Bad Trip, Chapter 13
Apr. 27th, 2004 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookAnd, like magic, a new chapter appears. Tiny bit of a cliffhanger for this one, but since the next chapter is very, very close to being done, there won't be much of a wait for the rest. Trusssstt usss...
Previous parts here.
ACT THIRTEEN: SHOW AND TELL
The hospital gates slid apart with an agonized creak, and the mob came pouring in.
The human flood parted around the tall figure of the Slayer who called herself Sanguine. As her followers rushed by, she raised her makeshift spear and exhorted them onward. "Purge the blasphemers! Spill their blood! Send them back to the darkness!" A ragged young man with blank, wild eyes brushed past her, howling wordlessly as he ran, and Sanguine gave his rump an encouraging pat. "That's the spirit!"
Neena and Lo, standing beside one of the police cars that made up the courtyard's barricade, exchanged nervous glances. "No killing, right?" Lo asked. "Just disable 'em until the crazy wears off?"
Neena took a deep breath and nodded in the affirmative. "Remember your training, Lo. Keep moving, maintain the rhythm, stay aware of all your enemies at every moment..." She offered her hand, forcing it not to tremble. "And good luck."
"Girl, please!" Lo clasped Neena's hand for a moment. "We've fought super-vampires in the mouth of hell. These guys won't know what hit 'em." She dipped her head in the direction of the hospital, of the defenders arrayed behind them. "Just watch out for friendly fire, okay?"
The girls parted, Neena moving over to the left side of the hospital driveway, Lo dashing for the right, a pair of patrol cars filling the gap between them.
Lo rounded the rear end of the second car, skidding to a halt, and turned to brace herself for the mob's onslaught. She imagined her Gramma's voice scolding her, just like all those times when she'd come home from junior high with bloody knuckles and scabby knees. Lolita Szyszkowski, I expressly forbid you to fight a hundred maniacs. She laughed despite herself.
Okay, Lo. The first wave of attackers were perhaps thirty yards away now. Twenty-five. Twenty. She willed away the fatigue, felt the strength flowing back into her. You're a machine. You're Linda Hamilton. You're Ripley. The chick from Night of the Living Dead--the new version, the color one. You're Buffy fucking Summers, and you're about to kick ass.
They came at her, frenzied and screaming. Lo turned aside as a knife drove past, flicked out a knee to break the arm that held it, ducked beneath a swinging baseball bat and plucked it out of its wielder's hands as it passed. Clawed fingers reached for her--effortlessly sidestepped, the woman's chin within easy reach of her elbow. The bat in her hands now, the unsteady legs of the bearded man behind her virtually begging to be swept from under him.
Lo fought on, her thoughts swept away in the terrifying ecstasy of battle.
For Neena, it was different. As she dodged and kicked, weaved and punched, she felt as if she were detaching from her body, rising above it, a dispassionate observer of its efforts. She thought of the solemn, grandfatherly man who had appeared on the doorstep of her parents' house in Chennai six months ago, a lifetime ago--the Watcher who introduced himself as Rama Choudhry.
Rama, what does it feel like to be a vampire? The Watcher had considered her question, his fingers absentmindedly twining the white hairs of his long beard. They say they feel connected, little one. A part of something larger and stronger than a single person.
But to become a Slayer, Neena now understood, was something altogether different. She felt herself connected, not to some outside power, but to something deep within herself. Deeper even than instinct--something like muscle memory, a physical knowledge accumulated over centuries of neverending battle.
Her body knew what to do, Neena thought, and her mind was surplus to requirements. Her awareness drifted above the fray, calmly considering the situation, intervening to nudge the part of her that fought--the machine that was her body--over here, to cut off the enemy's right flank, back there, to spare the skull of an adversary from the full force of a killing blow.
Neena battled on, falling back as the stunned and broken bodies piled up at her feet.
Meanwhile, the Slayer known as Sanguine strode down the driveway toward the hospital. She looked about her, watching with satisfaction as wave after wave of her followers charged into the courtyard, overran the barricades, trampled the defenders underfoot.
A cry of triumph came from the side of the courtyard where the bulldozer was parked. A blood-smeared man stood atop the vehicle, an axe in his hand, and as Sanguine watched he set down his weapon and lifted the mangled body of a policeman into the air like a grisly trophy. The crowd roared its approval.
Sanguine leapt onto the top of a patrol car, stooped to pluck a cowering policeman from behind his barricade, and flung him one-handed across the courtyard. Two of his companions ran towards her, and she swatted one aside with the length of pipe she carried; he made a crumpling sound as he spun away. She reached out and clamped her left hand around the second man's face, pulled him close.
"Oh God," the policeman gasped. The bones of his jaw and cheek made cracking sounds as Sanguine's fingers tightened their grip. "Oh God, please don't hurt me."
"But I will," Sanguine smiled. She sighed in anticipation, and her breath was hot upon the man's face. "And you should be glad. The Great Mother will savor the memory of your suffering... as she devours your soul."
"You put that man down right now."
Sanguine blinked in surprise. The voice was coming from just ahead, beneath the canopy which extended from the lobby doors out into the hospital's courtyard.
Giving the policeman's face a final squeeze, Sanguine flung him aside and turned her attention to the tiny blonde stranger who had challenged her. "And who might you be, little girl?"
Drawing herself up to her full height of five feet and change, Bet fixed her adversary with a steely glare. "My name is Elizabeth Shaw. And you're not going to hurt my friends."
...........
"Are we there yet?" Xander joked. An oldie but a goodie.
They'd been descending the stairwell for what felt like hours. He'd begun to suspect time passed differently in this place.
The going had become somewhat easier, though, if only through sheer familiarity. After his first attack of the heebie-jeebies and a (thankfully brief) unmanly moment in which he'd been tempted to cling to Spike's hand like a little kid, Xander had become--well, not comfortable, but accustomed to the strange shifting landscape. His initial hysteria had muted into mere background uneasiness; he was now able to take the hordes of wandering spirits somewhat more in stride. They were like curiosities now, easier to ignore, less like horrors from some late-night creature feature.
He was even beginning to feel chatty.
"So, these ghosts... where are they all coming from?" Xander asked. "Seems like a lot for one hospital." That was a major understatement. There were far more shades on the stairs now than there had been at the start, although thankfully the vampires had stopped making appearances several levels back.
