A phone was ringing somewhere. Somewhere close, too close to her pounding head. Everything hurt. She was cold, yet too hot at the same time, and her eyelids were in pain, her toes, her fingernails too. Everything. How could every inch of her feel so… raw?
The ringing diminished a bit before returning full force, making her flinch, which brought a whole wave of pain through her whole body. And for a moment, she didn't even realize the strange position she was in.
She wasn't lying down on the floor. She wasn't sitting. She was upright, she thought, yet her feet didn't touch the ground. Her arms were stretched above her, her wrists bound by something cool and rough, similar to her ankles. She was trapped, her limbs spread wide, leaving no room for free movement.
Pushing through the fog that clouded her mind and the ringing, which by then she guessed wasn't a phone but her own head –probably a concussion, she resolved– she tried to take in her surroundings without yet opening her eyes. Her eyelids felt like they were made of lead, and it hurt too much to try to even part them a millimetre.
She felt her hair clinging to the sides of her face, sticking to her sweaty and dirty skin like vines. But it didn't hang around her shoulders. Instead, she could feel it fall perpendicularly, across her cheeks and to her front.
She was hanging horizontally, somewhere, facing the ground.
"I know you are awake." A soft male voice called from beneath her, even the quiet sound searing through her skull like a shriek.
Fighting the pain, she forced herself to open her eyes. She wished she hadn't.
There, beneath her, were half a dozen guys with symbols etched into their skins where their eyes should be, clad in black robes, holding knifes and axes in their hands. And in the middle of them all was him.
Jon.
She closed her eyes and opened them again, unable to believe herself. He couldn't be there. He'd died. She'd been at his funeral. She'd gone back home to be there. She'd seen his family, his friends, crying his loss. He was dead. He'd fought cancer for two years before it took him. He couldn't be there, with her. Sure, he looked older than she remembered, thinner, consumed by the cancer, but it was still him. It was how he would have looked had she returned home before he was gone.
But how could it be?
"Jon…" Her lips brought a new flash of pain at the simple sound, feeling them crack and split, tasting the blood in her mouth.
"Oh, I see you remember. I didn't think you would. You never came back. Never called after the first year or so. You forgot about everyone but your new friends, didn't you?" He accused, shaking his head in disapproval. "I was hoping you'd come back. At least one last time before by body gave up. I held on as long as I could, hoping they'd at least tell us you were alive. That you hadn't been killed like your parents. They told us they'd been mugged. That you were kidnapped. You didn't even care enough to tell us you were fine."
"You are dead…" She sobbed, her voice raspy and pained.
"Yes, I am." He paced, carefree, among the robed figures, keeping one eye on her.
"I went back."
"Too late." He snapped, stopping near a table covered with a black cloth. "Always too late, right? Too late to save your parents, too late to save Joyce, too late to save your new fake sister from Glory, too late to see me before my liver gave out, before my heart stopped. Always too late." A tear slid across the bridge of her nose, leaving a clear wet trail before dropping to the dirt beneath. "Oh, please, you're going to cry now? Pathetic."
"Wh-what is… happening?" How had she ended up there? She had been looking for RJ –eww, she'd been about to grab him and bang him until none of them could walk straight. The spell must have ended over, as she could think more or less clearly about that matter.
"Ugh, and I thought you were smart." He strode past the monks and stood in a clear area, crossing his arms over his chest. "Obviously, you've been kidnapped. And, finally, after almost five years, you're finally going to become what you were supposed to be. I'm astounded you never figured it out. You've had time, and resources. It wasn't like you didn't know what was out there."
"What are you ta-talking about?" She frowned, only to have to stifle a cry. She was pretty sure there was a gash on her forehead, and she'd just opened it with the gesture.
"Well, I guess it's story-time." He grinned, thoroughly pleased about what was going to happen next. "I will tell you all about it while my people do their job. It might sting."
Just as he said those last words, the thing that held her above their heads started getting lower and lower, turning until she was facing them, at the same height as the rest, among the robed figures. One of them approached the covered table and flung the cloth away, revealing several crystal bottles with a swirling dark substance inside, syringes and knives all around them.
Dread surged through her body. What were they going to do to her? What was happening? How long had she been out? Did her sisters know she'd been kidnapped? Did Spike know?
Oh, God, if she died there, what would happen to him? The voices in his head… his soul… what was going to happen to him?
Jon observed her for a moment before breathing deeply, preparing himself. "Not to be cliché, but our story starts with the conception of a girl. A girl chosen for big things. She had a bright future. A privileged mind, a healthy predisposition, and power coming her way. You see, she was going to be a hero. 'Into every generation, there is a chosen one. One girl in all the world. She alone will wield the strength and skill to stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness; To stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers. She is the Slayer.' Ring a bell? This girl was destined for great things. And she wasn't going to be just one, but two. Actually, she was meant to be a part of a little family of three. Three sisters. You might know where I am going with this."
He gave her a knowing look, his eyes staring straight into hers, darkness swirling behind them. This was not the Jon she remembered. This was wrong. The more she thought about it, the worse the situation turned in her mind. She didn't know where she was, she didn't know who these… people were, or who 'Jon' was supposed to be. Certainly not her childhood friend, was he? He'd spoken like him, yet not 'like' him. He knew her, but he was not the same person she'd known.
