Thanks to my readers and reviewers!

Chapter VII: Close Encounters of a Jabberwock

Alice knew she should have been feeling weak-kneed with relief that the little boat was speeding away from the people who were after her. She should have been sending up silent prayers of gratitude to whatever higher power may have been keeping an eye out for her. But whatever relief or gratitude she could have been experiencing was being drowned out by a growing torrent of anger, guilt, and horror. She could not feel relief that she was alive, unharmed, and free of imprisonment, not while the scene replaying in her head kept showing her that innocent old man being viciously tossed over the ledge to plummet to his demise. The man was dead because of her. She may not have been the one to throw him, but, in her mind, it made no difference. Those Suits had been searching for her. They had ransacked Hatter's tea shop in pursuit of her. They had been terrorizing and hurting people because of her. And she had done nothing save turn around and run the other way.

She was mortified and sickened by her own act of cowardice. As a Vampire Slayer, Alice was blessed with at least five times the strength of an average human, unparalleled speed, agility, and endurance. She was a trained and tried warrior who had never once, back in her own world, run from a battle. Her flight or fight response had, heretofore, almost always ignored the flight part. It was not as if she never leapt into battle without a drop of fear in her. Nothing could be further from the truth. Alice always feared some epic battle (or maybe even just a minor skirmish) would be the end of her. But, she had long since learned to tether her fear and cloak it underneath her courage, knowledge, and training. Normally, she was quite adept at controlling her fear rather than letting it control her. Well, that was, except when it came to heights. It was despicable that such a thing as being more than six feet off the ground rendered her a weak, pathetic coward. She could not even recall why heights instigated such liquefying fear within her. Her mind must have repressed whatever incident had created such an irrational, deep-seated fear. Would that she could remember, and then maybe she could resolve it and be free of its chains.

Had it truly been the thought of falling which had prevented her legs from moving where they wanted to take her? Certainly it could not have been the superior numbers of the enemy. Even with the much larger population of Slayers worldwide, they were still vastly outnumbered by their enemies. Alice had been in countless battles where the odds had been wholly against her and her compatriots. They had always prevailed, nevertheless. No, the greater number of the Suits had not intimidated her in the least. And, as she did not believe their guns could have been the reason, the only other option left was the unexplainable fear which had dogged her steps since before she could remember.

"Alice?" Hatter's voice broke into her melancholy, self-recriminating thoughts. "Are you all right?"

Alice glanced up, feeling her throat grow entangled with emotion as she saw the concern in his dark brown eyes. She looked away, not being able to bear sympathy she did not deserve.

While Alice knew Hatter had assured her that he believed none of this to be her fault, she could not help but feel as if he if should just abandon her on some lifeless rock. That he was not only still with her, but trying his best to keep her away from the Suits, filled her with a strange, wondrous feeling of gratitude. In her company, Hatter had received nothing but trouble. He had been shot in her place down in the bowels of the Great Library. He had been transformed from a valuable operative to a hunted enemy in the eyes of the Resistance simply because he had protected her. Then, his shop, his very livelihood, had been destroyed by the queen's servants because they knew she had been there.

For a brief second, Hatter let his hand rest on her hand. Alice felt a curious, fluttery sensation in her stomach. When he took his hand away, she dismissed the sensation as mere hunger pains paired up with guilt and horror.

"Alice, I know you feel guilty over what happened back there, but there was nothing we could have done. We only would have gotten ourselves killed," he insisted softly.

What would she have done if he really had been killed down in the Great Library? Her blood ran icy cold through her veins at the mere thought. That was a road she did not even want to think about having to travel.

Alice knew better than to dwell on things which were over and done with, and not to be changed. She willed herself to leave the terrible scene at Hatter's shop behind and focus on the entire reason she had sought his help in the first place. Now, more than ever, she felt the need to rescue Jack and deliver him safely home. In a way, it seemed as if it would redeem her pitiful behavior from earlier.

"Where is the casino?" she inquired calmly.

