"Down the Well" - Part 3 - BtVS/Tomb Raider crossover
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tomb Raider xover
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Buffy/Satsu, Lara Croft, Willow
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters
Warnings: Contains spoilers for the Tomb Raider: Underworld game. Knowledge of the game is not necessary to understand the story, since everything you really need to know is spelled out... but you'll probably appreciate the references more if you know the game.
Notes: This story takes place during Season 8 (the comics), after "Harmonic Divergence" (issue #21). May contain minor spoilers for season 8. This story follows my earlier ones, "But We Know Pleasure Is Not That Simple" and "The Little Death." Buffy and Satsu are a couple, and there is femslash, although nothing too explicit in this story.
The problem wasn’t that Satsu was in trouble... Satsu was always in trouble. They were all always in trouble.
The problem was that they were going to be left behind on the rescue mission, and Lara -- the newcomer -- wasn’t.
“She’s our best mate, Buffy,” Leah said. “Lara here is all kinds of amazing with awesome sauce and a big bleeding cherry on top. But Satsu’s our sister. Can’t we go in with you?”
Buffy took Leah by the hand. This was a time to put General Buffy in the closet for a moment and let Human Being Buffy get some fresh air.
“I know how you feel,” she told Leah. “But we need you two more out here than in there. This place is crawling with vamps, and Lara didn’t come packing for them and doesn’t have much experience fighting them. There’s going to be three of us lying here completely helpless, and if anything happens to our bodies while we’re in that Hellmouth, we never come back. If your body dies while your astral body is in Hell, Hell is where you stay.” She looked at Sandra, who nodded in confirmation.
“Will we have any way to know if you are all right?” Rowena asked, her German accent seeming a bit thicker than it had in recent months.
“Sandra and I will be keeping close watch on their astral signatures,” Willow said. “We won’t know what they’re doing, but we’ll be able to tell if they’re okay. That’s another reason we need you two here. We’ll be too distracted to be much help if we’re attacked. And I don’t even know if our magic will work right in this crazy room.”
Leah gave a resigned sigh. “We’ve got our job to do,” she said. “But we hate not going with you, Buffy, ma’am. Put that in the official record, or whatever.”
“It’ll be okay,” Buffy assured her. “And after we’re done here, I’m taking you two and Satsu to Cannes for a week. As four friends, not as Mama Hen Slayer and her chicks. I want to see how that new tartan bikini looks on you, Leah.”
Leah smiled. “Eh, you just want a look at my excellent bum.”
“If I did, maybe I would be taking you into the Hellmouth with me. Our astral bodies are going to be...”
“...Naked,” Sandra finished for her. “Quite a bit more than naked, in fact. Only living material can make the trip. So no clothes, no weapons, no equipment. And this might be a good time to ask if either of you have anything artificial in your bodies. Plates, pins, cybernetic implants? Other kinds of implants?” Sandra gave Lara a hard look.
“Nothing here I didn’t grow myself,” Lara confirmed with a smile.
“Same here,” Buffy said. “I must’ve had a shorter growing season, though.”
“Wait,” said Rowena, alarmed. “No weapons? You two are going into Hell with no weapons?”
“Not precisely,” Sandra said. “The Scythe exists simultaneously in all dimensions. It’s a Reality Anchor. Quite a powerful trait, actually. They’ll be able to take that in with them. But as far as anything else, they’ll have to use what they can find on the other side.”
“How do we find Satsu when we get there?” Buffy asked.
Sandra sighed. “This is going to sound stupid,” she said, “but that True Love thing you and Satsu have? It’s, uh, more than just fairy tales and romance. It’s a form of electro-magnetic current. Souls are self-contained EM power sources and True Love is a connection between them. In this world you can’t sense it as such, but in Hell there isn’t any love at all except what you bring in with you. You should be able to sense Satsu and track her without too much trouble. It’ll be like being in a world with only one radio station. Easy to tune in.”
Buffy considered. “That’s not stupid,” she said. “It’s silly. There’s a difference. Silly I’ll do. Stupid I won’t.”
“That will certainly be a helpful policy to follow in Hell,” Sandra agreed.
“But that electro-magnetic current stuff?” Buffy gave a sour look. “You totally just ruined Valentine’s Day forever, did you know that?”
“Sorry.”
* * * * *
Buffy didn’t throw up when she and Lara materialized, which was unusual for her. There had been no real sense of movement when the spell had been cast. She had simply been lying on the floor of the Hellmouth room one moment, and lying in Hell the next.
