Bad Trip, Chapter 5
Mar. 22nd, 2004 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookThe latest installment in our road saga. Our heroes make a stop to gather information. Phone conferencing, more cameos, and Xander gets a visitor....
ACT FIVE: AT THE SOURCE OF THE RIVER
By the third evening of their journey, Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and the young Slayers had made their way up through Idaho into southwest Montana. From successive iterations of the tracer spell, they'd determined that their target--Buffy, they presumed--was somewhere to the north, and moving now in an eastward direction.
A final reading in the vicinity of Butte had left the party uncertain as to whether they should continue northward into Canada, or resume heading east. At length, they rationalized that they could be pretty certain that their quarry would continue cross-country, but there was no guarantee she'd remain north of the border. "I think," Xander said to the group huddled in the back of the minivan, "we're better off heading east through one of the Dakotas. Faster we cross the country, the better our chances of cutting her off along the way."
"If I may," Neena interjected politely, "this does seem rather complex. Might our energies be better spent doing what we can to help out where we are? The local situation appears to be deteriorating rapidly..."
"The kid's got a point, guys," Kennedy conceded. "We just have Lorne's say-so that finding Buffy is going to help us sort out this mess."
"I guess, but that's better than nothing," Xander replied. "I'm inclined to take the magic demon's word for it. What do you say, Will?"
Willow leaned back in her seat and pondered for a minute, staring up at the van's ceiling. "My hunch is that we should stick with the plan. I don't know why or how, but somehow... I'm sure she's the key to all this."
"Isn't she always?" Xander grinned. "Okay, girls, buckle up. The siren song of I-90 is calling."
But with the sun now hanging low in the sky, the group decided against pressing on any further that evening. It was one thing to wander into a mystical war zone in the middle of the night, they agreed, but quite another to do so after all the grocery stores and restaurants were closed. The van pulled over at a lodge just outside Three Forks, where the headwaters of the Missouri River converged to form the "Big Muddy" itself, and its passengers clambered out to stretch their aching limbs.
Once they'd settled into their lodgings, Willow made another call to the Wolfram & Hart contact number Lorne had left them. "They think they have something for us," she reported, lowering the receiver to share the good news. "Sounds like they need a couple hours to get all their reference material together, though. Guess we should get a bite to eat before we go all conference-y..."
............
While the chattering girls made their way to the motel pool for a post-dinner swim, Xander took a shower and put on a clean pair of sweatpants. He didn't bother with anything else. For once, he didn't have to worry about protecting the tender eyes of giggling teenagers; flush with the recent infusion of cash, he'd splurged on a private room. And for once, he really needed that privacy.
The motel was an old-fashioned operation, with separate cabins set back a little bit from the road, all done up in faux-hunting lodge fashion--log-cabin-style furniture, snowflake-patterned quilts on the beds, dusty deer heads and lacquered salmon staring balefully from the walls. Xander's cabin was farthest from the highway, almost at the edge of the woods.
He'd left the tea brewing while he was in the shower, and he now set his mug on the floor inside the circle. He'd bummed the hot water from the motel office, and the desk lady had microwaved it for him. He'd told her it was herbal tea. "Let me know if you need some honey to go in that, dearie," she'd offered with a motherly smile. He'd just smiled back and gotten the hell out with his mug full of drugs.
Moving slowly and deliberately, Xander laid out the magical items in a circle on the hardwood floor. He checked the positions carefully against the fortune-teller's list. He'd been around Willow long enough to know that getting the sequence right was important--he didn't know what any of it did or meant, but he did know that one little Blair Witch stick man out of alignment could make all the difference between a happy fun time spell and an oh-my-bleeding-eyes demon summoning. He checked the list again.
Everything was ready. He blew out a nervous puff of air.
Incense cone lit, Xander took up his position in the middle of the circle, and sat down cross-legged, his arms resting on his knees. The log cabin ambience of his surroundings made him think of a Native American sweat lodge, which seemed appropriate enough to the occasion. And then suddenly he was reminded of A Man Called Horse and its hooks-in-flesh Hellraiser version of the vision quest, and he grabbed the tea and gulped it down before he could lose his nerve.
Shaking, he set down the mug. Stage one accomplished. Now it was just up to the herbal concoction to do its thing. Bring on the psychedelic smears.
He waited.