She saw the expression on Hatter's face darken from sympathetic concern to alarm and disbelief. Her eyes traveled downward to his hands, which were gripping the steering wheel so tight she could see his knuckles turn white. "You still don't plan on trying to negotiate with the queen, do you? I've told you before, it's pointless. The woman would never listen to you. She'd be more likely to have you beheaded for even daring." He gazed at her, his dark eyes desperately entreating her to heed his reason.

"There might be another way," he mused, his eyes turning from pleading to thoughtful. "The White Rabbit is a whole other kettle of onions. There may be some way we can cut a deal with them. It's a long shot, but the way I see it, it's the only chance we've got."

Alice cocked an eyebrow when she heard Hatter's intentional use of the collective pronoun. "We?" she repeated, fixing her questioning gaze on him.

The man shifted awkwardly. He was silent for a long moment before he finally spoke, endeavoring to keep his gaze straight ahead. "Um, well, I don't know if you noticed back there, but my shop was completely ransacked and, quite possibly, will be destroyed. I'm homeless." Alice bit on her lip as guilt assailed her. Though he did not lay any blame at her feet, it was there just the same. She had completely turned his life upside down.

"I'm a target now," Hatter continued levelly, but there was an undercurrent of uncertainty in his voice. "Not just for the Resistance, but for the Suits as well. And, well, there are only so many places in Wonderland I can hide. The only option I see for myself is to go back with you...to your world." He glanced at her, possibly to observe her reaction. There was hope, dread, and a few emotions Alice could not decipher sifting about on his features.

The girl was too stunned to speak for a moment. "You...you want to go back with me?" After all that had happened to him just by being around her, she figured he would be itching to get her to the Looking Glass. She could be out of his life for good and he might then be able to restore some measure of normalcy to his life. She had not expected him to want to join her on her return journey. Even more, she had not expected feeling happy, almost elated, at the prospect.

"Well, if that's all right," he mumbled awkwardly.

Well, shit, if he thinks it's bad here, I don't know how he'd handle a hellmouth. But, he doesn't have to live in Cleveland, of course. I've got a ton of connections. I could make sure he got a nice, relatively demon-free place to live.

"Hatter," Alice said warmly, grasping his shoulder. "You've done so much for me in the short time I've known you and all you've gotten in return for it is a huge pile of grief and pain. If you want to come back with me, then, by all means, you are more than welcome." She smiled, feeling as if it were the first time a genuine smile broke out on her face in years.

She felt her heart speed up when she noticed Hatter was staring at her, a peculiar expression upon his face which she fancied she almost recognized. Before she had time to ponder over it, a distant rumbling sound caught their attention. Two heads whipped around to peer anxiously behind the traveling smuggling boat. Alice groaned when she saw what Hatter had called a Scarab in the air, hurtling towards them. Her sharp eyes carved its ominous shape, feeling a shudder as she recalled being trapped in a box hanging from one of those contraptions.

"Wow, that was quick," Alice muttered.

"Yep, before we do anything we have to shake that royal flush," Hatter remarked, sounding surprisingly calm in spite of the situation.

As Hatter pushed the throttle forward to gain more speed, the little boat emitted a high-pitched keen which made Alice grimace. She had a vision of the boat's engine overheating and blowing a gasket. Almost as if in response, the airborne Scarab started to grow larger as the distance between them grew smaller. It, too, was moving faster. She eyed the woody shore which she presumed was to be their destination. Where they were headed appeared to be a huge, thick forest which extended all the way to the shore. There was no leveling off into a treeless beach she could see. She had not asked where they were going, not so much because she trusted Hatter, but more because it would probably have made little difference for her anyway. It was he who had been born and raised in this world, not she.

She could barely contain her relief when they reached the shawl of trees hugging the shoreline. Hatter angled the boat up against the shore. With a quick glance to check the status of the Scarab, he stood up and directed his attention to Alice. "We have to work quickly to try and hide the boat," he said. He scrambled out of the rocking boat onto the solid ground.