"Not ghosts, remember?" Spike corrected him, answering without turning. "Wandering souls. They're not really dead, not yet, although they're headed that way. Most of them won't be coming back."
Xander took this in, turned it over in his mind, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of Spike's head as he did so. He'd learned early on it was easier to concentrate if he didn't look around. The concrete stairwell kept changing, dreamlike, into what looked like stone or earth, with roots or rock formations appearing and disappearing, fissures opening in the walls sometimes... and of course the shuffling ghosts. Oops, wandering souls.
"Yeah, I got that part. I was asking where they're coming from."
"Where do you think? This isn't really a hospital, Xander--not a real one. Just modeled on it, sort of. Probably because of you, for you. To make it easier."
"Excuse me? Mind translating that into English?"
"This place." Spike was apparently feeling chatty too. He waved a hand in a general motion indicating the stairwell. "Looks different to everyone, probably. Odds are good even I'm not seeing exactly what you are."
Now there's a thought. "It looks like a stairway to me... well, most of the time. What do you see?"
Spike ignored him. Very obviously so. Apparently the chatty moment was over. Or maybe he was pretending he hadn't heard--the background howling noise that had first made Xander think of ghosts, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style in-your-face ghosts, had grown nearly deafening.
"We're going to the place that's beneath the whole world," Spike said finally, voice raised to carry over the shrieking wind. "Bigger than this. Other than that, I can't tell you much, not till we get there. Not like I ever got the guided tour."
Xander frowned for a moment, then raised his own voice in reply. "So what qualifies you for the tour guide gig? Do they just hire random dead guys from a temp agency, or what?"
"Don't be an arse, Harris." Spike gave him a solemn look. "When you're dead, you know things. Things you don't get to take back with you." His eyes narrowed speculatively. "Not without special dispensation, that is."
"But you know your way around here, right?" Xander shouted back. That last statment had put a twinge of creeping fear back into him. "You're a vampire. You're dead. So you know your way around here. Right?"
To Xander's relief, Spike nodded. "Something like that," he called out. "This is death's gateway, after all. Everything that dies passes through here, and vampires are humans who've died. Never really leave here, actually." He was quiet again then, and they kept marching.
But there was something else in that, something that nagged at Xander.
"Do you remember anything about that?" Xander prompted, thinking of the vampires upstairs, the struggling victims. "Dying, I mean."
The blond head shook back and forth. "Remember it hurt. Not much else," he said shortly. "Vampires don't come away from death with stories about tunnels of light and meeting their loved ones, Harris. Soul goes on that walk--this walk. You don't go with it." He sunk into a broody silence, pushed forward a little faster as if trying to escape. Xander had to speed up to stay with him.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'you don't go with it'?"
"Just what it sounds like," Spike was starting to sound really annoyed now, his voice growing louder than even shouting over the wind could comfortably excuse. "Vampires stay here, in the gate. Between life and death. The soul... it goes."
"Yeah, right, the whole soulless thing." Xander didn't really want to think of Jesse again, but he couldn't help it. His friend Jesse the happy vampire. I feel good, Xander! I feel strong! I'm connected, man, to everything! You're like a shadow to me now.
Screw it, he had to ask.
"So Spike, just wondering... when you become a vampire, where does your soul go?"
For a long moment, it seemed like Spike wasn't going to answer.
"Wherever it was meant to, I expect," he said finally. "Didn't really find that out, when I got mine back. Don't remember anything. And I don't want to talk any more about this," he said shortly, and that was the end of it.
Xander slipped into his own broody silence in response. Remembering Jesse had been bad enough, but to make things worse, he'd started wondering about his family--they'd left town when the Hellmouth began cooking, everyone had, but they hadn't even called to tell him where. I don't even know where they are. If I die here, will anyone even call them? Or will they just bury me in Buffalo... god, I left my heart in Sunnydale and my body in Buffalo, now there's a life story.
Weird as it seemed, he wanted to see his mother. He wished he'd had a chance to say goodbye.
His train of thought came to a halt when he realized Spike had stopped.
Xander pushed past the milling shades, stumbled to his side. "What?" he blurted, trying to peer farther ahead. He couldn't see anything but more stairs.
"There's... trouble ahead," Spike replied, sounding uneasy. Obviously he was seeing something else... or feeling it. "There'll be people, maybe... things. Best if you don't talk to anyone, or listen to anyone who speaks to you." He turned to look at Xander, the first time in however many hours they'd been at this that he'd done so. "Watch yourself," he said.
"Yeah, okay, I got it," Xander agreed. He mustered up his nerve, tried to prepare himself for anything. He could do this. He'd seen it in movies. Jacob's Ladder. With the haunted hospital... okay, don't think about that one. Don't go into the light, Carol Anne. Better. White lights and spooky phantoms. I can handle that. No different from the stairs. I can take it. "Right. Let's go."
"Just stay close to me."
And as they moved forward the scenery gradually shifted, the closed-in shape of the stairwell giving way to a spacious marble plaza. A glass atrium arched overhead, and an oversized fountain claimed pride of place in the middle of the floor, an artificial waterfall worthy of a Las Vegas casino. Live greenery and full-size evergreen trees filled the space. Xander craned his neck to look up as he stumbled past; the trees arched up well past the highest arch of atrium. The green canopy of tangled of branches blocked his view of the top.
"Checking out, sir?" a voice blared from somewhere near him.
"Don't listen," Spike hissed.
But he turned to look helplessly; his body moved without asking him. There was a nurse--or at least a woman dressed like one--smiling pleasantly behind what appeared to be the hospital's front desk. Ashtree Foundation, a sign behind her read, in impressively carved letters. Ab initio, Hic sepultus. Huh? He blinked, looked again. Now it read E pluribus unum. Again, huh?
The nurse was holding up a manila file. Bits of paper trailed from it, like supermarket receipts.
"You'll need this," she called out. "Your account statement, sir."
And despite what he'd been told, his body jerked to obey, his insubstantial feet dragging him slowly toward the desk, his hand outstretched to accept the file.
Spike swung around him to block his path. "Don't be an idiot, Harris," he snarled, and Xander blinked, as if slapped awake from a dream.
"You can't check out without your papers, sir," the nurse chimed in again. "We'll need your proof of insurance."