The room was quiet. There wasn't even a ticking clock to break up the silence. The only sounds came from outside--dim echoes of the girls in the pool, their whoops and shouts and splashes and the snap of the diving board.
Minutes slid by. The small window near his bed let in one last stream of golden light from the setting sun. The incense was filling the room with smoke. Time seemed to slow.
But no lurid images. No crazy-quilt visions.
No white rabbit.
Mind wandering from boredom, Xander was beginning to reconsider his decision to do this alone. Maybe checking with Willow would have been a good idea after all. Although she surely would have talked him out of trying to do anything like this because, hey, who was he to attempt magic anyway? Willow was a bona-fide witch, and what was he? No powerful warlock, that's for sure. Just some guy who took an overdressed demon seriously and believed that he could do something to help, even if that something was simply to sit in a motel room and get stoned on peyote, or mescaline, or.... wait, what was the name of those mushrooms? Not like he'd ever been to college, so technically he didn't have much reason to know...
"You gonna just sit there all night then?"
Xander blinked, his train of thought suddenly derailed. The room was cold now, and dark--when had that happened? The small bedside lamp and a dim glow from the incense cone were the only sources of light. He felt as if he'd been shaken awake from a sudden sleep.
Spike sat in the middle of the bed.
.........
"You sure Xander didn't want to sit in on this?" Willow asked again.
Kennedy shook her head patiently. "Said he wanted to turn in early so we can get a good start tomorrow. Plus, he says, he's not really one for the research stuff. I think the poor boy's just tired."
Willow nodded, and made a minor adjustment to the pile of pillows on which she was reclining. For what must have been the twentieth time, she stared at the bedside phone and willed it to ring. "I guess if they turn up anything useful, we can always read it back to him from notes."
"And the girls, too," Kennedy reminded her. "They're in this as well. They have a right to know what's going on."
Willow sighed. "Yeah. I don't wanna scare them any more than we have to, but..."
"Superheroes, right?" Kennedy smiled. "They can deal."
The phone trilled, and Willow's hand shot out to grab the receiver. She listened for a moment, then prodded the speakerphone button, and a man's voice filled the small cabin. "Angel here. Life treating you okay, Willow?"
Willow shrugged. "Kinda having its ups and downs, but we're working on it. How's the evil law firm?"
There was an awkward pause. "I have someone here," Angel said neutrally. "This is Rutherford Sirk, from the archival department."
"Charmed, I'm sure," Sirk intoned in a measured British accent. "And if I might have the pleasure...?"
"I'm, uh, this is Willow. Willow Rosenberg." She gestured pointlessly. "And this is Kennedy."
"Hi guys," Kennedy chimed in. "So, what you got for us?"
"It's not much, but we've located what appears to be an additional reference to The First. It's part of a longer narrative epic in an ancient Cushitic dialect, and it's taken us some time to have it fully translated..."
"A fairytale?" Angel's voice was disapproving. "I thought you had hard information, Sirk."
"A myth, not a fairytale," the archivist replied evenly. "All the oldest myths are derived from race memories of actual events--allegories for things experienced before the dawn of human civilization. And this myth is very old indeed." The creak of leather book binding came weakly over the speakerphone, and they heard Sirk mutter, "Abyssinian Codex, new English translation."
"Abyssinian?" Kennedy asked. "What, like a cat?"
"As in Ethiopia," Sirk corrected her. "The highlands of Ethiopia, source of the Nile. And, by some accounts, the seat of an ancient civilization that preceded both the Egyptian and Sumerian cultures. It appears that portions of this older oral tradition were recorded by Egyptian scholars in a document known as the Abyssinian Codex, of which a single copy was, ahem, rescued from the Library of Alexandria prior to its destruction circa A.D. 400."
"A copy that was then retained," Angel added dubiously, "by the Watcher's Council."
"And is now part of the Wolfram & Hart archives," Sirk concluded. "May we proceed?"
After a moment's expectant pause, the archivist let out a small harrumph, and they heard the fluttering of pages. "Ah, here we are. The primary narrative deals with an ancient king or chieftain, whose loyal companion has fallen in battle. Hoping to revive his friend, the protagonist goes on a journey 'to the source of the river, to the cavern beneath the tree,' where he petitions 'the dweller on the threshold, lord of the borderlands... he who guards the divide between the world of the living and the world of the dead.' This gatekeeper figure agrees to consider his request, provided he can pass the requisite tests, but he asks that the king listen to his own story first..."
