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Oaxaca Nights
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part II
Growing up in Sunnydale, you learned a lot of unwritten rules by a kind of psychic osmosis. Anywhere after dark, watch out. — You can’t fight city hall, not about anything. — Mace is a girl’s best friend. — Fools rush in, and are never heard from again. And, there among many others: Don’t ever think things can’t get any worse, they’ll do it just to show off.
Turned out, some of those rules weren’t true only of Sunnydale.
Cordelia gasped, stumbled, and almost fell again. A hard pull on her arm kept her upright, and didn’t directly threaten to dislocate her shoulder. Undergrowth tugged at her clothing and at exposed skin, sweat stung her eyes, and she could seriously use some time in the ladies’ room.
Uncomfortable, undignified, unwelcome, and unsatisfactory … but she wasn’t complaining, and not only because it would have wasted breath to no purpose. Something was calling her, urging her on, and with the intimidating presence of her now-dominant companion guaranteeing the uselessness of any resistance, Cordelia couldn’t see the point in meaningless protest. Beneath the level of direct thought, however, something within her seethed and gathered itself, darkening with mounting anger.
Then he eased to a halt, the cruel grip on her arm fell away, and he turned to face her in the moon-washed Mexican night. “This should do it,” he announced. “Didn’t want to chance you makin’ noise back in the bloody tourist haven, but there’s no rush; ’ccordin’ to Spooky-Voice, you were caught soon as I got the bracelet on you, so let’s just see how this business plays out, then.”
Welcoming the respite, Cordelia let her breath settle before attempting speech, which provided the added benefit of time to organize her thoughts. At last she looked to him and said flatly, “Nick.”
This time there was no mistaking or explaining it away: that was definitely a sneer. “Told you, prom princess,” he said, his tone brutally dismissive. “ ’S’not my name.”
“I know. ‘Nick’. As in ‘Mick’? Mick Dundee?” She glared at him. “You copped an Australian accent — if that’s what it was supposed to be — from Crocodile Dundee?”
“Not a bit of it.” He flicked his cigarette away into the darkness, and regarded her with smirking amusement. “Drunk my share of Ozzies, I have, an’ I’m an expert on accents. Not that I needed to worry too much about authenticity, not dealing’ with the likes o’ you.”
“Don’t talk about me like you know me,” Cordelia shot back. “You don’t know me at all.”
“We were never formally introduced,” he returned with heavy sarcasm. “But I heard you a few times in that bloody kids’ club in Sunnyhell … Bronze, was it? Voice that can blister paint, you’ve got. I don’t need t’know everything t’know enough.”
And that did it. The hair (not as light as described, but close enough, had he used some kind of gel to darken it slightly to fool her?), the accent (feigning Australian to mask his own), the cheekbones, the casual ruthlessness, and most of all the Sunnydale connection. He hadn’t worn the human mask during his brief appearance at Hallowe’en, and kept his back to her while threatening the still-enspelled Buffy, but … “Oh, God. You’re that lame-o vamp that Buffy squashed with a church organ, aren’t you? What was it? — ‘Spork’?”
“It’s Spike, you daft bint!” His own glare was a quantum level of threat higher than hers. “An’ I know good ’n’ well you bollixed it up deliberate, just t’be takin’ the piss with me.” His voice lowered to something softer and infinitely more frightening. “Word o’ warnin, Corpuscle: head games aren’t a good idea with someone who’ll tear yours bloody off if he takes a mind.”
The danger here was real and terrifying … but also inescapable, so Cordelia did her best to jump past it. “What do you want with me?”
“Well, it’s not your sparklin’ conversation, that’s for sure.” He snorted contempt and impatience. “An’ if all I’d wanted was blood, I’d’ve taken it before I spent two solid hours listenin’ t’you prattle about.”
He had been right: his utter, unstoppable lethality, and willingness to apply it at a whim, were definitely muting her normal verbal aggressiveness. “But you didn’t actually say what you wanted,” Cordelia observed carefully. “Or where you’re taking me.”