Astral body or not, Buffy felt real enough. They were still underground, in some fairly stereotypical version of Hell that featured lots of dark jagged rocks, a reddish glow that seemed to emanate from nowhere in particular, and the smell of fart gas (which she considered more descriptive than “brimstone.”)
Getting up, the first thing she saw was Lara, lying absolutely naked a few feet away from her, her beauty rather undercutting the horrible aspect of this place.
“You’re really not kidding with that body, are you?” Buffy said to her as she gave her a hand up.
“The view from where I’m standing isn’t bad either,” Lara said with a smile as both women brushed the pebbles and dust off their bottoms. “Of course, the lack of my sports bra is going to be an annoyance. I bounce.”
“I noticed,” Buffy said with a smirk. “You jiggle too.”
“Now, now,” Lara said severely. “Let’s put the ogling and flirting on hold until after we’ve found your girlfriend.” She gave Buffy a mischievous smile. “Then the three of us can do as much of it as we want.”
Buffy shook her head and smiled. She hefted the Scythe, which had indeed made the trip with them in solid form. This is going to be an interesting day, she thought.
“Ow,” Lara said, putting her hand to her jaw.
“What?”
“I seem to have left a couple of dental crowns back in the real world. It’s a good thing Hell is hot. Cold air would definitely be bad at the moment.”
Sandra had been right about being able to pick up on what direction Satsu’s astral body had gone. It was sort of like following the scent of coffee or bacon in the morning. So this is what love is like in Hell, Buffy thought. Breakfast.
The demons apparently thought so too, judging by the number of them showing up, one or two at a time, probably to investigate the unusual taste in the air. Fortunately the narrow corridors only allowed for small demons, and Buffy and Lara took turns, one of them putting the Scythe to use while the other remained safely in the back. After a few fights, they managed to scavenge a decent-sized club and a makeshift dagger off the corpses of their opponents.
“How far can Satsu have gone, anyway?” Lara asked after more than an hour of following the twisting tunnels. “My direction sense almost never lets me down, and I know I can still find our way back to the Hellmouth, but the farther we go, the farther we have to fight our way back.”
“Sandra said people don’t always materialize right inside the Hellmouth entrance,” Buffy said. “They can pop in anywhere up to a mile away. I just hope Satsu had the good sense to stay put and keep out of sight.”
They stopped to sit on a convenient outcropping of rock (one that didn’t have too many sharp protrusions to torture bare bottoms) and rest for a few minutes. “So,” Buffy said. “Is this the kind of thing you spend your time doing too?”
“Hmmm.” Lara looked into the distance. “Let’s see, what did Lara do on her holidays? Well, my enemies created an exact duplicate of me to fuck with my life... quite a success, that. My dead mother was brought back as a zombie and I had to put her down. That was so much fun. My home was blown to bits, taking a very good friend and colleague with it. And I started a delightful and very torrid sexual relationship with someone who’d been trying to kill me for quite some time, and vice versa.”
Buffy gaped at her.
“What?” Lara asked.
“Seriously... are you sure you’re not me?”
“Really? What sort of things do you get up to, then?”
“All that stuff you just said?”
Lara nodded.
“Me too.”
“Oh. Christ.”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes until Buffy started with alarm.
“Lara? I... I can’t feel her anymore.”
“Satsu?”
Buffy nodded numbly. “Oh, God... what happened to her?” Tears welled up.
Lara put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “Now, don’t panic, Buffy. She might just have gone out of range and we’ll have to pick up her scent again. She may even just be asleep or something. There’s no need to think the worst.”
Buffy bit her lip and nodded. Lara brushed away the couple of tears that had managed to leak out. “Let’s go get her, Slayer.”
* * * * *
After a few more minutes of walking, Buffy and Lara arrived in a very large cavern with several tunnels exiting from it, and no idea which one might lead to Satsu. That was Bad Thing Number One.
Bad Things Number Two and Three were two very large, very dangerous demons who seemed to be in a life-or-death struggle in the center of the cavern. One was a thirty-foot tall Abominable Snowman type with claws longer than Buffy. The other seemed to a gigantic scorpion with the torso, arms and head of a woman. Either one of them could have used the Scythe as a toothpick.
The Scorpion-Woman-Demon was as big as a fire engine, and roughly the same color, except for her human parts, which were white as snow. Her gigantic bare breasts and short white hair bobbed and bounced in all directions as she tried to move into position for a strike with her massive stinger, which was dripping yellowish venom. Buffy and Lara could smell her sweat all the way across the cavern. There was a look of desperate madness in her eyes.
