Where's Mom?
Part 8 and 9
Part Eight
As Spike held Joyce in his arms, he waded through the sewer tunnel carefully. He had nearly fallen before, nearly dropping her, and he was not about to repeat that experience again. Especially when the damn tunnels were littered with seaweed. He looked around warily, all of his vampiric senses alert. He smelled stale blood and dust all around him, along with the decaying scent of fish, garbage and human refuse.
[Not a place I fancy to die in,] thought Spike as he took another step. He stepped on something squishy. He looked down and saw the hand of a dead man floating up. Then a head with a missing eye floating by. Sighing, he hefted the semi-conscious Joyce closer to his chest. He was glad that she wasn't awake to see that. And he hadn't the faintest clue why.
Granted that she was the Slayer's Mother. And she had once hit him on the head with an axe when he had attacked the school. But she had also granted a wary welcome into her house. Then she had given him that packet of blood in Los Angeles after he had saved her life. But that was *not* the oddest thing that had happened to him. It was the fact that she had not allowed him to die.
The Slayer's Mother had not allowed him, a vampire, the mortal enemy of her daughter to die under that pile of rocks. Then she drove off that demon that was about to use him for face powder, like it did to Rickster. She batted the demon with that iron rod like she did for her Slayer daughter. It was... weird. He looked down at Joyce's pain drawn face, but didn't see her. He saw a face from a time long past. He saw his mother's quiet face.
[Mum.] he whispered. Then Spike shook his head, and he saw Joyce's face again. He frowned at her, staring at her. He felt something hit his booted leg, and looked down. It was a piece of garbage bobbing up and down. Grimacing, he looked around and started walking again until he reached the doorway he had just spied.
[Gotta get outta here. Damn tunnel smell are making me hallucinate,] he grumbled. Still, as he opened the door, her wondered. [Why the hell did she save me? And why am I thinking about Mum?]
Joyce opened an eye to see that Spike was lost in thought. She winced as she felt her arm move when he stumbled. “Um, Spike? I hate to ask, but did you have something to eat before you were trapped?”
Spike blinked at her. He doubted that even the Slayer would even think to ask that question. “Yeah, I had a meal. But we’d best hurry to the surface before I get hungry again. And try not remind me what’ll happen to me if I drain you for nutrition.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Joyce murmured as she made an effort to rouse herself. “So, do you think that Manchester United has a shot this year?”
Spike looked down and frowned at her. “How do you know I like football?”
“One day after Buffy came back, she wanted to know what to was,” Joyce chuckled drowsily as she looked at him. “And since she knew I was an avid sports fan, she asked me.”
*~*~*~*~*
Buffy looked around the sewer tunnel she was in, finding nothing. There was seaweed all over the place, but other than the occasional piece of floating garbage, nothing.
[And it smells worse than Xander's ten-day-old socks!] Buffy thought as she rubbed her pert nose. She took several more careful steps, she had stopped running because she had nearly tripped over debris. Then her foot hit something, she was about to look down when her walkie-talkie squawked loudly.
"Buffy? You there?" Giles's voice rang out. Buffy frowned at her little black communicator, and took great gulping breaths while trying not to smell anything. She placed her hand against her chest to calm her fast beating heart. "Buffy?"
"I'm here, Giles. Jeez, did you have to put this thing on loud? It's enough to wake the dead down here," Buffy scowled.
"Sorry, but I was wondering if you had seen anything yet. Gabriel had seen more bodies with gnawed necks, and all I have seen so far is an inordinate amount of debris and seaweed. Anything on your end?"
"Nothing but debris and seaweed, Giles. I'm going to move up..." she frowned as she got a closer look to what hit her foot. "Oh, God..."
"Buffy? Buffy, what is it?"
Buffy stared at the thing she pulled out of the water. "It's...it's a hand, Giles. I pulled up a hand! Ew!"
She threw the hand as far away from her as she possibly could. “I mean, gross. Really, really gross.”
"Buffy...this means that you might be getting close to the monster's source of power!" Giles said excitedly. "You're the closest one so far!"
Buffy frowned at the walkie-talkie. "And just how am I supposed to kill this damn thing? We still don't have a bead on how we can get rid of it, Giles!"
"Well, yes, but I'm sure that we could think of something. We always do," Giles said encouragingly. "I'll try and contact Willow now."
"Fine," Buffy grumbled. She continued walking until she spied a doorway. [Maybe this will take me somewhere.]
*~*~*~*~*
Giles looked at his tunnel and continued down, his flashlight looking for anything. So far all he saw was debris, garbage and dead fish. There was no dead bodies, seaweed and alot of dust all around. He just couldn't understand it. Water was all over the place, and seaweed was on top of the debris. But there was dust all over the seaweed.
It just didn't make any sense. Was the sewer tunnel so unstable that it was flaking? Giles shook his head. There was something missing, but he couldn't place his finger on it. He walked further on, and found another junction in the tunnels. This time there were two doorways.
[Now which one? The left or the right? Lady or the tiger?] he mused. His head snapped as he heard sounds of water splashing and growling. Quickly he ducked into a doorway on his right.
