Part 6

The Darkness

"Buffy!" Liam screamed as he entered room after room on the ground floor of the Hyperion Hotel. But the slayer was nowhere to be found. At one point he had been able to hear her voice, then it had turned into a whisper, then into a muffled sound and then into silence. "Buffy!" he banged on the walls of the hotel trying to make himself heard by someone who he thought was lost somewhere inside. "Come on girl...," he murmured to himself frustrated. He held the first aid kit in one hand and a hammer in the other. William needed the medicine or whatever that strange little box contained urgently, but he couldn't bring himself to leave without the slayer. What if she were harmed while he was gone? What if he wasn't there when she screamed after him? He sighed. He had to run upstairs and leave the first aid kit and be back before anything bad could happen.

As he put his plan into motion, he didn't hear Buffy screaming and banging on the place on the wall that had once been a door - and it still was one from the outside, but she didn't know that.

"That's a neat little trick," James said as he and Halfrek observed the scene through the ceiling, sitting on the floor of a first level room. "How'd you do it?"

"I shifted them into different planes. The boy's in the real world and our darling slayer is lost in the astral plane of the imaginary Hyperion Hotel," Halfrek said smiling.

"Can something imaginary have an astral plane?" James asked frowning.

"Not that I know of," Hallie chuckled.

"So you just created it?" James still didn't understand.

"Technically," she nodded. "It's a deviation of the real meaning of astral plane. She's stuck inside a mutation of the real plane. It shouldn't exist and I have no idea why in hell it actually worked, but it was worth a shot. And ta-da. The funniest thing is I have no idea what's going to happen to her inside it."

"Then this is going to be an interesting show to watch," James said with a grin.

"Great!" Ronald let out annoyed. "And while you two are enjoying your little show, my hand is stuck in a goddamn closet with those murderous little bastards plotting to do who knows what to it."

"It's your fault it happened," Hallie shrugged. "You had to get greedy and send in both your hands. With that scrawny little boy, one would've been more than enough."

"You're not going to help me get it back?" Ronald asked.

"Nope," Hallie said. "It would spoil all the fun we've been having."

"I'd rather see what happens to the slayer," James admitted.

"Fine," Ronald practically stomped.

"Are you going to pull a one man, one hand, rescue mission, doctor?" Halfrek asked mockingly.

"I'm going to see if Billy..." Ronald started, but was stopped by both Hallie and James' laughter.

"Billy? You really think Billy's going to care about your damn hand?" Hallie asked still laughing. "You might as well take your help petition to the loony slayer! She'd probably make sure you'd lose your other hand as well."

"Look, it's better if you just forget about it," James said more serious now.

"You're no fighter, doc, your detachable limbs come in handy when it comes to games and spying, but when it comes to combat, those two kids left guarding your hand can kick your ass. And that's not even counting the little girl," Halfrek pointed out. "So give it a rest. You lost one hand, at least you're not dead. Yet."

"What an absolutely comforting thought," Ronald said mockingly.

Liam barged into the room, startling Wesley and Willow.

"Here!" he tossed the first aid kit to Willow and was about to run back down with the hammer still in his hands.

"Wait! Where's Buffy?" Willow asked putting herself between him and the door before he had a chance to leave.

"She's lost somewhere downstairs. I have to go and find her," Liam said gesturing for her to move.

"Dawn's lost too," Willow blurted out and Liam finally stopped trying to run out of the room.

"What?!" he let out incredulously. "How?"

"When they came here, they left her alone in the room. She must've wondered off somewhere while they were busy fighting the hands," Wesley explained.

"Brilliant! Just bloody brilliant," Liam mumbled. "And he can't be left alone," he eyed William with an annoyed look. "I'm going down to fetch Buffy and then we'll both go and search for Dawn."

"Buffy can take care of herself, Dawn can't," Wesley pointed out. "She can wait."

"No, she can't," Liam insisted.

"This isn't a good time to be stubborn, Liam," Wesley said firmly. "Lives are at stake."

"You go find the girl, she stays with William, I'll search for Buffy downstairs," Liam settled it once and for all.

"That's a good way to get everyone killed," Wesley pointed out. "What about the killer hand in the closet?"

Liam frowned before suddenly heading for the closet, yanking its door open, grabbing the hand - before it managed to stab him - without even twitching and laying it down on the nightstand. He slammed it with the hammer one time hard. The hand turned into a bloody mass of flesh and broken bones. His shirt was stained with blood when he turned back towards Willow and Wesley.

"What killer hand?" he asked with a smirk. "I'll be downstairs if..." his words were cut off by a horrifying scream that echoed through the entire hotel. In a room right on that floor Ronald Miltser hadn't been able to bite back a cry of pain when he had felt the full extent of Liam's blow as his wrist began bleeding and he knew his hand was gone forever.