The Abominable Snowman made a mistake soon enough, and the She-Scorpion struck at last, so quickly the eye could barely follow. The big brute couldn’t even draw breath for a death scream before the huge stinger buried in his side pumped what must have been a bathtub full of venom into his body. Buffy and Lara could see the stinger pumping and throbbing as it delivered its deadly payload.
The She-Scorpion clenched her fists and screamed, her face twisted in what looked an awful lot like... an orgasm? But this was Hell, and the relative positions of pain and pleasure weren’t entirely clear.
Spent at last, the monster let her head slump forward on her chest, her body and hair dripping with sweat. A sizzling sound came from the other beast’s prone corpse... it seemed to be dissolving before their eyes.
And even more horribly, a chittering sound soon began to emanate from the thing’s remains, which were now twitching and squirming wetly on the ground. Seconds later a small army of rat-sized Scorpion Things erupted from it, bursting out of every orifice and readily creating new exits of their own. As Buffy and Lara watched in horrified fascination, the things began eating the liquefied remains they’d just crawled out of... and then started in on each other.
The Mother Scorpion Demon looked over right at the two tiny Slayers. They both tensed, preparing to make a run back into the narrow corridor, but the demoness only gave them an exhausted smile.
“Don’t be afraid,” she called to them. “I’m quite sated now. It was a close thing, though. A few more seconds and I’d have had to paint the walls and ceiling of this cavern with my venomseed. My little darlings would have withered away and died with no food.” She looked lovingly down at the awful things, which were now about half their original number (one half having devoured the other half), and were now all roughly the size of terriers. And still going at one another.
As they stared at the demoness, Buffy heard Lara whispering curses to herself. “What is it?” she asked.
“Hello again, Lara,” the demoness called in a surprisingly soft voice. “Happy to see me?”
“We’re in Hell,” Lara growled. “So yes.”
Buffy looked blankly at Lara. “You two know each other?”
“Buffy Summers,” Lara said, “meet Jacqueline Natla. Former Bitch Queen of Atlantis, and current Bitch Bane of My Life. This is a bit of a new look for her, but I can adapt. Lend the Scythe for a moment, please? I probably can’t kill her, but I can make a good start at chopping her bloody tits off before she kills me.”
“Really, Lara,” the demoness said in a tone of contempt. “Such gutter language, and so beneath you. Is that the way the British train their nobility these days?”
“Besides,” she sniffed. “You already killed me quite thoroughly the last time with that damnable hammer. And now you have the satisfaction of seeing what’s become of me, for the time being. How is Amanda, by the way? Are the two of you still licking each other’s genitals, or have you gone back to punches and gunplay?”
“She’s far happier now than she has been since before she met you,” Lara answered.
“But happier since before you left her to die in Peru all those years ago?”
“Much happier,” said Lara without hesitation. “I can see it in her beautiful blue eyes every time I kiss her.”
Natla smiled a smile that most definitely did not reach her own eyes. She looked down to check the progress of her babies, and saw that there were only two left, now the size of Great Danes, and trying their best to kill each other.
She reached down and picked up the ghastly scorpion-things, pulling them apart. She held them up to her breasts, and gasped in momentary pain as they both clamped down with their toothy maws, sinking their teeth deep into her flesh, and began to suckle milk and blood from her in equal amounts.
She let go of them, letting them dangle from her like a pair of gruesome ornaments.
“As it happens,” she said pleasantly. “I was sent here to help you. To guide you. I know you’ve lost your way here. But the one rule of Hell is that everyone always knows exactly where they’re going.”
“Do you know where Satsu is?” Buffy blurted out. “Is she alive? Why can’t I feel her anymore?”
Natla smiled at her. “The pretty little morsel who came to visit us is very much alive, yes. Alive and nearby. I’ll tell you exactly where to find her. The Congeries has her.”
“Congeries?”
“Oh yes. You’re a Vampire Slayer, aren’t you? You know how vampires drain the blood from their victims, leaving an empty shell behind. The Congeries drains all the love from its victims... and leaves an empty shell behind.”
Natla looked down and stroked the two things that sucked at her bleeding breasts.
“The reason you can’t feel her anymore, darling? It’s because she no longer loves you. Or anyone. Or anything. And never will again.”
She grinned radiantly at Buffy and Lara. “Did you think this was one of your tombs, Lara, or some sort of crypt to fight your way through, Slayer? Welcome to Hell, ladies.”
