Title: Scyomantia
Author: Frawley
Date: 5th February 2004.
Category: Full-length story. A couple of changes made since my original draft - this is set in season 7, with some AU elements: Spike is no longer insane, Willow is still in England working out the bad mojo, Xander and Anya have reconciled. It may not be entirely faithful to the show, but aside from these elements (two of which did happen but maybe not exactly true to the time frame I'm using), I'll try. Oh, and the First is on hiatus for this... the fic has its own villain, and I didn't want to juggle two.
Spoilers: Considering the show is done? Well, if you haven't seen the sixth/seventh seasons...
Summary: Body parts are piling up in Sunnydale, and the creature behind the carnage has Buffy & Dawn in its sights.
Comments: Scyomantia is my first full-length fic in story format (my past works have either been vignettes or full-length scripts), and its been a long time coming. When I started it, we were still in season six, and even now I'm not anywhere close to complete. Let's hope actually posting the first bit motivates me to get in gear.
The fic is based in part on the works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who inspired Marlowe to pen Dr. Faustus (well, not entirely, but his influence is there). Agrippa was a writer of esoterica during the Renaissance who at one point lived under a death sentence issued by Charles V. Scyomantia (Scyomancy/Sciomancy), according to Agrippa, is a form of necromancy where only the shadow ("umbra", essentially spirit) of the deceased is raised. I've taken some liberties with the concept in order to suit the story. I'm sure Agrippa won't mind; that or he'll haunt me from the great beyond.
You can find out a bit more info on the Author's Notes page of my web site - frawley.cjb.net - but I haven't posted the fic there yet (and probably won't till it's closer to completion).
Disclaimer: Joss owns most of it, I lay claim to the scraps. FOX can sod off.
And just when you thought the pre-story blurb was done...
All my other works have been PG-13, but there's no way to rate this anything other than a hard R. This first chapter is likely to be as gory as it gets, so if you get through that you should make it out alive.
You've been warned.
Scyomantia
1. Bits & Pieces
I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them fall away
mildewed and smoldering, fundamental differing
pure intention juxtaposed will set two lover's souls in motion
disintegrating as it goes, testing our communication - Schism/Tool
The earthquake startled both of them, something that irked Buffy - he was a
vampire, damn it, couldn't he sense these things coming? But then, what
didn't irk her about Spike?
She'd stumbled but caught herself, in time to see a tree crack at the trunk and topple over with a whoosh; leaves crackling as they cushioned the impact. Spike didn't seem to have budged, and he had the nerve to wear a smirk across his face. His smugness annoyed her to no end. Most of the time. Not that there was time for playing "The 1000 Annoyances of Spike", however - she knew, even before she sensed him feeling the same, that something was off about that particular earth-shaker. Sure, it was California, earthquakes were old hat, but
"That felt close, Buffy" was all he said. Then he set off across the graveyard, leaving her no choice but the follow.
~~~
The year following the Boxer Rebellion, during which he had claimed his first Slayer, bore witness to more mayhem and carnage in the first three months than in any three years of Spike's afterlife combined. It was a glorious era - for him at least. He was high from the victory, one the great sap going by the laughable title of Angelus could never achieve. Young, headstrong, and full of fight, he would kill anyone, anywhere, which led to a multitude of memories. All of which were rather delectable.
He recalled one particularly brutal slaughter most of all. Along with Drusilla, his dark goddess and sire, he'd wiped out nearly half a village of over three hundred. It had been in South America, Chile, one of many times they would visit that part of the world during the course of a century. And while those visits rarely ended well - they rarely began well, for that matter - his time there after the Boxer Rebellion had been marvelous. Bloody marvelous.