"Right," he heard himself answering automatically. "I've got Blue Cross."
"They're not asking you for Blue bloody Cross, Xander. Don't listen."
Then it was there again, that slapped-awake feeling. "Do you mind?" he snapped irritably. "I'm trying to take care of some civilized business here. Not that you'd know anything about that."
"And you're damned lucky I'm not civilized," Spike's features blurred, changed. Xander stared at the yellow eyes, hypnotized as if he'd never seen a vampire's face before. "When you check out of here, you check out for good. If you want to live, ignore it, and walk on," he said in that faint lisp the fangs seemed to cause.
Check out for good. Okay, bad idea. Xander kept his eyes on Spike, and dragged his feet heavily toward what seemed to be a door. He could still feel the pull of the nurse behind him, the hypnotic tug of her voice.
"There'll be a penalty for this!" she shrilled, sounding for all the world like his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Walker. "We'll have to charge interest! Your benefits may decrease!"
"Ignore it. Keep walking," Spike told him. "You're doing fine."
Xander nodded, put his head down, and pushed his feet forward, as if he were trudging through deep snow. He began to count his steps. Five. Seven. Ten.
And then they were through the door.
...........
Willow and Buffy stood for a long moment, regarding the weapon embedded in the stone--or, more precisely, wedged into a chunk of ebony material which was in turn embedded within the boulder. With its blade half-buried in the black mass, the protruding shaft looked a little like the tip of a lance jutting out of the rock, and Willow recalled a fragment of some half-forgotten story. A spear forged in the dark heart of the earth...
"I came here alone," Buffy mused, "in the way of the Slayer." She seemed almost hypnotized by the reflection of the flickering torchlight on the metal of the weapon, by the dancing shadows it cast on the walls of the vault. "To live or die, win or lose, without friend or ally. I left him sleeping..."
Buffy's eyes flicked away for a moment, and Willow followed their motion to the corner of the chamber. She caught a brief impression, like the afterimage from a camera flash--a dark figure curled on a bed, one raised arm suspended by the shackles around its wrist--and then it was gone.
"Buffy, is this important?" Willow looked back at her companion. "We don't have that much time."
Ignoring her, Buffy resumed her musing. "I could have stayed with him, could have let him come with me... I could have loved him, if I let myself. But that was just what it wanted, wasn't it? For me to love him, and kill him, and lose myself. Just like with Angel. Just like with Dawn." She shook her head. "I tried to send them away, you know. The ones I loved. And to harden my heart against the ones I couldn't send away..."
"The ones you didn't love?" There was hurt in Willow's voice. "So I guess I didn't make the cut."
Buffy paused a moment before answering, still staring at the glimmering weapon. "Is that so wrong of me, Willow? That I couldn't forgive you?"
Willow had no reply.
"I could almost feel it, you know," Buffy took a step towards the block of stone, and began slowly raising her right arm. "Sniffing around me like a dog. Looking for my weakness, for the flaw in my armor. Trying to make me weak enough and scared enough..."
Willow stepped forward, trying to make eye contact with the other woman. "Scared enough for what?"
Buffy grasped the shaft of the weapon. "To accept what it was offering me." With an easy movement, she swung the blade out of the ebony mass in which it was buried, and held it up before her.
"And did you?" Willow's impatience was obvious. "Is this how it happened?"
"It spoke to me," Buffy replied dreamily. She turned the axe-like weapon, admiring how it shone in the firelight. "Do you want to hear?"
"What?!"
"Listen," Buffy said, "and hear the voice that speaks without tongues." She reached around with her free left hand and brushed it against Willow's ear. Something warm and wet ran down Willow's cheek, and then she heard it--a faint voice, seemingly coming from all around them, echoing from the walls of the chamber.
I am the divider, the voice murmured. I cleave the living from the dead, inside from out. I am for you alone to wield. The reflected torchlight glimmered in Buffy's eyes as she studied the weapon. Do you accept me?
There was wry amusement in Buffy's reply. "Gee, I don't know. I already have weapons." She grinned. "Friend of mine even made me a big box to keep 'em in."
A footstep thumped behind them, and Willow flinched in surprise. She turned, and saw the torchlight blotted out by a looming silhouette. "Buffy! There's someone here!"
Buffy didn't turn around. "The preacher? He's just a shadow. Only borrowing something that was always meant for me..." She held the weapon out in front of her, blade upward, and wiggled it slightly in the air. As Willow watched, the silhouette split vertically in two, the halves crumbling away as they fell to either side. "He wasn't half the man he thought he was."
"Buffy, this is nonsense." Willow flapped her arms emphatically, and Buffy looked over at her with an expression of mild surprise. "You're talking in riddles, you're showing me things that didn't happen... These aren't memories, Buffy, they're hallucinations!"
Buffy's eyes narrowed, their dreamy glaze suddenly gone, and her lips curled in a cold smirk. "Okay, Will. No more riddles, no more talking. Let's give you what you came for."
The chamber blurred and stretched, its walls expanding and receding, turning into grimy rows of brick. Willow looked down and saw that a large metallic disc, its width greater than a man's height, had appeared in the earth at her feet. Its surface was emblazoned with runic symbols, a pentagram, a goatlike head.
"Don't recognize it, Will? The Seal of Danzalthar? The mystic manhole cover?" Buffy knelt and pressed a bloody palm to the surface of the seal. "This is our last stop. Welcome to the Hellmouth."
...........
The smooth marble had been replaced by unmown grass, the grand hall with a bare hilltop. A brisk wind whipped at Xander's hair, tugged at the scanty hospital gown.
"Boy, the fun never stops around here, does it," he murmured, looking around. A thick mist shrouded nearly everything but the shape of the huge tree that arched above them, its roots gigantic and spreading in all directions, its vast trunk reaching up, up, up, into a fading mist. The image nagged at his memory, but he couldn't remember where he might have seen something like it before.
"Could be worse," Spike shrugged, similiarly scanning the area. "If this were Dante, you'd have to meet and greet with all your deceased neighbors."
Xander shuddered. "Not in a hurry to see old man Hawkins again. He trained his dogs to go after skateboarders." Xander frowned. He'd been on the edge of adding a remark like bad enough I got the undead roomie but the thought wasn't sitting comfortable with him.