Alice, without needing to be told, threw Hatter the rope. He proceeded to tie it around the trunk of a tree as she hopped to the shore. They then quickly set to work tearing off large branches from the surrounding trees with giant, broad green leaves. They laid those over the boat, effectively concealing it from the view of anything up above. Luckily, it seemed the Suits had not sent a waterborne pursuit because part of the boat's white siding peaked out from in between the leaves.

"Come on," Hatter urged Alice, beckoning her to follow him up the slope into the woods.

As they walked further into the dense woodland, Hatter continued speaking. "That weirdo leading the posse has one hell of a nose for blood." He paused ominously. "And this is the place to find it."

Alice had almost forgotten about the rabbit-headed Suit who had outright murdered that poor man back at Hatter's tea shop. One did not really forget the sight of a man with a ceramic rabbit for a head. She would never go so far as to say she had seen everything, for she knew, philosophically, that such a thing was impossible. She did consider it fair to say she probably could write a lengthy tome on the sheer amount of weirdness she had experienced in her life with the last six years comprising the greatest weight. In her tenure as Vampire Slayer, she had seen things which eclipsed the wildest of imaginations and the darkest of horrors. But, she could honestly say, she would never have dreamt up something as bizarre as a walking, talking male body with a white, ceramic rabbit-shaped head.

Had not a guttural roar emanating from deep inside the woods intruded upon Alice and her companion, she might have launched into a bevy of questions about that strange Suit. As it was, she decided to give her attention over to this immediate development. She mentally opened up all her preternatural senses, feeling the forest subtly shift as if the lenses of a pair of glasses had just been cleaned.

"What was that?" she asked while probing with her senses. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was not very far away from them. The sound of its roar and the vibe she received from it told her that much. It was nothing she had ever felt before, however. There was no innate sense of benevolence or malevolence, however, which gave the young Slayer some cause for relief. It was probably no more than some kind of an animal. That made it no less dangerous, however, for animals liked to eat. She suppressed the images from the movie Jurassic Park, figuring it would be simply absurd to ask Hatter if dinosaurs roamed these woods.

Hatter's answer was cryptic. "There are things in these woods that defy the imagination." His face was pale and pinched with dread, but his eyes roved over the woody area thoughtfully.

Yeah, it takes a lot to defy my imagination nowadays, Alice dryly intoned to herself.

"Come on," Hatter announced, walking forward at a hurried pace. "We don't have much time."

Alice had not heard him, nor had she consciously noticed him moving ahead of her. She was far too busy scrutinizing her surroundings as strategies took shape in her mind. Sunlight dappled the leaf-strewn ground through pockets in the thick canopy layer above. The trees varied in size and thickness from whip thin saplings barely past her hips to massive giants which dwarfed the California Redwoods by at least a few yards in height. These woods were incredibly old, she could feel that. There was infinite age and power sewn deep into the soil and the vegetation. She half expected some of the trees to open up bark-lidded eyes and demand why they were trespassing upon their territory.

I watch too many movies, she silently decided.

"Alice, we have to keep moving," Hatter said anxiously. "We can't shake the posse or fight them. There's only one thing left to try."

Alice's brow furrowed and she stared at the young man in confusion. "And what is that?"

"We're gonna lead 'em into a trap," he explained.

Alice blinked, confounded by her friend's statement. She glanced around the forest again, wondering just what he had in mind to use for a trap. They did not have the time to dig a hole and cover it with leaf litter and dirt. They did not have time to build any other kind of booby trap she could imagine. So, unless Hatter had some fancy tricks up his sleeve (which was possible, she conceded), the young Slayer was completely clueless as to how they would fashion a trap to lead their pursuers into.

Hatter resumed walking deeper into the woods. Alice's eyes widened in alarm when she realized he was walking directly towards the pathway of the beast. Its foghorn roar blasted through the air again at a much greater volume than before. That could only mean one thing: the creature was getting closer to them.

"Hatter!" Alice screeched, running after him. "What are you doing? You're walking towards that thing! Shouldn't we be walking away?"

