Chapter 44

The Pit

The house creaks and cracks like bones under tension. I watch as the corridor around me stretches and warps, groaning as it is pulled out of its slumber.

Suddenly, the floor shifts downwards, and the passageway swiftly becomes a pit. I stumble on the brink, but Faith catches my hand and draws me back.

"Where are we?" She says with pink lips marred by black stitches, her face is pale and her hair chopped real short, and she seems so much younger than I have ever known her, perhaps twelve or thirteen.

"They burned this place down." I say. "It's where they shot Buffy and captured Oz."

"She is here. Can't you tell?" The young teenager says. She swallows and releases my hand. "I can feel her."

"Part of her maybe. But this place is gone and everything becomes ash one day."

"This way." The young girl says. I watch as she slips her hand into her pocket and produce a slim black handle. A switch blade snaps out. "What?"

"This is a slayer dream?" I say.

"Guess so." The young girl says. "You're talking weird shit, like Buffy does, so yeah. Probably. This is gonna bite. I hate fallin' dreams."

"But this place is gone. It doesn't make sense." I say, as Faith pushes a door open cautiously. The floor inside is melting downwards as the walls slide upwards. I watch the paper patterns and posters rolling on a loop. A jack o lantern's smile stretches as it oozes down into the pit. "Aren't these supposed to be prophetic?"

"You don't feel her?" Faith says, her hand shooting out to grip my arm. "Down there. Deep down there."

I hear her sobbing then. The wretched cries that drew us through the real halls. Buffy's sobbing. Faith glares down the hole, and swallows.

"We need to find Buffy. If this is a Slayer Dream, she will be here."

Faith steps back from the pit, shaking her head. "Hell no. I am not going in there again. Not again."

"Someone has to." I say, gazing into the darkness. I feel Spike's smile against my neck, just a ghost of a feeling. A goading, mocking feeling. I turn to Faith. "Give me the knife. I will go."

Faith's brow scrunches as she looks at the switch blade in her hand. Now it is long, wickedly barbed, a double bladed dagger, black with blood. Emotion takes her, and she lets out a strained sob. She pulls back just as the floor drops away beneath me, and I am fall, down and down, blue lights streaking past me. I feel the crush of inertia in my gut, and sense the floor coming up fast below me.

I land heavily, and tuck into a roll, tumbling over and over on the cold metal grating, the lights circling over and over my head like a bike crash.

And with a painful "oof" I come to rest in a dimly lit corridor. Both of the walls are smooth concrete, which seem new, clean, reinforced with yellow painted steel supports every ten yards or so. A red line is painted on the wall with the number 6 stencilled not far from where I sit.

Below me, the metal grill reveals a glass porthole, and what appears to be a small dimly lit cell. I cannot make out what is there, but gazing down fills me with a sense of discomfort. I stand, wanting to distance myself from the round glass as much as I can. But then as I tread warily down the corridor, I find another below me, and another. Row after row of cells.

The corridor opens out to a large room, with silver foil lined walls and no ceiling, well, I can make out a ceiling far, far above, but the room itself is more like a pit within a larger room. I feel exposed and naked standing in the dark, wide open space, and my spidey sense is quivering through my nerves.

I hear Buffy' sobbing, but there is no source. It is in this room, this pit, floating on the air, among the eye watering sharp stench of disinfectant and blood.

I remember then it is a dream. That it is a message. And I try to focus, to take note of my surroundings. There has to be a clues to where this is.

The room is strung through with wires and pipes, leading to all manner of machines. And many of them sit in familiar cases. Standard issue military supply boxes line one wall. There are no names, no labels. Nothing I can hold onto.

And then, my heart stops as a screaming face appears before me. And I stagger away from the image. It is Cordelia, dressed in a black slip, clutching her skull. She blinks at me through red tearful eyes and says something I cannot make out, looking behind me before she vanishes.

I know these dreams. Never turn around. Never look behind you. And yes, I can feel it now. I can sense it. The smell of raw meat and freshly ground metal. A Wet, rapid, clicking sound like something lodged in the throat. The sound builds, shifting from a clicking to tortured, metallic groans.

I have to turn. And what I see sends terror pooling through me.

A quivering, twisted mass of glossy raw flesh, fur and spindly, spiderly limbs lined with metal claws, pitted through with metal staples. And in what I can only guess is or was a face, five human looking eyes lock onto me. Eyes burning with agony.


Faith and I startle awake at the same moment, both drawing ourselves up to sitting position, fists raised. She blinks and shakes her head. The room is filled with cruelly bright white. Morning has come with a vengeance.

"Jesus. What was that thing?" She says.

"Same well." I mutter, "that was a Slayer Dream, right? Those things are real." I jump out of bed and have my Sunnydale Razorbacks shirt pulled over my head before I realise that nothing hurts. My joints are stiff and there is a dull ache, sure, but I felt like I had been in a car crash last night. Right now, I feel like I could run a marathon. I gaze back at Faith, who is stretching out her neck like nothing just happened.

"You were there right? You saw it?" I say. She looks at me from her stretch and gives me a look.

"Creepy house? Frankenstein fucked a giant spider?" She shrugs. "Yeah. Guess so."

"Why are you not freaked? I mean, I am freaked for the both of us, but, feel free to join in."

"Who says I ain't?" Faith says, and stands, wincing. My cuts are little more than red marks now, but her cheek seems little much better than it was last night. Oh right. Curse.

"We have to warn the others." I say, trying to slip on some jeans, which are fighting back.

"The others being…" Faith says, head hung low, she seems fascinated by her fingers all of a sudden. She looks at me nervously, then sighs. "Stupid question."

"Hey. I promise, things are different. You are different."

"Ya reckon?"

"Yeah. Big time. I mean, you want a measure of how much things have changed…" I gesture to myself. One leg in a jean. Jeans? Is it a pair of jeans? As in two jeans or…?

Faith shrugs, still nervous.

"Giles is not with the council any more. Willow is a werewolf. And gay. A big gay werwolf. And Cordelia? She is half demon and is actually nice. Ish."

"Fuck off."

"I am not even kidding." I grin. "So much has changed Faith. One of the new Scoobies, Anya, she was a vengeance demon for like a thousand years. Got up to all manner of terrible things. Believe me, you walk back in there and… and…"

I am coming up with nothing, so I settle with an emphatic shrug. Faith's smile is cute and natural, she chuckles.

"Aight. So I go eat crow. "sorry I stabbed you all in the back, yadda yadda" Do the whole good Slayer thing. We fight, whatever the hell those things are, find Oz or what's left of him and then we all live happily ever after and, play house and shit?"

"Basically." I shrug. "Don't piss on this Faith, I happen to think it's an excellent plan."

"Well, best laid plans and all that."

"I need you."

"Yeah, you do." She says, and stands. Then she chuckles. "A 'Big gay werewolf?' Seriously?"

"Well, big compared to me. Now."

"Okay, shorty. I will play nice. But you're buying me coffee. Because fuck facing my demons down without a bastard huge cup of joe."

"I could not agree more."