Chills rippled through Faith. She picked a tunnel at random and walked silently down it. Buffy dropped in behind to follow, her breathing calm and steady. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. Walls glistened with a damp hue. The faint drip of water echoed throughout. Puddles and potholes dotted the tunnel. Both girls switched their flashlights on. Thin strands of light tackled the lengthy darkness.
Although Faith couldn't sense the physical presence of the undead, an eerie stillness lingered in her body. The Slayer instinct inside anticipated the hunt. Her keen, sharp eyes saw the bones of a rat hunched in the mossy undertow. The smell of dead and decaying things pushed her lungs.
"The living conditions here are rank." Buffy compulsively wiped her sleeves. "I mean, ick?"
Faith prowled around a curve, muscles flexing tight like a steel trap. "Prefer it if we stay quiet for now. Don't want no surprises."
"Not going to happen," Buffy said. "We'll sense a surprise from a mile off. We'll be fine."
"Maybe so. Still," Faith shrugged, "Not too keen on the feel of this place."
"Vamp lair. Always a major creep factor," Buffy replied, wry. Faith grunted agreement.
Signs here and there indicated the tunnel still got used regularly. Black stains smeared the walls. Fait recognised them as blood, no more than a few days old. Anxious quiet settled between them. Then Buffy started muttering under her breath, touching her sleeves and glancing around feverishly. "Usually sewers are cleaner than this…"
"What kind of sewers you been trumping around in?"
"Cleaner ones. Duh."
"Scared of getting down and dirty, huh? And here I thought you were an action kinda girl."
Buffy pointed at herself, indignant. "Hey! It's not like I have much stuff to wear. I've only got a suitcase full. A girl has to be attentive about her clothing when she has limitations. Just... ew! God! That went in my eye!"
"Stop being such a baby," Faith drawled, greatly amused as Buffy furiously rubbed her eyelid. "Go and play with your my little ponies or something if you can't handle getting a little wet."
"I can handle!" Buffy protested. "I'm all about the handling. But my clothes? Not so much. They hate freaky creepy drippy tunnels." She stared at a small pile of bones and pulled a face. "And little dead rodents. Whiskery little rats…"
"Rats in a sewer. Really? Well I fucking never!" Faith raised her hands in the air in mock astonishment.
"I hate you. I have a vested interest in preserving my clothes."
"A vested interest," Faith echoed, manoeuvring around a large indent on the floor. "Sure. Still don't change the fact you're whining in my ear. Like those little flies."
Buffy's mouth fell open. "I don't whine!"
"Yeah? Then what are ya doing?"
"Talking. Making conversation. You do know how to do that, right?"
"Those panties of yours are bunching." They reached a junction and picked the left catacomb. The scent of dead things permeated stronger in the air. "Let's just keep the convo five by five, before someone says something the other will kill them for."
Buffy snorted. "Deal. What does that even mean, anyway? Five by five."
Faith swivelled her head ninety degrees to face the blonde. "Means everything's a-ok. Means also 'loud and clear.' It's old radio slang. When testing the strength of a signal, an radio operator reported the strength and clarity of a signal on a scale of 1-5. Got used as early as the '50s."
Buffy stared at her. Faith tried to identify the look. Every time Faith did a random thing or said something, sometimes Buffy would just look at her. She acted like someone who'd just had someone splash cold water in her face, or found out the family dog was able to talk. The look irritated Faith. It seethed right under her skin. She clenched her jaw and took a few collected breaths to regain better command of the emotion.
Really, it was ridiculous how easy she felt the anger.
"Oh. Didn't know that."
"Not many do," Faith managed, some of the rage diffusing. "Even tripped Red up on it, and you know how nerdy she is."
"Willow does know a lot," Buffy agreed. "She and Giles were like, always the brainy ones."
"Someone's gotta be. Don't think Slayers are exactly famed for their intelligence."
"That's not true," Buffy pouted, offended. "Okay so I'm not exactly up there with the brainiacs, but I refuse to be put in that stereotype."
Faith raised her shoulder up and down. "Whatever. We don't need smarts - we just need pointing so we go bang. The strong ones never have brains, anyway. You see it all the time in movies and games. Although there's Beast," she pondered, "In X-men…" Thinking of comic book superheroes dissipated the last of the anger.
Faith could tell the X-men comment went straight over Buffy's head. The blonde pouted and strode forward, a mini storm cloud brewing overhead.
"Hey, wait. What? Are you annoyed? What did I do?" Faith attempted to catch up.
Buffy splayed out a hand. It stopped an inch from Faith's chest. "Less with the noise. You feel them?" Buffy whispered.
Faith looked down at where Buffy's hand happened to be positioned. "The twins? Nope. But you might."
"What? Ew, no!" Buffy hastily retracted her hand. "I mean the vamps! Bumpy faces! Not bumpy…" She flushed. "Never mind. Can you sense them?"
