Living at a Pace That Kills: Chapter Two - Buffy/Dean Fic
Title: Living at a Pace That Kills: Chapter Two
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: None so far
Warnings: Violence and language
Genre: Thriller
Summary: Buffy’s life after the fall of Sunnydale takes a tragic turn, turning her to a hunter.
Disclaimer: The only real major difference in the Buffy story is how things ended up after the last episode of the series. It doesn’t follow the comics. All characters and storylines from Buffy and Supernatural belong to their original creators, not me.
SEE THE REST OF THE CHAPTERS HERE.
My head was sore again. It made me long for my healthier days when I had a somewhat healthy life. Despite the oddities of my existence, I had always maintained a decent sleep schedule and diet. The jaded attitude I had gained subsequent to my loss had forced me into an overall self disdain. I was horrifically depressed and the only treatment I could find for it was alcohol and the occasional one night stand. I had become the opposite of what I had ever believed I could be.
The afternoon sun peeked through the thick curtains of the cheap motel. It had to have been at least four o’clock. I hadn’t gotten in until after dawn, using the darkness to kill every vampire I could find. There were more around than I had ever seen, but they were scattered. Their presence followed no logical pattern which frightened me slightly. It seemed to be chaos, something I had been able to handle at one point in time, but felt no longer capable of. There was no one to catch me when I fell. I was alone.
After showering, I pulled on a long T-shirt and sat on the bed I had made for no reason other than the unkempt nature of the room was making me crazy. Lazily, I flipped through the channels on the television, one that consisted of many more than I would have imagined. As of then, I was on the slight outskirts of Chicago, just barely outside the downtown area. My original source of transportation had been the trains, which contained more vamps than most people would think. The previous night, however, I had obtained a Harley Davidson, the product of grand theft auto.
“…seem to have no real pattern, but have kept many Chicago residents in their homes…”
My mind switched back to the television, which was running an afternoon news broadcast. A reporter of East European descent with long dark hair and beautifully tanned skin was reporting a gruesome story. Beneath her read the headline, “SEVEN DEAD IN MIDNIGHT MASSACRE”. I nearly laughed at the contrast, finding it grossly inappropriate that such beauty should represent something so repulsive.
“Three men and four women were found gruesomely murdered in what witnesses described as a satanic style murder. Police have neglected to inform us of the details, waiting for further information from the coroners…”
I pulled my attention from her words and focused on the imagery being splashed across the screen. It amazed me that the network had the audacity to display such things at such an early hour and could only guess the kind of publicity it would bring them. Brief shots of a downtown nightclub were shown, with sheet covered bodies laying amongst broken furniture and shattered glass. Suddenly, it jumped to a clip of a girl who couldn’t have been any older than seventeen, crying and shaking.
“There was just…so much blood…oh, God!”
She broke into a fit of sobs as someone pulled her from the view of the camera.
Blood?
Vamps didn’t leave blood, that was for damn sure. The usage of the word ‘satanic’ really did nothing for me either. Although it perked the interest of many people, I could think of nothing but how often it had been overused. The media loved that word. It increased their ratings significantly. There could be something as slight as words written in blood at a location that made witnesses jump to the satanic murder claim, when in reality, it had nothing to do with what would be considered a ritualistic murder. Details were important in such a case.
I sighed and looked down at one of my bags of weapons sitting next to the bed. One of my many stakes was poking out the side. It would be of no use in such a case. Underneath the bed was a double barreled shotgun and a .44 Magnum was in my side drawer. Until then, I had used them for safety. I had pulled the .44 on two different men, but they weren’t demons. They were simply the type of humans who selectively filtered the word ‘no’ out of their hearing. I still had yet to find out how guns could be used against demons. Sighing, I decided it was time to get ready to go out for the evening.
“Hey there, cutie, how’d you like to-“
“No,” I shot flatly at the second guy who had tried to hit on me in the past fifteen minutes.
