Hiding Places
by Alixtii

"Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books."

--Giles, in "Superstar"

Somewhere in Africa – June 1917

"Is there anything else you would like, sir?" the girl asked them.

Yes, thought Spike as he looked at the smooth figure of their young hostess. I'd like you to sink my fangs into your neck. But the demon Yr-a'k-tr probably wouldn't take very well to Spike's draining one of his priestesses—demons tended to be possessive about those sort of things. They were lucky that they had been welcomed as guests to stay in his temple.

Drusilla, however, was not reticent to name what she wanted. "Blood," she said. "Spike and I thirst, thirst for our special sort of nourishment, life to sustain in death. And Miss Edith wants cake."

The priestess nodded and brought her hands to her neck, untied the strings which held her white robe together and let it slip off her body. "Blood I can handle," she said.

Spike cocked an eyebrow and smiled. That was his Dru, unafraid to ask for—or take—what she wanted.

Somewhere in Africa – December 2003

They weren't zombies—not quite. They were stronger than normal zombies, faster too, and more agile. They were all women, and they were all dressed in the same white dresses.

They were more lethal than normal zombies. Sam Finn sliced her broad sword through one of the uber-zombie women's necks; the head fell to the ground, still hissing. She parried the attacks of two zombies which came at her, then thrust her sword into one zombie as she spun around it, positioning it so that it was between her and the other zombie. The zombie, still on her sword, reached up and grabbed her face, its claw-like fingernails ripping into the skin of her cheek. Sam ignored it and thrust the sword into the second zombie, so that both were on her sword like shish- kebob.

"Catelyn!" Sam cried as she took one hand off her sword to knock the clearer zombie's arm away from her face. "I could use some fire here."

Catelyn, a petite blonde holding a flamethrower, nodded and pivoted slightly. "Anytime, Sam!" she said.

Sam raised her leg and sent a powerful kick into the close zombie even as she pulled her sword out of its chest. The two zombies fell backwards into the flames, incinerating. Sam turned to see the third member of the group—her husband—hacking away at two more of the zombie women.

"Need any help, Riley?" Catelyn asked.

"Nah," he answered, "I can't let you girls have all the fun." One of the zombies came at him; he threw it over his shoulder towards the two women. As it rose from the ground, Sam delivered a quick roundhouse kick, sending it back to the floor just as Catelyn flamed it. When they turned back towards Riley, the other zombie was nothing more than pieces on the floor.

"What were those things?" asked Sam.

"Priestesses," answered Catelyn, as she surveyed the strange pictograms on the walls. "Acolytes of the demon Yr-a'k-tr. They took their own lives as a sacrifice to the demon and then were reanimated by his power."

"So where is this demon and how do we kill it?"

"We can't," answered Catelyn. "At least not physically. It doesn't exist in time. What we can do is shut down his ability to interfere in our dimension by cutting off his access to this world. The conduit should be somewhere in this temple, but we won't be able to know what it is or how it works until I finish decoding these pictograms."

"In the meantime, we'll set up camp," said Riley.

"Good idea," responded Catelyn as she gazed intently at the wall.

Sam sighed. She wasn't thrilled with having Catelyn as a "third wheel" on this mission, especially when the young blonde looked so much like Riley's ex-lover. But Catelynn, despite being right out of high school, was an expert demonologist (it had been a private school in Cleveland run by an order of Catholic priests skilled in the occult), and there was no one better to have at one's side in the fight. Sam liked the girl; she just didn't trust her around her husband.

London, England

Reg pushed his tongue farther into Lydia's mouth, tasting its unique flavour. He ran his hair through his lover's hair, let his fingers find there way to her blouse....

He paused.

"What's wrong?" asked Lydia, clearly displeased at the interruption.

"What if Wyndam-Pryce finds out about us?"

"Then he is going to have some explaining to do as to why he is prying into my sex life, Reg."

"The man's a suspicious bastard. I have no doubt he won't let a little thing like privacy or common decency stop him from doing whatever he feels is necessary to protect the council. Besides, you're my thesis advisor."

"Roger Wyndam-Pryce is not God, and he certainly is not Quentin Travers. He is not the end-all and be-all of the Council. If it comes down to a confrontation, he knows he needs me. If you are what I demand, he'll let me have you."

"And everyone will know that the only reason I'm in the Council is because my lover was on my defense board and played hard ball? What does that say about me?"

"Reg, your thesis is bloody brilliant—what you've finished of it, anyway. No one is going to doubt your ability."

Reg sighed, then brought himself back down upon her, kissed the side of her neck. "You sure?" heasked, whispering the question into her ear.

"Reg, there is no need for anyone to ever find out. Wyndam-Pryce knows we're working the Drusilla-in-Romania case together."

He nodded, admitting the truth of what she said. Still, something kept giving him the feeling that they were just waiting for the next shoe to drop, and whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good.

Somewhere in Romania...

Drusilla pulled the crossbow bolt out of her chest and raised her eyes to see where it had come from. Grrr, she thought as she saw Solomon and Jezebel sparring with the Slayer. She hoped they liked being dust. Drusilla didn't like dust; Angelus had taught her to bathe everyday even though her mother had told her never to take a bath; he preferred her white skin to be unblemished. Sometimes he himself would bathe her; sometimes he would bathe her in blood.

But the Slayer was fighting the two vampires hand by hand; there was no crossbow near her. Drusilla turned her gaze, searching for the crossbow. There it was, held by the pretty blur of energy. The Key. Drusilla could see through the guise the Key wore, that of a beautifully appetizing adolescent girl, to the destructive energy that was beneath it, ready to burst out of its fleshy prison and open all the doors to other worlds, worlds without shrimp and worse. Much, much worse.

