Chapter 5 – Shadows' Waiting
"You believe this crap?" Munch asked his partner as they stepped into Olivia's apartment. "I'm wondering what else could go wrong at this point."
"Not that hard to figure," Tutuola answered. "Kathy left him, he and Liv have always been pretty simpatico. Sunday had all of us in pretty bad shape. I can see it happening."
"It's poison," Munch declared. "They know, we know it. Top it off with the cherry that is IAB crawling up everyone's ass for a good look, and there's no way we're going to get a straight shot at finding the perp before he does her or at clearing Elliot."
"We do our job," Finn replied. "If there's anyone got a chance of hauling herself clear of a perp, it's Liv. Then all we have to do is deal with the fallout. Where you wanna start?"
"Check her desk, I'll take the bathroom."
Normally, checking a vic's apartment led to a kind of dark banter with speculation on everything from reading habits to cookware. Neither had ever been to Olivia's apartment before; the SVU as a rule didn't socialize much after hours. This time, there were no comments called out, just a thorough search, looking for evidence that someone had been after their colleague.
Munch bagged the sheets on the bed and condom wrappers from the trashcan. He found himself silently thanking his Maker that one or both of them had been tidy and hadn't left anything used in the bathroom trashcan. He found Olivia's backup gun under her bed. Elliot had lost a sock in the pile of towels just outside the bathroom.
"I got nothin'," Finn said, joining him in the bedroom. "Liv keeps the place picked up, and my guess is there's nothin' on her computer she wouldn't be okay with us seeing. Mail's current, no weird notes, she doesn't even have leftovers in the fridge."
"Yeah," Munch surveyed the scene. "Really all we got is what Elliot told us. He's been here the past couple of nights. No sign of anyone else. Let's go."
"Sucks, doesn't it?"
At
the sound of the voice, her head came up. She had been sitting, back
against the wall for what seemed like hours. Her eyes continued to
adjust until it seemed she could see the outline of her hand when she
held it in front of her face. She hoped it wasn't just wishful
thinking.
A man was squatting on the floor in front of her,
staring with an expression of frank curiosity. She knew
him.
"Eric?"
"Yeah," he agreed.
He had never looked frightening, not even when he'd held a gun to the head of some perfectly innocent woman, not even when she knew he was responsible for the deaths of four people. He had been just a guy, a guy she'd sent up for a rape he hadn't committed, a guy who'd tried to destroy her life as she had his.
"So, Olivia, how you doing?"
"You're dead," she whispered.
"Well, yeah. You killed me. I did tell you there weren't any bullets in the gun, but you didn't believe me. Say, how's it feel to have failed once more?"
"What?"
"Well, you sent me up with a false conviction, pretty much ruined my life. You couldn't save those people I took care of. You couldn't save me, but then," he tilted his head back and forth, "you didn't really try that hard. Two girls dead in the last two days. Your partner, well, his career's toast, and it's your fault. If it weren't for the fact that he'll probably take the fall for your disappearance and death…I think he'd be pretty grateful you're out of the picture."
"Get away from me," she whispered.
He laughed. "Can't, Liv. There is no 'away' for you. You're pretty much stuck here. Now, can you tell me, honestly, what's it like to be the kind of person who poisons the lives of the people around her?"
She lunged at him, swinging her fist into his face, and landed hard on the floor, scraping arm, knee, and the side of her right hand. She turned over as quickly as she could, but he was gone, and the darkness closed in.
He was lying flat on his back, not really sure why he was staring at the ceiling. And, he was tired. He couldn't remember being this tired since Maureen was a colicky baby and he and Kathy worked opposite shifts, trying to keep body, soul, and family together. So, hard as the floor was, he really didn't mind it. He was annoyed that, for some reason, he couldn't just give up and sleep. There was something that had to get done. It was so important, he really shouldn't be lying there looking at the ceiling; he should be doing something.
A head came into view – a young man with an eye patch and dark, unruly hair.
"Yeah, he's alive," Xander said, looking up and away from him. "Looks like he could really use a shower, a shave, and a sense of humor, in that order."
Another face joined him – the determined young woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. "Be nice, Xander. He and Willow took the brunt of that spell."
"True," Xander nodded, "and I'm going to go out on a limb that it worked a heck of a lot better than last time. What with the celestial lights and whole floor-go-bye-bye thing."
