Chapter 10 - Bad things, good people.
Note: This rather lengthy chapter comes with trigger warnings.
Dawn readjusted her scarf while half paying attention to both her teammates. Etta seemed bored, aimlessly patrolling around the ruins. Louis didn't appear to be doing much of anything – some sort of scrying for mystical disturbances in the natural energies of the place. While planning the reconnaissance mission at their hotel in Puno, Louis said the energies of old places like this, especially old burial grounds and cemeteries, were usually chaotic hotspots of aged magics. The ancient peoples who created these tombs and old cemeteries often buried their dead in rituals that if not actually magic, were based on magic rituals, and so left the areas soaked in echoes of layered power, prayers, and emotion, a beacon to any practioner who knew what to look for. Louis needed absolute concentration to work through the death energies surrounding the place to pick up what was wrong.
Etta completed her umpteenth turn around the ruins, saw Louis and Dawn were still just there, and started walking around again. Dawn watched her walk away and circle behind one of the larger tombs. Dawn looked out onto the darkened landscape.
"It feels. It feels like some sort of intrusion. … or convergence." Louis didn't move anything but his lips. Eyes still closed, still searching, he muttered, "Like someone is pushing against wet tissue. A pressure. Beginning to be too much, and…" Louis' eyes flashed open. "Dawn, it's happening right now. Something is happening right now!"
"What's happening, Louis? I don't see anything. Is this a stand and fight sort of happening or a run-away happening?" Dawn tried to sense what Louis felt, but didn't get much of anything.
Because of her unique nature, Dawn's attempts at magic never turned out quite how anyone expected them too. Willow and other Council magic-users had tried to teach her, but they couldn't explain how Dawn's inherent magicalness affected her practice. After several small explosions, and one accidental metamorphization of a door into a semi-intelligent life form, Dawn thought it was better to abstain from spells. The door, self-named Quercus, thought so too. Though Quercus appreciated being somewhat aware, the Door gently suggested to Dawn that she not to make any other doors.
Here and now, though, Dawn wished she could at least harness her magic to feel what was going on. She didn't see anything unusual. Etta walking between two tombs. Louis jumping to his feet, clearly worried. But whatever Louis sensed wasn't making a big to-do. Darkness. Tombs. Louis. A barren landscape. Nothing was moving.
Nothing was moving!
"Etta?" Dawn had seen Etta walk behind a tomb, but not emerge on the other side. Dawn spun around to try to find the missing slayer. "Etta! Where are you?"
No answer. No movement. Just silhouettes of tombs against a dark sky.
"Shit! Louis, do you …" As Dawn spun back around to Louis, who moments before had been standing not a foot away from her, she discovered she was now alone. Neither Louis nor Etta had made a sound before vanishing, and neither appeared to have been given a chance to fight back.
Dawn saw nothing, just darkness. She heard nothing. She couldn't even call for back-up. No cell service. She had two choices: run or wait.
Dawn waited for whatever took her team to come for her. She learned long ago in Sunnydale watching the Scoobies face impossible situations together that you don't leave your friends to the darkness. Not ever.
Dawn just hoped that whatever took the mage and the slayer wasn't death. That'd be a hell of a stupid thing to be waiting for.
Her face was wet, and her arms hurt. Dawn blinked back to consciousness not knowing how she'd got to unconsciousness in the first place. She was hanging by her wrists and had drooled down her chin. When they retold the story later, she thought, she'd leave the drool out.
Other than aching wrists and arms, nothing else hurt. She wasn't injured. How did she get taken? Not the oft repeated bump to the watcher's head.
"Dawn, Dawn. Are you awake?" Etta whispered from her left.
No point in playing dead then. Dawn lifted her head and turned toward Etta. There a few feet away from her, Etta and Louis were similarly situated. The chains sturdily built into a pretty solid looking wall. The wall was stone, like the tombs they'd been next too, but it didn't appear to be the crumbling ruins of an age-old pre-Incan cemetery. Could they have been transported to an earlier time in history, somehow?
"Etta, Louis, any chance you were waiting for me to wake up before you cleverly busted out of these chains?" Dawn asked, gesturing to the chains by wriggling her own.
"I wish. The wall is solid, and I think the chains are magically reinforced." Etta continued, "No idea how we got here. I didn't see anyone. I didn't even see how you two came in. One minute, I was waiting on you lot to finish up your thing, and then we were all here."