Alice had fought her fair share of battles against some larger than life foes. However, she had always had a full complement of Slayers accompanying her during those incidents. She would fight this thing if it came down to it, but she would have preferred simply to avoid it, especially if it was just an animal looking for a meal. Hatter, apparently, had other ideas in mind which made the girl worry for the man's sanity. She supposed now was the appropriate time to use that superlative mad.

"Hush!" Hatter cautioned her. "Keep your breathing shallow."

Alice grabbed his right arm and clamped down on it like an iron vice. "What are you doing? What is that thing anyway?" she demanded, though she lowered her voice to a stage whisper.

Hatter swallowed nervously. "It's a jabberwock."

Though the name sparked some recognition, it was not enough to give Alice any helpful information on how to evade, fight, or kill the thing. She struggled to remember the story of Alice in Wonderland, but only the vaguest of images were summoned. She sorely wished she had thought to read that book more often in her adolescence.

"Remember that trap I was talking about?" Hatter said in a quavering voice. "Well, this is it. And I'm the bait."

"What?" Alice hissed in confounded incredulity. Jesus Christ, he's lost his mind.

"I'm going to lead it to the posse," he informed her. She could tell he was fighting to steady his nerves. The man was not certain this plan was going to work at all. Uncertainty led to mistakes, and mistakes could be deadly.

Hatter looked down at the arm which Alice gripped so tightly. He laid his hand over her hand and gazed imploringly at her. "Alice, let me go. You need to get out of here. Find a tree to climb."

"Are you crazy? You can't make yourself bait for a monster," she protested vehemently. "Even if I thought this plan would work, which I don't, it should be me being the bait. I'm fairly certain I can run faster than you." Not to mention I'd rather face this beast than climb a fucking tree.

The tones of the monster's roar reverberated through the air again, causing both Alice and Hatter to flinch. He looked down at her, panic in his dark chocolate gaze. It took her a few seconds to figure out the panic was more on her behalf than for himself. She would not be defied in this matter, though. She could not abide him putting himself in any more mortal danger for her sake.

Tremors overtook the ground, vibrating up through Alice's legs. The trees shook, their leaves producing ominous whispering sounds of doom. Hatter grasped Alice's shoulder with his left arm, as she would not let go of his other arm. "Alice, please, get..."

His plea was abruptly interrupted by the crashing appearance of the jabberwock. It was a truly monstrous creature. Its greenish gray, reptilian scales stretched over a body that was easily larger than any elephant from her world. The closest comparison she could come to (and this would be much later) would have been some kind of dragon-like creature. It had long, lethally sharp claws and a powerful, long neck. A pair of ragged, thin wings sprouted from its hunched back, neither of which looked capable of carrying a creature of such size into the air. Perched atop its proportionally tiny head were two bulbous protuberances which served as the beast's eyes. There were also two humongous buck teeth protruding from its mouth.

The lumbering beast stopped in its tracks when the two humans came into view. Its eyes swiveled around to focus on Alice while making a decidedly hungry growl. The shock of it made the girl's hand go limp. She unintentionally let go of Hatter's arm.

Hatter screamed, "Run!" while bolting off the pathway, no doubt believing Alice would follow him. Unfortunately, it had decided she looked like a more delectable morsel. The girl knew she would appear to be the easier target, and once the creature had appeared and seen them, she had known instinctively that it would go after her. With no particular direction in mind other than that it was opposite to Hatter's direction, Alice ran.

Releasing a great howl, the jabberwock followed. It tore through the woods in its clumsy pursuit, stumbling over logs, boles, underbrush, and rocks which Alice was able to deftly maneuver around or over. She kept her speed at a normal level, however, knowing if she pushed herself to run at Slayer speed, it may lose sight of her and then turn on Hatter.

As she fled the snapping jaws of the beast, her sharp ears picked up the sounds of Hatter's voice, crying out her name. As far away as he was, she could still hear the panic and terror in his voice, all of it bent towards her. She did not turn around or try to shout out a reassurance, as she wanted him to be as far away as possible from this monster and she definitely did not want to lead it back to him.

Be bait for a monster...the moron, she thought to herself even as she leapt over a huge tree root.

