The Shield and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
in a crossover FanFiction
Antwon's Fangs
by LancerFourSeven
AKA STFarnham
See Chapter One for Disclaimer
Chapter Six
Vic was frankly worried as he oversaw the raid on the warehouse. He exhibited nothing but confidence on the outside – the info was probably good, but wasn't a hundred per cent and his rep was on the line these days.
The LAPD SWAT team, backed by several carloads of uniformed cops, quietly surrounded the warehouse, making certain all exits were covered. At the Captain's signal, SWAT crashed through doors on all four sides simultaneously, with a lieutenant on a loudspeaker yelling, "POLICE! POLICE! POLICE! DOWN ON THE FLOOR!" over and over until everyone inside was lying on the floor. Vic, the other detectives, and uniformed officers started searching for hiding places and checking out closed doors. Vic casually opened an office door, but was shocked when an incredibly large individual roared out with the impetus of a freight train. He was at least four hundred pounds of muscle on a seven foot frame, with a bushy red beard and a bald skull sporting some strange tattoos. His fierceness was palpable, Vic stumbled backwards in fear, yanking at his gun, yelling, "DOWN DOWN DOWN YOU MUTHERFUCKER!" Vic could see some of the others pulling guns and had enough presence of mind to yell, "DON'T SHOOT, HE'S UNARMED!" About twenty cops pulled their nightsticks and leaped on top of the rushing perp. All Captain Rawlings could see was a pile of blue with their black sticks rising up and down. She thought about ordering them to stop, but she thought better of that when the perpetrator managed to throw off a half-dozen officers. Still, it was about four thousand pounds of cops versus four hundred pounds of perp, eventually he settled down, unconscious, and incredibly, thought Rawlings, still alive. She supervised as they handcuffed the man with double cuffs and manacles. He didn't even appear badly injured, she thought it was lucky they hadn't filled him full of bullets.
After that excitement, they went back to searching, and finally someone found about two hundred kilos of nearly pure black tar heroine, much to Vic's relief. He would have been in the doghouse without that. And even better, Vic found two plastic wrapped kilos all alone in a back room, he quickly hid them in the ceiling, without mentioning them to anyone.
Hours and hours later, well after dawn, they finally dragged the walking mountain back to the station, where he started groaning and came to, and not so surprising, was still angry, angry enough to bust his handcuffs and start tossing cops around in the station.
Faith came into the Barn to get her ride-along with detectives Wagenbach and Wyms. As she entered, she couldn't help but notice a huge commotion on the other side of the glass security door. The desk sergeant was too busy trying to restore order to notice her waiting to be buzzed in, and there was a pile of at least a dozen cops on top of somebody, with most of the cops slamming an unseen perp with their night sticks. Faith's eyebrows shot up when she observed what was nearly an explosion of people: the perp on the floor somehow heaved up with superhuman effort and cops went flying every which way.
Faith thought, 'Damn, that is one huge dude!'
As she watched, he ran towards the entrance, looking like a charging rhinoceros from Faith's viewpoint. He bowled over more cops, tossed waiting room chairs this way and that, and burst furiously through the 'unbreakable' security glass. Faith was aware of Vic and a few other cops behind her frantically shouting at her to move so they could get a clear shot, but she stood her ground. The perp was preparing to charge right through her when she moved to her left at slayer speed, hooking her foot around the huge man's ankle and grasping his right wrist with her right hand. Now he tripped forward from his feet while being held back by his hand, which made him completely out of balance. Faith twisted around, pulling the perp's arm with her, her legs angled and braced against a door frame to give her leverage. He twisted, stopped, and fell to the floor face first. It sounded just like you'd expect more than four hundred pounds of fresh meat hitting the floor to sound. He wasn't knocked out, but he was groggy enough not to offer much resistance as Faith twisted his arms behind his back and handcuffed him in seconds. She stood to face the crowd of cops rushing at her from both directions.
"Holy fucking shit!" said Vic.
"Damn girl," said Dannie, "you could teach our unarmed combat class – that was as good as Kennedy."
