Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to Joss and his magical story weaving crew and the WB. So don't sue me for running a muck with these characters…
Setting: Sometime early in an alternate season four where the A.D.A.M. project was delayed and things are somewhat (well ok, very) different.
Authors Preface: Well, as much as I've looked, there isn't any literature that says that a Slayer can't become a vamp, a demon or a government agent for that matter so I've decided to test the waters and play with what Joss cannot. Hopefully you guys will enjoy.
Warning: This is going to be a kind of darker story but I want to explore a dark side to the characters. If you want a happy story, watch daytime PBS. And so without further delay…
***
The Queen
Part One
The young man ran across the graveyard as fast as his government enhanced body would carry him. She was coming. She was after him. He knew that alone, without the aide of backup or the powerful weapons from the Initiative, he would not make it through the night alive.
Agent Riley Finn leapt over the next headstone that was in his way and made the turn towards the gate and out into relative safety. He felt his blood burning with adrenaline and he could taste the sweat on his lips. He knew that if he could get back out to his car and then back to the safety of the Initiative that he could rest, but until then, his body would have to keep moving, or else stop moving forever.
This was probably the first time since he was in training that Riley Finn had feared for his life. In those early days, he would square off against weakened demons to hone his fighting abilities and every time he walked into the training facility he was afraid that one of the little bastards they had captured, only to be killed, would get lucky and bury him before he could even begin his career protecting people. As his talent increased, and his training intensified, so did Riley's confidence and at this point, some 4 years into his work, nothing scared him anymore…
Nothing, that is, until the She came along. Once she arrived in Sunnydale, the place changed like he never thought possible with the Initiative there to defend. Suddenly the town was swamped with Vampires, hundreds of them, and people died and disappeared daily. Bright Sunnydale had gone from being an oddly creepy, yet quaint little town in Southern California, to being a quiet town by day and a ghost town after dark.
Even the other demons there seemed to be afraid, like something more than the Initiative was after them. And yet, very few of them left and fewer families moved out of town. It was as if something had drawn them all there and held them there by some dark force.
UC Sunnydale seemed to take the highest hit from it all too. College students left and right had disappeared or turned up dead in their rooms. The university had lost almost a third of it's students in the last year and nearly a quarter of it's staff. Sunnydale, whatever had happened since she came, was a city held captive by something dark and slowly and surely, the town seemed to be being sucked into Hell itself.
Finally making it to the gate of the cemetery, Riley breathed a sigh of relief. He could see his car from where he was. "Almost safe…" was all Riley could think before the thought was interrupted by a whooshing sound.
Instinctively he turned and lashed out in time to strike the vampire, who had leapt from the top of the stone fence, straight in the nose. Riley didn't stop to be amused that he struck the vamp so hard he had swung back and hit the ground with his head before the rest of his body. Four more vampires were closing in.
Pulling a mini-crossbow from his jacket and letting wooden darts fly, Riley was able to kill two of the four vampires and then continued his run for his car. If he could get there, he thought, he could be safe.
Rile reached the door of his brand-new, black sedan but that was as far as he made it before the two vampires still alive caught up with him and pulled his away. Riley spun hard and broke free from the grip of the demi-demons and punched with all his strength at them, sending them reeling backwards onto the ground.
Turning again towards his car, Riley found that three more vampires had advanced from down the street and were making their way towards him, blocking his escape. He turned to run down the other direction down the street and again his eyes met several vamps coming towards him.
Knowing in his mind that he could stand and fight and in his heart that this would probably be the last time that he would ever get the chance to fight, Riley started throwing punches and kicks and wielding the few weapons he had with all his strength. It seemed, though, that each time he landed a blow, another vampire showed up to attack and grab a hold of him.
Finally Riley was completely overcome by the vampires and was forced to his knees by the blows to his head and body. Quickly, several of his opponents grabbed his arms and chest and held him still. One vampire came close and grabbed his head, forcing Riley to look into his cold, dead eyes.
"She wants you," was all the vampire said before striking Riley in the head, knocking him unconscious. Off in the distance, from the top of a building, a dark stranger watched the whole thing.