Louis didn't appear hurt either, but at his age, hanging by his wrists must have been especially painful. "It felt as though something reached through a hole, a hole in the world's energy, I think, and then I was here. My magics are blocked. I can still vaguely sense the energy I felt before, but it's muted. It'll all muted."
"What the hell is going on!?"
"Well, I'm going to use all the juicy mystical essences teaming in your bodies to open a permanent door to your world. Then I'm going to conquer it." Enter the expositing bad guy. He was an average looking fellow at first glance. Mid- 20s. Dark eyes and hair. He shouldn't have been anything of note. But he had a sense of age about him, some feel of permanence in the eyes, and the extreme paleness that usually came from being dead.
"Great, vampires, my favorite," Etta drawled. This was not sarcasm. As it happened, Etta preferred hunting vampires to other demons. She liked the little swoosh sound they made when they dusted.
The vampire laughed, "Yes, dear, vampires. But none like you've ever seen before."
Dawn meanwhile had caught the important two words in the vampire's opening line. "Uh, when you say 'your world'… I wish I could do air quotes right now…what do you mean by that?"
Dawn took in the vampire's clothes. With the average vampire, you could usually tell roughly when he'd died. Old vampires tended to wear tailored, formal clothes – almost cliché in their dramatic appearance with all the dark colors, leathers, or fur. Vamps turned in the 20s were invariably flappers, and those from the 60s were flower children. It was a rule that most vampires didn't adjust to fashion trends very well.
This vampire had a "coming into the industrial age" style going on. But everything was incredibly well-made and didn't quite fit up with fashion of any time she could pinpoint. The fabrics were modern-looking, and the vampire wore a belt of small tools, but he also had a sword attached to his hip. With a calf-length frock coat, waistcoat, and a bandolier of strange gadgets, he looked like the vampire version of Doctor Who.
"Clever girl. Would you like to know where you are right now?" The vampire taunted and approached Dawn, running a finger down the side of her face and neck. "What will you give me if I tell you?"
Both Etta and Louis called out protestations to the vampire's friskiness, but were ignored.
Dawn was not unfamiliar with being chained to walls by vampires. She was also not unfamiliar with male flirtation. She was rather unfamiliar with the two things occurring at the same time. She swallowed, but kept eye contact, hoping to discourage the vampire with her confidence. Eye contact, as it turned out, was a mistake.
His hand ran down her side and settled on her hip in a parody of an embrace. The vampire's face inches from her face. He leaned up to her as though for a kiss. His dark eyes staring into hers.
Her legs were free. Dawn decided he was close enough to kick in the balls, and consequences be damned. She decided to kick him in the…she decided to… She couldn't think. She was going to do something to him. What was she going to do? His eyes were strange, so very strangely beautiful. Yes, he was beautiful. She decided to kiss him. She needed to kiss him. Dawn needed him.
Not hearing the yells of alarm from her compatriots, Dawn lowered her lips the rest of the way onto the vampire's. This was no tentative first lovers' kiss. She'd never kissed anyone so wantonly before, but her screaming desire demanded total embrace. His hands roaming beneath her shirt, beneath her bra, she struggled to free her arms to touch him. She longed to run her hands through his hair and on his body. Gods, if only she could feel him in her hands, her mouth and deeper. If she couldn't taste him, then she had to touch him.
Her legs were free. Moaning, she wrapped her legs around his body. Grinding herself on him, she desperately hoped to be totally owned. Twisting her nipple, he whispered, "Now, dear," and cut her lip with his mouth.
She came.
Her face was wet, and her arms hurt. Dawn blinked back to herself not knowing why she was intertwined with this stranger, a vampire. She was hanging by her wrists, and a slight stream of blood leaked down her chin. When they retold the story later, she thought, she'd leave this part out.
As the vampire withdrew his soft hand from her cold breast, tweaking her nipple a last time, he chuckled, "For that, I will tell you where you are."
The vampire took his time, licking her blood from his lips, and tenderly straightening out her clothing like a parent straightening a child's clothes in disarray from play.
Dawn blankly turned away from him into the expressions of her team. Etta's wrists had started bleeding from struggling to get out. Louis – she'd never seen a grown man look so angry and cry at the same time. She tried to let them know she was alright, but.
She took a deep breathe. So the vampire had mind powers. That explains how they got there. He could kidnap them and chain them up without them remembering. He could make her want him. He could make her do anything, to cum at his word, and she could do nothing to stop him. She thought of being tied to that Tower again, sliced open and bleeding, wanting to stop Buffy from jumping. She could do nothing.