Not like his feelings would be hurt if I did say it. We're not exactly best buds. Even if one or both of us weren't dead.
Spike grinned at him. "Ah, the pants-ripping dog gag. That's a classic. But the point is, you'd get yours by seeing him be all miserable and suffering."
"I don't want to see him suffer." He made a face at the idea. "He was just a creepy old man."
"They used to call that moral instruction. Tales of horrors visited on the heads of sinners. Meant to inspire you. Or scare you. Same difference, I suppose."
Yeah, same difference. He glared at Spike, not appreciating the sudden reminders of sin and suffering, even as memories bubbled up out of nowhere of Spike himself cut up and beaten, his eyes swollen shut. Tales of horrors.
"Why you?" Xander asked abruptly. He couldn't say why this seemed like a logical progression from what they'd been talking about. "Why do you always end up being my guide in these things? Are you supposed to inspire me? Scare me? I just don't get why you keep showing up all the time."
Spike shot him a look, puzzled. "Damned if I know what you're getting out of it. Can't say I'm enjoying being held up from the great hereafter just to shepherd you around."
"Yeah, well, you're not my first choice either, pal."
Spike rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with, yeah? Same as before. You see any friendly faces, don't talk to them." He began descending the grassy slope, vanishing quickly into the mist.
Xander just followed. It was still nagging at him. Why Spike. It really didn't make any sense. Why not a friendly face, like Grandma Harris or Auntie Viv?
Because Grandma Harris wouldn't have gotten me onto those stairs, that's why. I'd have been scared shitless this entire time, not... and she was a nice lady, but she didn't know anything. She gave me cookies. It's not like I'd expect her to explain the universe.
But he expected it from Spike? That was another weird thought right there.
If it weren't for him, I'd never have gotten this far.
It felt weird to admit it to himself.
The space they were now walking in had firmed up into some sort of shape. It almost looked like a parking garage. Xander could see what appeared to be a forest of concrete posts, a curving ramp spiraling further in, the vague outlines of cars. There was even a flickering light source, like a harsh fluorescent, to complete the effect. And the howling from the stairwell had been replaced too--the new sound was low and pulsing, like the throb of heavy machinery, a generator or a power plant.
"Getting closer now," Spike announced. Xander started. He'd gotten so used to the endless marching that the idea that they might be reaching the end of the journey was... disturbing.
"What does that mean?" Xander asked, not really wanting to know. Dante. Tour of hell. Hi, I'm Xander. Pleased to meet you, hope you've guessed my name.
"Almost there. Where everything goes," Spike replied. "Under it all, like I told you. Where the souls separate out."
"Souls separate... huh?"
"Have to split off somewhere, don't they? Otherwise vampires, dead things like me, couldn't exist."
"What's that got to do with anything?" He screeched to a halt, tried to ignore the column of shuffling shades streaming between him and Spike, who was now facing him with an expression just this side of you are really pissing me off.
He struggled with the idea for a minute. Where the souls separate out. "Look, even if I'm dead, okay, and you... well, you're really dead, but I'm not a vampire. That is, unless something happened to me that I don't know about. So why are we going to someplace where souls 'separate out'? That doesn't make any sense."
Spike snorted. "No, it doesn't. Because that only happens to you when you die, and like I told you, you're not dead."
"Then what's that got to do with me at all? My soul's not gonna take off without me. Again, not a vampire here."
"That's not--" Spike made an annoyed sound. "Where do you get this stuff? God, to hear you talk, a person would think you don't even know what a soul--" He stopped, mid-sentence. Stood there, hands on hips, studied Xander with narrowed eyes.
"Christ, you really don't know, do you?" he whispered. "You've never even thought about it."
There was something about his intense stare that made Xander feel very small. "Of course I know," he choked. "Don't be stupid."
"Oh. Sorry. Enlighten me then." Spike folded his arms, waited. Stared.
"It's, uh..." Xander shifted position. Why don't I ever have an answer ready when he does this to me? This keeps happening and he always makes me look stupid. God, I hate this guy.
"Go on. I'm all ears."
"Hey! Don't rush me," he snapped, then let the words fall out of him in an unedited blurt. "It's like your conscience, okay? A little voice that tells you right from wrong, and without one, you can't tell the difference." I so cannot imagine having this conversation with Grandma Harris.
Spike just looked at him for a long time. Then he laughed. Really laughed. A real, bellowing, holding one's stomach kind of laugh. "What, like Jiminy Cricket?" he howled. "It talks to you?"
"Hey, so I haven't had time to think up a funky metaphor, alright? All I know is that without a soul, you don't have a conscience, and you're not good, and you wouldn't know how to be if you tried. That much I'm sure of. So if you've got a better explanation, I--"
"Or maybe," Spike cut him off, still laughing, "it's like that mouse in Dumbo that gives you a feather so you believe you can fly." He wiggled his fingers in the air to illustrate, and giggled--outright giggled--biting his lower lip with his front teeth as he did so. Xander boggled at this rather mind-bending sight, queasy with the similarity it had to some particularly stinging Eighth Grade gym class mocking. The whole scene was turning seriously disturbing.
"For a vampire, somebody's pretty up on their Disney Classics," he said dryly.
Spike nodded, chest still heaving with supressed laughter, eyes bright with amusement. "Dru liked going to the movies. The cartoons were her favorite." He looked at Xander with that tilted head thing he did, his expression a mixture of pity and amusement.
"So that's it then," he said. "That's what you've got. Soul as conscience."
And suddenly, it didn't seem so important to pretend anymore. Xander just gave in. "Whatever," he sighed. "You're right. I don't know. Why don't you just tell me?"
Spike frowned, dipped his head to study the ground. He began pacing in a slow circle. Xander had the distinct impression he was stalling.
"You sure you want to hear this?" he asked quietly.
"Hey, you're the big expert, right? I'm so stupid and all--"
"You were closer than you realized with your cute little joke about me roasting in hell."
That stopped him. Don't you have someplace warm to get to? He'd actually forgotten he'd said that. Obviously Spike hadn't.
"Look," Xander said slowly. "I'm..." He looked around at the misty space around them, the columns of wandering souls he almost forgotten about, absorbed in conversation, forced himself to think, really think about where he was, what they were talking about.
"You said I was a wandering soul. That that's what these are." He waved a hand at the shuffling shades. "And if I don't wake up, or even if I do, I... yeah, I need to know."