Spike laughed. “If I understood it right, I don’t have to ‘take’ you anywhere. You’ll go, come hell or high water.” He studied her with lazy satisfaction. “Far as I know, it might be hell or high water, or both. I’ll enjoy watchin’ t’see how that goes.”
The bracelet. That had to be what he meant: by accepting the bracelet, she had sprung some kind of trap on herself. Cordelia considered snatching it off and hurling it away into the … jungle? forest? rain forest? … surrounding her, but Spike’s likely response quelled the thought for the moment. Playing for time (as long as they were standing here talking, they weren’t moving toward her probable doom), she asked, “So what’s going on? with this, this ‘business’ you mentioned?”
He was about to answer, she was sure of it … but then he stopped, his head cocking to the side in an attitude of listening. His nostrils flared, and he drew in a long, slow breath (oh, God, he was smelling the air!). He looked to Cordelia, mouth tightening, and said, “Go.”
“What?” She hesitated, not understanding; was he turning her loose now? “What do you —?”
“Run!” he roared at her, his features shifting into the familiar horrible vamp-face, and she took off on the instant.
(She was good at running, after all. In BuffyWorld, that was that she did best. Right?)
At first she was focused purely on speed, on making distance between her and the demon behind her. Once the first few minutes were past, though, as her breath began to catch in her chest and her shoes once again reminded her that they had not been designed for safari, Cordelia began to vary her route, change direction unpredictably, move more slowly to reduce the noise she was making and watch for some promising place of concealment. And to listen, for some clue as to what might be taking place behind her.
Because something was happening back there. Spike hadn’t sent her running so he could chase her, the not-so-naked prey; he’d had something else in mind, and then heard or sensed something that changed his plans. He’d sent her away to keep her clear of whatever he had stayed to fight or lead away, which meant he was protecting her, which — since he was an evil soulless killing-thing that didn’t care about her at all — meant he wanted something that she had to be alive in order to provide.
Something to do with the damn bracelet.
Cordelia found a thick patch of brush, worked her way into it so she was at least semi-decently hidden, and tried to pull off the bracelet. It wouldn’t come off her wrist — no surprise, Spike had said it was tight and at least that much had been true — plus it was doubtless some kind of stupid damn dweeby magical artifact that didn’t want to be taken off. In the dark, she couldn’t find how it had been fastened. She rooted around in her temporary hiding place; the soil was dry and stony, and she managed to find a couple of rocks, but trying to smash the bracelet open between them didn’t work, either. It wasn’t that the thing was impervious, she just couldn’t hit it right; no matter what angle she chose or how carefully she struck, the rock simply glanced off with minimal impact.
Cordelia really hated magic. Really hated it.
Okay. Running from Spike, and from whatever Spike had sent her away to avoid. Wearing cursed bling that was just sure to guarantee she was going to be sacrificed somewhere. (And, damn it, the whole sacrifice thing had to be even more likely because she was still, technically, a virgin. She had to do something about that. Had to. Soon.) She was in danger of her life from at least two sources, maybe more, and nobody even knew about it. It was time to set some priorities and act on them.
So, as her first priority, Cordelia hiked up her skirt, peeled down her pantyhose and underwear, and squatted to pee, long and to immense relief. Then, pulling the pantyhose the rest of the way off, she folded one leg inside the other and dropped the two rocks down inside the double-layered fabric, working them to the end so that they rested inside the reinforced toes and then knotting the hose to hold them in place. A cautious exploratory swing satisfied her; it wasn’t much as a flail, would probably burst at the first strike, but it was something, and made her feel just the least bit less absolutely utterly hopelessly helpless.
She knew nothing whatsoever about navigating in the wilderness. Still, this was wilderness surrounding a resort (or at least a town with resort-like appurtenances), and she hadn’t really come that far and had a rough idea from what direction she’d been traveling. She’d cope. Staggering back into civilization sweaty and scuffed and disheveled and Willow-Rosenberg-level styleless, while unappealing in the extreme, was still so much better than winding up disappeared, dead, and forgotten.
Clutching her improvised weapon and mustering her frayed nerves into something that could pass for determination, Cordelia set off.