"So this is a story within a story, then?" Willow asked.
"Well, it's a traditional form." Sirk flipped more pages. "Ah, here we are. The threshold-dweller launches into a creation narrative, recounting how the world began in a state of chaos: 'In the beginning there was only the void of Chaos, which was substance without form. Then into the shapeless darkness came the High Ones...'"
"High ones?" interjected Kennedy. "Like kings, gods, dopers, what?"
Sirk heaved a weary sigh. "An allegory, of course. The primal beings of these early mythologies are all based on dim memories of the Old Ones, the true demons who once ruled the earth. All these cosmologies have similar stories of great and powerful entities who shaped the world, fought against each other, and gradually lost their power, surrendering control to their human inheritors. In this case, the narrative refers to them as High Ones. Literally meaning that they were very tall."
More pages rustled. "This iteration of the myth resembles the later Egyptian and Sumerian versions in that the earth's chaotic primordial state is embodied as a serpent or dragon, whose body is then dismembered and used to construct the ordered world we know today..."
"Uh, okay," Willow replied. "Sounds like a good story and all. But what does this have to do with us?"
The tone of Sirk's response was cold, scornful. "In this version, the serpent doesn't die when its body is torn apart. 'Stripped of its substance, formless Chaos was cast into the pit beneath the world. And here it remains, the First and Last of all things. It whispers in the darkness... as it gnaws the bones of the dead.'"
.........
Shock seeped into Xander slowly, like ice water. There had been no transition, no flash, nothing. The vampire was just there.
For a moment, he couldn't even remember how to form words.
"You're dead," Xander finally managed.
Spike nodded at him, the familiar face forming into a slow smile. He was sitting in the same cross-legged pose as Xander, his dark coat pooled around him like a mirror image of Xander's own circle of bones and stones.
"You--you're The First," Xander babbled. "Back to haunt..."
"Don't wet yourself, Harris. Not The First. What did you think your little ritual was for anyway?" the apparition drawled--because it had to be an apparition, right? He sounded bored. Or--scratch that, annoyed. The disdainful look aimed in his direction was far too recognizable.
"What do I th--?" Xander sputtered... then, suddenly, he was angry. Zero to sixty angry. This was not the trip he'd signed up for, not by a long shot. He hadn't swallowed several ounces of psychedelics just to get harangued by the evil dead. Thanks a lot, brain. Dreams about Anya weren't bad enough--now you've got to guilt-trip me with the undead roomie.
"It's supposed to give us some answers," he barked. "Not call up the ghosts of ex-vampires to annoy from beyond the grave." Take that, subconscious.
"Right, and you haven't. Not a ghost." At Xander's blank look, the Spike-shaped thing snorted. "I'm your spirit guide, you nit."
His brain froze. "No way. No way."
"'Fraid so." A casual hand gesture, as if flicking an invisible cigarette. "And before you blame me, I had nothing to do with it. Like you said, I'm dead. The form comes from you."
"From me?" Xander's temples were throbbing. Was this was the drugs felt like? This was not fun. Where were all the rainbow colors? "What, like a dream is a wish your heart makes? What is this, A Christmas Carol?"
An amused snort from the shadows. "That's Cinderella. And don't get your hopes up."
Shaking his head, Xander began to wave his arms like an overzealous traffic cop. My vision. Mine. Take control. "This is not gonna happen. I refuse to let you be my spirit guide. I mean, how is it that other people get coyotes or beautiful women, and I get a vampire? No deal."
"Not a negotiation here."
"Oh yeah? Well, I'm making it one. Bad enough I had to live with--"
Then Spike was bouncing off the bed, a motion that startled Xander so much he scooted backward on his butt as far as clay figurines and pebbles and stick men would allow. The blond crossed the floor in three angry strides, his leather coat flaring out from the sudden motion like a rustle of wings.
"You still don't get how this works, do you? Told you. This. Is. Just. A. Form. You called. I came."
Xander's mouth went dry. "I, uh... okay." Whoa, way to make me not want to think about what this thing really looks like. He shifted restlessly. "Yeah, uh, sorry then. I--"
"Just shut up, alright?" Spike snapped. Xander was just uneasy enough that the vampire's familiar snarl felt almost comforting.
