Believe Your Eyes - Buffy/Grosse Point Blank crossover (Chapter Three)
This is for all of the brave souls who asked to see more of this insanity.
Chapter Three: I'm All Sixes and Sevens and Nines
"Did you ever wake up to find
A day that broke up your mind,
Destroyed your notion of circular time?
It's just that demon life has got you in its sway:
It's just that demon life has got you in its sway."
-The Rolling Stones, Sway
part three - martin:
My first instinct is to shoot him in the face, but since that's my first instinct when it comes to a good 75 percent of the human race, I manage to restrain myself. My next instinct is to ask questions, and that's an instinct I've never been too good at reining in. The increase in pay wasn't my only reason for leaving the CIA's protective aegis.
"If you're a vampire too, then why were they after you?" The vampire shakes his head slightly, fangs and ridges smoothing back into humanity.
"Do I look like I'm from around here?" he asks. It's obviously a rhetorical question, as he continues speaking without waiting for an answer. "Vampires are territorial, and as I haven't been through this way in nearly forty years, the locals have forgotten that it doesn't pay to get me brassed off."
"Right," I mutter, trying to wrap my brain around the increasingly surreal turn that my evening has taken. "You don't look forty years old."
"I'm a vampire," he says impatiently. "I haven't aged since 1880."
"Of course," I say, and decide that the shocked hysteria will have to wait until I'm no longer in Beirut. "Well," I tell him, "it's been nice meeting you. I'm leaving now." He doesn't move.
"Look," I say, "you're between me and the door. You saved my life, but that doesn't mean I won't kill you. Get out of my way."
"No can do," he says. "Sorry." I don't even have time to blink before he's got one hand on the rifle barrel, pushing it up to the ceiling, and the other around my throat. He's a good two inches shorter than I am, and about a million times more physically intimidating.
"Now," he continues, smiling up at me, "you can cooperate, or we can do this the hard way."
"What do you want?" I ask.
"Nothin' complicated," he says. "You're doubtless planning a quick getaway from the well-watered cedars of Lebanon. I want to go with you."
The biblical reference is surprising, but then, I've never encountered a vampire before. Maybe it's required reading for the undead, part of some kind of know-thine-enemy doctrine.
"I can't," I tell him flatly.
"See, that's not a word I like to hear," he says conversationally. "Unless it's used in the context of 'I can't take any more, stop, please'. Which I can arrange, if you keep being stubborn."
"It's impossible," I say, and keep talking before he can demonstrate his displeasure at my words. "I don't have a definite way out, and the only contact I have in-country is the very definition of unreliable."
"So introduce us," the vampire says. "He'll be reliable enough once I have a go at him."
"While I'm sure that dead men are very reliable, they're not very good at securing documentation and a way across the border," I snap. "Besides, don't you have your own ways of moving around? Some sort of secret vampire way of avoiding customs, patrols, and overly nosy border agents?"
"Usually," he says. He doesn't seem irritated by my outburst of temper; instead he looks amused, like a grown-up looking at a precocious child. I fight back the automatic desire to prove him wrong. Being underestimated might be the only thing that gets me out of this situation alive.
"So get out of Lebanon that way," I tell him, and pull hard on the rifle, hoping to get it away from him. His muscles don't even tighten, and the rifle doesn't so much as budge in his grasp. I start compiling a list in my head of any method I've heard of for killing vampires. Staking and decapitation have already been proven; sunlight's no good for another six hours. Crosses, holy water, fire...
"I can't," the vampire says, interrupting my chain of thought. "Lebanon's a sort of demonic no-man's land. The local government and its most prominent opposition are both infiltrated, and if you piss off the locals, dying quickly is generally the best you can hope for."
I can't help but wonder if the demonic politics in the area are a result of the human mess, or if it is the other way around.
"Not sure if your lot influenced ours," the vampire echoes my thoughts, "or if our lot's craziness spilled over onto you. Sixty-five years ago, I'd have said the latter, no question. Now?" He shrugs. "It don't matter to me either way. I just want to get out of here in one piece. And you'll either help me," he increases the pressure on my throat, "or I'll turn you and make you help me. See, once you're a vampire, you'll heal fast enough that your mate won't notice any damage when we ring him up."
The impersonal resolve in his face is more frightening than the fangs were.
"I don't have a choice, do I?" My question is rhetorical, and I barely murmur it, but he hears me anyway, and answers me.
"No," he says, "you really don't."
"Fine," I say. "But if we're going to do this, we do it my way. No intimidating my contact. I may have to work with him again. And if you tell him what you are without my express permission, I will light you on fire and douse your smoking corpse with holy water before burying you on the most heavily-consecrated ground in Lebanon."
He raises both eyebrows, but in appreciation rather than intimidation.
"Points for imagery, pet," he says. "I'll behave. I promise."
The sheer wickedness of his smile is far from confidence-inducing.
(Chapter Four)
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Author's Notes: The chapter title is taken from The Rolling Stones' Tumbling Dice. The chapter itself is dedicated to everyone who asked to see more. Thanks to you, there are now chapter titles on all three so far, and plans for more to come.
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