Things have been a little busy these past few months (a vast understatement) but I fully intend to finish posting this beast shortly!
Cheers!
Anna
She looked out the window of the truck, eighty miles per hour blowing her hair back. Maybe Wesley was right not to take his Corvette out here. The yellow and tan rectangles of field were outlined with years-old barbed wire and singular flat plateaus jutted up from the land every few hours. They had entered Nebraska around noon, the faded national highway sign welcoming them to the Cornhusker State. Wonderful. The blue sky of Los Angeles was now replaced by low, solid gray clouds pregnant with afternoon rain. A fat raindrop hit the windshield.
She paused her music and removed the headphones. Wesley was an absolute control freak with the radio, in the sense that he had cut the wires at the last rest stop. "Hey pull over at this diner." She pointed to a low, beaten restaurant coming up in the next mile.
"Ron Eats?" Wesley read off the neon sign, the missing "s" flickering in. Hopefully Ron didn't eat the family dog or the kitchen rats from the look of the place.
Faith rolled her eyes. "What're you looking so worried for? Like you don't even need food, right?"
"Habit." For some reason he felt vaguely insulted.
She held the map over her head as they beat the rain to the diner. Two other customers, old bikers. The waitress wordlessly served them coffee as they sat down. She flattened the map over the table, searched for a minute, then pointed to one of several yellow highlighter marks. "This was the last place I heard it visited."
Wesley looked so closely at the map she thought his nose might touch the table. "There's no town there?"
"Tipton. It's not marked. This thing takes down the small places." Her gum smacked.
"And how long have you been tracking it?"
She shrugged. "Bout a year, through four states. Word of mouth, mostly."
"Good Lord … But there's no pattern? There must be some sort of pattern, how he chooses the churches," Wesley muttered to himself. "Any description of the vampire?"
Faith raised an eyebrow. "Um, fangs? Yeah, about that: not really any living witnesses. The last guy I talked to was convinced it was his neighbor's kid."
Wesley sat back and slowly stirred his coffee. "We don't know where it is or what it looks like. Forgive me for reverting to the old 'needle in a haystack' cliché."
"Hey it's not like I haven't tried! Look, I figure we check this last town out, and I dunno, maybe you can get some clues."
"Right," he replied wryly, gazing out at the downpour.
She fiddled with her napkin and tore off little pieces to toss into her empty cup. "So uh … How'd you die?"
Wesley glanced over briefly, as if sizing her up for the answer. "Stabbed. Fairly boring, I suppose, considering the usual company."
Faith nodded slowly. "Knife's a bitch. …What'd it feel like? Being dead, I mean."
"… Nothing. The next thing I remembered was standing in an elevator, having my contract shoved at me."
She bit her lip. "Bummer."
"Not exactly how I pictured."
The rain had let up by the time they were back on the road, mud splattering against the sides of the truck. Faith cradled the map in her lap and kept place of their location with a painted nail. She made a mental note to get more polish. "Should be the next ten miles."
Wesley slowed, seeing small clusters of clapboard houses, a gas station sign and a blue water tower emerge on the horizon. Out here there were no surprises; he could see everything that was coming at least ten, fifteen minutes before it actually happened. Which gave him plenty of time to study the white-washed church steeple. The town of Tipton was deserted as they entered.
"Guess nobody's home?" Faith asked.
Wesley nodded ahead. "Funeral service."
He parked among the decades-old Fords and Chevrolets in the church's gravel lot. They sat for a minute and observed the morbid gathering in the back graveyard, a bunch of black umbrellas. Six graves were freshly dug.
"It happened four, five days back. The vamp never turns anyone, just racks up a nice body count." She frowned at the service. It was a shame. "Let's check this church can go in there, right?"
Wesley shrugged. "Haven't tried yet."
The church was empty, the priest and members being otherwise occupied. He thought he felt a fleeting chill as he crossed the threshold, but it could have been the rain-cooled wind. No visible smiting so far. The wooden floorboards creaked and the stained glass was dark under the cloudy sky. Faith strolled down the aisle smacking her gum and it crossed his mind that it might be a little blasphemous. "Can't you spit that out."
She raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Six people got murdered in here and you're worried that I'm offending God or whatever with my Bubblicious?" She stuck it on the back of a pew.
Wesley bent down to get a better look at what he already suspected was on the floor. "Blood; bit of a nasty job then."
"Vamp was probably in a hurry, you got townspeople screaming."
He paused. "Not necessarily. See how these blood stains are all in separate places? And I bet …" He moved two pews and stood back.
Faith crossed her arms. "Huh. Sort of a circle pattern? So they were tied down." She glanced around, then went to the choir chairs. The metal had been wiped clean but a smear of dark brownish red down one of the legs gave it away. "Should've noticed that before."
Wesley paced the aisle. "It isn't haphazard yet it's clearly a waste of perfectly good blood. Perhaps a kind of ritual?"
Suddenly the door banged open and an old black-robed priest cleared his throat loudly. Wesley and Faith froze. "God bless." He noticed the shifted pews.
"Ah, yes, reverend," Wesley recovered smoothly, hoping that Faith would just stay out of it. "We were, ah, just traveling through town. We heard from our sister church what happened. Terrible, terrible."
The reverend eyed Faith's less than conservative traveling clothes. "Sure is. Funeral for Jimmy Thorton just finished, and I got two more lined up this afternoon. What church did you say you's is from?"
