BAD BLOOD

A Buffy the Vampire Slayer story.

P.J. Dickinson

Part Three: Hell

Five

Riley picked himself up and with a quizzical expression surveyed the carnage. All his internal systems were without damage and operating within normal parameters. He checked the disruptor and that it was still connected to his battery. The weapon was running perfectly.

He climbed up out of the crater his descent had caused and scanned his surroundings. The jungle was teeming with life though none which could threaten him. He looked again at the crater and for a moment he felt at burst of guilt at the environmental damage he had caused. Trees were knocked down for one hundred meters in every direction. He blanked that thought, this wasn't earth he thought. He had made that mistake once before.

Riley performed a few calculations and estimated that taking the force required to cause such destruction into account and assuming that gravity did not change from dimension to dimension then he had fallen over four kilometers before hitting home. His memory had no record of the fall. The passage through the rift must have temporarily disabled it. That combined with the trauma of Spike's grenades going off in his face. He looked about but there was no sign of the vampire. That didn't really matter to him. Spike had often said that after having the chip put in his head he would have been happier being dust. Perhaps the grenades had blown him away from the rift and the Initiative had caused his wish to come true.

A Pnarwaidh bounced out from the tress and came towards him. Riley leveled the disruptor and gave it a second to charge up. Time to put the weapon through its first field trial he thought.

"That was some entrance mate." Said the Pnarwaidh. "Took me forever to find you."

Riley raised the disruptors business end at the last moment and its beam sliced through the fallen trees behind Spike. He bounded for cover in some bushes.

"Spike? Come out if that's you."

"Of course its me you pillock. That fall fry all your circuits you freak?" Spike raised two red eyes from the fallen canopy. Riley stared at him and a smile began to crease his stony face.

"You feeling okay Spike?"

"Never better mate," said the big black bollock as it approached the soldier. "Sorry about that shit with the grenades. But you know what they say 'No blood no penalty'."

"Quite alright. Worked out quite well in the end."

"This is Hell ennit? You've been here before ain't you? This is where whatever did that to you happened."

Riley slowly nodded and looked northwards. His new body needed no rest but he still had a human brain and that needed some rest. He sat down at the edge of the crater and Spike hopped over and squatted down seemingly oblivious to his change in appearance. He was a vampire; Riley could hardly show him his reflection on his plastisteel body.

"When I left Sunnydale I never thought anything good would happen again in my life. I had lost the woman I loved..."

"Don't talk crap soldier boy. You didn't lose her, you threw her away."

"I didn't throw her away. She pushed me away."

"So that's why you let weak assed vamps suck your blood. Out of self-pity. I told her what you were up to by the way."

"I know," growled Riley.

"I always said you weren't dark enough for her."

Spike had no idea how thin the ice he was treading on was.

"I was dark enough for Buffy Summers. Its whatever makes her the Slayer I wasn't dark enough for."

"She went after you you know. Ended up burbling in a heap on the ground all her shouting drowned out as your helicopter took off. Bleedin' tragic really."

Riley stared at him. If he had sensed that Spike was trying to drive the knife in any deeper he would have killed him on the spot. He didn't. Spike seemed to be genuine about how their relationship had ended. Riley looked away. It could have all been so different he thought. But that was in the past. If he hadn't left he would never have met Egg and that had been the real thing.

"I rejoined the Initiative, but it was changed from the section I had been recruited by. It was leaner, more serious and committed to defending earth. There's a war coming Spike. A war to end all wars. Everything that has gone before is small fry compared to this confrontation. This will be a battle of apocalyptic proportions. This stalemate can't go on much longer with most of humanity living their lives unaware of the demons that walk among us. The Initiative are getting ready for it and are prepared to initiate it if we sense the enemy are weak."

"I joined an elite black operations squadron. We concentrated our affairs in the Southern American continent because that is where we are sure the war is going to start. I pulled off a couple of impossible missions: I didn't care whether I lived or died. I just wanted to blank out what had happened between Buffy and I. My successes attracted the attention of General Markwell who was putting together a base that was going to work directly against Hell. Take the battle to them and destroy the source of the evil that was threatening humanity."