Chapter Four
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Buffy/Satsu, Lara Croft, Willow
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters
Warnings: Contains spoilers for the Tomb Raider: Underworld game. Knowledge of the game is not necessary to understand the story, since everything you really need to know is spelled out... but you'll probably appreciate the references more if you know the game.
Notes: This story takes place during Season 8 (the comics), after "Harmonic Divergence" (issue #21). May contain minor spoilers for season 8. This story follows my earlier ones, "But We Know Pleasure Is Not That Simple" and "The Little Death." Buffy and Satsu are a couple, and there is femslash, although nothing too explicit in this story.
The problem wasn’t that Satsu was in trouble... Satsu was always in trouble. They were all always in trouble.
The problem was that they were going to be left behind on the rescue mission, and Lara -- the newcomer -- wasn’t.
“She’s our best mate, Buffy,” Leah said. “Lara here is all kinds of amazing with awesome sauce and a big bleeding cherry on top. But Satsu’s our sister. Can’t we go in with you?”
Buffy took Leah by the hand. This was a time to put General Buffy in the closet for a moment and let Human Being Buffy get some fresh air.
“I know how you feel,” she told Leah. “But we need you two more out here than in there. This place is crawling with vamps, and Lara didn’t come packing for them and doesn’t have much experience fighting them. There’s going to be three of us lying here completely helpless, and if anything happens to our bodies while we’re in that Hellmouth, we never come back. If your body dies while your astral body is in Hell, Hell is where you stay.” She looked at Sandra, who nodded in confirmation.
“Will we have any way to know if you are all right?” Rowena asked, her German accent seeming a bit thicker than it had in recent months.
“Sandra and I will be keeping close watch on their astral signatures,” Willow said. “We won’t know what they’re doing, but we’ll be able to tell if they’re okay. That’s another reason we need you two here. We’ll be too distracted to be much help if we’re attacked. And I don’t even know if our magic will work right in this crazy room.”
Leah gave a resigned sigh. “We’ve got our job to do,” she said. “But we hate not going with you, Buffy, ma’am. Put that in the official record, or whatever.”
“It’ll be okay,” Buffy assured her. “And after we’re done here, I’m taking you two and Satsu to Cannes for a week. As four friends, not as Mama Hen Slayer and her chicks. I want to see how that new tartan bikini looks on you, Leah.”
Leah smiled. “Eh, you just want a look at my excellent bum.”
“If I did, maybe I would be taking you into the Hellmouth with me. Our astral bodies are going to be...”
“...Naked,” Sandra finished for her. “Quite a bit more than naked, in fact. Only living material can make the trip. So no clothes, no weapons, no equipment. And this might be a good time to ask if either of you have anything artificial in your bodies. Plates, pins, cybernetic implants? Other kinds of implants?” Sandra gave Lara a hard look.
“Nothing here I didn’t grow myself,” Lara confirmed with a smile.
“Same here,” Buffy said. “I must’ve had a shorter growing season, though.”
“Wait,” said Rowena, alarmed. “No weapons? You two are going into Hell with no weapons?”
“Not precisely,” Sandra said. “The Scythe exists simultaneously in all dimensions. It’s a Reality Anchor. Quite a powerful trait, actually. They’ll be able to take that in with them. But as far as anything else, they’ll have to use what they can find on the other side.”
“How do we find Satsu when we get there?” Buffy asked.
Sandra sighed. “This is going to sound stupid,” she said, “but that True Love thing you and Satsu have? It’s, uh, more than just fairy tales and romance. It’s a form of electro-magnetic current. Souls are self-contained EM power sources and True Love is a connection between them. In this world you can’t sense it as such, but in Hell there isn’t any love at all except what you bring in with you. You should be able to sense Satsu and track her without too much trouble. It’ll be like being in a world with only one radio station. Easy to tune in.”
Buffy considered. “That’s not stupid,” she said. “It’s silly. There’s a difference. Silly I’ll do. Stupid I won’t.”
“That will certainly be a helpful policy to follow in Hell,” Sandra agreed.
“But that electro-magnetic current stuff?” Buffy gave a sour look. “You totally just ruined Valentine’s Day forever, did you know that?”
“Sorry.”
* * * * *
Buffy didn’t throw up when she and Lara materialized, which was unusual for her. There had been no real sense of movement when the spell had been cast. She had simply been lying on the floor of the Hellmouth room one moment, and lying in Hell the next.