"Who do you think taught Kennedy?" She put her knee into the perp's back and said, "Hand me some more cuffs, he broke the last set you had him in."
The ride-along was postponed until the next day, so Faith went back to the hospital to check-in with Buffy and Willow. She found Kennedy's room (she was out of the ICU by now) and said to Buffy, "The plot thickens. Someone out there really wanted Kennedy dead. She was shot from a block away with a very expensive military sniper rifle..."
"Military?" said Buffy. "Someone's starting up the Initiative and wants us out of the way?"
"I don't think so. They used a cut-out, a long time alcoholic homeless man."
Willow frowned and said, "How does that work? Alkies can't shoot straight, can they? Don't they tremble too much?"
"Apparently this guy was ex-army, and he didn't have to shoot from very far, just a short block or so, which is nothing for a rifle as good as the one they got. And luckily for Kenn, he missed his shot – he was probably trying for a center head shot but he only winged the side of her skull; slayer or not, that's why she's alive. They also had a backup, but he was trying to stay in the background and managed to get himself arrested when a couple of detectives, purely by luck, happened to be right on the scene as he tried to clean things up."
"But who would want to go to this much trouble to assassinate Kennedy?" Willow asked, shuddering a little.
"Good question. Buffy, you want come with me and do a little investigating?"
"Huh? Oh yeah, sure. You okay staying here, right Willow?"
"Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Call me if you need anything."
Buffy and Faith walked out to the car. Buffy asked, "So, do you have a, what-do-you-call-it, a lead?"
"A couple of ideas. How 'bout you?"
"Well, I did get a message to see someone named Riley about a demon."
"Riley? Your old boyfriend? The Army guy?"
"Since the message was from Riley, I think this is a different one. Anyway, here's the address."
They drove off, eventually ending up in front of a small but well-kept Spanish Revival house in a solidly middle-class neighborhood. Buffy knocked, a woman answered. "Uh, does a 'Riley' live here?"
"Yep, that's me, Lauren Riley. What can I do for you?"
"The message said something about a demon."
Riley suddenly froze, just for a moment. Her expression shuttered down. She asked, "Who sent you?"
"Someone you know. Riley Finn."
"Oh yeah, he sent you? You two are some kinda super-powered hunters?" Lauren didn't seem impressed with either Buffy or Faith.
"Yeah, you could say that. So what's the scoop?"
"Who are you guys?"
"I'm Buffy Summers of the ISWC."
"And I'm Special Agent Faith Lehane, DCIS, on loan to the Justice Department."
"Oh, I see. Er, what's the ISWC?"
"Sorry, it's a need-to-know basis only. All you need to know is it's an organization that is tasked to deal with things that go bump-in-the-night."
"There's an organization for that?"
"Yep, an international NGO, even."
"Okaaay." She paused, then finally continued when neither Faith nor Buffy appeared ready to explain further. "Well, I was out hunting for bodies with my dog..."
"Hunting for bodies? What the fuck is that about?" asked Faith.
"What she said," said Buffy.
"I'm under contract with the City of Los Angeles. I have a cadaver dog, Rover. When the cops suspect buried victims, they call me and Rover and I look for them. Well, Rover does the looking, I just drive him around."
"Oh, no one briefed me on this, go ahead then."
"So anyway, I got caught up peripherally with Riley's little group of hunters a couple of years ago. It scared the ever-lovin' shit outta me, but after the weirdness got straightened out I thought about adding to Rover's repertoire. With the help of Riley's group, I trained Rover to give me an 'off' signal when he detects a demon, buried or not, dead, undead or alive."
"How does that work?"
"When he detects a human corpse, he barks once and sits down to wait. I flag the spot and signal him to continue. But if it's something demonic, he barks once and takes a leak, then continues hunting without any other signal. That way other cops assume there's nothing there, and I just have to remember the general area and call Finn later on."
"Okay, that makes sense, you wouldn't want the local constabulary to dig up demons, would you?" said Buffy.
Faith looked at Buffy oddly for her choice of words. " 'Constabulary?' "
"Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in England, so sue me," said Buffy. "So Rover found a buried demon, let's go dig it up."