Dawn swallowed, and avoided eye contact, hoping that if she didn't look into his eyes, she would never feel…that…again.
"You're in a different universe on a different world than your own. A world of darkness and vampires. Many years ago, I discovered that this spot sang with death energy." He finished arranging Dawn's clothes and with a pat on her head, stepped away. "We're in the catacombs of the ancient vampire clan of Y'borein, who performed sacrifices of cattle when they interred the ashes of their glorious dead."
Walking to the other end of the stone room, he lifted up a human skull from a tomb and contemplated, "This cattle never had so much honor as when it was slaughtered in the name of his master."
The vampire continued softly, "I used to come to here as a young one and dream dreams of bloody death. Ripping, meaty death. Viscous life running into dirt. Glory. This place inspired me. I wanted to be like the Yboren clan, respected by all vampires and gods to the cattle." The vampire sighed, and replaced the skull. "The best of times. Times long past. "
Etta screamed, tired and terrified, "What do you want with us, you sick fuck"
The vampire turned back to Dawn, "Well, she's rather slow isn't she, my sweet?"
"You three are filled with power. I'm going to use that power to rip open the veil between our worlds and anchor a door to the place of death on the other side. Like place attracts like place. I've been able to open brief doors in different tombs and burial places in your world for years now. Taking a human here and a human there. Learning about you. Studying you. Tasting you."
"But my search is over. You've come." The vampire laughed, looking at Dawn with visions of her twisting love and humiliating pain in his gaze. "You'll never die now. You'll wish you could, but your essences will power the door to your world – eternally. I'll visit you, my sweet. I wonder how long you'll be able to scream."
"I will lead my followers to your world," the vampire smiled, showing a full mouth of teeth, every one a fang.
"I will become God."
He'd left them alone after his little display of power and explanation of his evil plan. Usually, the Scoobies would quip and joke at the tired tropes of bad guys, mwhahaha, but her team wasn't the Scoobies and Dawn didn't feel much like laughing. She ached.
She's experimented a little with boys and girls before now. Dawn even had sex with a handsome boy she thought had been the one. Hadn't learned from any of the Scoobies' sex lives apparently. He'd been quick. It had hurt a little and nothing else. He never called her. But this. Dawn guessed she could talk to Buffy about Spike now.
Her team tried to engage Dawn in conversation, but Dawn told them to shut up and think of a way out of this. Dawn stopped listening to them once they started brainstorming.
"…okay, okay. Even if we get out of these chains, we don't have any weapons and we don't know where we are, how to get out, how many there are. For all we know, we're not even on a different world. This guy could just be fucking with us…" Etta stopped her tirade to glance at Dawn, not the best choice of words. Dawn steadfastly refused to engage.
"No, I'm pretty sure we're not in Kansas anymore, Etta." Louis chimed in, "I felt the energy before we got kidnapped. That ...thing's explanation fits what I felt happening. I'm not saying that's the only explanation, but it makes more sense than anything I can think of. It also explains why my magic is muted – different world, different magics. Maybe, given time, I could reconnect with mine."
Etta, who'd looked downright grumpy with Louis for agreeing with the vampire that had assaulted Dawn, looked ready to forgive Louis if he could get his magic back. "Good. Do that. Do that quickly. Like now, buddy."
"I'll try, but I don't know how long it will take, even if I can do it." Before Etta could pull her grumpy face again, Louis interrupted, "And complete silence. I need to concentrate."
"Fine." Etta turned worried back to Dawn. She liked Dawn, the little sister she'd never had. She'd never told Dawn that. Dawn got little sistered by everyone, not just the Scoobies. She's seen it in Council meetings and briefings. People knew Dawn was smart and capable, but everyone over-protected her. Maybe the New Council picked it up from Buffy. Maybe it was because things like this shouldn't happen to people like Dawn.
If she got the chance, Etta would dust that monster, after ripping off his balls. Maybe if they killed the little prick slowly, she'd be able to look at Dawn in the eyes again one day. Her wrists hurt from trying to pull them out of the chains when the vampire had hypnotized Dawn. Dawn's lip wasn't bleeding anymore, but she was going to make him bleed a long time.