Unlike the first, he went away quickly and was off to his next victim. The other had been kind of a pain in the ass, trying technique after technique to get me to talk to him. I wasn’t in the mood.
I had found the club that the people had died in the prior night, but it was shut down for obvious reasons. It most likely wouldn’t be opened for weeks and even then, the owners would have to filter out the people who were there simply to gawk. So rather than lurk around the people investigating the area, I was in the bar of a neighboring night club I wasn’t familiar with, keeping an eye on every person that walked through the door. The place was very lively, full of people close to my age and younger, dancing and drinking colorful cocktails. It was close enough to the other club that I felt I may end up running into someone who had seen something, regardless of their involvement.
I wasn’t given much trouble, aside from the typical pick up lines. The situation was a real catch twenty-two in that manner. Had I noticed anyone who I really wanted to scrutinize, I was dressed and made up to keep them talking to me. Still, tight jeans and a tiny sparkling black top that showed off nearly every muscle on my body sent the remainder of the patrons to me as well. Not only was it annoying, it made it more difficult for me to keep my eyes on the rest of the people. I had been there for nearly two hours and had seen nothing. The sun was close to setting however, something that was always an advantage for me.
“Hey, honey, do you need anything?”
I looked to the bartender, a girl who reminded me very much of Faith. She was nearly as muscular as me, but her facial features were darker, housing dark eyes and long black eyelashes. Tattoos lined her long burly arms, mostly black with a slight hint of color. Her lips were huge, but I had yet to see her smile.
“I…don’t know,” I said, looking down at my empty glass.
Names of drinks eluded me. I had been too busy watching people.
“I’ll make you something good,” she said, smiling for the first time.
“Thanks,” I grinned back at her.
“No problem. Are you waiting for someone or something?”
“What?”
She pulled out multiple liquor bottles and combined them into a small glass.
“You look like you are trying to find someone.”
I sighed, feeling my cover had been blown.
“Not really. Do you know anything about what happened down the street last night?”
The girl froze momentarily and I could see different thoughts shifting through her mind through the expressions varying on her face. For a second, I was worried. She looked terrified.
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
The way she said it was so cold.
“Do I look like a cop to you?”
She set the drink in front of me, a concoction of God only know what that had turned to a shade of dark pink. I took a sip of it and realized it could have caused serious problems as the taste of alcohol was entirely absent. I could have drank them all night.
“Go sit over there,” she said, nodding towards the area across the room at a series of large red couches next to the dance floor. “I have a break in five minutes. I’ll come talk to you then.”
“I was working here when it happened.”
The girl, whose name I still didn’t know, was sitting next to me on one of the couches I had forced an angry party of five off of. It was in the corner of the club, a quieter and more secluded area. I was on my second little pink drink and she was drinking something clear that seemed to calm her nerves.
“Did you see or hear anything…?”
“My roommate works there. She told me what happened, but you cannot tell anyone. She is too scared to even talk to the cops, okay?”
“What happened?”
She took another swig of her drink. The scent of it made my nose turn up in disgust, which I did my best to hide.
“She was in the backroom when it all…started…”
“When what started?”
There was a moment of silence between the two of us and I thought I heard her swallow before speaking.
“She said that these three people came into the bar - two men and a woman. But they weren’t people.”
Her voice was becoming quieter as she spoke.
“How so?” I asked, not knowing how else to put it without saying too much.
“Their eyes...she said they were solid black. She could see them through a small window in the back. I guess when they came in, everything just came to a halt. Several people simply left, but the ones that remained stood around, looking at them. She said everyone appeared very afraid. The fear she felt is what kept her in the back room.”
I watched patiently as she bit down hard on her lip and turned away briefly. The tanned skin of her face had paled slightly.
“They lined up seven people. I guess they were randomly chosen, but she said she couldn’t really tell. That’s when it all happened. She just saw blood and heard people screaming in ways that sounded unnatural. The sounds made her run further into the back, but she couldn’t get outside because someone had locked the back door. So she hid in the bathroom, crying until she realized that the screaming had stopped. When she felt like she could go out there, she saw that the seven people had been shredded. It looked like their skin had been split apart. Everyone in the club was sobbing and the three things that had done it all were gone.”