"No. Getting nothing," Faith said. She stretched her awareness outwards, delving into every taste, sound and smell. She beamed her flashlight all around the stygian tunnel to reveal a fork in the path, still detecting nothing. It was dead and tranquil as before.
Buffy swallowed, her eyes gleaming in excitement. "This way. There's a lot. All grouped up." She weaved to the right. Faith trailed behind, slightly sullen.
How come she can feel those bastards and I can't? Faith ventured the question into her mind, waiting impatiently for a reply.
Hell if I know. The Inner Slayer murmured.
We should have the same senses, right? Shouldn't we?
Yes. But you've noticed, right? In the patrols. She seems to be on the ball more. Reacts faster. Punches stronger. Senses them from further away.
You saying she's a better Slayer? The revelation outraged Faith in a lot of ways.
She shouldn't be. She should be more or less the same. So once again, I state: hell if I know.
The peculiar absence in Faith's mind told her the voice wasn't interested in continuing the conversation. She fumed silently, taking quick peeks at Buffy every now and then.
Buffy's hand twitched over her stake. Faith instantly mimicked the gesture, padding with utmost stealth. The blonde's neck muscles were taut. She faced Faith, nostrils flaring, and mouthed the word, 'Vamps,' flashing her left hand four times.
Twenty vampires. Faith narrowed her eyes.
In normal situations, twenty vampires would send them packing in the opposite direction. A Slayer picked their enemies carefully when they had the choice - in order to live just that little bit longer. Thankfully, soulless vampires and hellish demons tended to be solitary. They had no warm fuzzy feelings for each other. Sure, when it came to selecting targets to kill, they generally avoided each other or occasionally teamed up when it was most convenient. But when they started actually congregating, it caused some semblance of alarm.
"How near?" Faith mimed. Buffy's answering smile was canine.
One corner later, Faith felt her Slayer senses pinging.
Finally, the bat signal! Buffy switched off her flashlight, inviting Faith to do the same. They edged carefully around the next corner to peek at where the vampires gathered. The area in question was a spacious cistern, with five other tunnels leading off into unknown depths. Weathered paths sloped up to the centre, shaped like a circle. Nineteen vampires crowded around an altar. One vampire stood on a podium. A naked woman lay on top of the altar, and judging by the numerous puncture marks on her, dead. The vampire on the podium talked incessantly, his voice reverberating softly in the large chamber.
Bile rose in Faith's throat. Blood swirled in her ears.
"I'll-" Buffy hissed, face full of murderous promise. Faith reached out an arm and grasped Buffy's shoulder to restrain her. She shook her head no. Buffy trained the murderous glare on Faith instead.
The expression vanished when Faith pulled a sun-bomb out of her pocket.
Fascinated, Buffy watched as Faith clicked the catch off and discreetly rolled the weapon so it had full view of the entire cistern.
None of the vampires noticed. Both Slayers retreated back and squeezed their eyes shut. Faith manically grinned as the bomb spewed out pure, blazing light. Startled screams and shrieks drowned into silence. The grin turned into exalted, breathy chuckles.
Buffy opened her eyes, expression resembling a fish. "That was easy," she said.
"Uh huh." Faith admired the relatively empty cistern. She began to approach the body tied on the altar.
"It feels wrong, somehow…" Buffy muttered, now the one following behind. "Doing that without a fight. Or even an exchange of insults. It just reeks of wrongness."
Faith ignored her and examined the deceased female morosely. Young, probably no older than sixteen. Her eyes stared sightlessly up to the ceiling.
Faith wondered about her last moments. She wondered about the fear.
She gently lidded the eyes with her thumb and forefinger. She regarded the girl for a little longer in contemplative quiet. Faith noted the pale, anaemic and shrivelled skin. The girl probably had not even a single drop of blood left in her body. No way this one would be rising up as a vampire.
Faith wanted to cover up the corpse. She wanted to hide away the imperfections, the myriad of bite marks and exposed veins on her skin, hide away the fact she had been so violated in a twisted act of darkness. Rage coiled in her body.
"The girl…" Buffy's voice wavered, "She has a mark on her." The blonde pointed at a small tattoo just above the girl's wrist.
The shape of the mark was a blue hexagon - six sides each decorated by a small scarlet circle. Interconnecting black lines between each circle trailed around the hexagon.
Alarm bells rang in Faith's head.
"Do you know what this mark is?" Faith put down her flashlight and held up the dead girl's arm, displaying the tattoo under Buffy's torchlight. It glimmered.
"No," Buffy replied, wrinkling her nose in disdain.
"This is the same pattern as the one we got in SunnyD High."
Faith wasn't sure how much Buffy knew about the human sacrificial spell they had tucked in the ruined foundations of the school. It was something no-one ever liked talking about, because it reminded them of their own constant failure to properly seal the Hellmouth without cost.
