Once More, With Strangeness

Chapter 25

 Becca was relieved, a few hours later, when she had complete control over her body once again. Those goddamn bats were a thorn in her side. She wished Malcolm could find a spell of some kind to just wipe them all out. They kept coming back and mucking everything up.

"So, how are you going to get Spike to come out?" asked Lucas as he reached forward to grab another slice of pizza. As the day wore on and everyone had gotten hungry, Robin and Ivy had headed into town to grab some food. "He's safe as long as he's in the Upside Down, right? He has all his monsters to protect him."

"I might have to go back through the gate," she reasoned. Becca opened the microwave, pulling out the mug of blood she had heated up for Eddie. Moving back into the living room, she handed it to him before curling up next to him on the couch.

"Whoa, why would you go back in there?" he asked. "I thought the whole point of this was to keep everybody out of there so we have home turf advantage."

"Yeah, but how is he going to know I'm there if I don't show myself?" she asked. "I can't exactly stand there screaming for him to come out. It's not his front porch. He's not going to hear me in a different dimension."

"Actually," Dustin interjected, his finger raised in the air, "he can." Becca shot him a confused look. "So, when Eddie, Robin, Steve, and Nancy were stuck in the Upside Down, they could hear us talking. We couldn't hear them though."

"Yeah, it kind of sounded muffled," Steve explained, "like we were listening underwater or something, but we could hear him."
"We all thought Steve had lost his mind," Robin laughed. "He was yelling for Dustin. He thought he was in the walls or something. I thought he had rabies."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Yeah, turned out I was right though, didn't it?"

Robin shrugged, taking another bite of her pizza.

"Okay, so what? I just stand outside the gate and taunt him until he shows himself?" Becca asked. It sounded like a pretty shitty plan.

"Based on his ego, he won't be able to ignore it," Ivy said. "Plus, he wants you bad. He wants to add the feather that is you to his cap of slayers that he's destroyed. I think he might want that more than he wants to bring Vecna back. Plus, he knows you're going to keep getting in his way so he has to take you out. I have no doubt he will come if you call."

"So...you're just going to be bait?" Eddie asked.

"Yes, we've gone over this. He has to be kept distracted long enough for El and Will to try their mojo. If we can permanently close any gate to the Upside Down, his power source will be cut off. Once that happens, I'll stake him and be done with it. It's the only way that doesn't require us to go back there."

That was Becca's worst fear, that she would have to kill Spike before the gates were closed. If that happened, she didn't know what that would mean for Eddie. Would the hell dimension just suck him back in as its de facto leader? Had she done all of this, teamed up with a demon intent on destruction, put her friends, the town, the world in danger, for nothing? If they wound up right back where they started, then all of this had meant nothing.

"I'm going with you," Eddie stated, as if she had forgotten what he'd already told her.

"I know," she agreed, taking his hand in hers. "You and I will kick his ass and keep him focused on us so the others can do what they need to do. I'm fine with that. You're just not stepping foot through that gate again."

"Where are we going to be?" El asked. "If you're at the gate and Spike is there...we don't want him to know what we're doing, right?"

"Yeah, won't it be pretty obvious when they go into their trance thing?" asked Mike.