I thought back to that demon that I had encountered in my kitchen a year earlier and felt the faded scar on my stomach. There was nothing I could do with that information in the club. I needed to get back to the motel and go through the books I had gathered from Giles’ home after he had been killed. Whatever had been following me, I felt it was close. I stood up and looked down to the girl, who I felt tremendously sorry for. She had reason to be as scared as she looked.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching into my pockets and pulling out a fifty dollar bill. “Take this.”
She looked ready to protest, but I beat her to it.
“Consider it a tip. And take care.”
I wished I could have said more to her, but I really had no idea what to say. There was nothing that could make anything better at that point. So without another word, I left the club and kick started the Harley. As I rolled down the alley and made my way to the street, a large black car, some sort of Chevy, pulled in front of me. I hit the brake so hard that the front tire swerved slightly, sending me flying to the ground.
“God, drive much?” I yelled at the man who leapt from the driver’s side and pulled me to my feet.
I brushed off sand and gravel from my jean, annoyed. There were several small tears in them, which I really didn’t care for.
“It’s a one way, Shorty,” he said, as a cocky smile covered his face, “and you’re going in the wrong direction.”
I shoved him away from me, more frustrated with myself than anything. Contents of my bag were scattered across the street, including holy water and stakes. I gathered them together frantically and thrust them into the tan canvas bag that normally hung from the back of the Harley.
“Stakes?” he asked, as if I would answer him.
When I pulled the bike up and straddled it for the second time, he stood in front of it.
“Get out of my way.”
“You shouldn’t be down here. It’s dangerous.”
“You don’t say?” I shot back.
The two of us stood staring at each other while I tried to figure out why he looked familiar to me.
“Dean, get in the car,” I heard from the passenger side of the car.
I used the moment of distraction to back up and ride around him, onto the street, and back to the motel.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: None so far
Warnings: Violence and language
Genre: Thriller
Summary: Buffy’s life after the fall of Sunnydale takes a tragic turn, turning her to a hunter.
Disclaimer: The only real major difference in the Buffy story is how things ended up after the last episode of the series. It doesn’t follow the comics. All characters and storylines from Buffy and Supernatural belong to their original creators, not me.
SEE THE REST OF THE CHAPTERS HERE.
My head was sore again. It made me long for my healthier days when I had a somewhat healthy life. Despite the oddities of my existence, I had always maintained a decent sleep schedule and diet. The jaded attitude I had gained subsequent to my loss had forced me into an overall self disdain. I was horrifically depressed and the only treatment I could find for it was alcohol and the occasional one night stand. I had become the opposite of what I had ever believed I could be.
The afternoon sun peeked through the thick curtains of the cheap motel. It had to have been at least four o’clock. I hadn’t gotten in until after dawn, using the darkness to kill every vampire I could find. There were more around than I had ever seen, but they were scattered. Their presence followed no logical pattern which frightened me slightly. It seemed to be chaos, something I had been able to handle at one point in time, but felt no longer capable of. There was no one to catch me when I fell. I was alone.
After showering, I pulled on a long T-shirt and sat on the bed I had made for no reason other than the unkempt nature of the room was making me crazy. Lazily, I flipped through the channels on the television, one that consisted of many more than I would have imagined. As of then, I was on the slight outskirts of Chicago, just barely outside the downtown area. My original source of transportation had been the trains, which contained more vamps than most people would think. The previous night, however, I had obtained a Harley Davidson, the product of grand theft auto.
“…seem to have no real pattern, but have kept many Chicago residents in their homes…”
My mind switched back to the television, which was running an afternoon news broadcast. A reporter of East European descent with long dark hair and beautifully tanned skin was reporting a gruesome story. Beneath her read the headline, “SEVEN DEAD IN MIDNIGHT MASSACRE”. I nearly laughed at the contrast, finding it grossly inappropriate that such beauty should represent something so repulsive.