He could not for the life of him figure out why these idiots wouldn't leave him alone. The floor was nice and comfortable. The ceiling wasn't going anywhere. He just wanted to lie still until everything stopped hurting. He was hoping for sometime next Friday.
"Come on, Elliot," Buffy said, taking his hand and pulling him up. "You'll feel better with some food and some caffeine."
It turned out that when Buffy pulled someone to their feet, there really wasn't anything to be done but go along with it. Stabler found himself standing, a little wobbly, just as tired as he thought he was, and with a throbbing headache as reminder of their little excursion into the dark – no, scratch that – white arts. Willow stood a few feet away, tended by Giles and Faith. Stabler checked the floor, to make sure it had come back and he wasn't standing on thin air as he had been a few minutes previously. Sure enough, the hardwood floor was right where he'd left it. The symbols painted and drawn onto it looked subtly different. He turned around, trying to find exactly what the difference was – something about how the color shifted on the yin-yang knot.
"Did this - " he started to ask.
Xander nodded. "Yep. We don't ask. We don't want to know."
"Right," Stabler agreed, closing his eyes. Liv. The spell had worked. She had some sort of help right now, nearly three hours after she'd disappeared.
"There's more coffee downstairs," Xander offered.
"That would be great."
12:48
SVU
Squad Room
"IAB's here, Captain," Munch said, putting his head into Cragen's office for a moment.
"Great," Cragen muttered. "Send them in, John. Keep working on Harper. We've got to find a trace of him somewhere."
Munch nodded and walked off without introducing the detectives from the Internal Affairs Bureau, a slap in the face from a cop who usually extended every professional courtesy available, albeit with a raised eyebrow.
"Captain Cragen, I'm Detective Sanders, this is Detective Flemming," the senior partner said, offering a hand. Cragen ignored it.
It wasn't that any cop on the force disagreed with IAB's stated mission – to find and deal with corrupt cops. It was that every single IAB detective, every case they touched, every suspect they dealt with, ended up tainted by a greasy film of political expediency. More often than not, good cops got burned, bad cops were tolerated, bungles were covered up, and cases that had been successfully closed were pulled apart and destroyed, and all for a bunch of shields with heavy grudges and a taste for bullying.
"The clock is ticking for my detective," Cragen snapped. "And I've got a shorter supply of patience than I do temper. What do you want?"
Flemming traded looks with her partner. "We understand Benson's partner, Stabler, is a possible suspect in her disappearance."
"Well, you understood wrong," he said, throwing his report on the indecipherable whereabouts of Derek Harper on his desk. "I pulled Stabler off the case because he'd made one bad choice and he's been under a load of stress lately. I can't risk losing him on top of Olivia Benson."
"You call two of your detectives sleeping together under your nose one bad choice?" Sanders asked.
Cragen looked directly at him, which he'd avoided doing until then. All alcoholics could spot each other, though Cragen had been on the wagon even longer than he'd been in charge of SVU. Sanders was a 12-pack a night kind of drunk, and probably mean to boot.
"You want to crucify me, you can wait until we've got Benson back one way or the other," Cragen bit out. "I'll hand you the nails myself. Until then, get the hell out of my squad house and off my back."
They left, satisfied they had thoroughly marked their territory. Cragen watched them go with a growing sense of disaster hanging over his head. Neither Munch nor Finn would have said a word to IAB of what Stabler had told him. Someone had probably overheard and mentioned it to IAB when the grilling began. He knew, better than anyone else, that their best possible outcome – they got Liv back in one piece – could still mean that the entire department was torn apart over this. Not from internal pressures. His detectives would watch each other's backs until Armageddon came and went. No, the powers upstairs would declare the squad a loss, scatter him and his cops to the winds, and maybe, just maybe, start over with a fresh bunch. It suddenly occurred to him that he'd seen his bunch work together for the last time just yesterday, when they'd been grilling Rupert Giles. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted a drink this badly.
Olivia sat, in the dark, breathing hard. Her hands still smarted from her landing. She was more frightened than she dare admit. Was she crazy? Was she dead? There was no frame of reference. When Eric had been there, she could see him, but nothing else. Elliot was Catholic. He probably could have told her stories about Purgatory and Limbo that would have made sense compared to these circumstances. Just now, though, she didn't have the sli-
The lights came on, and she flinched, trying to shield her eyes. She stopped when she realized that her eyes were completely adjusted, and the light didn't hurt at all.