After twenty minutes of Dawn staring off into nothing and Louis staring off into nothing, Etta was antsy. She'd always been the epitome of focus in med school. Her great focus and precision made some of her colleagues think her cold, robotic. She couldn't refute it. But becoming a slayer turned on something hot and restlessly pacing in her. If she hadn't had such training in med school, and later at the New Council, it was easy to see how the slayer could have swallowed her whole. Even with the training though, she hated waiting.
"Psst. Louis."
Louis ignored her.
"Louis!"
Louis continued doing nothing.
"LOUIS."
"Jesus, Etta." Etta's yell woke Dawn out of her stupor. Dawn continued, "What are you yelling for? What's Louis doing?"
"Uh, Dawn. Hey, how are feeling?" Etta was happy Dawn spoke, but worried that she didn't seem to remember what the plan was. Not that it was a good or complete plan. Really just a stab in the dark.
Dawn stared.
"Louis thinks he lost connection with his magic because we're on a different world and they have different rules of magic." Etta explained, "Louis is going to reconnect, and then we're getting out of here."
"Not likely, my dears." The Vampire reentered the room. Dawn went still again. Louis continued to do whatever he was doing. Etta glared.
Several other vampires followed him in, dressed similarly in long coats, boots, and swords, carrying some equipment. "All right, you must be getting rather sore from hanging so long. Why don't we get you out of those chains, hm?"
No one took the bait. Two vampires walked up to Louis. One pushed his head to the side and held him tight a vise-like grip. The other stripped off Louis' clothes, then unlocked the chains. Concentrating on his inner magic, Louis appeared not notice. The two took him over to a table that had been set up, and strapped him down.
Next was Etta. Perhaps something in her eyes gave her away, because while the Vampire looked on, three lackeys approached her. She struggled as two vampires tried to hold her still. She got in a couple good kicks, and then the third punched her hard in the head once, twice, and three times. Dazed and bloodied, she was easily stripped and moved.
The Vampire approached Dawn. She closed her eyes. She would not look. She would not...
"Dear, open your eyes," the Vampire whispered from only inches from her.
Dawn opened her eyes.
"Good girl. I've tasted your blood, my sweet, and you've tasted my power." He explained while unlocking her chains. "You're mine. I don't need to hold your eyes anymore."
The Vampire steadied Dawn as he unhooked her from the wall. Dawn trembled when he stroked her hand. The Vampire smiled and took a step back. "Go ahead. Take off your clothes. I want to see you."
Dawn could do nothing but take her clothes off with shaking hands. Tears ran down her checks.
The Vampire looked her up and down once she was naked. He regretfully spoke, "If I didn't need your power, the things I would do to you."
He turned his back on her. Dawn burned with hate. She could do nothing, and he knew it. He knew he could turn his back to her. With every fiber of her being, she struggled to move just one step, one step toward him. She would annihilate him. She could do nothing.
"Lay down on the table now. That's my girl."
Two vampire lackeys strapped her to the table. Others moved around the room, placing candles and symbols around the room. Still more began painting symbols on their naked bodies. The paint was almost certainly not paint. It smelled like copper and minerals. But Dawn tried not to think too hard on the paint or cold fingers drawing across her body.
Finally, a lackey with a heavy copper bowl cut each of their arms, collecting their blood. It was always blood. Once he had Dawn's, all the lackeys turned to the Vampire.
"Let's begin, my friends." The Vampire addressed his compatriots. "A new world awaits us. One with opportunity and life. We will throw off the stagnation and compromise of this world. Let the Authority and the Old Ones have their society of castrated cattle and chained warriors. They have kept us from glory for too long. Tonight we will go to a new world, and we will have blood."
The Vampire took the bowl of her team's mixed blood and approached the stone wall at their heads. Dipping his fist into the blood, he began drawing a door in blood.
Quercus's warning about not making doors suddenly popped into Dawn's head. Maybe the old Door had premonitions. Wouldn't that be funny? She saw no way out of this.
The vampire lackeys began chanting.
Etta struggled in her bonds. Super strength fail, she thought. She couldn't slip her bonds. She couldn't fight the vampires. Louis was still doing nothing, and there was no rescue. She saw no way out of this.
The Vampire finished the etch and returned to the lackeys' side. They formed a semi-circle around Dawn's team, facing the blooded door. He pulled a small book from his coat, flipped open some pages, and joined his lackeys in chant.
Louis could feel his magic. It wasn't gone, but he didn't know how exactly to access it here in this world. Thinking of the basic tenants of magic in his world, he wondered why they would be so different here. No matter what magic beliefs you held, so much of magic was the proper application of will. Why would that change here? It wouldn't, he thought. It wouldn't!