"A hexagon? Why?"
Faith dropped the arm, resisting the impulse to punch the blonde flying into the cistern waters.
"There's a problem with the Hellmouth." Faith checked for any other signs or symbols. This was a ritual killing, she was sure of it, and she needed to know why. After all, the changeover was soon. Too soon.
"Isn't there always?" Buffy said dismissively. "The Hellmouth problem thing happens so much, it's practically my end of year exams."
Faith scoffed. "Tell me about it. Problem with this Hellmouth is that it's open."
Buffy neatened her hair, sweeping up loose blonde strands into a tight knot at the back. Faith eyed a scar on her neck. Two pinprick lacerations ribbed the skin. Deep and jagged vampire bites.
The Master, wasn't it? He'd actually killed her for a brief moment. The after bite however seemed uneven, as though Buffy had been bitten more than once. Faith momentarily forgot what else she wanted to say and studied the scars. Funny how such a small thing told so much.
"Open? But.." Buffy paused, her hazel eyes squinting in the faint yellow illumination. Her breath curled and fanned out in the air. A shiver of cold burrowed into Faith's limbs. "It can't be open. This place isn't... apocalyptic-y enough. Right?"
"Oh, it's open, girlfriend. We're just not letting it go all the way. We got a mojo shield around it 'cos we can't close it. That hexagon you see on the girl? That's the symbol of the shield."
"Huh." Buffy crinkled her forehead. "Let me get this straight. You got some freaky pattern around the Hellmouth so it can't cause the apocalypse? Then what's the problem?"
"Everything," Faith spat the word from her mouth. "It needs six human sacrifices every four months to keep it working. It kills them when they cast the spell."
"What? What?" Buffy's eyes sparked, the kind of spark that sent small creatures and demons scurrying for a place to hide. "You people kill people?"
"Don't look at me like that. The spell - I hate it. I…" Faith jerked an arm in frustration. "There ain't anything I can do. Council says it's the only way for now. They and the scoobs - everyone's trying to find a better way to stop it."
"Why can't they just plug it up like every other Hellmouth?"
"Wish I knew. But they can't. If they let it free, we can kiss America goodbye. We're... we're saving more people than losing."
The words sounded empty to Faith. No matter what truth they held, they still didn't make her feel any better.
Buffy abruptly turned away, tense. She paced down to the network of cistern tunnels, walking to the entrance of each one and peering into the depths. Her voice trembled, dew-drop like in the gloom, quieter than the human ear could hear, but picked up with ease by Faith's own:
"Is that girl... one of the sacrifices?"
"No. I know their faces. All of them."
All their faces were engraved into Faith's brain like a memorial of the dead. A list that could only get longer.
For her, the room of the Hellmouth in Sunnydale High was a room of nightmares. The mechanical, lifeless bodies of the Wiccans all sat around a crimson hexagon, pulsing with spasmodic light. The light made her think of a laboratory in a horror movie.
Buffy peered at Faith with some degree of wonder. "You're serious."
Faith snapped out of her stupor. "Deadly. We gotta report this. Dunno exactly what the whole setup means, but it ain't chance - the changeover is in two weeks. It's the best moment for them. The demons." Faith grabbed her flashlight off the ground and picked the direction they came from, intending to find their impromptu entrance and crawl out of the earth to make sure Giles and Voirrey knew. The sooner they started looking into it, the better.
"You're just going to hurry out?"
"You coming or what?" Faith said irritably. She glanced at the identical labyrinthine catacombs.
Buffy rested a hand on her hip, exhaling loudly. "We still haven't fought anything. I need…" Buffy stumbled, and stopped. Heat burned her cheeks.
"Hungry and Horny, eh?" Faith finished for her. "Deal with it later, in a cold shower."
"No!" Buffy exclaimed, setting her jaw in a stubborn line. "That's not it. I just want to beat something up. You know, bad guys?"
"Riiiiiight."
"And that has to be the best timing ever." Buffy pointed in a vague direction. "Bad guys incoming."
Voices echoed from one of the outlaying tunnels, getting louder each second. "That guy totally asked for it, y'know? He was all like, 'bite me,' which you should never ever say in front of a vamp. I mean, how retarded is that? Why don't you just kill yourself already?"
"I know. Some humans just deserve it."
Two vampires emerged out into the clearing. One was a tall, black haired male, the other a slender and beautiful auburn female. They paused and gaped when they saw Faith and Buffy hurtling towards them.
"Holy shit!" The tall male vampire yelled. Without a second thought he turned tail and fled. His female companion flinched.
"Where did everyone go - ohhhhhh…" Faith's stake plunged effortlessly into her heart.
Buffy growled and thundered after the other vampire, the noises warping in the air. Faith cursed and sped off after her.
"Buffy! What are you doing? Get the fuck back!"