* * *
It was half an hour before she became aware of the problem, another fifteen minutes before she confirmed it, and fifteen more to establish that she couldn’t overcome it: Cordelia’s path wasn’t under her control.
Maybe it would have been different if she could have set a straight course, or maybe not. In the rougher country outside Puerto Escondido, however, she had to adjust her route every now and then, if only to walk around a thorny patch of brush instead of wading straight through it. Somehow, every adjustment, and the re-adjustment that came after the obstacle had been passed, seemed to nudge her just a bit out of line. And then a bit more, followed by more yet, until even Cordelia’s near-nonexistent woodcraft could tell that she was moving away from the coast and deeper into the wooded hills.
It was a lower level of the same hypnotic siren call that had possessed her while Spike was first hustling her away from the city. Less overtly overpowering now but deeper, more insistent, scrambling her perceptions until she couldn’t trust her own judgment. No wonder the Peroxide Punker had been willing to send her away: the bracelet had her now, just as he had said, and despite all her efforts she was still continuing in the direction she didn’t want to go. She could have wept in frustration. How could one expertly blended piña colada have plunged her into such a ridiculous, sordid tar-pit of catastrophe?
She found another thicket and went to ground again, on the theory that at least sitting still wasn’t moving her any closer to squalid, unfashionable death. Maybe she could wait out the night; maybe, in daylight, the spell-compulsion would fade or vanish, or she could see well enough to puzzle out the catch on the bracelet, or follow the sun toward the sea and find her way back to town, or anything that might serve to improve her situation.
When she stopped traveling, though, she became more conscious of the night sounds. She was no Nature Girl, for her the call of the wild was strictly limited to bolder lipstick choices, and now the cheeps and creaks and rustles and various other unidentifiable noises began to wear at her composure. What kind of wildlife roamed the Mexican resort countryside at night? How many different species of snake abounded out here? She had no idea, and her imagination ran riot with all the things that might threaten her even outside the supernatural arena. Jaguars, boa constrictors, giant scorpions … no, the way her luck was running lately she’d probably be rooted out and trampled to death by a herd of wild pigs …
Okay, that one out there right now? Definitely not a pig, or any social grouping thereof.
Cordelia huddled in her hiding-place, holding her breath and listening. Whatever was out there was big, and in no particular rush, and quiet. Not trying to be quiet: the rustle of grass and leaves, the crunch of dry earth and small stones, were too regular for any efforts toward silence; it was more the quiet of something that naturally made no more noise than necessary. Steady, and deliberate, and — however much she might want to believe otherwise — undeniably moving toward her place of concealment. Cordelia gathered her legs under her, readied her rock-weighted pantyhose, and prepared herself to fight or die or just scream in despair and outrage.
(Note to self: next time hide under a tree, so at least you have something to climb if you’re sniffed out by a cave bear.)
It was there, outside the screen of bushes. She thought she could hear breathing; if so, most likely not Spike. Did it actually know she was in here? Was there any possibility it might just leave —?
The voice was mellow and resonant, the tone conversational. “Venga salgan, señorita. No voy a hacerte daño … probablemente.”
Crap. Cordelia spoke no more than a few words of the local lingo, but señorita made it pretty clear that she was the one being addressed, meaning he knew she was here. “No hablo el Spanish-o,” she replied, doing her level best to sound unfrightened.
A pause, and then she could hear the smile behind the next words. “I said, Come out, I won’t hurt you. Probably.” More smile in the tone. “Not unless I have to, and no more than necessary; I’m not a barbarian. And, if you’ll excuse my saying it, you don’t have a lot of options at the moment.”
Well, that was certainly true, and the genial courtesy of the words — almost cultured — offered the tiniest ray of possible reassurance. Cordelia stood, brushed herself off, and pushed her way out of the bushes.
And gasped, or at least had to work not to gasp. Despite knowing better, she had let ‘human speech’ make her think ‘human speaker’. The thing she faced was … not. Man-shaped, and wearing a man’s clothes, but expanded in every dimension: maybe seven feet tall, and almost three feet broad. The face, too, was near-human, except the complexion was wrong; impossible to be sure in the moonlight, but it seemed blueish or grayish, and deep slashes were carved through the eyebrows and down into the craggy cheekbones.