There was a light now. Tiny, growing bigger. Xander squinted, and saw that it was flaring from a point in the center of Spike's chest. He blinked, looked again, and this time he could almost see the outline of the faceted jewel, the chain holding it.
"Why are you still wearing that?" he blurted, unble to help himself. "'Cause, gotta tell you, if this is my head coming up with you, I don't see myself picturing the world-saving version." Because we still don't really know what happened in the Hellmouth, for starters, his brain chipped in. Distracted, he missed the warning growl.
But he didn't miss the sight of the face changing, becoming ridged and frightening, eyes glowing, fangs lengthening. And he especially didn't miss the sensation of two pale hands grabbing him by the throat.
At this very, very solid contact, Xander's brain seemed to short-circuit. Shouldn't be able to touch me, I'm in a magic circle, I'm protected! his mind screamed. His feet kicked out reflexively, and the careful arrangement of stones on the circle's southeast corner went skidding across the room. Ohhh, shit, there went the protection. I'm so screwed. Oh god. Some ancient spirit thing that looks like Spike is gonna kill me.
He clawed at his neck, ears ringing with the booming voice that suddenly didn't sound quite so much like Spike's. It was deeper, echoing like an electric guitar with the reverb turned up.
"Look, you useless prat, let's get this clear. This form is from you, but it is not yours to command. You called on ancient powers. You wanted to know the oldest truths of the deepest parts of your pathetic race's memory. You don't get to nitpick the symbology." The grip on Xander's throat loosened, but did not let go. "Feel lucky you're not the last fellow who went through this," Spike added in a feral hiss, drawing Xander's head close, turning it to whisper directly in his ear. "He had to tear his own eyeballs out."
"Guess I got a head start then. Always on the lookout," Xander croaked. A long way from his best joke, but he was beginning to feel light-headed. And the light was still getting brighter. It was also much closer, and all but filled his vision.
"The light," he sputtered, struggling uselessly. "Oh god, it hurts," Because it wasn't just bright--it was hot, burning hot as if from a sun up close, and he could feel the heat searing his face. "Oh, god. Oh, god!" he shrieked.
"You think you know," came a sibilant whisper, and now the voice sounded like Spike's again, even if the words still didn't. "Pain. Suffering. What it is to make choices. You've never made a real choice. Never really seen."
"Can't see anything," he whispered. Tears were streaming from his eye; the heat was too much; his whole body ws melting, running like taffy. "Too bright..."
"You wanted to see the truth."
Burning heat. Closer and closer. He felt like screaming but his cracked lips wouldn't move. He could feel the heat all the way to his bones.
"So then. Let's get on with it," Spike's voice had assumed a businesslike tone, and Xander could see him now, in dim silhouette--the light had been compressed into a ball, like one of Willow's balls of sunshine, and it was held in the vampire's upraised hand. His fingers were darkly illuminated as if under an X-ray. Xander heard the snap of movement before he saw it--the leather-clad arm shooting forward, the ball of light driving into his skull, filling his empty eye socket, lighting his brain on fire.
This time he did scream.
ACT FIVE: AT THE SOURCE OF THE RIVER
By the third evening of their journey, Xander, Willow, Kennedy, and the young Slayers had made their way up through Idaho into southwest Montana. From successive iterations of the tracer spell, they'd determined that their target--Buffy, they presumed--was somewhere to the north, and moving now in an eastward direction.
A final reading in the vicinity of Butte had left the party uncertain as to whether they should continue northward into Canada, or resume heading east. At length, they rationalized that they could be pretty certain that their quarry would continue cross-country, but there was no guarantee she'd remain north of the border. "I think," Xander said to the group huddled in the back of the minivan, "we're better off heading east through one of the Dakotas. Faster we cross the country, the better our chances of cutting her off along the way."
"If I may," Neena interjected politely, "this does seem rather complex. Might our energies be better spent doing what we can to help out where we are? The local situation appears to be deteriorating rapidly..."
"The kid's got a point, guys," Kennedy conceded. "We just have Lorne's say-so that finding Buffy is going to help us sort out this mess."
"I guess, but that's better than nothing," Xander replied. "I'm inclined to take the magic demon's word for it. What do you say, Will?"
Willow leaned back in her seat and pondered for a minute, staring up at the van's ceiling. "My hunch is that we should stick with the plan. I don't know why or how, but somehow... I'm sure she's the key to all this."
