Chapter 13

Buried Deep

Surging. That's all I can call it. I was surging, bursting, flowing over with anger and confusion and frustration and lust. I wanted to break her, devour her, make her pay with her body and her bones.

Her eyes widened at my words, and her perfect lips fell open. Are these lips made from memories? I bit them, sucking her lower lip into my mouth. She moaned, low enough to make me vibrate through my body. What else do I remember? I thought, and pressed my body to hers, feeling the caress of her breasts against mine through the fabric. A growl formed in my throat as I let my wantoness take its fill. The friction renewed my feverish desire, so much it sang through me… but not enough to quench the other voices screaming their will. Vengeance spoke to me, as desperate, and as urgent as the ache between my legs.

Her hands slid over my sweat damned clothes as she hooked her arms around behind me. I shoved her away, refusing to be encircled anymore, and rose to intercept her. We she struck the wall to the left of the window, rattling the dresser and the windowpane, and I swear she gave a growl before I kissed her silent.

She reached for me again, fingers hooked and urgent into the meagre flesh of my hips. No. I caught them up and pinned them to the wall above her, defying her resistance, leaning my whole weight against her.

She gasped for air against my neck, ragged and sweet. Liar. Lies. I pressed my hot, damp lips to her throat and breathed in the taste of her skin. Is this made of memories too?

"Alice" she gasped, "please."

"What do you want from me?"

"I don't… I don't care. Just touch me. Please. Alice, please."

"Please what? What have you to demand of me? You are not even real."

Her brow furrowed at this, and whatever she tried to say I clamped silent with my hand. Hot breaths rushed through my tightened fingers. Wide eyes, desire, fear. Good.

"Or maybe you once were." I growled, thrusting my hips forward to give her the friction she needed, somehow I knew how, a confidence of body that did not surprise me at all. "Maybe, there is a real Buffy. Maybe she is mine, or was. Either way, you have no right to wear her face. That's it isn't it? Cynthia was right. All this is made of my past. So you must be too."

The next thing I know, the ceiling tumbles down before me, and I am crashing to the floor on the far side of the bed. My lungs empty as my ribs strike the linoleum. Somehow the girl has thrown me with nothing but her hip.

A second later, she is on me, and it was my turn to have my hands pinned above my head. She is heavier than I imagined, stronger by far. There was no way she could be human, and with her back to the window she became an inky black silhouette against the moonlight. For an instant, I see rows of razor fangs dripping ichor behind, a maw splitting her face wide, but then as she leans into the light, no such horror awaits. Her face is soft in the moonlight, young, mortal. Kiss swollen lips parted, eyes wide in shock.

"Alice?" She whispers, as if she doesn't believe it herself. "Are… is it really… are you real?"

"Enough of this crap. Let me go." I say through clenched teeth. She shakes her head, first in disbelief, then firmer, as an answer. Her lips tremble as she leans down to look at me, really look at me.

The orange lights flicked on in the hall, and frantic voices. The nurses had heard us.

"There coming." She said, her face tightening.

"Why don't you just vanish then?" I growl.

"You are just full of good ideas tonight, aintcha?" She said, and stood sharply, pulling me to my feet without any apparent effort. My wrists complained at her vice grip as she lead me to the window, and cracked it open with her free fist.

The next thing I knew I was being dragged barefoot through the hospital grounds. The grass was damp and cool, with crepe myrtle blooms crushing and jamming between my toes. The moon was rising beyond the darkened hospital, the three story Kirkbride building was serrated with spires. Buffy was dragging me away from the center tower, towards the eastern end. I had never been that way, and became aware of a terrible feeling; that we would plunge past my memories and into nothingness.

"Crap." She said sharply as the lights started to flicker on inside. Much to my horrors she changed course, and I found myself pulled towards the black band of woods.

"Not there. Please."

"I know what I am doing."

"Please. I don't want to go in there." I cried.

"Why is that, I wonder?" She said, pausing to look at me, before her head snapped back towards the hospital. "Sorry toots. Way it's gotta be."

She moved faster than I, despite my best efforts, I barely stayed on my feet as she plunged us into what seemed like complete darkness.

After what seemed like an eternity, we broke through into a moonlit clearing. To my horror, I realised it was a graveyard. I was breathing hard and my belly was gnawing at my flesh to escape, but I held it down, somehow. Buffy slowed, her head scanning the shadows as she lead me.

"I don't remember this place." I said.

"What is a memory but a dream?" Buffy said absentmindedly.

"Doctor Myhnegon said the same thing." I said. "I am tired of this. Stop. Just stop." I dug my heels into the soil, and grabbed Buffy's wrists. She relented and stood, one hand on her hip, glaring.

"Smart. Changing it up. I thought you would torture me with this broken Alice crap for eternity, but… props to you, whatever you are."