Astral body or not, Buffy felt real enough. They were still underground, in some fairly stereotypical version of Hell that featured lots of dark jagged rocks, a reddish glow that seemed to emanate from nowhere in particular, and the smell of fart gas (which she considered more descriptive than “brimstone.”)
Getting up, the first thing she saw was Lara, lying absolutely naked a few feet away from her, her beauty rather undercutting the horrible aspect of this place.
“You’re really not kidding with that body, are you?” Buffy said to her as she gave her a hand up.
“The view from where I’m standing isn’t bad either,” Lara said with a smile as both women brushed the pebbles and dust off their bottoms. “Of course, the lack of my sports bra is going to be an annoyance. I bounce.”
“I noticed,” Buffy said with a smirk. “You jiggle too.”
“Now, now,” Lara said severely. “Let’s put the ogling and flirting on hold until after we’ve found your girlfriend.” She gave Buffy a mischievous smile. “Then the three of us can do as much of it as we want.”
Buffy shook her head and smiled. She hefted the Scythe, which had indeed made the trip with them in solid form. This is going to be an interesting day, she thought.
“Ow,” Lara said, putting her hand to her jaw.
“What?”
“I seem to have left a couple of dental crowns back in the real world. It’s a good thing Hell is hot. Cold air would definitely be bad at the moment.”
Sandra had been right about being able to pick up on what direction Satsu’s astral body had gone. It was sort of like following the scent of coffee or bacon in the morning. So this is what love is like in Hell, Buffy thought. Breakfast.
The demons apparently thought so too, judging by the number of them showing up, one or two at a time, probably to investigate the unusual taste in the air. Fortunately the narrow corridors only allowed for small demons, and Buffy and Lara took turns, one of them putting the Scythe to use while the other remained safely in the back. After a few fights, they managed to scavenge a decent-sized club and a makeshift dagger off the corpses of their opponents.
“How far can Satsu have gone, anyway?” Lara asked after more than an hour of following the twisting tunnels. “My direction sense almost never lets me down, and I know I can still find our way back to the Hellmouth, but the farther we go, the farther we have to fight our way back.”
“Sandra said people don’t always materialize right inside the Hellmouth entrance,” Buffy said. “They can pop in anywhere up to a mile away. I just hope Satsu had the good sense to stay put and keep out of sight.”
They stopped to sit on a convenient outcropping of rock (one that didn’t have too many sharp protrusions to torture bare bottoms) and rest for a few minutes. “So,” Buffy said. “Is this the kind of thing you spend your time doing too?”
“Hmmm.” Lara looked into the distance. “Let’s see, what did Lara do on her holidays? Well, my enemies created an exact duplicate of me to fuck with my life... quite a success, that. My dead mother was brought back as a zombie and I had to put her down. That was so much fun. My home was blown to bits, taking a very good friend and colleague with it. And I started a delightful and very torrid sexual relationship with someone who’d been trying to kill me for quite some time, and vice versa.”
Buffy gaped at her.
“What?” Lara asked.
“Seriously... are you sure you’re not me?”
“Really? What sort of things do you get up to, then?”
“All that stuff you just said?”
Lara nodded.
“Me too.”
“Oh. Christ.”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes until Buffy started with alarm.
“Lara? I... I can’t feel her anymore.”
“Satsu?”
Buffy nodded numbly. “Oh, God... what happened to her?” Tears welled up.
Lara put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “Now, don’t panic, Buffy. She might just have gone out of range and we’ll have to pick up her scent again. She may even just be asleep or something. There’s no need to think the worst.”
Buffy bit her lip and nodded. Lara brushed away the couple of tears that had managed to leak out. “Let’s go get her, Slayer.”
* * * * *
After a few more minutes of walking, Buffy and Lara arrived in a very large cavern with several tunnels exiting from it, and no idea which one might lead to Satsu. That was Bad Thing Number One.
Bad Things Number Two and Three were two very large, very dangerous demons who seemed to be in a life-or-death struggle in the center of the cavern. One was a thirty-foot tall Abominable Snowman type with claws longer than Buffy. The other seemed to a gigantic scorpion with the torso, arms and head of a woman. Either one of them could have used the Scythe as a toothpick.
The Scorpion-Woman-Demon was as big as a fire engine, and roughly the same color, except for her human parts, which were white as snow. Her gigantic bare breasts and short white hair bobbed and bounced in all directions as she tried to move into position for a strike with her massive stinger, which was dripping yellowish venom. Buffy and Lara could smell her sweat all the way across the cavern. There was a look of desperate madness in her eyes.