The other Slayer completely blanked her and disappeared into the looming shadows, mind focused only on her prey. Something clattered onto the ground, and Faith's foot crunched on it. Buffy's flashlight.
She continued the chase. The only thing helping her keep track of Buffy was the connection they shared, which acted like a homing missile. Twice she nearly ended up short-cutting through solid wall, slipping along green moss and cracked foundations.
These tunnels were enormous. Faith wondered if they'd even be able to find their way out again. Perhaps they both held a one way ticket to hell.
Every instinct warned her against running into danger.
But she couldn't leave the blonde Slayer alone in the darkness.
"Moron…" Faith wheezed, feeling Buffy drift further and further from her. Buffy was fast, so fast... "Shoulda just left it…"
A male vampire dropped in from above, littering her with mud and stone. With a primal scream, she sent a leaden fist crunching into the vampire's stomach. Too late she realised she clutched the flashlight in that hand, and shattered it upon impact. The vampire flew back, thudding loudly against the wall. He shook himself and roared, rugby-tackling her to the ground. They rolled and scratched in the slime, clothes staining brown and soaking up damp. Faith's superior strength and enhanced fists ensured the vampire had picked the losing side. A vicious left hook knocked him out cold.
She thought about the dead girl in the main cistern chamber.
Another screech rippled through her lips. She crouched, grabbed the vampire's neck - and ripped the head off. It crumbled into dust.
The sheer savagery felt unbelievably satisfying. It wasn't enough, of course. It never was.
The girl would be dead either way.
It was a start, though.
She didn't get very far until two more vampires engaged her. They didn't talk or jeer, they just slashed in with blades glinting. Faith smelled the burnished metal, the dried blood on their lips and the sweat from their rotting bodies.
She lashed out for the shorter female's wrist and stepped in and around to twist it into a painful lock. The vampire's nerveless hand released the blade. Faith scooped it up and threw it at the other vampire, spearing him in the eye like a boar. He went down shrieking, clawing at his face.
She dusted the one trapped in the lock, and watched the one on the floor as he writhed, sensing three more vampires closing in. She knew she was in trouble. All the lessons with Voirrey and Giles flashed through her head.
Take out the opponent as fast as you can, using whatever means you have. Don't be an idiot and take on more than you can handle.
The trio of vampires careened out of the second-to-right junction, spitting obscenities.
Faith braced herself for them. She immediately trapped the first one in a choke hold. She jabbed the second male viciously in the eye with her elbow to temporarily incapacitate him before he could use his claw weapon, and ducked a swing from one donning a leather jacket.
She spotted a sharp jagged rock on the ground and tripped up Leather Jacket, impaling him on the floor. The one she had in a choke hold wriggled free and kicked her in the guts. Vampires tended to not need breath as much as living beings actually did. Faith cringed and dropped to her knees.
Well fuck.
She took in her situation, her surroundings, feeling the feral growl of the Slayer build up in her. She heard the thump of more vampires closing in. The Claw Weapon vampire swiped, scouring angry crimson lines on Faith's jacket. They reached right down into sinew and muscle.
Run. Faith needed to run. With a frenzy bordering on desperate, Faith dusted the Claw Weapon vampire, and swung the discarded claw into Choke Hold vampire's face. She finished off the two impaled on the floor, and stumbled backward as Choke Hold vampire punched her in the jaw. Her head snapped back and thunked against solid stone. She saw stars, pitched forward and tripped her opponent up. He ended up rather dead from the result.
She staggered crazily up, breathing erratically. Where the hell was Buffy? Faith couldn't sense her anymore through the Slayer connection. A lurch of panic forced her to keep moving in an attempt to try and pick up the blonde's distinctive scent, to try and get away from the potential swarm of vampires she could feel humming all around her.
Another vampire skidded past her, completely ignored her and changed direction to increase the distance between them. A few bruises highlighted his face. He likely had encountered Buffy.
"Not so fast, punk!" Faith grunted and made a heroic-style tackle, landing square on his back.
She immediately realised her mistake.
The vampire tipped forward into the darkness. He tipped - and didn't stop falling. Faith fell right with him over the precipice of a shadowy edge, down into rushing emptiness. Completely blind, she could only feel the cold bite of stagnant air, the whip of acceleration in her ears and the keening wail of the vampire below her. They tussled for top position, cartwheeling over and over.
Faith's limbs jolted and her body slammed full into the vampire as he smashed into the bottom with a spine-cracking whump. Both lay there dazed.
Faith stirred fast, wincing at the deep slashes just above her breast, and grabbed another stake from her pocket. She pushed it into his chest and hammered it in like a piston. Her landing cushion gave way to damp rock and gravel.
She lay still for a little longer. Her muscles did not enjoy the impact one little bit.
Something warm trickled down her leg and collarbone.
"Oh hell,' she whispered.