It was at this moment that several breakthroughs happened. First, in the last moment before the screaming, Louis realized that he wasn't blocked from using his magic. He'd only thought he'd been blocked. Vampire mind tricks.
Second, the Vampire smiled, chanting away, as a hole between the two worlds began to form. As the door materialized, Dawn's team screamed. The vampire-induced ecstasy earlier was incomparable to the unimaginable agony of having one's magical essence stretched from your soul to force a hole in the separation of realities.
Third, cloaked and goggled figures burst into the catacombs. A cross-bolt flew across the room into a chanting lackey. He didn't dust but burned out of existence. Definitely not the vampires like back home. Lackeys broke their positions to engage the intruders.
"No, NO!" The Vampire screamed, "Keep chanting, you fools!"
But it was too late. Immediately when the chanting stopped, so did the screaming. It had only been moments, but Etta breathily whimpered and weakly struggled against her bonds. Tears streamed down Dawn's face, she breathed only with the utmost of effort. Those few moments, an eternity, were enough to drive anyone mad, Dawn thought. Boiling icy needles in her eyes and soul. I'll be like this forever –wide-eyed terror waiting for pain. She tried to hold back the screaming.
It was at this moment that the chains holding her down unlocked. She let out a sob and shakily flung the chains from her body. Slipping off the table, she saw Etta unsteadily getting to her feet. Chaos around her. Hooded, goggled people fighting snarling vampires. A goggled man went down with a snapped neck. Over there a vampire lackey went up in rather pretty sparkles. The Vampire roared in combat with a slim figure at the entrance of the room.
Then Dawn saw Louis. He'd somehow kept it together enough to be able to free them from the chains. Louis made no effort to get off the table. He lay clutching his chest, wheezing for breathe. Nearing 65, Louis was one of the older active field agents the Council had. He was fit and strong, but his father had died early of a heart attack and his father's father. The strain had induced a heart attack.
"Etta," Dawn hoarsely tried to get Etta's attention. "Etta, Louis. Help Louis."
Etta avoided the raging battle around her to get to Louis. Without equipment, without a hospital, there wasn't much she could do. Dawn stumbled across to the room, when she came even with the Door, she stopped. Dawn could feel the hole into their world. It was still open. Maybe, maybe, they could still get home and prevent these monsters from following. With these vampire's powers, it would be a slaughter.
"Quickly, Etta, grab him." Dawn made it the rest of the way to Louis and Etta. She took Louis by the arm to stand him up. He didn't look good, but he was still alive. "The door is open. Can you feel it? We can go through."
Between the two of them, Etta and Dawn walked Louis to the Door. A vampire lackey jumped in their way, but was taken from behind by a hooded fighter.
"Hurry, go through quickly." The male fighter encouraged, not that they needed it. Dawn saw his face for a moment. Scars and cragged wrinkles deep on his face. He lifted his goggles to reveal very human eyes. Dawn couldn't help but compare his eyes to Buffy's that last year in Sunnydale, tired and indomitable.
Dawn replied, "We don't know how to close the door. We can't let these things into our world."
"It should collapse without our power." Louis wheezed. "Should disconnect when we cross."
From across the room, the Vampire briefly got the better of his slim opponent, and flung her out of his way. There just going through his Door was his cattle, the ticket to a new, glorious life. He rushed to the Door, even if he couldn't bring his followers, he would get there.
The slim figure recovered and rushed to follow the Vampire, but paused at the older, lined man.
He smiled, "Go on. Good luck."
Tears in her eyes, they clasped arms, and she flung herself into the doorway just before it went dark.
The battle between vampire and human continued in that room. It became many of their graves.
Dawn's team collapsed naked on the cold ground outside the Sillustani Tombs. It was still dark. Their packs still on the ground where they'd left them. Dawn glimpsed their Jeep a few hundred feet away. Louis was half-dead.
"Hurry, let's get him to the car." Etta and Dawn started to lift Louis again, when a snarling thing flew from the door on top of them.
The Vampire backhanded Dawn several feet. Louis fell to the ground, and Etta lunged forward hoping to make the bastard bleed. Etta knew not to look into his eyes, but he was still one of the fastest things she'd ever fought. She didn't have any weapons, and he was faster than her. After trading a few blows, Etta knew he was stronger than her too. They had about the same reach, but Etta knew she needed a hail mary to not die.