He watched her take it in, and smiled. “Overwhelming, am I not?”
“Uh … huh?” Cordelia said dumbly.
A short laugh. “Sorry. Logan’s Run. The book was better, but I liked that line. Now, we have places to go, and soon, so let’s get the amenities out of the way. I’m Boone, and you are —?”
“C… Cordelia.”
The smile broadened. “See? That didn’t hurt a bit. Now, I’m not really interested in you, but in that bauble on your arm. And, call me presumptuous, I’m assuming you’d rather come with me than have me cut off your hand so I can take the thing without bringing you along.”
“You assume right.” Cordelia shook herself out of the daze that threatened to take her over; this night just kept getting more surreal. “The bracelet … what is it? What’s the story here?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Boone shook his head slowly. “I owe someone a favor, and delivery of the bauble will leave us square. And, just to sweeten the motivation, she may even be able to remove it without killing or maiming you.” He indicated direction with a sweeping gesture. “Shall we?”
“It’s a plan.” Her heart was thumping like a marimba, but Cordelia did her best to keep her voice level. As she stepped ahead, she added, “You may have to lead me. This thing … it has its own ideas about which way I should go.”
“Ah.” Another smile. “I should be able to handle that. Thanks for mentioning it.”
One huge hand closed on her arm, gently but with immovable solidity, and he guided her along the path he had selected. Cordelia realized she was still holding the pantyhose flail in her other hand; Boone had, clearly, dismissed it as irrelevant, not even worth taking away from her. Part of her felt insulted, but the overbearing majority was frankly relieved to find herself in such formidable custody. Not that she was home free (Boone had implied that he’d rather not cut off her hand, not that he would never do such a thing), but it was still a huge improvement over William the “you’re not important enough to kill unless I happen to think it might be fun” Bloody.
At the thought, she looked to the massive demon. “Was it you that Spike was waiting for, when he sent me running ahead?”
Boone chuckled. “Is that who that was? Well, yes, the description matches, but we didn’t exactly settle down to chat.”
“So … you beat him?”
“Didn’t bother to try. We fought to the edge of a cliff, and then I threw him over. Well out and over.” He chuckled again. “Haven’t had that much fun since the Ptarmiiki hive war. I suppose he might have been impaled on something at the bottom, in which case you could say I beat him. Mainly, though, I just wanted him out of the way so I could keep on after you.”
She thought about that. “You don’t even care whether or not you won?”
“Normally I might.” He glanced over to her. “Some things are for honor, some are for pride. The two may intersect here and there, but they’re not the same.”
Right. Killer of two Slayers, and Boone had tossed him aside without even troubling himself to confirm victory. No wonder her makeshift flail hadn’t concerned him. And yet she felt — and probably was — much safer now than before.
… Why, oh why couldn’t her parents have stuck to St. Bart’s, as originally planned?
* * *
He had led her for an hour (farther away from Puerto Escondido, of course) when she was presented with the next installment in this unending series of heinous disasters. As Cordelia had hoped, the resolute hand on her arm forestalled the bracelet’s subverting influence; though her feet continued trying to turn her path, the looming presence beside her kept her moving as he wished. Even though he had offered her only the most limited choice in the matter, it was actually kind of comforting to find herself in Boone’s control.
So, when the arrow sprouted from his neck, she did not greet this as a welcome development.
He stopped and reached up to pluck it out, studying it with mild curiosity and rather more amusement. “Really?” he observed at large. “Seriously?” Then the horde descended, fast-moving figures assailing from all sides with curved sabers and halberds and God knew what-all-else. Much smaller than Boone (some shorter than Cordelia), he would have out-massed any four of them together, but in the first confused moments of the onslaught there seemed to be dozens of them, shouting war-cries and striking out with the utter totality of all-out assault.
Cordelia shrank back, bewildered by the too-abrupt onset of events and unsure if these new players constituted a new threat. Then one of them started toward her, and that settled it: garbed ninja-like in dark, close-fitting fabric with a hood and face-concealing flap, coming at Cordelia with the same frightening intensity of focus … Cordelia shrieked and swung the flail, lashing out wildly in sudden decision.