"Isn't she always?" Xander grinned. "Okay, girls, buckle up. The siren song of I-90 is calling."
But with the sun now hanging low in the sky, the group decided against pressing on any further that evening. It was one thing to wander into a mystical war zone in the middle of the night, they agreed, but quite another to do so after all the grocery stores and restaurants were closed. The van pulled over at a lodge just outside Three Forks, where the headwaters of the Missouri River converged to form the "Big Muddy" itself, and its passengers clambered out to stretch their aching limbs.
Once they'd settled into their lodgings, Willow made another call to the Wolfram & Hart contact number Lorne had left them. "They think they have something for us," she reported, lowering the receiver to share the good news. "Sounds like they need a couple hours to get all their reference material together, though. Guess we should get a bite to eat before we go all conference-y..."
............
While the chattering girls made their way to the motel pool for a post-dinner swim, Xander took a shower and put on a clean pair of sweatpants. He didn't bother with anything else. For once, he didn't have to worry about protecting the tender eyes of giggling teenagers; flush with the recent infusion of cash, he'd splurged on a private room. And for once, he really needed that privacy.
The motel was an old-fashioned operation, with separate cabins set back a little bit from the road, all done up in faux-hunting lodge fashion--log-cabin-style furniture, snowflake-patterned quilts on the beds, dusty deer heads and lacquered salmon staring balefully from the walls. Xander's cabin was farthest from the highway, almost at the edge of the woods.
He'd left the tea brewing while he was in the shower, and he now set his mug on the floor inside the circle. He'd bummed the hot water from the motel office, and the desk lady had microwaved it for him. He'd told her it was herbal tea. "Let me know if you need some honey to go in that, dearie," she'd offered with a motherly smile. He'd just smiled back and gotten the hell out with his mug full of drugs.
Moving slowly and deliberately, Xander laid out the magical items in a circle on the hardwood floor. He checked the positions carefully against the fortune-teller's list. He'd been around Willow long enough to know that getting the sequence right was important--he didn't know what any of it did or meant, but he did know that one little Blair Witch stick man out of alignment could make all the difference between a happy fun time spell and an oh-my-bleeding-eyes demon summoning. He checked the list again.
Everything was ready. He blew out a nervous puff of air.
Incense cone lit, Xander took up his position in the middle of the circle, and sat down cross-legged, his arms resting on his knees. The log cabin ambience of his surroundings made him think of a Native American sweat lodge, which seemed appropriate enough to the occasion. And then suddenly he was reminded of A Man Called Horse and its hooks-in-flesh Hellraiser version of the vision quest, and he grabbed the tea and gulped it down before he could lose his nerve.
Shaking, he set down the mug. Stage one accomplished. Now it was just up to the herbal concoction to do its thing. Bring on the psychedelic smears.
He waited.
The room was quiet. There wasn't even a ticking clock to break up the silence. The only sounds came from outside--dim echoes of the girls in the pool, their whoops and shouts and splashes and the snap of the diving board.
Minutes slid by. The small window near his bed let in one last stream of golden light from the setting sun. The incense was filling the room with smoke. Time seemed to slow.
But no lurid images. No crazy-quilt visions.
No white rabbit.
Mind wandering from boredom, Xander was beginning to reconsider his decision to do this alone. Maybe checking with Willow would have been a good idea after all. Although she surely would have talked him out of trying to do anything like this because, hey, who was he to attempt magic anyway? Willow was a bona-fide witch, and what was he? No powerful warlock, that's for sure. Just some guy who took an overdressed demon seriously and believed that he could do something to help, even if that something was simply to sit in a motel room and get stoned on peyote, or mescaline, or.... wait, what was the name of those mushrooms? Not like he'd ever been to college, so technically he didn't have much reason to know...
"You gonna just sit there all night then?"
Xander blinked, his train of thought suddenly derailed. The room was cold now, and dark--when had that happened? The small bedside lamp and a dim glow from the incense cone were the only sources of light. He felt as if he'd been shaken awake from a sudden sleep.
Spike sat in the middle of the bed.
.........
"You sure Xander didn't want to sit in on this?" Willow asked again.
Kennedy shook her head patiently. "Said he wanted to turn in early so we can get a good start tomorrow. Plus, he says, he's not really one for the research stuff. I think the poor boy's just tired."