With Dawn unconscious and Louis on his way there, no one saw the arrival of the slim figure. She flashed across the ground before either Etta or the Vampire saw her and delivered an almost fatal staking. The Vampire turned to deflect Etta just in time to also deflect his immediate death.
"You, you cattle!" The Vampire spit foaming blood from his mouth. With the wound from the long, spear-like stake, the Vampire knew he could not win against both women. He attempted to make his way to the Door. His dreams of a glorious new world dying.
The hooded and goggled fighter intercepted and kicked him to the ground. She moved to end him, but Etta stepped forward.
Etta's eye swelling, blood dripping from her nose, she said, "I promised him a little something before he died if you don't mind."
The hooded woman lent Etta her knife, and Etta knew she'd be able to look Dawn in the eyes after this. With a scream, followed by a reapplication of the stake, the freshly eunuched Vampire burned into nothingness in the dirt.
The Door closed.
Etta rushed to Dawn. "Dawn, sweetie, Dawn. Hey, take it easy. You got hit on the head pretty good there."
Dawn started to sit up, "I'm okay. I'm okay. What happened?"
"That monster jumped through after us, but we fucking nailed that bastard."
Relief. Dawn swallowed, "Louis?"
Etta checked on Louis, who finally slipped into unconsciousness. "We need to get him to the hospital right away, Dawn."
"Dawn?" The hooded woman, standing where Etta had left her, hoarsely questioned. Dawn, stood up and stared at the voice.
"Dawn, is this…is this earth?" The woman slowly pulled off her hood.
With an inch of hair, and a face paled by lack of sunlight and stretched thin by hunger, Dawn couldn't be sure. "Take off your goggles. I need to see your eyes."
Etta tensed up, hearing something strange in Dawn's voice. This woman had helped with the Vampire, but Etta was tired of her team being hurt tonight. She gripped the bloody knife in her hands.
Faith took the goggles off. "The sun isn't lost here too, is it?"
"No, it's just night." Dawn answered. Faith audibly sighed in relief.
For almost two years, the New Council considered Faith dead, ever since she disappeared on a mission in Latvia. People rarely came back to life in Dawn's world. At least not in a good way.
"How do I know you're Faith?" Dawn wasn't going to take chances with her team's lives right now.
Etta startled at the name. Faith was supposed to be the ultimate, bad ass slayer. A lone-wolf warrior making up for past sins. Stories of her exploits, good and evil, were still told late nights in the New Council's slayer wing.
"Prove it to me," demanded Dawn.
Faith looked surprised and out of sorts. "Prove it, uh, okay. I mean, when I first showed up in Sunnydale, I called you SunnyD. You complained that B treated you like a kid and never let you do anything with her."
"I, uh, hung out with you sometimes. Once I showed you to how to shoplift at the mall." Faith half smirked in remembrance, but the curve melted into a frown of recrimination. "Never been great role model me. After, after all the shit went down, and I came back, you told me not to call you SunnyD anymore. Guess we weren't friends anymore."
Twenty-year old Dawn, naked as a jay-bird, flung herself into Faith's startled arms, remembering better days when two lonely girls hung out. Dawn whispered, "You can call me SunnyD anytime."
People rarely came back to life in Dawn's world. Dawn learned long ago in Sunnydale watching the Scoobies face impossible situations together that when someone did come back, you didn't take it for granted.
Note – The idea for Faith teaching Dawn how to shoplift came from someone else's brain. But I can't for the life of me remember whose. Apologies for not remembering the fic it came from. Credit to that person.
Note Note – Now that I'm thinking about it, I can't be entirely sure the nickname "SunnyD" for Dawn is originally mine either. Don't you hate it when you come up with a brilliant idea only to realize that you may have read it somewhere else first? I don't think I read it somewhere else, but just in case, credit to that person.
They'd taken a few minutes to dress with the extra clothes from their packs. It was going to be hard enough explaining away their bruised and bloodied appearances, plus Faith was dressed like a steampunk hero. Shaved head, goggles hanging around her neck, hooded cloak and tall boots – definitely some comic-fan's wet dream. But naked, bruised, and bloodied would probably lead to police and questioning and a delay getting home. Dawn didn't think she'd be coming back to Peru for a while.
After dressing Louis as best they could, Faith, the least hurt of them all, gently carried him to their Jeep and buckled him in the back seat. Louis was pale and clammy, but Etta thought he would probably be okay. Probably.