The Abominable Snowman made a mistake soon enough, and the She-Scorpion struck at last, so quickly the eye could barely follow. The big brute couldn’t even draw breath for a death scream before the huge stinger buried in his side pumped what must have been a bathtub full of venom into his body. Buffy and Lara could see the stinger pumping and throbbing as it delivered its deadly payload.
The She-Scorpion clenched her fists and screamed, her face twisted in what looked an awful lot like... an orgasm? But this was Hell, and the relative positions of pain and pleasure weren’t entirely clear.
Spent at last, the monster let her head slump forward on her chest, her body and hair dripping with sweat. A sizzling sound came from the other beast’s prone corpse... it seemed to be dissolving before their eyes.
And even more horribly, a chittering sound soon began to emanate from the thing’s remains, which were now twitching and squirming wetly on the ground. Seconds later a small army of rat-sized Scorpion Things erupted from it, bursting out of every orifice and readily creating new exits of their own. As Buffy and Lara watched in horrified fascination, the things began eating the liquefied remains they’d just crawled out of... and then started in on each other.
The Mother Scorpion Demon looked over right at the two tiny Slayers. They both tensed, preparing to make a run back into the narrow corridor, but the demoness only gave them an exhausted smile.
“Don’t be afraid,” she called to them. “I’m quite sated now. It was a close thing, though. A few more seconds and I’d have had to paint the walls and ceiling of this cavern with my venomseed. My little darlings would have withered away and died with no food.” She looked lovingly down at the awful things, which were now about half their original number (one half having devoured the other half), and were now all roughly the size of terriers. And still going at one another.
As they stared at the demoness, Buffy heard Lara whispering curses to herself. “What is it?” she asked.
“Hello again, Lara,” the demoness called in a surprisingly soft voice. “Happy to see me?”
“We’re in Hell,” Lara growled. “So yes.”
Buffy looked blankly at Lara. “You two know each other?”
“Buffy Summers,” Lara said, “meet Jacqueline Natla. Former Bitch Queen of Atlantis, and current Bitch Bane of My Life. This is a bit of a new look for her, but I can adapt. Lend the Scythe for a moment, please? I probably can’t kill her, but I can make a good start at chopping her bloody tits off before she kills me.”
“Really, Lara,” the demoness said in a tone of contempt. “Such gutter language, and so beneath you. Is that the way the British train their nobility these days?”
“Besides,” she sniffed. “You already killed me quite thoroughly the last time with that damnable hammer. And now you have the satisfaction of seeing what’s become of me, for the time being. How is Amanda, by the way? Are the two of you still licking each other’s genitals, or have you gone back to punches and gunplay?”
“She’s far happier now than she has been since before she met you,” Lara answered.
“But happier since before you left her to die in Peru all those years ago?”
“Much happier,” said Lara without hesitation. “I can see it in her beautiful blue eyes every time I kiss her.”
Natla smiled a smile that most definitely did not reach her own eyes. She looked down to check the progress of her babies, and saw that there were only two left, now the size of Great Danes, and trying their best to kill each other.
She reached down and picked up the ghastly scorpion-things, pulling them apart. She held them up to her breasts, and gasped in momentary pain as they both clamped down with their toothy maws, sinking their teeth deep into her flesh, and began to suckle milk and blood from her in equal amounts.
She let go of them, letting them dangle from her like a pair of gruesome ornaments.
“As it happens,” she said pleasantly. “I was sent here to help you. To guide you. I know you’ve lost your way here. But the one rule of Hell is that everyone always knows exactly where they’re going.”
“Do you know where Satsu is?” Buffy blurted out. “Is she alive? Why can’t I feel her anymore?”
Natla smiled at her. “The pretty little morsel who came to visit us is very much alive, yes. Alive and nearby. I’ll tell you exactly where to find her. The Congeries has her.”
“Congeries?”
“Oh yes. You’re a Vampire Slayer, aren’t you? You know how vampires drain the blood from their victims, leaving an empty shell behind. The Congeries drains all the love from its victims... and leaves an empty shell behind.”
Natla looked down and stroked the two things that sucked at her bleeding breasts.
“The reason you can’t feel her anymore, darling? It’s because she no longer loves you. Or anyone. Or anything. And never will again.”
She grinned radiantly at Buffy and Lara. “Did you think this was one of your tombs, Lara, or some sort of crypt to fight your way through, Slayer? Welcome to Hell, ladies.”
Chapter Four