The outcome was depressingly predictable. Her attacker melted back outside the arc of the first swing and darted inside the second, hand clutching Cordelia’s throat — a hard, forceful grip that nonetheless didn’t seem designed to close off her wind — and said urgently, “Cálmate, angustiada. He venido a rescatarte de un destino terrible.”
“I don’t speak Spanish!” Cordelia screamed. “God, I got this tan from a salon! Why does everyone keep thinking —?”
“I said calm yourself, fool!”, and Cordelia realized that was a woman’s voice. Fierce eyes regarded her over the top of the face-flap. “We are here to save you, and my sisters are spending their lives to allow your escape. Come with me if you want to live!”
Had she … had she actually said those words? Cordelia choked back hysterical laughter, but her resistance had vanished in the same instant, and while her brain was still struggling to recover its balance, the woman had grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her into motion. Before she had quite realized what was happening, Cordelia found herself running through the forest with the still-nameless newcomer.
Naturally. Spike, then Boone, now Ninja Girl. When exactly was it that Cordelia had turned into Princess Buttercup?
Spike had pulled her along roughly, impatiently, but without any particular hurry. Boone had set a steady, unvarying pace. This woman, by contrast, was clearly oriented toward speed and distance, almost as fast as Cordelia had gone in her first flight but ceaseless and unflagging. Cheerleader conditioning kept Cordelia on her feet, but she was having to fight for breath now and her shoes were steadily more excruciating instruments of torture. They were classic Danica Carlisles, she’d scooched a pair ahead of the big show in Milan … but, oh, if only she’d gone out on the town in cross-trainers instead —!
The single mercy was that she didn’t have to choose her course through the chaotic night; her ‘rescuer’ led, and Cordelia only had to dedicate herself to keeping up. Still, it was a glorious relief when at last the woman slowed and came to a halt, and Cordelia sank gratefully to the ground, taking pressure off her ravaged feet and allowing her heart-rate to begin the return to normal. “Is it … too much to ask,” she panted grimly, “… if someone would please explain to me … just exactly what the hell is going on?!!”
The woman, too, was breathing hard, but she looked to Cordelia with stolid control. “I am Luz, of the Byzantine Sisterhood,” she said. She pulled back the hood, drew away the face-cloth, shook out her hair. Her features were stern, proud, thick brows and straight nose and thin, severe mouth, eyes dark and piercing. “You have been marked by a dark entity for a dreadful fate. I realize these things are difficult to understand, but I will try to put it into words you can comprehend. Briefly: the world is older than you know —”
“Been there, heard that, dropped the t-shirt in the Goodwill bin,” Cordelia interrupted. “You can skip the Dick-and-Jane version, Lucinda; back home, I work with the Slayer.” (Work? worked? what if Buffy never came back?) “Just skip to the payoff. Exactly how screwed am I, and what do I have to do to make it go away?”
Luz was studying her with what might have been reluctant respect. “The Slayer. That is … a name of some import. Very well. A malevolent force has awakened from enforced sleep, and seeks to walk once again free. We of the Sisterhood are tasked to guard the wards, but something … unprecedented, came to pass. We do not fully understand, for historically two artifacts must be brought together to loose the Slumberer, and you wear only one. Still, you have been marked.” From a sheath at her belt, Luz drew a dagger. “I have been schooled for many years in how this weapon may be used to banish the Slumberer; now, however, only you can do this. I will show how and when you must carry out the ritual, and I will go with you to the place where the unclean thing waits. You will seal it again into its sleep of exile … or, if for any reason you cannot, you will plunge the dagger into your own breast to forestall your possession and damnation.”
“What?” Cordelia stared at the woman. “Are you crazed? I’m not about to kill myself!”
“If that is what you must do, that is what you will do.” Luz’s eyes held Cordelia’s with the clear, unwavering light of a commitment forged so solidly that the very thought of forsaking it simply would not form. “So is it written. So must it be. Such is the will of God.”
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