She picked up her pace and started to zigzag her movements, loping around trees and under low branches. Her intent was to slow the creature down and possibly get it tangled up in the décor of its own home. It had become almost immediately apparent that the jabberwock, while huge and fearsome, was also rather unintelligent and ungainly. Its cumbersome bulk was no match for the closely packed forest, which made Alice wonder how the thing had survived. Certainly natural selection would have prevailed upon the species to evolve smaller, more agile forms. Once she considered that, she snorted in dry humor and dismissed it. The natural laws of biology and physics probably did not apply in this world as it did in her world.

Skirting through a pair of trees which allowed plenty of space for a small young woman to slide through, but not nearly enough for an enormous carnivore, Alice experienced a decided loss in agility: she tripped and fell. The toes of her boot snagged on a branch or exposed root concealed by the dead leaf litter, keeping her lower body from moving forward. Her upper body, however, was still in forward motion. The imbalance was immediately redressed once she went sprawling, face first, onto the ground.

"Shit!" she cursed. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees a few paces before springing back to her feet.

Her decision to run through those two trees proved to be very auspicious, however. The jabberwock's lack of wits and its lumbering size had combined to trap the monster between the trees. Enraged that its prey was so close and, yet, still out of reach, it stretched out its long neck and blared its foghorn roar of anger and hunger at Alice. It dug its large claws into the ground, tearing up clods of dirt and roots as it strained to break free of its temporary wooden chains. The trees bent forward, emitting small cracking sounds.

Knowing those trees probably would not hold the thing forever, the girl knew she had little time to act. She would have to disable the creature somehow to keep it from re-commencing its pursuit of an Alice-shaped meal. The last resort would be to outright kill it, but that was much easier said than done with the jabberwock's impressive size and her having no weapon on her person.

Snap off a tree branch. Jesus, that's the first thing you learn in Slayer 101. Weapons are everywhere if you know to look.

Alice looked above her and spotted a thick long branch hanging low to the ground. She stretched up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around the branch, and tore it off at the base. The wood splintered unevenly and left sharp, jagged edges. She flipped it around so the sharper edge faced the struggling jabberwock. While not as sharp as she would have liked, the branch would have to serve; she would just have to put extra force behind it to compensate.

"Alice!"

Hatter came running into view through the thick foliage. The timing of his appearance coincided with the sharp cracking sounds which meant the two trees keeping the jabberwock at bay had finally snapped under the stress, literally speaking. Alice barely noticed her friend's appearance while she lifted her make-shift weapon as the beast's jaw came straight at her. Instead of getting a mouth full of flesh and bone, the creature ended up engulfing the branch almost entirely. Its momentum almost made her fall again, but she had splayed her legs to stabilize herself and disperse her center of gravity. Her boots dug into the soil as the creature heaved against her and the branch, but she stayed upon her feet. Once the branch lodged in the beast's mouth, she marshaled her strength and shoved the branch in deeper, feeling resistance give way as she pierced the flesh at the back of its throat.

A gurgling, pitiful howl emerged from the creature's throat. It reared back, shaking its bulbous head and clawing at the branch lodged in its mouth. Alice had shoved the thing in deep, and the jabberwock's unwieldy digits could not wrap around the branch. All it could do was howl and tear at it uselessly while its swiveling eyes rolled in their protuberant sockets, eventually coming to rest on Alice, who stood before it watching with fascinated horror.

Well, great. I think all I managed was to piss it off even more. Fail.

"Alice," Hatter uttered in warning, his voice breathless.

With her peripheral vision, she saw him edging closer to her while keeping his gaze trained on the beast. Very carefully, Alice waggled her finger to gesture for Hatter to stay back. She knew the beast was studying her, preparing itself to strike out at her in all its fury, pain, and hunger. She held its yellow gaze, balling her fists. It was completely different from staring down a demonic creature or a vampire. Those creatures were brimming with malicious hunger; they reeked of unnatural death and evil. The jabberwock was neither malicious nor evil, nor did it smell of the loamy decaying scent all newborn vampires exuded. It was merely an animal driven by instinct to eat, and it had suffered a great amount of frustration and agony all for the pursuit of a meal.