He interrupted her thoughts as he resumed his speech. "Well, you know, the three sisters were meant to complete each other. The uncontained power, the unrealized power, and…"
"The hidden power." She finished for him, unable to tear her eyes from the face of her childhood friend until she felt one of the monks slash at her left arm, bringing a cry out of her. Another one on her right repeated the motion, both her arms dripping blood, letting it slide down her skin, to her shoulders, down toward her legs, soaking her t-shirt and jeans on the way.
"Exactly." He grinned again. "But, you see, not everything is as good as it sounds. At least for her. For you. This girl had one little problem. Her mother… well, she wasn't exactly all for good, you know." He stopped when her expression turned to horror, letting it sink in. What did her mother have to do with anything? She was dead! She'd been killed. "Oh, right, you don't know. She did keep it quite a secret. Not even your father knew. Not your brother, not anyone. Your mother… She served someone very powerful. When she found out what her daughter was going to be… well, she couldn't let that chance escape her. She would be rewarded, if she could give this powerful entity a tool such as a Slayer. Still, Slayers are not easily controlled. They have to be prepared, and even then, a lot of them are awfully stubborn. So they needed a way to control this girl. A way to make sure that when she was called, she'd served the right side."
"I mean, how could you not be a bit suspicious? What kind of mother would let her thirteen-year-old daughter go off to the other side of the world, to a military base, and not come back in years?" He taunted, a smirk adorning his pale ill-looking face.
"I was with my dad." She defended, not about to let him stain their memory. Why was he doing that? What could he possibly get out of that?
"Where you? Your dad was never there. True, it wasn't because he didn't want to. But shouldn't a loving mother try to get her lonely, teenage daughter back home, where she would be safe? Please, she wanted you far, until your moment came. She couldn't afford to feel attached to you. After all, she was going to sacrifice you that Christmas, when you went back home."
All thought process stopped. The world froze around her, at least that's how she felt it. In reality, the robed men grabbed the bottles, six of them, and approached her once more. Two of them slashed at her legs, opening another two wounds, then another did the same to her stomach.
She was bleeding everywhere, and yet she didn't care. What was Jon telling her? That her mother had sold her to this entity? That she was going to kill her when she went back home?
"When they were all attacked in LA, the plan suffered a great setback. With the mother dead and the girl under a powerful vampire's care, one connected to the Powers That Be, nonetheless, she was difficult to reach. There was a plus side, though. She was being trained like a Slayer, like what she was meant to be, and she was still far from the other two sisters. As long as it stayed that way, when Buffy died, she would be called, and –also a plus– the portal couldn't be closed without her. Not unless they killed the youngest sister too."
"But then the vampire had to go and give her a chance to live a normal life. That wouldn't do, either. She had to die. Be it through being sacrificed by her mother, or killed by demons or vampires, or even a car accident, who cares. You had to die. You had to go to hell. You were always going to end up there. This powerful entity made sure of that. Because in hell, she would be broken, she would become vulnerable. You weren't simply tortured, you know. Your soul was cracked. Why do you think you yearned so much for the vampire? The demon inside, the darkness, is not so different from what you'll soon have." Jon walked closer again, standing right behind the monks holding the bottles. For the first time, she paid attention to them, to the substance inside the glass. Six flasks. Six. Two slashes on her arms, two on her legs, one across her abdomen, one across her forehead. Six. "Doing the math? Do you know what's in these?" He gestured toward the bottles, smirking cruelly. "That's going inside you."
Her eyes snapped back to his, terror like no other filling her. Whatever was inside those bottles was bad, evil, dark. Nothing like she'd ever faced before, nothing like she'd ever seen before.
"No. Please, don't." She begged, not for her life, but to avoid what that was going to turn her into. She'd rather be killed, than turned into something so bad. Because she knew, somehow she knew, she would be used to hurt and probably kill her loved ones.
She wouldn't be able to protect them from herself.
"Those cracks in your soul will soon be filled. You won't be broken anymore, don't worry. You will be complete. The point of this whole story, the point of everything that's happened to you since before you were born, is that you are not just meant to be a Slayer. You are going to be the Dark Slayer. This black thing inside the bottles, moving around, alive? That's the essence of the very thing that planned this whole ordeal. You can thank mommy dearest for the chance to be its host, its vessel."
The robed servants neared her slowly, uncorking the bottles and positioning themselves so the glasses rested right above her wounds. Without even tilting them, the black substance flowed outside of the flasks, slowly, torturously. It moved, swirling near the edge of her wounds, spreading over them until they were completely covered, before the burning began. The dark mass fought to get inside her, to take her blood's place, mix with it. The burn travelled through her body, down to the tips of her toes, to the ends of her hair. She could feel every single one of her veins being scorched from the inside, and she cried out, an ear splitting sound that made the ground tremble. The noise that left her throat was not even human. The monks flinched away from her at the sound, only to soon return to their places.
They were not done yet.
More monks approached, this time holding the syringes. There was still some of the black matter left in the bottles, and they made sure to get every last bit of it inside the syringes, before burying them in her. One in her neck, two in her wrists, two in her thighs.
Another scream ripped through her, the fire in her veins increasing tenfold.
She wanted to die. She only wanted it to end. The pain, the fear, the feeling that she was losing herself to the thing running through her veins.
She just wanted it to go away.
"Say hi to Buffy before you kill her."
Next chapter will be up on Wednesday, around 6pm (GMT +1).