Willow nodded, and made a minor adjustment to the pile of pillows on which she was reclining. For what must have been the twentieth time, she stared at the bedside phone and willed it to ring. "I guess if they turn up anything useful, we can always read it back to him from notes."
"And the girls, too," Kennedy reminded her. "They're in this as well. They have a right to know what's going on."
Willow sighed. "Yeah. I don't wanna scare them any more than we have to, but..."
"Superheroes, right?" Kennedy smiled. "They can deal."
The phone trilled, and Willow's hand shot out to grab the receiver. She listened for a moment, then prodded the speakerphone button, and a man's voice filled the small cabin. "Angel here. Life treating you okay, Willow?"
Willow shrugged. "Kinda having its ups and downs, but we're working on it. How's the evil law firm?"
There was an awkward pause. "I have someone here," Angel said neutrally. "This is Rutherford Sirk, from the archival department."
"Charmed, I'm sure," Sirk intoned in a measured British accent. "And if I might have the pleasure...?"
"I'm, uh, this is Willow. Willow Rosenberg." She gestured pointlessly. "And this is Kennedy."
"Hi guys," Kennedy chimed in. "So, what you got for us?"
"It's not much, but we've located what appears to be an additional reference to The First. It's part of a longer narrative epic in an ancient Cushitic dialect, and it's taken us some time to have it fully translated..."
"A fairytale?" Angel's voice was disapproving. "I thought you had hard information, Sirk."
"A myth, not a fairytale," the archivist replied evenly. "All the oldest myths are derived from race memories of actual events--allegories for things experienced before the dawn of human civilization. And this myth is very old indeed." The creak of leather book binding came weakly over the speakerphone, and they heard Sirk mutter, "Abyssinian Codex, new English translation."
"Abyssinian?" Kennedy asked. "What, like a cat?"
"As in Ethiopia," Sirk corrected her. "The highlands of Ethiopia, source of the Nile. And, by some accounts, the seat of an ancient civilization that preceded both the Egyptian and Sumerian cultures. It appears that portions of this older oral tradition were recorded by Egyptian scholars in a document known as the Abyssinian Codex, of which a single copy was, ahem, rescued from the Library of Alexandria prior to its destruction circa A.D. 400."
"A copy that was then retained," Angel added dubiously, "by the Watcher's Council."
"And is now part of the Wolfram & Hart archives," Sirk concluded. "May we proceed?"
After a moment's expectant pause, the archivist let out a small harrumph, and they heard the fluttering of pages. "Ah, here we are. The primary narrative deals with an ancient king or chieftain, whose loyal companion has fallen in battle. Hoping to revive his friend, the protagonist goes on a journey 'to the source of the river, to the cavern beneath the tree,' where he petitions 'the dweller on the threshold, lord of the borderlands... he who guards the divide between the world of the living and the world of the dead.' This gatekeeper figure agrees to consider his request, provided he can pass the requisite tests, but he asks that the king listen to his own story first..."
"So this is a story within a story, then?" Willow asked.
"Well, it's a traditional form." Sirk flipped more pages. "Ah, here we are. The threshold-dweller launches into a creation narrative, recounting how the world began in a state of chaos: 'In the beginning there was only the void of Chaos, which was substance without form. Then into the shapeless darkness came the High Ones...'"
"High ones?" interjected Kennedy. "Like kings, gods, dopers, what?"
Sirk heaved a weary sigh. "An allegory, of course. The primal beings of these early mythologies are all based on dim memories of the Old Ones, the true demons who once ruled the earth. All these cosmologies have similar stories of great and powerful entities who shaped the world, fought against each other, and gradually lost their power, surrendering control to their human inheritors. In this case, the narrative refers to them as High Ones. Literally meaning that they were very tall."
More pages rustled. "This iteration of the myth resembles the later Egyptian and Sumerian versions in that the earth's chaotic primordial state is embodied as a serpent or dragon, whose body is then dismembered and used to construct the ordered world we know today..."
"Uh, okay," Willow replied. "Sounds like a good story and all. But what does this have to do with us?"
The tone of Sirk's response was cold, scornful. "In this version, the serpent doesn't die when its body is torn apart. 'Stripped of its substance, formless Chaos was cast into the pit beneath the world. And here it remains, the First and Last of all things. It whispers in the darkness... as it gnaws the bones of the dead.'"
.........
Shock seeped into Xander slowly, like ice water. There had been no transition, no flash, nothing. The vampire was just there.