***
Xander made his way through downtown Sunnydale and out towards the residential area to Giles home where now he, Anya, Willow and Tara met for refuge during the nights. Very few places in Sunnydale were safe from the attacks of vampires and the other assorted demons that now ran the town but their group had managed to protect themselves quite well.
He walked in the door, out of breathe, and was quickly greeted by the rest of the group. Anya wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close.
"Hi hunny," she said quietly. "I was scared for you."
"I'm ok," Xander said more confidently than he expected to. "I've got the magicky stuff you needed Willow," he continued as he set the package he had been carrying down on Giles coffee table.
Willow and Tara were sitting on the floor in front of an old book written in some language no one else in the room understood. Whatever it was, they were deeply into it because Willow hardly waved her hand in thanks.
Giles entered the room with coffee for Xander and himself.
"Any trouble along the way?" Giles asked.
"No, I stayed to the building tops as much as I could while I was in town," Xander said after a brief sip of his coffee. "I saw some guy get killed though. It was weird."
"Weird?" Giles half-asked, half-repeated, confused.
"Yeah," Xander continued with Anya clinging to him even more after his last comment. "It took like 12 vampires to bring this guy down. He was strong, and a good fighter too. I think he was one of those military guys we've heard rumors about."
Giles was intrigued. They had been trying for months since the chaos had started to find out who these Initiative people were and exactly what they were up to. Unfortunately, their limited ability to move around in the night now made it hard to track the men they suspected.
"Who got to bite him?" Giles asked. "Was there a leader of some sort?" Eight months ago, Giles wouldn't have pushed Xander so quickly to give him details. At the time, he would have had a hard time getting it all out. The months of hiding, fighting and protecting however, had hardened the young man. "Shame," Giles thought to himself.
"Nobody really," Xander replied between deep gulps of the hot coffee. "I decided not to stick around after I saw them grab him and nail him in the head. Military-guy was out cold when I left."
Before Giles could get out a reply Willow grunted and slammed the book shut that she and Tara had been reading.
"I can't find it!" Willow cried out in frustration.
"We-we- we can f-find it if we keep looking," Tara tried to encourage her.
Willow and Tara had spent endless hours pouring over Giles collection of books, their magic books and everything else they could get a hold of that had anything to do with vampires. This was one of the few books that they had been able to get since Sunnydale had gone downhill. Still, nothing turned up to help them.
"Willow dear," Giles said in his soft, fatherly voice, "we will find whatever it is we need, be it a spell or some other form of answer. It will come. We just cannot give up."
Somehow, everyone in the room agreed on the surface, but all of them, even Giles himself, had begun to give up hope in their hearts. It didn't seem like an end was near.
***
Faith woke up for the… damn, she couldn't remember how many days it had been now, but she woke up. She woke up in the same place she had for a very long time. She was underground somewhere, hanging from chains in the ceiling and stretched out by chains attached to her ankles and hung over a pit whose bottom she could not see. And yet another morning she prayed to whatever god she could think of to die.
She couldn't die though. She was a Slayer. The vampires that held her kept her alive and somewhat healthy. She was fed with an IV so none of the vampires risked being staked. So while she stayed nourished, she was in a tortuous state of perpetual hunger. Also, while she was completely naked hanging there over the pit, they always managed to keep the room a temperature that she was "comfortable" in, as comfortable as you can be hanging from a ceiling for roughly eight months, almost ever since she awoke from her coma.
"Funny," she thought this morning as she hung there, "Buffy was supposed to be my arch-foe, but she was never, ever cruel like this."
Faith's thoughts then drifted to Buffy and what she was up to. Faith hadn't seen her since she woke up. She wondered what kind of demons the girl was killing off and having fun with while she hung here and rotted. Girl got all the fun.
"I'll have to kill her for that after I get out of here," she whispered to herself and then chuckled. Like she was ever going to get out of here. That was the first time she had chuckled since she had been here though. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe it was bad. Maybe it meant she was giving up hope.
Faith didn't care anymore. She wanted to escape but after months of thinking and trying and failing, she was beginning to figure that it was impossible. The vamps wouldn't get near her, no matter how much she taunted and pleaded. She hung far enough away from the edge of the pit that even if she could get them to the very edge, and if she happened to be able to free her legs from the chains that held them in place, she still couldn't reach far enough to kill something.