He looked Spike straight in the face. "So I'm asking you. Tell me what a soul is."
Previous parts here.
ACT THIRTEEN: SHOW AND TELL
The hospital gates slid apart with an agonized creak, and the mob came pouring in.
The human flood parted around the tall figure of the Slayer who called herself Sanguine. As her followers rushed by, she raised her makeshift spear and exhorted them onward. "Purge the blasphemers! Spill their blood! Send them back to the darkness!" A ragged young man with blank, wild eyes brushed past her, howling wordlessly as he ran, and Sanguine gave his rump an encouraging pat. "That's the spirit!"
Neena and Lo, standing beside one of the police cars that made up the courtyard's barricade, exchanged nervous glances. "No killing, right?" Lo asked. "Just disable 'em until the crazy wears off?"
Neena took a deep breath and nodded in the affirmative. "Remember your training, Lo. Keep moving, maintain the rhythm, stay aware of all your enemies at every moment..." She offered her hand, forcing it not to tremble. "And good luck."
"Girl, please!" Lo clasped Neena's hand for a moment. "We've fought super-vampires in the mouth of hell. These guys won't know what hit 'em." She dipped her head in the direction of the hospital, of the defenders arrayed behind them. "Just watch out for friendly fire, okay?"
The girls parted, Neena moving over to the left side of the hospital driveway, Lo dashing for the right, a pair of patrol cars filling the gap between them.
Lo rounded the rear end of the second car, skidding to a halt, and turned to brace herself for the mob's onslaught. She imagined her Gramma's voice scolding her, just like all those times when she'd come home from junior high with bloody knuckles and scabby knees. Lolita Szyszkowski, I expressly forbid you to fight a hundred maniacs. She laughed despite herself.
Okay, Lo. The first wave of attackers were perhaps thirty yards away now. Twenty-five. Twenty. She willed away the fatigue, felt the strength flowing back into her. You're a machine. You're Linda Hamilton. You're Ripley. The chick from Night of the Living Dead--the new version, the color one. You're Buffy fucking Summers, and you're about to kick ass.
They came at her, frenzied and screaming. Lo turned aside as a knife drove past, flicked out a knee to break the arm that held it, ducked beneath a swinging baseball bat and plucked it out of its wielder's hands as it passed. Clawed fingers reached for her--effortlessly sidestepped, the woman's chin within easy reach of her elbow. The bat in her hands now, the unsteady legs of the bearded man behind her virtually begging to be swept from under him.
Lo fought on, her thoughts swept away in the terrifying ecstasy of battle.
For Neena, it was different. As she dodged and kicked, weaved and punched, she felt as if she were detaching from her body, rising above it, a dispassionate observer of its efforts. She thought of the solemn, grandfatherly man who had appeared on the doorstep of her parents' house in Chennai six months ago, a lifetime ago--the Watcher who introduced himself as Rama Choudhry.
Rama, what does it feel like to be a vampire? The Watcher had considered her question, his fingers absentmindedly twining the white hairs of his long beard. They say they feel connected, little one. A part of something larger and stronger than a single person.
But to become a Slayer, Neena now understood, was something altogether different. She felt herself connected, not to some outside power, but to something deep within herself. Deeper even than instinct--something like muscle memory, a physical knowledge accumulated over centuries of neverending battle.
Her body knew what to do, Neena thought, and her mind was surplus to requirements. Her awareness drifted above the fray, calmly considering the situation, intervening to nudge the part of her that fought--the machine that was her body--over here, to cut off the enemy's right flank, back there, to spare the skull of an adversary from the full force of a killing blow.
Neena battled on, falling back as the stunned and broken bodies piled up at her feet.
Meanwhile, the Slayer known as Sanguine strode down the driveway toward the hospital. She looked about her, watching with satisfaction as wave after wave of her followers charged into the courtyard, overran the barricades, trampled the defenders underfoot.
A cry of triumph came from the side of the courtyard where the bulldozer was parked. A blood-smeared man stood atop the vehicle, an axe in his hand, and as Sanguine watched he set down his weapon and lifted the mangled body of a policeman into the air like a grisly trophy. The crowd roared its approval.
Sanguine leapt onto the top of a patrol car, stooped to pluck a cowering policeman from behind his barricade, and flung him one-handed across the courtyard. Two of his companions ran towards her, and she swatted one aside with the length of pipe she carried; he made a crumpling sound as he spun away. She reached out and clamped her left hand around the second man's face, pulled him close.
"Oh God," the policeman gasped. The bones of his jaw and cheek made cracking sounds as Sanguine's fingers tightened their grip. "Oh God, please don't hurt me."
"But I will," Sanguine smiled. She sighed in anticipation, and her breath was hot upon the man's face. "And you should be glad. The Great Mother will savor the memory of your suffering... as she devours your soul."
"You put that man down right now."
Sanguine blinked in surprise. The voice was coming from just ahead, beneath the canopy which extended from the lobby doors out into the hospital's courtyard.
Giving the policeman's face a final squeeze, Sanguine flung him aside and turned her attention to the tiny blonde stranger who had challenged her. "And who might you be, little girl?"
Drawing herself up to her full height of five feet and change, Bet fixed her adversary with a steely glare. "My name is Elizabeth Shaw. And you're not going to hurt my friends."
...........
"Are we there yet?" Xander joked. An oldie but a goodie.
They'd been descending the stairwell for what felt like hours. He'd begun to suspect time passed differently in this place.
The going had become somewhat easier, though, if only through sheer familiarity. After his first attack of the heebie-jeebies and a (thankfully brief) unmanly moment in which he'd been tempted to cling to Spike's hand like a little kid, Xander had become--well, not comfortable, but accustomed to the strange shifting landscape. His initial hysteria had muted into mere background uneasiness; he was now able to take the hordes of wandering spirits somewhat more in stride. They were like curiosities now, easier to ignore, less like horrors from some late-night creature feature.
He was even beginning to feel chatty.
"So, these ghosts... where are they all coming from?" Xander asked. "Seems like a lot for one hospital." That was a major understatement. There were far more shades on the stairs now than there had been at the start, although thankfully the vampires had stopped making appearances several levels back.
"Not ghosts, remember?" Spike corrected him, answering without turning. "Wandering souls. They're not really dead, not yet, although they're headed that way. Most of them won't be coming back."