With a garbled snarl, the creature lunged toward her with surprising speed. Hatter screamed her name, but his fears were laid to rest when it became obvious she was far quicker than the wounded creature. She dodged the attack, nimbly bounding to the side where he stood with his arm outstretched. He latched onto her hand and then they were pounding the ground, trying to put as much distance between them and the wounded, but still hungry, jabberwock.

They ran without any regard for direction, the leaf litter and exposed roots often providing tricky little detriments to their balance. The thumping footsteps of the beast behind them urged the two on quicker, though Alice was hoping the branch skewering its throat would have distracted and slowed it down just a little. She was about to begin kicking the gears up to preternatural Slayer speed (although that would probably have entailed dragging Hatter behind her like a kite, something she gathered he would not appreciate later) when the ground literally disappeared out from beneath them.

The descent to the cold, dirt surface lasted barely a second, but Alice still tried vainly to lash out for a holding to stop the fall. A sharp, slicing pain tore into her left side and she let out a gasp. She barely gave that a whit of a thought, though, when she heard Hatter unleash an angry grunt of his own. She frantically glanced over at her companion. He was lying spread-eagled on the ground, his hat having been whisked off his head during the fall, leaving an unruly shock of chestnut hair to spring free. Surrounding his body, but miraculously leaving him untouched, were several long sticks. Tilting her gaze upward, she saw that those sticks resembled elongated stakes, more like battle pikes or spears. They were securely dug into the ground and their tips looked exquisitely sharp.

Damn it, why couldn't I have found these about five minutes ago?

"Are you okay?" she heard Hatter ask between his gasps for breath.

Alice's answer was interrupted by the bulbous head and long, scaly neck of the jabberwock, branch still stuck in its mouth. It snorted and unleashed its broken howl. Alice and Hatter lay very still as the creature edged its face closer, skimming some of its bottom jaw on one of the sharp sticks. It did not appear to like that at all. Apparently, the branch piercing the back of its throat had made it wary of sharp, pointy objects, even if there was a potential meal involved. With a snarl that somehow sounded like a concession of defeat, it withdrew from the hole. They listened to it stomp away before breathing freely.

She heard Hatter rustle around, no doubt intent on putting his hat back in its proper place. Alice stayed where she was. The pain in her side reintroduced itself to her conscious attention and she winced.

"You okay?" Hatter repeated. She could not discern if he had noticed her injury or not.

"Um...yeah," she stammered weakly, although that was stretching the truth a bit. Alice had not been so lucky in her fall as Hatter, but, all things considered, it could have been worse. Unlike him, she had managed to hit one of the sharpened sticks. She tentatively reached out to her throbbing left side, feeling the rip in her dress and the warm, sticky feeling she was all too familiar with. She pulled her hand away, not surprised to find it stained red. Well, at least she had not been outright impaled. The irony of the situation was not lost on her. She was smaller than Hatter, and, yet, she had hit one of the lethally sharpened sticks while he had somehow missed them all.

"What the devil? You scheming curs! Vermin!" bellowed a voice from above the hole. Alice and Hatter exchanged bewildered expressions before looking up. A face appeared above the hole. It was the face of a man who was well into his golden years with a curly white mustache and another wisp of snowy white hair curling under his chin to form a comical little goatee. Of course, this being Wonderland, there simply could not be just a regular old man hurling archaic invectives at them above a hole which very sharp spears staked into the ground. This old man had to be decked out in a suit of tarnished armor with the remnants of a coat of white paint cracking and peeling off. A chainmail hood framed his narrow, angular face, which was almost red with indignation.

"Saboteurs! Anarchists!" the man shouted accusingly. "I was this close to catching him!" He then strung his hands apart for emphasis.

He looked down at his hands with a frown and then readjusted the distance. "This close," he reiterated in an almost mournful tone.

The old man slapped his hands down, drew up his shoulders, and turned his nose up superciliously at the two who lay below. "Degenerate bagheads!" he spat.

Alice and Hatter could do nothing for the moment but stare in complete bafflement.