On the sixth night of terrorizing that dingy little village, made up mostly of mud and straw huts, they'd happened upon a feast unimaginable even to creatures as twisted as themselves. Dru had clapped her pale, dainty hands and cried out in joy - it was special, so lovely, and all for them. He'd simply been hungry and was more than happy to take advantage of their find. Which happened to be the town's children, girls up to their teens, boys all short of manhood. Over three dozen. They'd been stashed in the basement of the village's lone church, hidden beneath the floorboards. The chapel was the only building in the town that even had a basement, and that was constructed of actual wood. As such, it was a poor hiding place - he knew immediately upon seeing it that someone was bound to be tucked away in there. Resting at the heart of the village, perhaps the adults had thought it sheltered - that their tormentors would be loathe to enter the depths of the town. They had some reason for which to believe this. Thus far, he and Dru had picked off nearly a dozen men and women each night amongst the outer dwellings, slowly working their way into town. Unfamiliar with vampires, and having little knowledge of demonology outside of folklore, the people were unaware of what beast stalked their citizenry. Possibly it was rabid wolves? Angry spirits they could not see, living out in the woods? Of course it was nothing so complicated. Drusilla had simply wanted to sleep out under the stars (at least in the few pre-dawn hours before they had to take shelter) - she always did love her stars - so it was a convenient way in which to feed, from the outside working in. And the church at the center like a prize, perhaps holding the priest or the mayor or a favorite daughter. What Spike hadn't counted on was that there'd be just children, with no parental guards to boot. The townsfolk, it seemed, had plenty of faith in The Lord. The Lord would take care of their precious young ones. No creature of the night would dare enter His realm. And to be sure of it, the rest of the population - what was left of it - huddled together amongst a trio of huts near the entrance to the village. There they actually killed two of their own - virgins, who gave up their lives willingly for the greater good - and smeared themselves with the blood, in an attempt to draw the source of their despair out for a final battle. The townsfolk, after all, expected animals. Or something like animals. Surely the blood would attract them and the children would be safe.
Drusilla had actually smelt the blood first; she'd always been more in tune with the world. Spike had sensed it soon enough - but recognized it for that trap that it was. They'd gone straight for the church instead. The locals may have thought them to be animals, and they often relied on their senses as such - more so than humans who had long since forgotten most of their natural abilities - but they were sentient. Most newly risen vampires would simply growl and attack and act like a pack of tossers, true. Any who made it past the first year, however, usually got their wits about them - else they didn't last much longer.
Every single child hiding in that chapel, praying to their God to show them just a smidgen of mercy, instilled with the faith that only children have - that because their parents said everything would turn out ok, then it must be so - was bled dry that night. Not a single boy or girl would survive. He'd fed on only three himself, Dru perhaps a couple more. The rest they tore apart, separating head from neck, limb from limb. He only remembered the first - hauling her up through the trap door in the floorboards, out of the hidden room below, where she looked up at him with big blue doe eyes. Moonlight streaming through a plain window - there was no money in this town for any fancy stained glass number - gave her eyes a luminous glimmer. She hadn't made a sound, but she did wet herself when he lifted her up to see her face to face - his demon visage exposed.
In the end, the blood had pooled in the center of the room, and he and Dru had bathed in it. Frolicked amongst its warm, luscious flow. They flicked drops at one another, covered the alter in rivulets of it, and smeared it across the walls. They rolled in it. Smiled all the while, her in that fetching, ear-to-ear way that made her look ever more insane. The blood had soaked her silken dress through, forcing it to cling to her breasts, pert nipples standing at attention. It made her look ever so delectable. He then proceeded to rip the clothes off his dark princess and fuck her through the floorboards, the both of them snarling like wild animals the entire time. He lapped her neck as he came inside her; her nails dug trenches is his back as she was overpowered by her own orgasm. A short time later, they took care of the bodies - or what remained of them - propping some up here and there, placing a head at the feet of the crucified stone Christ (while positioning it, he'd burnt his hand on the holy symbol, but was in too good a mood to care), and a torso on the altar. The bits and pieces left over they piled high amongst the main aisle of the chapel, which separated the groupings of pews. Once finished, they danced their way out of town. If, waiting in ambush, the grownups of the town had heard the children's screams, they arrived too late. Far too late.
~~~
Decades later, on another trip below the equator, he found himself in a Chilean town just to the north of that which he and Dru had devastated so long before. Supposedly, some demon or other was recruiting there, amassing a small mercenary band for a one-off job with many riches involved - and with luck a lot of killing. All he'd found, however, was a Chaos demon - whom he killed on principle - and a musty old tavern. The tavern, at least, was more interesting than the Chaos demon, who had died begging for his life. In it, an old blind man lacking most of his hair told him the tale of the cursed town to the south, where, just after the dawn of the new century, an angry demon arose and murdered all of the town's children. The demon took their lives in the most horrid of ways, as punishment to the parents, who were an ignorant lot all around. Afterwards, the blind man - who was half drunk even before Spike had bought him a couple of rounds of whatever passed for ale in that particular shithole - said that it had rained for thirty days straight. The heavens weeping, washing away the blood of the children with its tears.