Xander took this in, turned it over in his mind, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of Spike's head as he did so. He'd learned early on it was easier to concentrate if he didn't look around. The concrete stairwell kept changing, dreamlike, into what looked like stone or earth, with roots or rock formations appearing and disappearing, fissures opening in the walls sometimes... and of course the shuffling ghosts. Oops, wandering souls.
"Yeah, I got that part. I was asking where they're coming from."
"Where do you think? This isn't really a hospital, Xander--not a real one. Just modeled on it, sort of. Probably because of you, for you. To make it easier."
"Excuse me? Mind translating that into English?"
"This place." Spike was apparently feeling chatty too. He waved a hand in a general motion indicating the stairwell. "Looks different to everyone, probably. Odds are good even I'm not seeing exactly what you are."
Now there's a thought. "It looks like a stairway to me... well, most of the time. What do you see?"
Spike ignored him. Very obviously so. Apparently the chatty moment was over. Or maybe he was pretending he hadn't heard--the background howling noise that had first made Xander think of ghosts, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style in-your-face ghosts, had grown nearly deafening.
"We're going to the place that's beneath the whole world," Spike said finally, voice raised to carry over the shrieking wind. "Bigger than this. Other than that, I can't tell you much, not till we get there. Not like I ever got the guided tour."
Xander frowned for a moment, then raised his own voice in reply. "So what qualifies you for the tour guide gig? Do they just hire random dead guys from a temp agency, or what?"
"Don't be an arse, Harris." Spike gave him a solemn look. "When you're dead, you know things. Things you don't get to take back with you." His eyes narrowed speculatively. "Not without special dispensation, that is."
"But you know your way around here, right?" Xander shouted back. That last statment had put a twinge of creeping fear back into him. "You're a vampire. You're dead. So you know your way around here. Right?"
To Xander's relief, Spike nodded. "Something like that," he called out. "This is death's gateway, after all. Everything that dies passes through here, and vampires are humans who've died. Never really leave here, actually." He was quiet again then, and they kept marching.
But there was something else in that, something that nagged at Xander.
"Do you remember anything about that?" Xander prompted, thinking of the vampires upstairs, the struggling victims. "Dying, I mean."
The blond head shook back and forth. "Remember it hurt. Not much else," he said shortly. "Vampires don't come away from death with stories about tunnels of light and meeting their loved ones, Harris. Soul goes on that walk--this walk. You don't go with it." He sunk into a broody silence, pushed forward a little faster as if trying to escape. Xander had to speed up to stay with him.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'you don't go with it'?"
"Just what it sounds like," Spike was starting to sound really annoyed now, his voice growing louder than even shouting over the wind could comfortably excuse. "Vampires stay here, in the gate. Between life and death. The soul... it goes."
"Yeah, right, the whole soulless thing." Xander didn't really want to think of Jesse again, but he couldn't help it. His friend Jesse the happy vampire. I feel good, Xander! I feel strong! I'm connected, man, to everything! You're like a shadow to me now.
Screw it, he had to ask.
"So Spike, just wondering... when you become a vampire, where does your soul go?"
For a long moment, it seemed like Spike wasn't going to answer.
"Wherever it was meant to, I expect," he said finally. "Didn't really find that out, when I got mine back. Don't remember anything. And I don't want to talk any more about this," he said shortly, and that was the end of it.
Xander slipped into his own broody silence in response. Remembering Jesse had been bad enough, but to make things worse, he'd started wondering about his family--they'd left town when the Hellmouth began cooking, everyone had, but they hadn't even called to tell him where. I don't even know where they are. If I die here, will anyone even call them? Or will they just bury me in Buffalo... god, I left my heart in Sunnydale and my body in Buffalo, now there's a life story.
Weird as it seemed, he wanted to see his mother. He wished he'd had a chance to say goodbye.
His train of thought came to a halt when he realized Spike had stopped.
Xander pushed past the milling shades, stumbled to his side. "What?" he blurted, trying to peer farther ahead. He couldn't see anything but more stairs.
"There's... trouble ahead," Spike replied, sounding uneasy. Obviously he was seeing something else... or feeling it. "There'll be people, maybe... things. Best if you don't talk to anyone, or listen to anyone who speaks to you." He turned to look at Xander, the first time in however many hours they'd been at this that he'd done so. "Watch yourself," he said.
"Yeah, okay, I got it," Xander agreed. He mustered up his nerve, tried to prepare himself for anything. He could do this. He'd seen it in movies. Jacob's Ladder. With the haunted hospital... okay, don't think about that one. Don't go into the light, Carol Anne. Better. White lights and spooky phantoms. I can handle that. No different from the stairs. I can take it. "Right. Let's go."
"Just stay close to me."
And as they moved forward the scenery gradually shifted, the closed-in shape of the stairwell giving way to a spacious marble plaza. A glass atrium arched overhead, and an oversized fountain claimed pride of place in the middle of the floor, an artificial waterfall worthy of a Las Vegas casino. Live greenery and full-size evergreen trees filled the space. Xander craned his neck to look up as he stumbled past; the trees arched up well past the highest arch of atrium. The green canopy of tangled of branches blocked his view of the top.
"Checking out, sir?" a voice blared from somewhere near him.
"Don't listen," Spike hissed.
But he turned to look helplessly; his body moved without asking him. There was a nurse--or at least a woman dressed like one--smiling pleasantly behind what appeared to be the hospital's front desk. Ashtree Foundation, a sign behind her read, in impressively carved letters. Ab initio, Hic sepultus. Huh? He blinked, looked again. Now it read E pluribus unum. Again, huh?
The nurse was holding up a manila file. Bits of paper trailed from it, like supermarket receipts.
"You'll need this," she called out. "Your account statement, sir."
And despite what he'd been told, his body jerked to obey, his insubstantial feet dragging him slowly toward the desk, his hand outstretched to accept the file.
Spike swung around him to block his path. "Don't be an idiot, Harris," he snarled, and Xander blinked, as if slapped awake from a dream.
"You can't check out without your papers, sir," the nurse chimed in again. "We'll need your proof of insurance."
"Right," he heard himself answering automatically. "I've got Blue Cross."
"They're not asking you for Blue bloody Cross, Xander. Don't listen."