"He's lying," a woman's voice said.
Olivia was on her feet, ready to take an attacker and make them wish they'd never even thought of trying her.
"That is," the woman continued, "I mean, if it were him, which it isn't, he'd be lying, and so since it isn't really him, it's like buy two lies for the price of one."
Liv stared at her. She was a little taller than average, slender, white, dark blonde hair with a hint of red down to her shoulders, curled in a way that made Liv think of WWII movies. Her voice had a strange frankness to it, as if she'd never had it drilled into her that nice girls didn't say mean things. She was wearing a print dress and heels, and looked, for all the world, like she might run some sort of artsy-craftsy store in SoHo.
"Who the he-"
"Wait," the woman put out her hand. "I'm doing this wrong. Rules. There are rules, and I do have to follow them." Then she muttered under her breath, "no matter how stupid they are."
"What are-"
"No!" the woman snapped at her, though without anger. "Don't go asking questions unless you really mean it. You only get three. Questions. Stupid rule." She rolled her eyes.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!" Olivia yelled at her.
The woman blinked. "Oh, well, that's actually a pretty good question. Okay, where to start…um, hi!" she waved a hand in a short arc. "I'm here to help. You get to ask me three questions – two, now – and I get to give you the answers. The hell that's going on is that you were incredibly stupid, ignored Willow's warning – which, not real bright, even if you aren't into redheaded Wicca lesbians – and strolled right into the desmesne of a shadow mage who is-" and she started ticking off fingers on her hand, "a sociopath, has a grudge against Slayers, incredibly powerful, and determined to bring about the end of the world through your death."
Liv opened her mouth to say "what?" and stopped. Somehow, she had the feeling that she should play by the rules. Thankfully, the woman wasn't done talking.
"You walk right into a completely unlit basement labyrinth – hello, Theseus, forget your ball of brains? – that's seen the murders of eight different Potentials and two Slayers with nothing more than a flashlight and a gun? Like a gun's going to help you against the forces of evil?" She blew a lock of hair out of her eyes with a contemptuous puff of air.
"This isn't the basement," Liv said, trying desperately to keep up with this woman.
"It is, and it isn't," the woman answered. "Hey, that was pretty good. Not a question, but it does point me in a good direction to give you more information. Temporally and geographically speaking, this place occupies the same spot on the space-time continuum as the basement you were in. It's not easy to get to. Your shadow mage –"
"Dennis Harper," Olivia supplied, coming up with the name from some corner of her brain.
"Well, that point's debatable," her companion said, warming to her subject. "He definitely started off as a weird kid who took things too personally, but he left behind most of his humanity several years ago. Anyways," and she shook her head to reset herself, "the kid did stuff that would make a vengeance demon blanche. Trust me on this. Your shadow mage created this place as a kind of waypoint. You can't see it from the real world. You can't get in here without his permission, and you can't leave without his permission either. He distracted your partner and then pulled you in."
"Elliot," Liv whispered, horrified. He'd never forgive himself.
"So," she continued, "the plan at this point is that he's going to torture you psychologically until you break. Then he hands you a ceremonial dagger, you stab yourself in the stomach, and his spell is triggered – stripping you of your life essence, the one-time gift of Slayerocity, and your soul in one go. Of course, in doing so, he's also going to open up a Hellmouth – a straight shot portal into one of the nastier hell dimensions – so that he can feast on the blood, gore, and misery that'll be unleashed on a metropolis of nine and a half million people. At that point, being disemboweled and raped will be the least of your worries."
She smiled and shrugged,
pleased with herself that she'd done such a good job summarizing
the backstory. It was all Olivia could do not to
ask "are you
out of your mind?"
"It could be worse," the woman offered as a bit of comfort. "There could be bunnies."
Well, one of them was, Olivia thought, leaning her forehead against the damp stone wall.
Stabler grabbed a towel as he stepped out of the shower and stopped when he saw the other occupant of the bathroom sitting crosslegged on the counter. The relief he'd gotten from the hot water and caffeine evaporated on seeing her eye him in an overly dramatic way.