Etta drove carefully down the unpaved embankment to the road back to Puno. Faintly on the horizon, the sun started to rise.
This has been a hellish day, Dawn thought. She shivered, remembering. The way his eyes captured hers. His mouth, surprisingly hot, on hers. The Vampires hands on her breasts. Or was it her that was hot? She felt…Dawn jerked herself out of the flashback.
No one had noticed. Etta, deeply frowning, concentrated on the road. Louis slept. Faith stared at the hint of sunrise out the car window, like a survivor of a shipwreck desperate for that first glimpse of civilization on the way home after years of deserted islands.
"Faith," Dawn whispered softly. "What happened? You've been missing two years. Well, we all thought you were dead."
Faith startled, her eyes flickered from the sunrise to Dawn and back to the sunrise. After a moment of silence, as Faith watched the sky flare into streaks of purple and dark red, she spoke.
"Latvia. I'd just got in to Riga. Called Giles. Bodies kept turning up, drained of blood, but with weird fang marks. Like a mouthful of fangs." Now the sky continued to lighten to blue. A muted pale purple and red band across the horizon. "All the bodies had been found in hella old tombs or cemeteries, and right before a new body turned up, the witches and mages and the like felt strange energies."
Faith glanced at Dawn, "It was our guy back there, of course. He's been popping into our world to feed for years. Liked the taste of us 'cause of the sun. He'd never been able to stabilize the doors between our worlds with his own magics though. So without a permanent source to power the doors, he couldn't completely cross over."
More streaks of color rose up from the horizon, hints of a more vibrant color coming up from below. "Then he came across me. I didn't know he was there until he was on top of me, crushed through my collarbone with his teeth. Blood pouring out of me, I thought I was dead."
"Next thing I knew, I was bandaged up, chained in his basement telling him about being a slayer. He mind fucked me into telling all about our supernatural world, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it." While saying this, Faith looked calmly at Dawn, and meeting Faith's eyes, Dawn knew that Faith knew what had happened to her in those catacombs. Or was she just being paranoid? Faith couldn't know. No one could know. Dawn would swear Louis and Etta to secrecy, and no one would ever know.
Faith knowingly turned back to the horizon. "Most of the vampires of that world have some ability to confuse the mind. That's why we wear the goggles. Bespelled to repel the vamp mind tricks."
Etta glanced back at Faith through the rear view mirror, and said, "Yeah, those would have come in handy. I didn't see anything before he took me, and what he did…"
"Who is we?" Dawn interrupted Etta, not wanting to confirm the mind-fucking she'd gone through earlier. But Faith was a fairly astute judge of body language. She knew something was off, and since Faith had her own experiences with the vampires of that world, including the recently dead one, she could guess.
"A few days into my stay with the bastard, the human resistance raided the place." Dawn shuddered to think that Faith had been chained up with the Vampire for days. Faith continued, "His catacombs are actually just inside the free human's boundaries. He stays under the Authority's radar that way. But the free humans can hunt him right back."
Etta interrupted, "But he said the world was all dark, how do humans survive?"
Faith answered darkly, "With difficultly."
Faith went silent. The sky was the pale blue of early morning. The first rays of bright white light shot up. Dawn watched Faith's face as she struggled with emotion. Dawn couldn't imagine being in the dark for two years.
"What happened then?" Dawn prompted.
"He'd taken several people from the free humans as food, as fun. When the free humans came to the rescue, they rescued me too. I was lucky. On that world, only the cattle wear tattoos. They usually kill the cattle. Had to get rid of my tat."
Neither Dawn nor Etta wanted to think about how one goes about removing a tattoo without laser removal technology.
"The free humans didn't know me, but they took me in. If the Authority found me, they could have all been slaughtered, but they took me in, and I joined the resistance. We've been keeping an eye on the bastard ever since. Before me, he didn't know our world had any supernatural. Guess I inspired him to look for other powered folks."
Faith suddenly stopped talking.
She gasped as the first sunlight she'd felt in two years fell across her skin. As the sun spilt over the horizon, tears rolled down Faith's face. Faith gave up any semblance of keeping it together. Dawn turned forward to give Faith privacy, and then, after a moment, reached back to take her hand.
Hiking accident. They'd all got bruised up in hiking accident, and Louis had a heart attack from the scare. It was the best Dawn could come up with, but it was enough for the doctors.