"Enough!" I screamed, clutching at my head and slumping down onto one of the tombstones. Buffy flinched, shushing me. Her eyes darted to the treeline behind us. I couldn't hear voices or dogs or anything, but she seemed to be listening to something. I shuddered.

"Okay, listen. We stay here, they catch us. There is a ruined chapel up there that we can hide out in for a bit, at least until we untangle what is going on."

"Chapel?" Dread poured through me. A stone angel, and one of flesh like stone. "No."

"Okay, I'll bite. So, let's say you are Alice Cullen. The real Alice Cullen then I-"

"Cullen?" I laughed, burying my hands in my exhausted face. "How could you possibly know the name from my dreams? You are her, aren't you? This is all an illusion, and you know what? I am done. You let me out or kill me. I ain't giving you another moment satisfaction. And I ain't solving your puzzle for ya."

"Rude much? Let me finish, why don't you. By god, you certainly got that bit right about her." She chuckled grimly. "Wait, did you say puzzle?"

I glared at her.

"She makes me do that too. That's it! That's how we get out of here. We need to break back in and find the puzzle. Quick! We can double back and…"

"No. You made a mistake."

"What are you… you are my Alice right?"

"I am Buffy's. And you are not Buffy. Not my Buffy. Not some Buffy I dreamed up in my madness, or a sexual fantasy I assembled and projected on some poor fellow patient. My Buffy is from Forks. A vampire, like me. So give all this… this… charade up. You screwed up."

Buffy stepped forward, her lips trembling or perhaps trying to find words. Cautiously, she edged towards me, searching my face.

It was a subtle change, impossible to describe, but her manner became deeply unsettling. My spine squirmed like a worm on a hook as her smile peeled back across her face. Whatever it was laughed deep and loud.

"I was this close and don't you dare pretend otherwise." She said, running her slender fingers through her black bobbed hair and stepping back away from me.

"Who are you?"

"I am like you. Trapped. I just want to get out of here."

"The puzzle."

"The puzzle." She said. The Buffy thing slumped down onto a stone sarcophagus, and groaned. "I knew you were remarkable, Alice, but to defeat my Irkalla? How?"

It's funny how easy it is to ignore pure terror when you have resolved yourself to fate. Even with her feet from me, I found myself able to look away, look around me at the graveyard. Memories rolled over me like a new dawn.

I was wrong. I knew this place. I could see it now, a darkened spire nestled among the bare trees. The chapel, the only still shape in trembling black woods. I walked towards it, numbly drawn to it. With each footstep memories began to claw their way back up from the mists in my brain. Dark minions bearing gifts of pain and pleasure.

Buffy was waiting at the chapel as I stepped inside, of course. She sat patiently at one of the two dozen or so pews, black eyes fixed on me. I caught her reflection in the filthy water that submerged the chapel and I immediately had to look away. Whatever it was would not stay in my mind, it mercifully slithered out from memory a moment later.

"It only flooded after the storm." I said, drawing in the musty smell that had greeted my new life. "This is all wrong."

"Your memory, Alice. Not mine." It said. "How did you do it?"

"Like I said, it wasn't me. You made the mistake."

I felt him lurking in the shadows behind me. And took in a deep breath and held it. No urgency, no pain. I raised my hand to find it marble white, the scarred fingertips now smooth, the chewed nails were perfect moons once again.

"Using your dream name? Come now, Buffy could have broken into your personal records. Again. I mean, she did that exact thing to you in Forks. Not the most trusting person. Besides, you didn't have that memory until I clawed it out of your broken little brain."

"You hid a summoning spell in a prophecy."

She smiled.

"And someone hid something in me." I said. "I would call that poetic irony."

"I made a prison from my own blood, woven from your memories of the subject. How do you escape that?"

"With the only thing that could." I laughed darkly. "A memory."

Buffy, or, whatever it really was stood up and fixed its oil black eyes on me.

"Solve the seal." It said.

"It's over. I mean it." I said, firmly.

"No, Alice. Not for me.." She said. "It's just a waiting game now. Just time. You have tasted immortality now. You know what time means to the eternal. Speaking of which, I just remembered… one of us is truly immortal, the other needs blood to survive, even in torpor." The thing sat up and crossed her legs casually. "You have three sigils to go on your side. You finish your work, free me, and I have my thralls free you."

"No." I said. The thing was close now, the mockery of Buffy's face inches from mine. My flesh felt like it wanted to crawl from my bones to get away from her.

"I see another future Alice… you will like this one. Picture this. Once my avatar Diana and her toy slayer is done sending your beloved family screaming to the winds, she will bring my glove to your resting place and tear your gift from you. Then I will arise from The La Push Hellgate and the very first thing I will do in this realm is find your little Buffy. Can you imagine the things I will do to her?"

"You may wear her face, but you have no idea what she is capable of."

Behind me, Angelus began to laugh.