So far as Spike could remember, it had rained for three days, off and on. That's why they'd left - Dru hated the damp weather. But it was rather amusing to know that since then, the villagers to the south preformed a yearly bloodletting of their own children, in order to appease the fearsome beasts who had terrorized their home.
At the end of the night, he thanked the old blind bloke who was loosing his hair (that which remained was the white of pure snow), and said goodnight. Then he snapped the man's neck and left him where he sat, in the tavern, settling the hair loss problem once and for all. He was too old to eat.
~~~
Spike suspected, looking back on it, that the pile of body parts he and Drusilla had left in the church in the small Chilean town was at least twice the size of the one which now lay in front of him at the edge of the graveyard. He might have even wagered a guess at it being three times the size, only children's body parts were rather small, and these, from all appearances, were adult.
The similarity was rather striking though, despite the lack of artistry this particular bone heap (well, bone and flesh and blood and - hey was that an eye? - heap) seemed to convey. He and Dru had been artists, her especially, and while there had been a certain randomness - a sense of chaos - in their work, it was still art. What lay before him now was sterile. Sure, it likely had a purpose, though at the moment it was beyond him, but the heap was mechanical. He hated it. Worse, he hated what it would do to a certain petite blonde girl, hated the look of utter revulsion it would bring out of her, and he swore to himself that he would never, no matter how much she pried, recant some of the more... colorful anecdotes of his history to her. He couldn't bear to see her in pain - unless Spike himself was the cause of it. And even then, only a little. He didn't want to hurt her... much. Not in any permanent, emotional fashion.
The worst of it was yet to come, it would arrive in a moment, arrive when she did; after she saw what lay before them. She'd trailed behind as he strode firmly to the source of the quake. He'd felt in his bones that it had been within the yard. His yard, he liked to think of it as. It led him right to the spot, and she hung back, maybe pissed at him, maybe sensing that for him, this was trespass. Someone had pissed in his yard.
The worst of it would arrive when he would display that insight which only he could have; when he would get his moment to shine. It was his damnable luck, not being one to disappoint. He wished he didn't have to tell her - but he had little choice. Only he would recognize it instinctively - there were, after all, numerous benefits to being a killer.
"There's pieces missing, luv."
~~~
The world in which Phereus now existed stank. It reeked; was so vile it made him want to spew out all his innards, and just keep going - to expel his very soul and allow himself to be free. In a purer, more powerful form. Only it couldn't be so - he was bound to the world, this world, with no hope of reaching the next. A fact that had haunted him since before a simple carpenter had been nailed to a cross for the amusement of the masses.
Bile seeped up the back of his throat, the acrid taste a reminder of how much he hated this plane of existence. Its mortal populous disgusted him, adding to the stench of it all. They were weak of mind and body. Weak of soul. That he was forced to masquerade as one of them was infuriating, as much as living in the mortal coil itself. On Earth. The last place he ever wanted to be. Yet here he was, here he had remained, for over two thousand years. Watching human history unfold with great bemusement. Such a petty race. His greatest wish was that the lot of them choked. Let them murder each other off; he'd watch while one by they perished in a sea of arrogance, brother striking down brother like Cain and Abel. Yes, let them choke - but not before he found his way out of this hellhole.
Miles to go before that was achieved - curse the self-righteous but powerful fools of his homeland. When the Elders had forced him out of his own world, off the sublime astral plane in which his kind existed, they'd ensured that it would be a long time before he could ever return. How he wished that he could at least take on his true form, pure spirit, but no. He was trapped in mortal guise, a cripple compared to the being he once was. So he would remain until the time when he might at last return home. Whenever that might be. Return home, and ascend to spirit. As pure spirit, he could feel and experience reality on a level that no mere mortal creature could ever imagine - the philosophers of ancient Greece might bandy the notion about, but they would never be able to grasp the truth of it all. As a spirit, tactile sense was not lost - it was enhanced a thousand times over. The ability to feel an object, to take it in, from the inside - there was little in the universe that compared to it. Sex on the mortal plain might bring brief moments of fleeting joy, wet and sensual and impassioned, but to be fully immersed inside one's lover... no. There was most definitely nothing in the physical world that compared to it.