"Get the hell away from me!" growled a vampire as he struggled through the water, tripping on debris. He threw a rock at the smaller figure approaching him. “Get back!”
[Oh, my!] thought Giles as he closed the door tighter, but enough so he could see.
"Kappas be pretty! Pretty Kappas!" cackled the smaller figure. The vampire tripped and fell, he scrambled to get up, but Kappas pounced on him. "Make Kappas pretty!"
The vampire screamed as he turned to dust when Kappas bit his neck. The small demon grabbed at the dust and patted it all around itself, sliming itself with the murky water. "Pretty Kappas now! Pretty!"
The Kappas cackled like a demented child as it whirled around the sewers. Then suddenly, it lifted its head and sniffed. The bulging eyes blinked twice, then the long nose sniffed again. “More! Kappas want more! Hungry now! Food?”
Giles heard his heart in his ears as the demon approached the door he was hiding behind. His hand shook as he fingered the stake. It was not great odds, in his calculation. He only had a stake, an ankle knife and some vials of holy water. He beat down his dry humor as he watched the demon neared his door. [The next time I hunt a water demon, I’ll remember to bring a bloody flame-thrower!]
Then the Kappas sniffed again, and moved away, cackling. “More food! Go! More food! (sniff) Kappas more pretty!”
Letting out his breath slowly, Giles kept quiet as the small demon continued on its way. [Oh, my God! Oh, my God!]
Part 9
Spike sloshed through the water, staggering as he carried a semi-conscious Joyce in his arms. Fear started to claw through his undead heart, as her voice grew more slurred. “Come on, Joyce. Tell me more about you. Tell me about- about your daughter, the Slayer.”
Joyce roused slightly as she heard him ask about her favorite subject. “Buffy. She was so beautiful when she was born. Tiny and so soft. And so sweet.”
“Yeah, babies usually are,” Spike said as he climbed over a pile of rubble. He spied a ladder. “And they sometimes get stuck in your fangs.“
Spike stopped when he heard what he was said, and prayed that she hadn’t heard what he said. He eyed her warily as he cursed himself. [You have a bloody huge hole in your head, you bloody idiot.]
“They sometimes what?” Joyce asked drowsily.
“They sometimes give off things,” Spike said quickly. He gave her a weak smile, hoping that she wouldn’t see how weak it was. “You know, babies like to give off something dirty on both ends.”
Joyce chuckled drowsily. “Buffy gave off a lot of that, too.”
“So, how’d you name the Slayer ‘Buffy’? And what is a ‘Buffy’?” Spike asked as he looked at the ladder.
“I never named her Buffy, she did it herself,” Joyce chuckled again as she remembered. “I named her Elizabeth and called her Bethie, but she couldn’t manage to ‘th’. And then she saw ‘Family Affair’ and that was that. She never answered to anyone calling her Bethie again. She was Buffy. What did your mother call you?”
“I told you, my mother named me William,” Spike said as he tested the sturdiness of the ladder. “After her father. Now, Joyce, we have to climb the ladder to get out. I need to put you either over my shoulder or you have to hang on to my back. What do you want to do? How are you feeling?”
Joyce took an inventory of how she was feeling. “I think can climb the ladder, but I’m still feeling woozy.”
Spike looked at her doubtfully as he set her down. “And what about your broken arm? How are you supposed to climb with that?”
“Easy, you just climb after me and we’ll be fine,” Joyce panted as she grabbed the ladder with her left hand. She forced the spots in her eyes to disappear. “Now let’s hurry before that disgusting little demon comes after us.”
*~*~*~*~*
Buffy slowly walked along the sewer tunnels, her hand touching the sewer walls to help guide her through the unfamiliar territory. She cautiously sniffed the air, and grimaced. “Jeez, who’d have thought that San Francisco’s sewers would smell as bad as Sunnydale’s.”
Shaking her head, Buffy continued on her way. It was getting real disgusting down here, and that was really bad considering that she was in the sewers. The sewer was littered with dead bodies and the occasional severed body parts. But there were none for the past twenty minutes. She was seriously considering turning back when her walkie-talkie crackled.
“Buffy? Gabriel? Willow? Are you there?” It was Giles’s voice. “Answer me, please! Buffy?”
Buffy heard Gabriel and Willow answer before she could take the walkie-talkie out from her jacket. “Buffy here, Giles. What’s up?”
“I saw it. It is a Kappas demon, and quite demented if I may say that. It kills vampires and uses their ashes as a form of powder. It thinks that it makes itself look pretty.”
“Okay, that’s really, really gross.” Cordelia’s disgust coming though the airwaves. “We really needed to hear that, Giles. Anyway, Oz and Willow came back with some news about some guy they found half-alive under the debris. He was totally out of it, been there since the quake hit. And he was talking about-Hey!”
“Willow, Giles. We got more news, Giles, Buffy. I don’t want you to panic, but, well-it’s sort of hopeful-“
Fear started growing in Buffy’s throat as Willow stuttered through. Buffy finally couldn’t stand it anymore. “Willow, please. Just tell me. Is my mother up there? Is she safe?”
