping her keep the
floating swords at bay from the two witches.

She could see Dawn's terror as Glory placed her hand upon her and her body
began to warp and shift and change.  

"Buffy, GO!" shouted Willow as the spell punched a hole through the barrier
surrounding Glory and Dawn.

"Everyone out now!" screamed Buffy as she dove through the floating wall of
whirling swords towards Glory and Dawn.

Glory was delighted as she felt the energies of the Key beginning to respond
to her own powers and this pesky universe's reality began unleashing its
restrictive hold upon her.

"Yes! At last I will be free!" she crowed in ecstasy.

Then a furious ball of blonde Slayer struck her, loosening her grasp on the
Key.

"Get away from my sister, Bitch," snarled the enraged Slayer as she grabbed
hold of Dawn and threw out of the hole in the barrier and the wall of
spinning swords.  Giles caught Dawn and ran with her out of the room.  Away
from Glory.

"No!" shrieked Glory as she felt the energies of the Key vanish from her
grasp leaving only her limited power to complete the transition.

Straining to force the change that she had started, Glory began to shimmer
and morph.  Suddenly, Buffy from herself facing Ben the intern from the
hospital.  

Ben took in the situation and realized what Glory had begun. He saw Buffy
looking at him in surprise, and the hole in the barrier behind her.

"Get out of here!" he yelled as he felt Glory begin to try to reassert
herself into the body.  

Buffy turned and leapt back through the hole in the barrier to where Angel
still waited to grab her and run her to safety.

Time suddenly seemed to slow.

She could feel the magic blast happening behind her.

Willow, Tara, Wesley and Gunn were running towards the doorway.

Buffy saw Willow looking back towards her.  Her eyes open wide in fear.  
Suddenly, she shifted directions and slammed her body into Tara, knocking her
to the ground.

A streak of silver was all Buffy saw before the blast wave knocked her and
Angel to the ground and she blacked out.

******

"Buffy?  Can you hear me?" A worried voice roused her.

"Yea. Yea," she lifted her hand to her head. It hurt and when she pulled it
away there was blood.  She started to sit up but Angel's hand held her down.

"Careful," Angel told her. "Just lie still.  An ambulance is on the way."

"Ok. Alright. I'll stay still," she reluctantly complied as a wave of nausea
passed through her. Things seem to still be moving in slow motion.  She would
wait for them to

Soft weeping intruded upon her consciousness and she slowly turned her head
towards the source.  

"Who-who's crying?" she whispered as her eyes focused finally upon the blonde
figure kneeling with her back to her.  Giles and Dawn stood nearby.  Dawn
sobbing quietly into Giles shirt.

"Tara?  Why is Tara crying?" she softly asked Angel even though her mind was
starting to process her thoughts and she didn't like where it was heading.

"Buffy-" Angel began only to have the slayer suddenly roll away from him and
begin to crawl towards Tara.

"Buffy, wait," Angel tried to stop her but an angry glare silenced him.

"Let.  Me.  See," Buffy demanded.

Reluctantly, Angel helped Buffy to her feet.

Slowly Buffy moved forward until she saw.

Willow lay upon the ground her arms folded across her chest.  Her head rested
in Tara's lap and Tara was slowly stroking her hair.

A large bloodstain covered Willow's shirt.

"I'm sorry, Buffy," Angel told her softly.  "One of the swords hit her in the
back as we were running for the door.  She died instantly.  There was nothing
we could do."

Numb with shock, Buffy sank down to her knees next to the body.  Tara looked
up with a tear-streaked face.  

"S-S-S-She pushed m-m-me away and..and.."

Buffy sadly nodded and pulled Tara into a hug.

"T-this can't be happening.  I-I-...W-W-W-we, we were going t-to go t-t-to
Italy this summer because she said she had always wanted to- to go to Italy
and see and she wanted to eat ziti in Rome or Florence and, and, and, and she
wanted to ride a Gondola in Venice..."

Tara trailed off into a series of shuddering sobs.  Buffy held on as slowly
her shock wore off and her own tears began to fall.

****

The morgue was literally overflowing with bodies.  Over a hundred men had
been brought in today.  The police weren't certain about the number because
they had been hacked to pieces.  The coroners would have to sift through the
pieces and figure out exactly how many there had been.

'Do the head count and hoped it matches the body count,' Freddy Sikes the
junior assistant coroner had joked.  

Because there had been a surprisingly large number of bodies even for
Sunnydale, the media had poured in from out of town.  

The police captain had summed the incident up as simply 'some group of
medieval fanatics who took their fantasies too far'.  

"Bunch of DND freakos," was Detective Hume's quote that earned him the 10
o'clock news clip on all the television channels.

It was 11:25 PM that same evening.  The body of Willow Rosenberg lay on the
floor inside a black body bag in the morgue.  An autopsy was not planned.  
The cause of death was self-evident.  All that was needed was for the paper
work to be filled out.  Normally, the body would have been inside one of the
'storage lockers', but they were full at the moment.

With a gasp, Willow opened her eyes to the darkness.  For several seconds she
panicked and thrashed about trying to push the heavy vinyl sheeting off of
her before she realized that she was inside a bag.  Calming down she felt
around until she felt the interlocked teeth of a zipper.  Tracing the teeth
back to the zipper above her head, she wiggled a finger through the little
hole above it and began to slide the zipper down.  She breathed a sigh of
relief as the cooler outside air touched her face.  She had been getting
uncomfortably hot inside the sack.

**Why am I in a bag?** had been her first thought.  She looked around and saw
dozens of body bags laying on the floor around her.

**I'm in the morgue,** she realized.  Then she looked down and saw the front
of her shirt.  It was covered in blood and had a hole in the center of it.

"The sword," she remembered.  She had pushed Tara out of the way of a sword.  
It had placed her in the sword's path.  

**I died!** she realized and frantically felt for her neck.  

There was a pulse.  She sighed in relief as she began to assess her situation.

She wasn't a vampire.  **Good.**  She was alive.  **Good.**  But she had
died.  **Not good.**  People had seen her die.  **So not good.**  That was
why she was in a morgue.  **Shit!**

She had to get out of here with out anyone seeing her.  Then she had to find
Tara.

End Part 1

TBC?