“Three men and four women were found gruesomely murdered in what witnesses described as a satanic style murder. Police have neglected to inform us of the details, waiting for further information from the coroners…”
I pulled my attention from her words and focused on the imagery being splashed across the screen. It amazed me that the network had the audacity to display such things at such an early hour and could only guess the kind of publicity it would bring them. Brief shots of a downtown nightclub were shown, with sheet covered bodies laying amongst broken furniture and shattered glass. Suddenly, it jumped to a clip of a girl who couldn’t have been any older than seventeen, crying and shaking.
“There was just…so much blood…oh, God!”
She broke into a fit of sobs as someone pulled her from the view of the camera.
Blood?
Vamps didn’t leave blood, that was for damn sure. The usage of the word ‘satanic’ really did nothing for me either. Although it perked the interest of many people, I could think of nothing but how often it had been overused. The media loved that word. It increased their ratings significantly. There could be something as slight as words written in blood at a location that made witnesses jump to the satanic murder claim, when in reality, it had nothing to do with what would be considered a ritualistic murder. Details were important in such a case.
I sighed and looked down at one of my bags of weapons sitting next to the bed. One of my many stakes was poking out the side. It would be of no use in such a case. Underneath the bed was a double barreled shotgun and a .44 Magnum was in my side drawer. Until then, I had used them for safety. I had pulled the .44 on two different men, but they weren’t demons. They were simply the type of humans who selectively filtered the word ‘no’ out of their hearing. I still had yet to find out how guns could be used against demons. Sighing, I decided it was time to get ready to go out for the evening.
“Hey there, cutie, how’d you like to-“
“No,” I shot flatly at the second guy who had tried to hit on me in the past fifteen minutes.
Unlike the first, he went away quickly and was off to his next victim. The other had been kind of a pain in the ass, trying technique after technique to get me to talk to him. I wasn’t in the mood.
I had found the club that the people had died in the prior night, but it was shut down for obvious reasons. It most likely wouldn’t be opened for weeks and even then, the owners would have to filter out the people who were there simply to gawk. So rather than lurk around the people investigating the area, I was in the bar of a neighboring night club I wasn’t familiar with, keeping an eye on every person that walked through the door. The place was very lively, full of people close to my age and younger, dancing and drinking colorful cocktails. It was close enough to the other club that I felt I may end up running into someone who had seen something, regardless of their involvement.
I wasn’t given much trouble, aside from the typical pick up lines. The situation was a real catch twenty-two in that manner. Had I noticed anyone who I really wanted to scrutinize, I was dressed and made up to keep them talking to me. Still, tight jeans and a tiny sparkling black top that showed off nearly every muscle on my body sent the remainder of the patrons to me as well. Not only was it annoying, it made it more difficult for me to keep my eyes on the rest of the people. I had been there for nearly two hours and had seen nothing. The sun was close to setting however, something that was always an advantage for me.
“Hey, honey, do you need anything?”
I looked to the bartender, a girl who reminded me very much of Faith. She was nearly as muscular as me, but her facial features were darker, housing dark eyes and long black eyelashes. Tattoos lined her long burly arms, mostly black with a slight hint of color. Her lips were huge, but I had yet to see her smile.
“I…don’t know,” I said, looking down at my empty glass.
Names of drinks eluded me. I had been too busy watching people.
“I’ll make you something good,” she said, smiling for the first time.
“Thanks,” I grinned back at her.
“No problem. Are you waiting for someone or something?”
“What?”
She pulled out multiple liquor bottles and combined them into a small glass.
“You look like you are trying to find someone.”
I sighed, feeling my cover had been blown.
“Not really. Do you know anything about what happened down the street last night?”
The girl froze momentarily and I could see different thoughts shifting through her mind through the expressions varying on her face. For a second, I was worried. She looked terrified.