Louis would recover fully. He was resting at the Puno Hospital. The doctors wanted Etta to stay overnight, and since Dawn wanted to keep an eye on Louis anyway, Etta stayed, not bothering to tell the doctors all her wounds would heal in a few days.
Dawn took Faith to their hotel. The doctors wanted her to stay too, but she convinced them the bruise on her face where the Vampire backhanded her looked worse than it was.
They needed to get Faith some less inconspicuous clothes and food, lots of food, right away. Once Faith took her cloak off in the hotel room, Dawn thought maybe she should've insisted Faith get checked out too. Faith, never a large woman, was several sizes skinnier than she'd been the last time Dawn saw her. Faith wore a whipcord thinness that couldn't be healthy. Faith looked hard, all her softness eroded away by survival. No superfluous moves or curves, just etched muscle over bone.
"Faith, not that it looks bad, but what's with the haircut?"
Faith ran her hand over her hair, shrugged and replied, "World of darkness. Hygiene was tough. When we had enough algae to feed everyone, we made a sort of soap out of it, but it wasn't a priority. Easier to keep short hair, than keep long hair clean. Only the house-cattle and vampires wore long hair."
Several aspects of that statement disturbed Dawn, but Dawn thought she'd stick to a lighter topic than Faith calling humans cattle. "You ate algae?"
"Yup." Faith sat uncomfortably on the corner of the bed, fidgeting with her hands and flickering eyes around the room. The room was nothing fancy, but it was clearly much different than where Faith had been for two years.
"You only ate algae?"
"Well, it was the only thing that really grew in the dark. The Glow the kids called it. Came out of the feed ponds a white goop. Grew off the light of the moons. We made it into drinks and bars mostly. Weren't too bad. Sometimes we'd raid the food stores meant for the cattle, not often." Faith glanced at the bathroom. "Dawn, you mind if I grab a shower? Cat baths every few days just not the same as a hot shower, you know."
While Dawn ordered all the room service, Faith took the first shower. Then Dawn raided Etta's bag for clothes that would fit Faith. Etta and Dawn were about the same height and would be the same size if Faith hadn't only eaten algae for two years.
Dawn thought about Faith living in that hell for the past two years. Definitely worse than prison. Prison made Faith more watchful and silent, but no more trusting than before. In a way, Faith had been even more closed off after prison. And two years on a dark world ruled by vampires, and gods knew what else happened to her, can't have helped anything, especially since Faith struggled with her sanity to begin with.
The shower still ran at full blast. Dawn dialed Buffy's number.
Buffy picked up after the second ring, "Hey, Dawn! …no, Willow, it's Dawn. Yes, I'll tell her. Willow says hi. …guys, you can talk to her after. Fine, Xander says hi too. …"
To further forestall the Scoobies wrestling over the telephone, Dawn suggested speaker phone. They all needed to hear it anyway.
But before Dawn could say anything, Willow predictably began a barrage of questions, "How's Peru? Ever since Kennedy and I spent that time in Lima, I've always wanted to visit again. Are the tombs really cool? How did Louis do? I know you guys haven't …"
"WILLOW!" Dawn shouted into the phone. Dawn wanted more time to figure out how to tell the story of them being kidnapped and assaulted, so she skipped into the part that would make the Scoobies forget the mission. "We found Faith."
More silence.
Dawn continued, "Faith's alive."
"What…"
"But…"
"Who…"
Talking over the Scoobies' confused questions, Dawn kept the explanation brief. "She was pulled into a different universe. She's been surviving in a dimension without the sun ruled by vampires for two years."
"Dawn," Buffy broke the silence, "are you sure it's her? We've run into shape shifters and dopplegangers before."
"I'm as sure as I can be without Willow doing a scan. She knew the old nickname she used to call me. She knew stories about back in Sunnydale." Dawn shook her head, "It's Faith."
"Gods," was all Willow was able to say.
Xander ever the surprisingly insightful one asked, "Dawn, how is she? Two years in what sounds like hell is two years in, well, hell."
Dawn turned to bathroom as if to consider Faith through the door. The water was still running. She didn't know how Faith was coping. Truthfully, considering everything, no one had ever been good at knowing about how Faith was doing. Angel, maybe.
Dawn replied quietly, "Physically, she's lost a lot of weight and could use some time on the beach. From what I saw, she's still kicking ass and taking names. She hasn't really said much except when I asked questions. So, you know, she's Faith."