Then it was there again, that slapped-awake feeling. "Do you mind?" he snapped irritably. "I'm trying to take care of some civilized business here. Not that you'd know anything about that."
"And you're damned lucky I'm not civilized," Spike's features blurred, changed. Xander stared at the yellow eyes, hypnotized as if he'd never seen a vampire's face before. "When you check out of here, you check out for good. If you want to live, ignore it, and walk on," he said in that faint lisp the fangs seemed to cause.
Check out for good. Okay, bad idea. Xander kept his eyes on Spike, and dragged his feet heavily toward what seemed to be a door. He could still feel the pull of the nurse behind him, the hypnotic tug of her voice.
"There'll be a penalty for this!" she shrilled, sounding for all the world like his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Walker. "We'll have to charge interest! Your benefits may decrease!"
"Ignore it. Keep walking," Spike told him. "You're doing fine."
Xander nodded, put his head down, and pushed his feet forward, as if he were trudging through deep snow. He began to count his steps. Five. Seven. Ten.
And then they were through the door.
...........
Willow and Buffy stood for a long moment, regarding the weapon embedded in the stone--or, more precisely, wedged into a chunk of ebony material which was in turn embedded within the boulder. With its blade half-buried in the black mass, the protruding shaft looked a little like the tip of a lance jutting out of the rock, and Willow recalled a fragment of some half-forgotten story. A spear forged in the dark heart of the earth...
"I came here alone," Buffy mused, "in the way of the Slayer." She seemed almost hypnotized by the reflection of the flickering torchlight on the metal of the weapon, by the dancing shadows it cast on the walls of the vault. "To live or die, win or lose, without friend or ally. I left him sleeping..."
Buffy's eyes flicked away for a moment, and Willow followed their motion to the corner of the chamber. She caught a brief impression, like the afterimage from a camera flash--a dark figure curled on a bed, one raised arm suspended by the shackles around its wrist--and then it was gone.
"Buffy, is this important?" Willow looked back at her companion. "We don't have that much time."
Ignoring her, Buffy resumed her musing. "I could have stayed with him, could have let him come with me... I could have loved him, if I let myself. But that was just what it wanted, wasn't it? For me to love him, and kill him, and lose myself. Just like with Angel. Just like with Dawn." She shook her head. "I tried to send them away, you know. The ones I loved. And to harden my heart against the ones I couldn't send away..."
"The ones you didn't love?" There was hurt in Willow's voice. "So I guess I didn't make the cut."
Buffy paused a moment before answering, still staring at the glimmering weapon. "Is that so wrong of me, Willow? That I couldn't forgive you?"
Willow had no reply.
"I could almost feel it, you know," Buffy took a step towards the block of stone, and began slowly raising her right arm. "Sniffing around me like a dog. Looking for my weakness, for the flaw in my armor. Trying to make me weak enough and scared enough..."
Willow stepped forward, trying to make eye contact with the other woman. "Scared enough for what?"
Buffy grasped the shaft of the weapon. "To accept what it was offering me." With an easy movement, she swung the blade out of the ebony mass in which it was buried, and held it up before her.
"And did you?" Willow's impatience was obvious. "Is this how it happened?"
"It spoke to me," Buffy replied dreamily. She turned the axe-like weapon, admiring how it shone in the firelight. "Do you want to hear?"
"What?!"
"Listen," Buffy said, "and hear the voice that speaks without tongues." She reached around with her free left hand and brushed it against Willow's ear. Something warm and wet ran down Willow's cheek, and then she heard it--a faint voice, seemingly coming from all around them, echoing from the walls of the chamber.
I am the divider, the voice murmured. I cleave the living from the dead, inside from out. I am for you alone to wield. The reflected torchlight glimmered in Buffy's eyes as she studied the weapon. Do you accept me?
There was wry amusement in Buffy's reply. "Gee, I don't know. I already have weapons." She grinned. "Friend of mine even made me a big box to keep 'em in."
A footstep thumped behind them, and Willow flinched in surprise. She turned, and saw the torchlight blotted out by a looming silhouette. "Buffy! There's someone here!"
Buffy didn't turn around. "The preacher? He's just a shadow. Only borrowing something that was always meant for me..." She held the weapon out in front of her, blade upward, and wiggled it slightly in the air. As Willow watched, the silhouette split vertically in two, the halves crumbling away as they fell to either side. "He wasn't half the man he thought he was."
"Buffy, this is nonsense." Willow flapped her arms emphatically, and Buffy looked over at her with an expression of mild surprise. "You're talking in riddles, you're showing me things that didn't happen... These aren't memories, Buffy, they're hallucinations!"
Buffy's eyes narrowed, their dreamy glaze suddenly gone, and her lips curled in a cold smirk. "Okay, Will. No more riddles, no more talking. Let's give you what you came for."
The chamber blurred and stretched, its walls expanding and receding, turning into grimy rows of brick. Willow looked down and saw that a large metallic disc, its width greater than a man's height, had appeared in the earth at her feet. Its surface was emblazoned with runic symbols, a pentagram, a goatlike head.
"Don't recognize it, Will? The Seal of Danzalthar? The mystic manhole cover?" Buffy knelt and pressed a bloody palm to the surface of the seal. "This is our last stop. Welcome to the Hellmouth."
...........
The smooth marble had been replaced by unmown grass, the grand hall with a bare hilltop. A brisk wind whipped at Xander's hair, tugged at the scanty hospital gown.
"Boy, the fun never stops around here, does it," he murmured, looking around. A thick mist shrouded nearly everything but the shape of the huge tree that arched above them, its roots gigantic and spreading in all directions, its vast trunk reaching up, up, up, into a fading mist. The image nagged at his memory, but he couldn't remember where he might have seen something like it before.
"Could be worse," Spike shrugged, similiarly scanning the area. "If this were Dante, you'd have to meet and greet with all your deceased neighbors."
Xander shuddered. "Not in a hurry to see old man Hawkins again. He trained his dogs to go after skateboarders." Xander frowned. He'd been on the edge of adding a remark like bad enough I got the undead roomie but the thought wasn't sitting comfortable with him.
Not like his feelings would be hurt if I did say it. We're not exactly best buds. Even if one or both of us weren't dead.
