The Hive, Chapter 1
The Hive
By Fangstress
Fandom: Buffy The Vampire Slayer crossover Angel The Series
Warnings: Violence, Slash, Rating R, Eventual Spander
Xander's life changes forever when he tries to help a deranged Slayer..
THE HIVE
Chapter 1
Drip.
The water droplet trickled down the length of wet rusted pipe, finally falling free.
Drip.
It detoured , and met it’s splattery end as it broke apart, separating, forming into rivulets that followed the contour of a cheekbone.
The water became more of itself; it’s color shifted and transmuted, became the ruby red of blood.
Drip.
Beneath was a puddle of crimson; mingled dirty water and blood, and the droplet finally splashed down into it with a crashing finality.
In the dark, dank warehouse along the floor littered with broken crates and boxes, a large wharf rat crawled slowly, avoiding the spreading pool of blood and the crumpled business card that read, "Angel Investigations."
The rat flinched at a weak, muffled groan. It moved closer to the discarded food wrappers, stopping and sniffing when it encountered the scent of a human rank with the odor of violent death. A hand laying outstretched on the dirty floor, flopped weakly, and the rat scurried away. One dark, glassy eye tracked the rat's progress, the other mostly obscured by the patch, pulled askew.
Xander Harris lay in the dark, knowing he was bleeding out. And there was nothing at all that he could do to stop it. He couldn’t even move his head out of the way of the leaking pipe that dripped water onto his face, trailing down the side of his nose, landing in the puddle of his own blood spreading all around him.
He had been murdered in the worst heat of LA by a deranged Slayer, and it was all his fault.
Earlier that day, Xander, ignoring any common sense he'd ever possessed, had trailed the runaway Slayer from the sweltering heat of downtown LA, into the cool darkness of the old waterfront warehouse. He had hoped that his ability to tell uncomfortable truths in his soothing, yet denial-piercing way would reach the young girl, bringing her out darkest madness into the light.
Once he'd found the girl, things had rapidly gone downhill.
She hadn't really been all that captivated by what he'd had to say.
She'd been much more interested in gleeful torture with a side of homicidal knifing action. For hours.
During this unrelenting torment, Xander had learned just how alone he truly was. The rogue Slayer's sociopathic coldness had frightened Xander more than anything else, and when nearly three hours later, she'd ripped into his belly with the blade, it was almost a mercy.
Xander's heart was broken. His body was shattered. He didn't even have the strength to continue the feeble attempt to hold in the slippery , wet coils of his intestines; his hands flopped uselessly at his sides. His lungs filled up with blood as he coughed wetly and took a last, labored breath.
He stank. That depressed him.
He drifted.
Xander listened to the beat of his heart slow, and slow...
...thrumming ever more quietly until it faded to almost nothing.
Wetness tracked down the side of his face, tickled one ear. It wasn’t the leaky pipe.
He was crying.
Xander was dying, and he couldn't save the ones he loved most. Willow. Buffy. Dawn. Giles. All gone, all lost to an evil he didn't even understand. And now he'd never know how to fix it. Never have his family back.
Maybe if he hadn't pushed them all away in the first place... things wouldn't have happened the way they had...
I should have known, he thought sadly.
I should have listened...
He remembered Angel's face, so worried...
...just few hours ago…
** That's all for this week. There's a lot more coming, though. See you next Monday. :-)