For a moment, he couldn't even remember how to form words.
"You're dead," Xander finally managed.
Spike nodded at him, the familiar face forming into a slow smile. He was sitting in the same cross-legged pose as Xander, his dark coat pooled around him like a mirror image of Xander's own circle of bones and stones.
"You--you're The First," Xander babbled. "Back to haunt..."
"Don't wet yourself, Harris. Not The First. What did you think your little ritual was for anyway?" the apparition drawled--because it had to be an apparition, right? He sounded bored. Or--scratch that, annoyed. The disdainful look aimed in his direction was far too recognizable.
"What do I th--?" Xander sputtered... then, suddenly, he was angry. Zero to sixty angry. This was not the trip he'd signed up for, not by a long shot. He hadn't swallowed several ounces of psychedelics just to get harangued by the evil dead. Thanks a lot, brain. Dreams about Anya weren't bad enough--now you've got to guilt-trip me with the undead roomie.
"It's supposed to give us some answers," he barked. "Not call up the ghosts of ex-vampires to annoy from beyond the grave." Take that, subconscious.
"Right, and you haven't. Not a ghost." At Xander's blank look, the Spike-shaped thing snorted. "I'm your spirit guide, you nit."
His brain froze. "No way. No way."
"'Fraid so." A casual hand gesture, as if flicking an invisible cigarette. "And before you blame me, I had nothing to do with it. Like you said, I'm dead. The form comes from you."
"From me?" Xander's temples were throbbing. Was this was the drugs felt like? This was not fun. Where were all the rainbow colors? "What, like a dream is a wish your heart makes? What is this, A Christmas Carol?"
An amused snort from the shadows. "That's Cinderella. And don't get your hopes up."
Shaking his head, Xander began to wave his arms like an overzealous traffic cop. My vision. Mine. Take control. "This is not gonna happen. I refuse to let you be my spirit guide. I mean, how is it that other people get coyotes or beautiful women, and I get a vampire? No deal."
"Not a negotiation here."
"Oh yeah? Well, I'm making it one. Bad enough I had to live with--"
Then Spike was bouncing off the bed, a motion that startled Xander so much he scooted backward on his butt as far as clay figurines and pebbles and stick men would allow. The blond crossed the floor in three angry strides, his leather coat flaring out from the sudden motion like a rustle of wings.
"You still don't get how this works, do you? Told you. This. Is. Just. A. Form. You called. I came."
Xander's mouth went dry. "I, uh... okay." Whoa, way to make me not want to think about what this thing really looks like. He shifted restlessly. "Yeah, uh, sorry then. I--"
"Just shut up, alright?" Spike snapped. Xander was just uneasy enough that the vampire's familiar snarl felt almost comforting.
There was a light now. Tiny, growing bigger. Xander squinted, and saw that it was flaring from a point in the center of Spike's chest. He blinked, looked again, and this time he could almost see the outline of the faceted jewel, the chain holding it.
"Why are you still wearing that?" he blurted, unble to help himself. "'Cause, gotta tell you, if this is my head coming up with you, I don't see myself picturing the world-saving version." Because we still don't really know what happened in the Hellmouth, for starters, his brain chipped in. Distracted, he missed the warning growl.
But he didn't miss the sight of the face changing, becoming ridged and frightening, eyes glowing, fangs lengthening. And he especially didn't miss the sensation of two pale hands grabbing him by the throat.
At this very, very solid contact, Xander's brain seemed to short-circuit. Shouldn't be able to touch me, I'm in a magic circle, I'm protected! his mind screamed. His feet kicked out reflexively, and the careful arrangement of stones on the circle's southeast corner went skidding across the room. Ohhh, shit, there went the protection. I'm so screwed. Oh god. Some ancient spirit thing that looks like Spike is gonna kill me.
He clawed at his neck, ears ringing with the booming voice that suddenly didn't sound quite so much like Spike's. It was deeper, echoing like an electric guitar with the reverb turned up.
"Look, you useless prat, let's get this clear. This form is from you, but it is not yours to command. You called on ancient powers. You wanted to know the oldest truths of the deepest parts of your pathetic race's memory. You don't get to nitpick the symbology." The grip on Xander's throat loosened, but did not let go. "Feel lucky you're not the last fellow who went through this," Spike added in a feral hiss, drawing Xander's head close, turning it to whisper directly in his ear. "He had to tear his own eyeballs out."