Spike grinned at him. "Ah, the pants-ripping dog gag. That's a classic. But the point is, you'd get yours by seeing him be all miserable and suffering."
"I don't want to see him suffer." He made a face at the idea. "He was just a creepy old man."
"They used to call that moral instruction. Tales of horrors visited on the heads of sinners. Meant to inspire you. Or scare you. Same difference, I suppose."
Yeah, same difference. He glared at Spike, not appreciating the sudden reminders of sin and suffering, even as memories bubbled up out of nowhere of Spike himself cut up and beaten, his eyes swollen shut. Tales of horrors.
"Why you?" Xander asked abruptly. He couldn't say why this seemed like a logical progression from what they'd been talking about. "Why do you always end up being my guide in these things? Are you supposed to inspire me? Scare me? I just don't get why you keep showing up all the time."
Spike shot him a look, puzzled. "Damned if I know what you're getting out of it. Can't say I'm enjoying being held up from the great hereafter just to shepherd you around."
"Yeah, well, you're not my first choice either, pal."
Spike rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with, yeah? Same as before. You see any friendly faces, don't talk to them." He began descending the grassy slope, vanishing quickly into the mist.
Xander just followed. It was still nagging at him. Why Spike. It really didn't make any sense. Why not a friendly face, like Grandma Harris or Auntie Viv?
Because Grandma Harris wouldn't have gotten me onto those stairs, that's why. I'd have been scared shitless this entire time, not... and she was a nice lady, but she didn't know anything. She gave me cookies. It's not like I'd expect her to explain the universe.
But he expected it from Spike? That was another weird thought right there.
If it weren't for him, I'd never have gotten this far.
It felt weird to admit it to himself.
The space they were now walking in had firmed up into some sort of shape. It almost looked like a parking garage. Xander could see what appeared to be a forest of concrete posts, a curving ramp spiraling further in, the vague outlines of cars. There was even a flickering light source, like a harsh fluorescent, to complete the effect. And the howling from the stairwell had been replaced too--the new sound was low and pulsing, like the throb of heavy machinery, a generator or a power plant.
"Getting closer now," Spike announced. Xander started. He'd gotten so used to the endless marching that the idea that they might be reaching the end of the journey was... disturbing.
"What does that mean?" Xander asked, not really wanting to know. Dante. Tour of hell. Hi, I'm Xander. Pleased to meet you, hope you've guessed my name.
"Almost there. Where everything goes," Spike replied. "Under it all, like I told you. Where the souls separate out."
"Souls separate... huh?"
"Have to split off somewhere, don't they? Otherwise vampires, dead things like me, couldn't exist."
"What's that got to do with anything?" He screeched to a halt, tried to ignore the column of shuffling shades streaming between him and Spike, who was now facing him with an expression just this side of you are really pissing me off.
He struggled with the idea for a minute. Where the souls separate out. "Look, even if I'm dead, okay, and you... well, you're really dead, but I'm not a vampire. That is, unless something happened to me that I don't know about. So why are we going to someplace where souls 'separate out'? That doesn't make any sense."
Spike snorted. "No, it doesn't. Because that only happens to you when you die, and like I told you, you're not dead."
"Then what's that got to do with me at all? My soul's not gonna take off without me. Again, not a vampire here."
"That's not--" Spike made an annoyed sound. "Where do you get this stuff? God, to hear you talk, a person would think you don't even know what a soul--" He stopped, mid-sentence. Stood there, hands on hips, studied Xander with narrowed eyes.
"Christ, you really don't know, do you?" he whispered. "You've never even thought about it."
There was something about his intense stare that made Xander feel very small. "Of course I know," he choked. "Don't be stupid."
"Oh. Sorry. Enlighten me then." Spike folded his arms, waited. Stared.
"It's, uh..." Xander shifted position. Why don't I ever have an answer ready when he does this to me? This keeps happening and he always makes me look stupid. God, I hate this guy.
"Go on. I'm all ears."
"Hey! Don't rush me," he snapped, then let the words fall out of him in an unedited blurt. "It's like your conscience, okay? A little voice that tells you right from wrong, and without one, you can't tell the difference." I so cannot imagine having this conversation with Grandma Harris.
Spike just looked at him for a long time. Then he laughed. Really laughed. A real, bellowing, holding one's stomach kind of laugh. "What, like Jiminy Cricket?" he howled. "It talks to you?"
"Hey, so I haven't had time to think up a funky metaphor, alright? All I know is that without a soul, you don't have a conscience, and you're not good, and you wouldn't know how to be if you tried. That much I'm sure of. So if you've got a better explanation, I--"
"Or maybe," Spike cut him off, still laughing, "it's like that mouse in Dumbo that gives you a feather so you believe you can fly." He wiggled his fingers in the air to illustrate, and giggled--outright giggled--biting his lower lip with his front teeth as he did so. Xander boggled at this rather mind-bending sight, queasy with the similarity it had to some particularly stinging Eighth Grade gym class mocking. The whole scene was turning seriously disturbing.
"For a vampire, somebody's pretty up on their Disney Classics," he said dryly.
Spike nodded, chest still heaving with supressed laughter, eyes bright with amusement. "Dru liked going to the movies. The cartoons were her favorite." He looked at Xander with that tilted head thing he did, his expression a mixture of pity and amusement.
"So that's it then," he said. "That's what you've got. Soul as conscience."
And suddenly, it didn't seem so important to pretend anymore. Xander just gave in. "Whatever," he sighed. "You're right. I don't know. Why don't you just tell me?"
Spike frowned, dipped his head to study the ground. He began pacing in a slow circle. Xander had the distinct impression he was stalling.
"You sure you want to hear this?" he asked quietly.
"Hey, you're the big expert, right? I'm so stupid and all--"
"You were closer than you realized with your cute little joke about me roasting in hell."
That stopped him. Don't you have someplace warm to get to? He'd actually forgotten he'd said that. Obviously Spike hadn't.
"Look," Xander said slowly. "I'm..." He looked around at the misty space around them, the columns of wandering souls he almost forgotten about, absorbed in conversation, forced himself to think, really think about where he was, what they were talking about.
"You said I was a wandering soul. That that's what these are." He waved a hand at the shuffling shades. "And if I don't wake up, or even if I do, I... yeah, I need to know."
He looked Spike straight in the face. "So I'm asking you. Tell me what a soul is."