That desire for home was all that drove Phereus. It consumed him in totality, a fact of which he was well aware. He didn't care. For there was a way to exit this horrid existence, a way to return home; this he pursued at all costs. When the Elders of his people had expelled him from his homeland, the portal they had opened was one through which his spirit form was... funneled. This was the push he had fallen victim to, a physic shove from behind. He had been funneled - straight into the womb of an unsuspecting young woman. One who, having achieved an immaculate conception, had been wise enough to keep her mouth shut about it (a few hundred years later, another girl would fail to be so cautious). The girl had been strong, in that, but far from strong enough. From within he'd fed on her, partially aware even then. She'd wasted away to a shadow, hiding alone in her hut - she was a widow, despite being little more than sixteen, her husband dead in a battle with a neighboring tribe (he had no idea who her people were, nor did he care). The girl had died birthing him, and for days afterward he'd fed from her body. Growing at an exceptional rate, his body - a vessel, simply - reached maturity before he'd lived a month as a mortal man. By then he'd managed to hunt, to feed off animals, and the other members of her tribe, who soon came to think of him as an angry spirit. They weren't far off.
The body was merely temporary. To survive, Phereus was trapped in a cycle of rebirth, able to retain memory but forced to find refuge in the womb of an unsuspecting mother with every generation. Such were the rules of this plane for his kind. He knew them just as all inhabitants of his plane had known, from those few who had made the journey to mortal worlds before. They could not survive in the mortal realm in their natural state. And if they - if he - died while in mortal form, he would simply... dissipate. Death with finality. Not something he intended to ever let happen. So for a few thousand years, he had, time after time in an endless cycle, taken a new mother and been reborn. He always knew when the time was right. His body never physically aged externally, but he was in tune with all the organs and veins of his shell and could tell when time was up. At that point, he would take a woman and bond with her - funneling his spirit into her just as he had been forcefully removed from his world and funneled into that first unsuspecting girl. Over the centuries, he'd been borne by and fed from a multitude of mothers.
And there was the way home, and the catch. He was not strong enough to open a gateway home by himself; it had taken twelve powerful magi Elders to send him here, combining their essence to remove their unwanted kinsman. Yet if he could combine his essence with that of his mortal progenitor, their fusion would generate the energy needed. Only none were strong enough to survive the birthing process, and thus none were available with which to link, afterwards, in an attempt to return home. It was the curse of this particular world, that its inhabitants were weak in so many facets. He'd sought out the daughters of seers and wise men, tried his hand with witches, but none could withstand the strain of birthing him. He had considered, once, taking a half-breed as a mother, a woman who was part demon, part human. Something, instinct mostly, told him it was a bad idea however. That it would kill him. He always listened to his instincts. So a human female it had to be.
Now the time had come again. And his hunt had let him to the odd little town known as Sunnydale. He'd learnt, in his travels, that Sunnydale rested at the base of a hellmouth. That didn't impress him - his astral home was far beyond anything the demon dimension had to offer - but when he had learnt that a Slayer called it home, that had intrigued him. He'd known of Slayers, but never thought to take one as a mother. He knew the secret that even they did not - that the origin of the Slayer was a demon lineage. If a half-breed was out of the question, surely that excluded a Slayer. But now things were different; now he was desperate, having run through the most powerful human specimens he could find. Every other avenue had failed. It was time, as the mortal saying went, to roll the dice.
And this Slayer. This marvelous specimen. She seemed to advertise her presence to all the world, as if asking for something full of razor sharp teeth to come take a bite out of her. He hoped he wouldn't disappointed.
She was advertising it now, heading towards him, and not alone. He would have stayed to get a closer look - his dark clothes and black hair allowed him to blend in with the night - but he couldn't risk it. He'd confront her, but not yet. On his own terms. He quickly collected what he'd come for and took flight, away from the Slayer and her companion, before they reached his leavings.
~~~
"There's pieces missing, luv."
Spike let her take it all in. The bodies; the bits and pieces. To her credit, she didn't question him, didn't ask how he knew. That was a good thing. Probably. Or did that just mean she still thought of him as a monster? Even if that was an adequate description of him, Spike didn't want her to think of him that way.
You treat me like a man
After a moment, she looked up at him. The hurt in her eyes shone even in the dark of night.
"Who would do this?" was all she could say.
He didn't answer.