"It was there that I met Egg; she was my commanding officer. Neither of us had ever expected to meet anyone else again. We had both dedicated ourselves to the Initiative. She was so beautiful and very slowly we discovered we were falling in love. This was different than with Buffy. That was an infatuation by comparison. Buffy never loved me, she needed someone like me in her life but she never loved me. She was my first love but I was just a rebound to her. I could never compete with Angel. But I learnt from the experience. See, there are two compartments in your heart. One for your first love, the second for your true love. If you're very lucky you never need the second but that wasn't to be for me. I will never forget Buffy; her memory occupies that first chamber but time passed and the pain faded. Egg took that second piece of my heart and that was so much stronger than the first. We were meant to be together."

Riley flashed the image he had taken in his quarters behind his eyes and stared at it and felt a pain he had never known with Buffy. She was so perfect and strong with her brown eyes and long flowing blonde hair. It had taken him forever to put Buffy behind him.

"Meant?"

"Yes. Meant. Past tense."

Riley sighed and stared northwards again.

"The Mayans occupied what is now Mexico and Guatemala and they had a huge and powerful civilization before the Spaniards came and brought it all down in their search for gold. The Mayans were unique. Never before had a civilization organized itself in a similar way nor had even remotely the same perception of time and the universe. Our tech boys were interested about where this influence might have come from. When strange demonic activity was centralized around an isolated pyramid deep in the Guatemalan jungles we were called in to investigate and neutralize the threat."

"Egg led the squad. We dropped about five kilometers from here," Riley pointed over Spike's spherical head. "We proceeded on foot to the target. I was second in command. We approached the pyramid and acquired our quarry. But it was a trap. Every sensor, even GPS said we were in Guatemala but at some point in the jungle we crossed a dimension and entered Hell on earth. Our back lines were taken out by a demon."

Riley looked Spike square in the eyes.

"You can't know what it was like. No bullshit Spike. I can't stand you most of the time but I've fought beside you and I know you can walk the talk."

"Cheers pal. Love you longtime too."

" But this demon, I hope there is a God out there somewhere cause that's all that stands a chance against this thing. It was straight out of the Old Testament. I was terrified. You would have been terrified as well. Not Egg. She was a better soldier than me. She held her ground and organized the troops and met it head on. I was screaming for us to retreat and I think I was the straw the broke the squads cohesion. They all scattered. Egg looked at me with this expression asking me what had I done and then the demon was upon us and I received these injuries. I held onto consciousness just long enough to see Egg being consumed in flames."

"You survived though mate." Said Spike gently putting one paddle like foot on the soldier's thigh as a form of comfort. "That's got to count for something."

Riley spat on the ground, disgusted with himself.

"I was dead Spike. I was completely burnt by fire. I died along with the rest of the squad. But something happened. What it was has I have never been able to explain and why I was chosen to be returned I have no idea but it must have happened soon after I died or else I wouldn't have had any life for the medics to revive. I suddenly appeared in the base. The rift opened for the first time and what was left of me fell out and onto the ground. It was from the readings taken while the rift was briefly open that Initiative scientists got the idea of opening their own rift. It was exactly the edge Markwell had been waiting for. I didn't care anymore. I had lost Egg. I just wanted one more chance at that demon. This body and this weapon will give me that. I just want one shot at it. I don't care if I kill it or not I just want it to feel some of the pain of what is was like for me to lose Egg."

"You know where this pyramid is mate?"

"Intimately. The coordinates are seared in my internal memory."

"Well what are we waiting for? Let's go kick some demon tail."

"Spike don't you want to try and find a way back through the rift?"

"Nah fuck it mate. By the sounds of this war I don't stand a chance whatever side I'm on."

Riley looked down at Spike.

"If that's what you want then follow me."

"Fucking A. Sure what could be better than having the Big Bad on your side?"

Spike tried to advertise his presence to the whole jungle.

"Here. Hold on." He said with panic rising in his voice. "Where the hell have my arms gone?"