"Um, Community of the Messiah? Los Angeles."
"Los Angeles," he nodded, as if that explained everything. "One of those new wave things. Used to get 'em all the time out here back in the sixties."
Faith interrupted. "So there were no survivors? From the massacre?"
He cringed at the word. "That's what the sheriff's sayin'. Who would do such a thing in a place of worship is beyond my years…" he trailed off and shook his head.
After assuring the reverend that no, they didn't need any sacrament at the moment and yes, they would try and make it to the bible study on Tuesday, Wesley took his directions to the local motel for the night.
A regular Norman Bates establishment, he thought. The place had obviously been vacant for weeks at least and he wondered why a town like Tipton would even need a motel. Faith dropped her duffel on the bed and watched a small puff of dust swirl into the air. Cable probably wouldn't work.
"Home sweet home, right Wes? Betcha you're missin' that sweet condo." She pulled out a pack of Oreos saved from one of the many gas stations.
"Mmm." He flicked on the bathroom light and was relieved at the lack of roaches. A roll of thunder sounded from outside; another storm rolling in from the plains. He absently rubbed the bandages on his stomach, feeling the severed skin move underneath. It was strange being away from Los Angeles, as if he had forgotten that another world existed outside of the law firm that held his life. Well, not held. More like stored in a dusty filing cabinet in the basement. There was decidedly nothing worse than being dead and still being expendable. Angel, on the other hand, had a bounty on his head that was probably worth a small country at this point. The others were gone; no records, no way for him to find out. Simply vanished. Illyria or Fred—or whoever she was—included.
"… really sleep?"
He realized Faith had been talking to him from the other room. "What?"
She had her arms hugged around a pillow, playing with the bedside lamp switch. "With the whole dead thing; how do you sleep? I mean, it's not really sleeping, right?"
He slowly hung up his jacket. "No. Not really. I can close my eyes and think … I don't know, about nothing."
"Must drive you crazy after a couple hours."
"I suppose it's like meditating. Drifting off."
"Huh. … So, uh, don't watch me sleep or anything weird like that." She clicked off the light, though the room still flickered briefly with lightening.
He hung between the bathroom and bedroom, then decided on the former. The shower spat out bursts of cold water before settling into a steady stream. Don't take a shower in the middle of a thunderstorm, he thought. Or what, he'd get electrocuted and die? He peeled off the clothes he'd had on for over fifteen hours and unwound the gauze from around his middle. It used to be that he'd get sick just looking at the angry rip, the way blood didn't flow from it. He hissed as the hot water touched the inner muscle.
Faith was asleep, one hand dangling off the edge of the bed, when he finished. They could've gotten a double. He wished they would have; she was half-sprawled on his side. He stared at the ceiling, at that little red light on the smoke detector. The rumbles of thunder were further away now. Probably in the next county. Wesley closed his eyes and tried to mimic sleep. Seeing Faith had brought back waves of memories; not all pleasant but not all bad either. It was a little overwhelming; it reminded him that he had been … well, that he had been Wesley Wyndham-Pryce once.
She heard the shower turn off, the rustle of clothes, felt the pressure of his weight on the mattress beside her. He wasn't the only one that could feign sleep. She was getting a cramp in her leg that screamed for a shift in position; she ignored it. After a few minutes she concluded that he wasn't going to make a move. Faith couldn't cover the twinge of disappointment. Of course, if he had tried something she would have acted offended. For a little while. You did torture the guy once, she reasoned. And he's dead; c'mon, that's Buffy territory. Maybe he can't even get it up. Gross. Forget it, Faith. She settled instead for remembering that guy from a bar down in Mexico a few weeks back, smooth tequila kisses over her bruises. Sometimes that sort of thing worked.
They went back to the church the next day; she considered it a waste of time but he wanted a second look to mull things over and play Sherlock Holmes. Typical Wesley, she thought. The sun was finally out, bringing with it a tearing wind that made her hunch her shoulders. They blew into the church and for a moment she was struck by how delicate the stained glass looked in the light.
"So here we are. Lemme know if you have any revelations." She prowled up to the altar and checked out the view from the pulpit. Wesley was peering up into the rafters. She picked at one of the bouquets, a sad arrangement of buttercups and something that looked like a weed.
"It must be some sort of ritual," Wesley muttered. "But there aren't any symbolic markers. Strange."
The wind made the walls groan and after a few more minutes they silently acknowledged there was nothing left to be gotten from the scene. Gravel crunched underfoot as she trailed him back to the truck. "Can't you call in a favor at your evil law firm? Help us out?"
He scoffed. "As if they would have anything to do with me."
Faith slid him a look, frowning. She guessed the last year or few hadn't been too kind on him. It showed. Well, so what, are you gonna play therapist the whole trip? She wasn't here to solve other people's problems; the mission right now was to find this thing and kill it. Preferably with as much gore as possible. She hopped into the cab, flipped out a pocket mirror and applied a fresh coat of lipstick.
"Okay, Jeeves. Next real town is due north. Reddington."
Wesley quirked an eyebrow. "And we can just assume it passed through there as well?"
"Can't travel in daylight, so yeah. Places to hide out here are pretty rare, Wes." She snapped the mirror shut and caught the glimmer of his smile. If things kept up like this maybe he'd fix the radio.