"It's coming from somewhere close by," Wesley said and the three of them quickly left the room and opened the doors of each room on that floor with a speed that barely left Halfrek, James and Ronald any time to make an exit. Luckily for them, Halfrek could teleport and they were out of that room in an instant. But there was something they had left behind - Ronald's blood. And it proved that their chasers were no ghosts and that something else, besides themselves, was currently residing in that hotel.

"It's definitely human," Wesley said touching the blood stains with his fingers and then smelling them.

"That's a comforting thought," Willow said hesitant. "Right?"

"Not if he's some sort of mage, "Wesley said. "Then we're, as you Americans put it, screwed."

"Wonderful," Willow muttered.

"I wager he was the one the hand belonged to," Liam said looking around the room. "Unless there were more than one and they got into a fight, but they would've left the wounded behind..."

"Why are you talking in plural?" Willow asked confused.

"The hurt one was here, a woman was there," he pointed towards the signs of high heels on the carpet. "And another one, most likely a man was there," he gestured towards a spot on the floor that was clean, unlike the rest that was dusty and filthy.

"There were three?" the redhead suddenly felt uneasy. "We have to find Dawn."

"She probably wasn't here or she would've screamed," Wesley tried to comfort her.

"What the hell is that?" Liam asked staring baffled at a hole he discovered in the floor that overlooked the rooms he and Buffy had been going through on the ground floor just minutes before. He tried to put his foot through it, but found that oddly enough, the floor was still there, but it was somehow invisible.

"One of them has magical powers," Wesley said now certain.

"It was their doing then," Liam said referring to Buffy's disappearance.

"Most likely," the watcher-in-training agreed. "Go and try to find her, but be careful, if magic's involved there's no limit to what could happen." Liam only nodded and headed out the door in a rush while Wesley and Willow returned to their room. With all the commotion they had forgotten about poor William, who was now unconscious.

"Can we take his shirt off now?" Willow looked at his bloody chest hesitant.

"We have no choice, I'm afraid," Wesley said as he opened the first aid kit.

Buffy desperately clawed at the walls around her. She had broken two nails and was slowly becoming claustrophobic. The room seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and she occasionally felt a strange wave passing over her like a poisonous vapor, making her sick. It was in fact reality being shaped after something inexistent, making the very place she was in unstable and as a consequence her very presence in that plane of existence was being bent to fit this odd scenario. She had thrown chairs in the walls and tried to break through them with heavy objects lying around in the room, but the only thing she had succeeded to do had been to rip apart the wallpaper and to make herself breath harder and harder. The air seemed to be getting thinner. At that very moment another wave passed over her and her oxygen deprived mind saw the room becoming longer and longer and she began walking towards what she believed was a light at the end of a tunnel. But there was no light, no door, even her walking was stagnated.

Another wave hit her, actually knocking her off her feet and the room started spinning. Or was it just the floor? She couldn't tell. She closed her eyes and put her hand on her face, but her stomach could still feel the spinning of her body. Her forehead was wet and her lower lip was bleeding after she had bitten on it too hard. As she opened her eyes, the room itself had evolved into some tall monstrous death trap, spinning her on a wooden wheel of misfortune. As her eyes half-closed, she heard a muffled sound, but ignored it as just another figment of her imagination.

"Buffy! Buffy!" Liam yelled and yelled running from one room to another, but finding nothing. Thinking that perhaps there was some secret room he was incapable of reaching through doors he broke the glass of a 'in case of fire' box and pulled out an ax from it. He started hacking away at the walls, occasionally using the hammer when the walls would not break under the ax's blade. He came across a couple of concrete walls, but he did not give up, but stubbornly went on.

As he hacked away at one particular wall, the ax suddenly electrified and flew out of his hands and into the floor. Guessing there was more to that wall than met the eye, he rose the hammer and began hitting it with all his strength. A small hole soon formed in it and through it Liam saw Buffy laying on the floor, subjected to the torment of what he guessed were inner demons. He continued to hammer away until the hole was big enough for him to pass through. To his surprise, inside the room, he saw its door wide open, as he had left it during his many desperate attempts at finding the slayer and wondered if she had been there all the time and because of his previous rush, he hadn't seen her.

"Buffy," he whispered as he kneeled beside her.

Still dizzy and sick, the slayer opened her eyes, but could barely see anything in front of her. She could feel the spinning had stopped, the waves were gone and the monster had returned to its den far away from the plane of reality.

"Are you feeling all right?' Liam asked putting his hands on her shoulders. He was taken by surprise when Buffy suddenly rose off the floor and kissed him. A short sweet kiss.

"Monster gone," she murmured still out of it before putting her head on his shoulder and losing consciousness.

"Monster gone," Liam repeated gently caressing her hair for a moment before catching himself, brushing off whatever feelings had been roaming around in his mind and rising the slayer off the floor in his arms. He headed back upstairs.