"Cut it out," he said, wrapping the towel around his waist. "You're no more interested in me than you are in Giles. You're just looking to play some headgames."
"Yeah?" Faith asked, raising an eyebrow. "What makes you so sure?"
"Because Wood grabbed you to keep you from falling, and a guy like him doesn't act all protective over a woman like you unless there's a serious something between them. You're not partners, you're lovers, and he's not the type to tolerate infidelity. So, either you're even crazier than you look – possible – or you're just looking to mess with me. Which, right now, Slayer, I really don't need."
She laughed, not quite pulling off the nonchalant tone she'd hoped for. "So, the cop thinks he can read people. Big whoop."
He stopped, leaned against the doorframe, and crossed his arms, making sure she could see his biceps and the tat on his right forearm.
"Your mom was a drunk all your life. If she didn't have a boyfriend to scream and throw things at, she'd take out her jollies on you. My guess is, if you weren't a Slayer, you'd have a hell of a lot more healed fractures showing up on an x-ray."
Faith swallowed and looked away, bravado gone.
"She's dead," Stabler continued, "or you wouldn't be here with these folks. Your dad was never on the scene – if you were lucky. If he was, he was the one who molested you when you were a kid. I'm guessing when you were eight or younger. If not him, then grandpa, or Uncle Mike, or some guy that should have protected you until Judgement Day. Your mom wouldn't believe you, or if she did, she told you it was your fault. Every time you turned around, the people who were supposed to protect you abandoned you, betrayed you, left you out in the cold, waiting for the predators to find you. And even though you're safe now, you'll never believe it. You could be the strongest Slayer in the history of the world, and you'd still feel like that little girl."
She had gone white while he'd spoken, shook her head, and climbed off the counter. "This was a bad idea, Columbo. Never mind."
She put her hand on the doorknob when he spoke.
"Faith, wait."
He stayed exactly where he was, knowing that if he were to lift a finger right now, she'd likely feel so threatened she'd rip his arm off and beat him to death with it.
"You showed up for a reason. My guess is you've got some questions you think I can answer. How about a fair trade?"
She took a deep breath and let go of the doorknob. It was one of the braver things he'd seen.
"Yeah, okay."
"What are our odds of getting Liv back?" he asked.
She made a face, and her whole persona slid from temptress to tactician in the blink of an eye.
"Not great," she said flatly. "First, we've got to figure out where he's got her, and it's not going to be in the guest bedroom, if you take my meaning. Then, we've got to deal with his defenses. There are both magical and walking layers. Red can take most of the magical ones, though she's getting pretty worn out. The walking ones…well, B and I have been out on patrol every three or four hours in the areas where we found Kennedy and the second girl."
"Holly," he put in.
She nodded. "We've run across half a dozen vampire nests. Most of them were smart enough to run when they saw two Slayers coming through the door, which means they aren't new to the game. But he'll be able to call them all together when he wants them, so numbers are against us."
She paused, and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "Trouble is, Detective," and he noticed that was the first time she'd called him that, "even if we do get to her before she's dead, there's no promise there won't be a fate worse than death involved. We got thrown into this when Willow woke up screaming three nights ago. It took me and B both to hold her down, and Giles had to pull a magical whammy on her to get her thinking straight."
"Giles does magic?" he asked, a little surprised. For some reason, it struck him as being similar to Cragen doing shots.
"Not his style anymore," she shrugged. "I don't know all the details, but there was some ugly stuff back when the Sex Pistols were the thing."
"So, Willow and Kennedy were…"
She gave him the look many women offered a man who was overly interested in the romantic tendencies of two women. "They'd broken up a couple of weeks ago, but Willow keeps tabs on all the Slayers – nothing too close, but if one of us is hurt, she knows."
She paused.
"You've got to
understand, Kennedy was not real well liked. She was pushy, thought
she was the coolest thing to slay since the first Slayer
was
called. But she was still a Slayer."
He understood. It was the same, after all, with cops. Then, something she said dropped into his stomach.
"You said Willow keeps tabs on all Slayers? Would she know if Olivia's okay? Has anything happened to her?"
She looked away, and he knew she hadn't meant to let on to that little fact.
"Faith."
She nodded. "Red says it's already started."