What was this? The millionth time she had thought about this? This was worthless. And again, this was probably the millionth time she thought that this was futile. She was trapped and nothing was going to save her. She had no friends on the outside since the mayor had died, and Buffy certainly wasn't going to come save her. That whore was the one that had put her in a coma and weakened her enough to let these little demonic bastards capture her.
She had only been awake for a few days and was trying to get her bearings straight on everything that had happened while she was asleep. The mayor was dead. Buffy and her stupid worthless friends had killed him. Besides that, she noticed that there were even fewer people out at night in Sunnydale, like there was a rule against it or something, or at least an unspoken one.
While she was attempting to find out all the details on the mayor's death she ran into a vampire who said he had information. Assuming that she could stake the idiot later, Faith followed him and ran into a den full of vamps. She was fighting well but quickly a yellow haze filled the room and by the time Faith realized that it was gas, she was falling to the ground unconscious.
The next thing she remembered was waking up here, in this living hell and not knowing what was going on. Days passed into weeks and weeks into months and not one of the vampires she ever saw walk by spoke to her, not even to taunt. They didn't even acknowledge her presence. It was like physical and psychological torture.
Today seemed pretty much the same at first. The vamps came and went and did their business and ignored her, but over time Faith realized that there were more vampires around than usual. They were all hustling around like it was Christmas in Sunnydale mall and blood was on half-price at Hecht's or something. Seemed like something big was going on and since she had nothing special to do, Faith watched them all moving around, in and out of her little room and room nearby.
The whispered conversations were hard to make out against the moving feet and the noise of the air moving up the pit and around her but she could catch little tiny tidbits.
"…she's pleased with this one…"
"…how long until we…"
"…so strong it took twelve of us…"
"…she tried ... …mouth will open if we…"
Nothing was making sense. Usually she didn't expect conversations to all flow together but the air about the vampires and the tone of their voices convinced her they were all having the same conversation in different stages. Something big was going on.
Suddenly there was a yell from down the hall. The two vampires that had just walked into her room turned and listened down the hall. Something was coming down the hallway there and causing a lot of chaos.
There were footsteps around the corner and the two vampires there suddenly hit the ground, bowing as low as they could get their bodies. Faith squinted to see what was coming around the corner and then fainted when she saw it. It was more than her stretched and weakened body could handle.
***
Riley came too lying on a stone floor. His started to move to get up but realized how badly bruised his usually strong body was and let himself slide back to the floor. He could sense that there were many other bodies in the room with him and he really felt like he was being watched. At this point, still being alive, Riley decided not to be afraid and speak.
"Who's there?" he said in as a demanding voice as his swollen body could muster.
There was laughter and grunts of approval but he got no reply.
"I said, who is there?" he repeated angry that he was so serious but being taken, apparently, so lightly. This time there was a response.
"Stand him up," came a woman's soft, yet commanding voice.
Riley felt hands of two of the vampires on his shoulders and under his armpits as he was lifted up and leaned against a wall. He tried to open his eyes but the light in the room was so bright that he had to shut them again. He reached up in pain and began to rub his eyes.
"I'm sorry they were so rough with you," came the woman's voice again. "They life to play," it said almost gleefully. The voice changed to a flattering tone, "You were just so strong."
Riley was still having a hard time getting his eyes to open and focus on the brightly candle-lit room. He could only make out the figures of the vampires in the room and that the voice of the woman came from a large golden chair, no, throne, in the center of them all.
"They'll be kinder to you now that you're here," the woman continued sounding somewhat playful, "or at least they will soon."
Finally his vision came back to him and the room and the vampires and the woman were all clear… he knew that woman… She was in Maggie's psychology class… she was…
"Buffy…" Riley whispered softly.
Suddenly the woman on the throne, Buffy, got an angry look.
"Ready to become immortal?"
***
So? What do you guys think? Let me know what you like and what you hate! I want feedback! Don't worry. The rest of it will be coming as quickly as this poor college boy can get it all together. See you all very very soon!!!
~Saint