"What a darling little girl," Billy said as he sat Dawn up on a chair. "Don't you think so, Dana?" the slayer looked at the girl with a mixture of confusion - like she didn't know what she was looking at - and remembrance - she had been small once.

"Who...," Dawn struggled to articulate the word as she stared at Billy.

"Me?" Billy asked with a creepy smile on his lips. "I'm just your friendly upstairs neighbor."

"Slayer," Dawn said staring back at Dana who was now struggling against her restraints violently, not carrying that she was hurting herself badly in the process.

"Yes, slayer," Billy nodded as he shot Dana an indifferent glance. "Very bad slayer," he added. "You're not like the rest of them, are you?"

"Rest," Dawn repeated and shook her head.

"I thought so," Billy said satisfied. "If you were some big shot hero from the future you would've been older and well...far more coherent."

"Real," she touched her chest with her hands.

"You're real," Billy said pensively before turning back towards Dana, who was making far too much noise for his liking, and hitting her hard twice, once in the stomach and another time in the face. "Stay the fuck still or I'll be forced to break both your damn legs," he told her in a harsh tone before adding, towards Dawn, in a much lighter tone: "I told you: very bad slayer. Now what were you saying about being real?"

Dawn didn't say a word, just stared at him with an air of suspicion.

"Giving me the silent treatment?" Billy said as one of his hands clutched the edge of a shelf. The shelf broke instantly. "Ops." He wanted nothing more than to break that little neck of hers, to crush her, but he suspected that there was more to this little girl than met the eye. And he meant to find out what exactly that was. "I'll be right back," he told her before leaving the room and closing the door with a key.

Dawn jumped off the chair and neared Dana looking at her curiously. She reached out a hand towards her and touched her bruised face. For a moment, Dana's gaze seemed to soften and a crooked strange smile appeared on her lips. Then just as suddenly she lunged out at her and bit down hard on one of her fingers. Dawn let out a scream and Billy rushed back inside the room and pulled her away from Dana. He shot the slayer a furious look and was about to hit her again, when Dawn murmured:

"Evil," her eyes glowed white and Dana let out a scream of pain as both her legs suddenly snapped.

"Good girl," Billy said with a smile as he set Dawn back down on the chair and pulled out what he had went out for, a raggedy old doll with one eye and dirty blond hair. "Look what I found." Dawn took the doll in her hands enthusiastically and hugged it to her chest. "I thought you'd like it." He pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around her bleeding finger and kissed the bandaged wound when he was done. "All better now?"

"Better," Dawn said with a smile nodding.

"Has Makhran been to see you tonight? Because I think I saw him...You know who Makhran is, right?" he wanted to explain who he was, when Dawn stopped him chuckling.

"Makhran. Stupid... demon."

"It's amazing how you can read my mind," Billy said with a smile.

"What happened?" Wesley asked when Liam entered the room carrying Buffy, who was mumbling incoherently something about vampires and dances, in his arms.

"I don't know. I found her like this. In a room I checked about ten times," Liam said as he laid her down in his bed.

"We heard a lot of banging coming from downstairs, did you run into trouble?" Willow asked as she put a last bandage on William's chest.

"No, that was just me breaking down the walls with an ax and a hammer," Liam explained.

"Oh," that was definitely not the answer she had been waiting for.

"Has she been this incoherent since you found her?" Wesley asked nearing the unconscious slayer and taking note of the protective way Liam had laid a hand on her waist.

"More or less," Liam said staring at Buffy. "At one point she even started singing. She has a horrible voice."

"Well she doesn't have a fever," Wesley concluded after touching the slayer's forehead. "Maybe she just needs some sleep."

"I hope so," Liam said. "Have you searched for the little one?"

"We didn't have the time," Wesley tried to excuse himself.

"It was a stupid idea anyway," Willow backed him up.

"Then let's go look for her," Liam said standing up and rubbing his face tiredly.

William blinked several times before he realized where he was. America. The future. A hotel. It had all seemed like a long nightmare, but here he was, once again, awakening to the reality of that very nightmare.

"What...," he grunted. "Hand," he suddenly remembered.

"Two hands actually," Willow said cheerful, happy he was awake. "One got away, one's squash," she pointed towards the bloody mass Liam had turned the killer hand into.

"Hello," a small voice said drawing their attention away from the freshly awakened William.

"Where have you been?" Willow asked worried, nearing Dawn.

"Bathroom," she said with a smile. "Lost."

"At least someone knows how to take care of himself," Liam noted with a smile dropping down into an armchair, tired.

"And this was only our first night here," Willow pointed out as Dawn cuddled into William's arms.

"That's a pretty doll," William noticed what she was holding in her arms. He frowned when he saw her bandaged finger.

"Rat," the girl said with a faint smile. Billy had told her she had to return to them and that she shouldn't mention anything about him or the evil girl to anyone. She had promised to come back the next day and see him again. And she intended to keep her promise.

End Part 6