"Now? It's late, it'll be dark by the time we're done."
"Rover don't care, does he? And we don't care neither."
"Yeah, but I'm kinda jittery at night these days, ever since that thing..."
Buffy and Faith smiled at her. "That's a good thing to be, but we ain't got time to sit around and braid each others hair till dawn. Let's get Rover and go."
Lauren sighed, "Okay, but if this ends badly I'm gonna haunt you guys. We'll take my car."
"I'll follow you."
"Does your car have four wheel drive?"
"No, it's a rented Taurus."
"Then we'd better take mine."
Riley drove out past the Farmington city limits and turned on a dirt road in the shadow of the highway. She studied the landscape carefully and found the track with the police tape across it. She stopped and shifted into 4WD low range, and carefully negotiated the crude road down the side of the old abandoned warehouse. She turned into the field, away from the building, and finally parked near an area with several recently dug holes.
"Okay, this is the place. Now we just have to find the 'off' hole."
Riley let Rover out and said, "Find!" The dog took off like an arrow and went straight to the place he'd marked the last time. He woofed once and lifted his leg.
"Rover! Stop!" commanded Lauren. "The dog piss marks the spot, I guess it's up to us to dig."
An hour or so later Riley was watching Buffy and Faith shovel dirt lit only by the headlights from her Jeep Cherokee. She was completely wiped out by digging, and was sitting on the dirtpile with her dog, both drinking water. She was astonished at both Faith and especially Buffy's energy and ability to keep shoveling dirt without even slowing down.
Suddenly, Faith felt the tip of her shovel hit something soft. They both stopped and brushed away dirt to find:
"Clem? Somebody murdered Clem?" exclaimed Buffy.
But the demon's eyes popped opened, shocking Lauren to her feet.
"H, h, human eyes don't do that," she said shakily, pointing at the demon's eyes glowing with reflected light from the headlights.
"True, he's a demon, but B and I already knew that."
"Hey, I'm not dead," said the demon as he started to sit up.
Faith grabbed him by the neck and said, "Don't go fuckin' with us now!"
Buffy shook her head. "Clem's all right, he won't try to eat us, will you?"
Faith backed off so the demon could stand. He shook the dirt off him like a dog shaking water. All three climbed out of the grave. Rover stood up and barked furiously, his fur standing up along his back.
Buffy said, "Can you control Rover? Clem here's okay for a demon. Come to think of it, he and Rover ought to get along fine, they both hate cats."
"Rover doesn't hate cats!" said Lauren.
"Hey, I don't hate cats, either! I love 'em! Especially barbecued and served with good sauce," said the demon, closing his eyes blissfully.
"How come he was buried if he's not dead?" asked Lauren.
"Look," said the demon, "when some scary gang-banger shoots me, I play dead, okay? If I didn't, they might find a way to really kill me, and I just know I'd hate that."
"So Clem, how'd you get shot?"
"First of all, I'm not Clem, I'm Melc, Clem's twin sister."
"Sister? Funny, you don't look like a girl."
"Our kind don't, we have different sex characteristics, I'd show you but I'm shy. Anyway, I was forced into this gang, run by that shit Antwon Mitchell. His sister got herself turned into a vampire, and somehow Antwon snagged on the idea of an undead squad of frighteners for his collections department. So he volunteered a couple of his men – I think drugs were involved – to get vamped by his sis, and tried to recruit some demons. I was all he could find in that department – the only other demons in Farmington being fast enough to stay clear of him. The only problem was that I didn't come up to his expectation of ferocity, one day he wanted me to torture a rival dealer and I wouldn't so he shot me and had his hit-couple bury me. I was buried too deep to dig myself out, and without air I couldn't do much but lie and wait."
"Wait for what?" wondered Buffy.
"Oh, you know, for the soil to wash away, or an animal to dig me out, or something. Hey, thanks for digging me up, it was getting kind of boring down there."
"You're welcome. Thank Rover here for marking your location."
Melc sniffed the air. "Yeah," he said, "thanks for pissing on my grave, Rover. You're lucky you're not a cat."
TBC