"Guess I got a head start then. Always on the lookout," Xander croaked. A long way from his best joke, but he was beginning to feel light-headed. And the light was still getting brighter. It was also much closer, and all but filled his vision.
"The light," he sputtered, struggling uselessly. "Oh god, it hurts," Because it wasn't just bright--it was hot, burning hot as if from a sun up close, and he could feel the heat searing his face. "Oh, god. Oh, god!" he shrieked.
"You think you know," came a sibilant whisper, and now the voice sounded like Spike's again, even if the words still didn't. "Pain. Suffering. What it is to make choices. You've never made a real choice. Never really seen."
"Can't see anything," he whispered. Tears were streaming from his eye; the heat was too much; his whole body ws melting, running like taffy. "Too bright..."
"You wanted to see the truth."
Burning heat. Closer and closer. He felt like screaming but his cracked lips wouldn't move. He could feel the heat all the way to his bones.
"So then. Let's get on with it," Spike's voice had assumed a businesslike tone, and Xander could see him now, in dim silhouette--the light had been compressed into a ball, like one of Willow's balls of sunshine, and it was held in the vampire's upraised hand. His fingers were darkly illuminated as if under an X-ray. Xander heard the snap of movement before he saw it--the leather-clad arm shooting forward, the ball of light driving into his skull, filling his empty eye socket, lighting his brain on fire.
This time he did scream.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-22 09:21 am (UTC)*small voice* "A dream is a wish your heart makes" is from Cinderella, not Sleeping Beauty. *watched far too much classic Disney as a child*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-22 10:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-22 10:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-22 06:45 pm (UTC)more more more!
Date: 2004-03-23 07:06 am (UTC)one little Blair Witch stick man hee hee hee, that made me giggle!
No white rabbit.
Brought about recollections of The Matrix, follow the white rabbit.
SPIKE! SPIKE! OMG! YAY! How awesome! And he's the same Spike not wussy Spike! Yay!
This is Rutherford Sirk NO! Don't listen! RUNAWAY!
But it is a nice twist!
"High ones?" interjected Kennedy. "Like kings, gods, dopers, what?"
Sirk heaved a weary sigh as we all do whenever Kennedy opens her mouth
In this version, the serpent doesn't die when its body is torn apart.
Well we all knew that TFE wasn't dead, but still, this is scary!!
I really like all of Sirk's telling of the story, it sounds really realistic, like it was something that he had come across in one of their archives.
So then. Let's get on with it," I can really hear Spike saying this in his businesslike tone.
This time he did scream.
All kinds of uh oh!!
Basically, I all kinds of scared about what is going to happen!!
Write more now! I'm on the edge of my seat!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-22 06:53 pm (UTC)((screams)) Oh! Good one. Total surprise.
Hee. Gotcha.
I love this bit.
So does the hubby. He always laughs re-reading that.
Aaaagh! More!
Sorry all this wasn't very coherent, but I did like this section quite a bit.
Wait 'til you see the next one. Heh heh heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-23 01:11 pm (UTC)Well, since I haven't actually seen Red Dwarf, any similarity would have to be unintentional. But an "edge," yeah. That was the idea. Heh heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 01:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-23 01:50 pm (UTC)((screams)) Oh! Good one. Total surprise. And gee, a lot better reason for Spike's return than a PACKAGE IN THE MAIL....((ahem))
Sorry, the popping-out-of-the-amulet and magic-light-in-a-box scenes from Season Five Angel are still operative. Perhaps the next chapter will give you some hints as to what Xander's dealing with. :-)
Yay Sirk! ((I don't care if he's a baddie, that's a good point.))
Even if he did borrow it from In The Mouth Of Madness. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-24 01:35 am (UTC)Perhaps we're just borrowing him (or his form, as it were) while he's suspended, like Schrodinger's cat, between existence and non. We'll put him back when we're done, I promise. :-)
Oh, the really freaky movie with Sam Neill that looked like it would give me nightmares til I was forty if I watched it? Yeah?
Yep. It's the greatest movie ever made! Mind you, I say that about about a lot of movies, but if you put 'em all in the steel cage of my opinions and made 'em battle to the death, Mouth Of Madness would be one of the few left standing by the final round. (Along with Excalibur and Event Horizon and Argento's Inferno, which probably tells you everything you need to know about my influences for this story.)