"Damn," muttered Drusilla. "Miss Muffet nor her big sister were invited to play. Now we must do this in a different way." She grabbed the gypsy woman by the hair and, with her vampire strength, lifted her right off the ground, ignoring the old woman's cries of pain. No, not ignoring—taking pleasure in them. But there was no time for such delights, not when the purplish energy was firing her crossbow. There was too much chance that the Key might actually hit her heart. "We'll have to play somewhere else," Drusilla hissed, as she drug the gypsey woman along.

Wait. She needed something—the stars were trying to tell her. She stopped and concentrated. Thesula, the stars said. The crystal sphere in front of Drusilla—it was like the world, only smaller and clearer and without the frogs. She would need it. She grabbed it with her free hand and rushed away. Behind her she could hear Jezebel turning to dust. It wouldn't be long before Solomon joined her, and the wind would blow their ashes around and they would be together for ever and ever. It would be romantic if the two had been able to tolerate each each other.

Drusilla scurried along, the Orb of Thesula in one hand and the gypsy woman in the other. She needed to escape the Slayer and her Key of a sister, escape to a place where they would be safe and could have tea, where the sun would not rise and turn her to dust like the Slayer turned Solomon and Jezebel to dust, like children turn to dust when one leaves them in the ground too long.

A forest loomed in front of her. A wilderness, where she could spend 40 days like the Christ whose cross burned her skin. (She had learned all about the Christ, in a different life so long ago. Her mother had told her that when she died she would join the Christ in heaven. Well, she was dead, and what did the Christ do but mock her from His cross she could not touch?) She could stay alive on the gypsy woman, if she had to, the old woman and all of the creatures of the forest, the wolf and the ram and the hart, and the lion and the tiger and the bear. .

For a moment, she heard her Spike's voice in her head: You're in Romania, ducks, not the jungle. There aren't any lions and tigers. That's what her Spike would say. She would have her Spike back, have him back very soon. But there were creatures in the forest that no one knew about, except those who knew the darkest secrets of the Old Country, or those who, like Drusilla, had the stars to whisper those secrets to them. There was power in the forest, power that the Romanian people rightly feared.

The Slayer would learn to fear that power.

Somewhere in Africa...

In the center of the temple sanctuary, on the marble floor, Sam had a small but considerable fire going. There wasn't much wood in the temple, but Riley had found a few cabinets which had no doubt been used as wardrobes by the priestesses when they had been alive. The pot of water was boiling, and Sam poured some into her bowl with the ration gruel. It wasn't the taste that she hated most about the stuff, although God knew that was bad enough. It was the texture.

"How's the translating coming?" Riley asked Catelyn.

"Slow but sure," answered Catelyn from beyond the colonnade. "I think the priestesses were intended to circumambulate through the colonnade as they slowly built to an orgiastic frenzy. These pictographs are getting rather pornographic. The thing is, there's usually a second thread of text interlaced within the primary thread in most hijr languages. I'm trying to figure out what the second thread is—I think it may be some type of prophetic message."

Sam watched as her husband's ears perked up at the first mention of orgies. "Orgies?" he asked. "With just the priestesses?"

"There's been a few pictograms with animals in them, but I haven't seen any with men in them yet. Sam, you're married to a lecher."

"You bet I am," Sam joked, but her heart wasn't exactly in it.

"As far as I can tell," Catelyn continued, "one of the priestesses becomes possessed by Yr-a'k-tr, and through her the demon would, erm, 'take advantage of' his acolytes. Evidently Yr-a'k-tr enjoyed having a cult of priestesses who were devoted body and soul to his service. Until they killed themselves and became zombies, of course."

Sam knew that she had better take control of where the conversation was going quickly. "You said the second thread was a prophecy. Do you have any idea what it says?"

"I'm working on it," said Catelyn. "It's about a demon, a flesh- eater—no, wait, a blood-drinker."

"A vampire?" asked Riley.

"I think so. Yes—here's the mark of the Order of Aurelius. Only this doesn't make sense."

"What is it?" asked Sam.

"This is the pictogram for a human soul. Only vampires don't have souls."

"Don't worry," said Riley, "there's one that does." Sam recognized the grim look on Riley's face; she knew that he wasn't overly fond of his ex-lover's ex-lover, Angel. Of course, their latest intelligence communiqué had placed the ensouled vampire running a demonic law firm in L.A., which made no sense to Sam at all. But she was much better at killing vampires; Riley and Catelyn were better at understanding how they thought.

"But the pattern doesn't appear just once," said Catelyn from behind the colonnade. "It appears twice, each time with a different distinguishing mark."

"You're telling me there are two vampires with a soul?" asked Riley.

"Yes, and both Aurelians. If I'm reading these markings right, they're both in the same bloodline descended from the Master."

Sam saw Riley's jaw clench. Did he have an idea who the second ensouled vampire could be?

"Wait, a moment, here's the pattern again, with a third marker."

"Three ensouled Aurelians?" asked Sam. "Now we're just getting silly."

"And then—" Catelyn broke off.

"What is it, Cate?" Riley asked.

Catelyn hesitated before answering. "There's the pictogram for fire," she said, "followed by darkness. And then, if I'm translating this right, 'There will be a time of chaos, and from the chaos there will rise a—"

"Well, there will rise a what?" asked Sam.

"It doesn't say," answered Catelyn. "The prophecy cuts off there. All that's left is a rather large and impressive orgy pictogram."

A/N: If you're interested in Catelyn or the Catholic school she attended, you might want to check out my story "The Academy," which was started when one of my reviewers asked me if Catelyn was a Slayer. Oh, and let me reiterate that with the exception of the plot, Catelyn, and a couple tertiary characters, all of this is owned by Joss.

Alixtii.