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
The way she said it was so cold.
“Do I look like a cop to you?”
She set the drink in front of me, a concoction of God only know what that had turned to a shade of dark pink. I took a sip of it and realized it could have caused serious problems as the taste of alcohol was entirely absent. I could have drank them all night.
“Go sit over there,” she said, nodding towards the area across the room at a series of large red couches next to the dance floor. “I have a break in five minutes. I’ll come talk to you then.”
“I was working here when it happened.”
The girl, whose name I still didn’t know, was sitting next to me on one of the couches I had forced an angry party of five off of. It was in the corner of the club, a quieter and more secluded area. I was on my second little pink drink and she was drinking something clear that seemed to calm her nerves.
“Did you see or hear anything…?”
“My roommate works there. She told me what happened, but you cannot tell anyone. She is too scared to even talk to the cops, okay?”
“What happened?”
She took another swig of her drink. The scent of it made my nose turn up in disgust, which I did my best to hide.
“She was in the backroom when it all…started…”
“When what started?”
There was a moment of silence between the two of us and I thought I heard her swallow before speaking.
“She said that these three people came into the bar - two men and a woman. But they weren’t people.”
Her voice was becoming quieter as she spoke.
“How so?” I asked, not knowing how else to put it without saying too much.
“Their eyes...she said they were solid black. She could see them through a small window in the back. I guess when they came in, everything just came to a halt. Several people simply left, but the ones that remained stood around, looking at them. She said everyone appeared very afraid. The fear she felt is what kept her in the back room.”
I watched patiently as she bit down hard on her lip and turned away briefly. The tanned skin of her face had paled slightly.
“They lined up seven people. I guess they were randomly chosen, but she said she couldn’t really tell. That’s when it all happened. She just saw blood and heard people screaming in ways that sounded unnatural. The sounds made her run further into the back, but she couldn’t get outside because someone had locked the back door. So she hid in the bathroom, crying until she realized that the screaming had stopped. When she felt like she could go out there, she saw that the seven people had been shredded. It looked like their skin had been split apart. Everyone in the club was sobbing and the three things that had done it all were gone.”
I thought back to that demon that I had encountered in my kitchen a year earlier and felt the faded scar on my stomach. There was nothing I could do with that information in the club. I needed to get back to the motel and go through the books I had gathered from Giles’ home after he had been killed. Whatever had been following me, I felt it was close. I stood up and looked down to the girl, who I felt tremendously sorry for. She had reason to be as scared as she looked.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching into my pockets and pulling out a fifty dollar bill. “Take this.”
She looked ready to protest, but I beat her to it.
“Consider it a tip. And take care.”
I wished I could have said more to her, but I really had no idea what to say. There was nothing that could make anything better at that point. So without another word, I left the club and kick started the Harley. As I rolled down the alley and made my way to the street, a large black car, some sort of Chevy, pulled in front of me. I hit the brake so hard that the front tire swerved slightly, sending me flying to the ground.
“God, drive much?” I yelled at the man who leapt from the driver’s side and pulled me to my feet.
I brushed off sand and gravel from my jean, annoyed. There were several small tears in them, which I really didn’t care for.
“It’s a one way, Shorty,” he said, as a cocky smile covered his face, “and you’re going in the wrong direction.”
I shoved him away from me, more frustrated with myself than anything. Contents of my bag were scattered across the street, including holy water and stakes. I gathered them together frantically and thrust them into the tan canvas bag that normally hung from the back of the Harley.
“Stakes?” he asked, as if I would answer him.
When I pulled the bike up and straddled it for the second time, he stood in front of it.
“Get out of my way.”
“You shouldn’t be down here. It’s dangerous.”
“You don’t say?” I shot back.
The two of us stood staring at each other while I tried to figure out why he looked familiar to me.
“Dean, get in the car,” I heard from the passenger side of the car.
I used the moment of distraction to back up and ride around him, onto the street, and back to the motel.