Buffy could hear Willow calming herself. “The emergency crew pulled out a man this morning, he was trapped in the sewers for the whole night. And he just came to. Buffy, he-he went out to dinner last night when the earthquake hit, and he was asking about his dinner companion. If she was found, if she as all right. Buffy…he was asking about your mother.”
Coldness seeped through Buffy as she gripped the walkie-talkie. She stumbled as she concentrated on what Willow said. “Are-are you sure? Did he say where they were? Where they ate? How long-“
“Buffy.” Giles’s voice came through the walkie-talkie. “Buffy, listen to me. Listen to me, your mother will be fine, we still have a chance to find her.”
Buffy nodded. Then forced her voice to answer the walkie-talkie, to answer Giles. “Yeah, we have to-“
Buffy’s voice trailed off as she looked down. And saw a severed hand floating by her knees. Flashes of her dream raced through her eyes. She looked around her. Everything looked familiar, but it wasn’t.
Seaweed all over the debris, the smell of blood and dead fish surrounded her. Something bumped against the side of her leg. She looked down and a sound escaped her throat. Vaguely, she heard Giles shout from the walkie-talkie. “Buffy! Buffy, what is it?”
Buffy forced herself to answer. “It’s a hand, Giles. It’s only a hand.”
“So what? You’ve seen lots of hands, Buffy,” said Cordelia as her annoyance clearly came through the walkie-talkie. “In fact, you’ve seen a whole lot of other body parts as well. No big there. Hey!”
“Obviously Buffy made a big discovery,” Xander said in the background. His voice became louder. “So what’s the big discovery? What’s with the hand? Buffy? Buffy?”
Ignoring Xander, Buffy looked at the debris handing around her more closely. She swallowed as she saw severed arm with some seaweed on it. A half-eaten head surrounded by bloody rocks. A foot covered with seaweed. All the fear she held at bay went crashing through her, her eyes widened as she gripped the walkie-talkie. “Oh, my god! Ohmigod!”
“Buffy! Buffy! What is it?” shouted Giles over the walkie-talkie. “Buffy!”
Buffy started babbling as started running through the tunnel. “Giles-oh God! I don’t-I think-Giles-I-I think that I’m in the demon’s dining room! I mean, I see body parts, all half-eaten. Covered with seaweed. I-He-He’s got to be near here!”
“Slayer! Where are you? What’s your section?” Gabriel’s voice shouted through the walkie-talkie. “I repeat, where are you?”
Her mind forced her to think over her fear as she ran through the dark tunnels, telling Giles where she was while praying that she would find her mother alive.
*~*~*~*~*
“All right, we’re up,” Spike said as he climbed through the hole. He peered through the darkness. Piles of debris filled the damp floor. He sniffed, then sniffed again. “Looks like we’re in beneath an underground man-made grotto or something. I smell water, dirt and flowers. Roses, irises and lavender.”
“My favorite flowers,” Joyce murmured as she cradled her arm. The climbing up the ladder didn’t do it any good. “We must be beneath the underground garden of Amaru Pier. The-the builders wanted something for a tourist attraction. Imported flowers from Japan. I think they made a man-made stream around here, complete with an imported stone statue.”
“Been reading the travel brochures again, haven’t we?” Spike teased as he gathered Joyce into his arms, careful not to touch her broken arm. He bit his lip in worry, her breathing was far too shallow for his taste, then he said jovially, “So, all I have to do is find a way out and we’re in the clear, Mu-Joyce. Don’t you worry.”
[Mum? Did I almost call her Mum?] Spike thought with a scowl. His mum was dead, and there was no god, vampire or magic that could bring her back. The demon in him started to react to his anger as he felt the familiar despair rise within him. She had no right to make him feel despair, no right to make him feel vulnerable. No right to make him feel like a human.
His demon rose, and he felt his face change. Then he looked down and glared at the pale, semi-unconscious woman in his arms, and watched her as she tried to breathe. Just as suddenly as his demon rose, it died down and Spike felt his anger leave him. For the undead life of him, Spike couldn’t explain how or why that happened.
“What the bloody hell is wrong with me?” Spike asked himself in amazement. The only people that were able to calm him like that had been dead for over a hundred years. Drucilla could only do that occasionally, when she felt like it. But not even she could calm him when he felt his rage, and certainly not while she was asleep.
He used his enhanced hearing to listen to her heartbeat, hoping that he could start thinking of her as his latest meal. Instead, it was what he didn’t hear that froze his undead heart with fear. Her heartbeat was getting slower by the second, and her lungs labored to bring air to her body. When she let out a small breath, and he could smell the sweetness of her blood on it. “No, bloody hell no!”
When Spike started for the nearest exit, he felt the slightest tremor run through the ground. By the time he bolted through the exit, the ceiling started to cave in. The ground trembled only for ten seconds, but when it was over, the exit was covered with shards of rock, dirt and water.