Here's my first attempt at fanfiction... or for that matter fiction of any kind. Mostly this started as a way to fill in plot holes that have been bugging me for years now. Like, who was the Doctor (I just don't believe it was Spike), and how did Angel get out of hell, what happened to Dawn's keyness, and what was up with that dominoes comment Doc made that one time? Anyway, it seems to have run away with me. This is a work in progress, and I welcome constructive criticism (my muse survives almost exclusively on Doritos and comments, so please comment :)).
Many thanks to my lovely beta, Mayalaen :)
Title: A New Dawn
Pairing: Spike/Gunn friendship, Spike/Dawn eventually, and maybe even a little Dawn/female OC just for the heck of it.
Rating: PG-13 for violence, language (ratings pertain to the chapter linked in the post. That way, if you like the first few chapters but squick easy, you can skip the NC-17's)
Summery: Post NFA. This one picks up where NFA left off, with our heroes facing impossible odds, at least until they get some unexpected help.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. I'm just borrowing it, and when I'm done I'll put it back where I found it.
That old Black Magic
A block away, fire-balls and lightening bolts rained down on the giant until it fell, collapsing one side of a warehouse under its weight. From the roof of the Hyperion, Willow watched with black eyes, black hair plastered to her face and neck. A wicked smile played at the corners of her mouth and she giggled. "Giant go crunch," she said to herself, then wondered if Rupert would make the same noise. "Daddy Giles shouldn't hide things from planet-jugglers," she said out loud as she prepared to teleport back to England, her work here complete.
From the storm clouds above her head, a glowing face appeared, lightening leaping around it like streaming hair. A voice like thunder only she could hear called to her.
"Witch!" it boomed, "Stay where you are!"
"Osiris," she said sweetly, "I've got a bone to pick with you, but we'll have to save that for later." Her smile vanished, her lips curling with disgust at the thought of the man who'd let Fred die, who would have let the Wolf, Ram and Hart win Los Angeles and maybe the world out of sheer pettiness. "Dumbledore's gonna pay."
The face in the sky smiled then. "No," said the god of death and resurrection. "I have a present for you, and a prophesy to fulfill." Willow gasped, and her eyes rolled back in her head as the god's power poured into her, filling her up to the brim and nearly spilling over, flooding the alley below.
Angel's hands were raw and blistered from the boiling blood of the dragon, but the pain in his back was far worse. He lay still on the dragon's carcass, surveying the carnage around him. Distantly, he could still hear the screams and battle cries blocks away, where Spike and Illyria destroyed what was left of the demon army of Wolfram and Hart. He moved to stand up, wanting to join them, but his muscles weren't working right. He slumped back down with a groan.
Willow struggled to contain the power. She could feel it inside her, burning under her skin and straining the connections between her muscles and bones to the breaking point. It wanted out. Her rage and bitterness fled in the face of the overwhelming instinct of self-preservation. She could feel the tough tissues in her joints begin to tear. A shoulder spontaneously dislocated and she screamed. She had to find a place for it to go, where it would be expended, used up. She thought her nose was running, but knew better when a thick, coppery drop fell into her open mouth. Through the tiny tears in the blood vessels in her nose, the power leaked out. She snatched at it with invisible fingers, but couldn't hold it. The blood dripped down her chin and onto her blouse. She couldn't contain the power, but she could still control it. She stopped trying to pull the wisps of power back into herself and instead pushed a little more out and gave it a mission. It felt its way down the building and into the alley below.
Angel half fell, half climbed clumsily off the dragon. He took a few staggering steps away from it, but stumbled when he tried to step over one of the many bodies littering the street. He fell painfully, to his hands and knees. He didn't know where the others had gone. He mentally tested the link between him and his grandchilde, and knew Spike still lived. He had no way of knowing about the others.
He felt dizzy, saw phantom flashes of light and darkness on the edges of his vision. He'd lost a lot of blood. Blood… It was all around him, the smell of it filling his nose and mouth and sticking to the back of his throat, and utterly useless to him. Demons, nothing but demons all around him. He needed mortal blood. Human was best, but animals would do. Wait. What was that? He turned his head to catch the scent again, and even that small movement made the pain in his back and body flare up again and the flashes of light and dark almost completely obscured his vision. He made himself move anyway. He'd caught the scent of human blood and he moved toward it on hands and knees.
He found the source of the scent buried under a pile of demons and parts of demons. He licked his lips, his tongue running over sharp teeth. He didn't remember vamping out. Weakly and with his vision almost completely gone, Angel pushed the demons away from his prize.
The power found its target. A body, a human body. Willow could see it in her mind's eye. A young black man, eyes open wide and unblinking. He was covered in blood and other, less easily identifiable substances. Desperate now, Willow stopped her search immediately and poured the power out of her, down the trail left by the searching tendrils, and into the body. Blood poured out of her nose and something in her knee popped painfully, and she fell into a heap on the roof. As the last dregs of power left her, so did consciousness, and she lay still and bleeding in the rain.
The power hit the body of Charles Gunn like a physical force. It jerked and convulsed, its back arching and its limbs flailing. One arm hit Angel, and he fell on his side. The delirious vampire snarled and raised himself again. Rage filled him. His prey was fighting back. He didn't have time for this crap! He viciously attacked the body, now shaking violently, and buried his fangs in Gunn's neck.
At first Angel could only pull a few tepid drops out of the corpse's neck. With no heart pumping the blood, the vampire was having a hard time getting what he needed. Then the blood was pouring into his mouth, and the body bucked under him as Gunn drew a desperate, gasping breath and tried weakly to push the vampire off of him.
With the first, wonderfully hot mouthful of Gunn's blood, Angel was flung violently back. His back arched as his muscles convulsed with the power that flowed from Gunn to him through the human's blood and continued to pour into him. He roared as the injuries on his back ground into the rough pavement below him. That pain seemed to lessen somewhat as a new, sharp pain in the middle of his chest took its place. Angel screamed until his voice was hoarse, his throat raw and dry. The pain in his chest throbbed and spread to the rest of his body. He writhed and twisted, his muscles randomly contracting and cramping sharply. It seemed to last hours. Then, all at once it stopped, leaving Angel breathless and gasping.