A multi-cross detailing what happens to the Scooby Gang after the amulet Angel gives Buffy causes the Hellmouth to explode, flinging the Scoobies and mini-Slayers across the multi-verse.
Crosses include Antia Blake, Merry Gentry, Lord of the Rings, Rachel Morgan, Pirates of the Caribbean and Enchanted. Enjoy and tell me what you think.
Part One
Siren Song
Chapter One
Spike and Xander are the property of Joss Whedon, Anita and company are the thought forms of Laurell K. Hamilton. I make no profit from this, just the reviews needed to feed my muse.
No one had known what to expect from the amulet Angel had given Buffy. A variety of scenarios had run through their heads but none of them had even come close to what had actually happened. The Hellmouth had exploded in a rush of mystical energy, blowing a hole the size of Los Angeles into the ground where Sunnydale had stood and flinging the Scoobies and mini Slayers through space and time, scattering them throughout the dimensions with no way to get back home. Which was how, one year later, Xander came to be standing in Jean-Claude's living room, wondering why the Master of the City had summoned them and searching the crowd of visiting vamps and shifters for the white-blonde head of his own vampire; the only face from home to have landed in the same world.
Xander felt a thrill go through him when he spotted Spike weaving through the crowd, wondering, not for the first time, what his friends would think of his relationship with the vampire. Yes, relationship. Over the past year they had become allies, friends, and eventually lovers, though Xander balked a bit at the term. Sure, his feelings toward the bleached menace weren't all of the hate, stake, kill mantra anymore but he was definitely almost certain that none of them were of the love-y variety. And yes, Egypt was a nice piece of real estate no matter which reality he happened to be in. Spike startled him out of his thoughts by wrapping strong arms around his waist and resting his chin on the taller man’s shoulder.
"What are you thinking on so hard, pet?"
Xander shrugged.
"Just wondering why JC wanted us here so bad."
"You," Spike replied.
"Huh?"
"He wanted you here, not us."
Xander turned to Spike.
"Me? Why?"
"Dunno," Spike shrugged. "But I think it has something to do with the Master of Cape Cod."
"Isn't he the one who brought his sons for Anita's pommes de sang?"
The vampire nodded.
"I think there's more to it though. Word is, he can call merpeople."
Xander looked at him, wide eyed. His life had never really been normal after meeting Buffy but since coming to this new world Xander had set some new personal records. Thanks to his run in with the hyena primal, his adventures with the swim team, and the weird metaphysics of this world Xander was no longer completely human. The first time he'd taken a shower he'd cracked his head open when his legs had suddenly fused together and turned into a scaled tail and fins had grown on his forearms and along his spine then on the first full moon he'd sprouted fur and turned into a hyena in the middle of Anita's kitchen. He had his eye back though it had been no picnic when Narcissus had reopened the empty socket.
"You don't think that he wants to take me with him, do you?"
He didn't think that Jean-Claude would make him leave if he didn't want to. JC was very good about not forcing his people to do anything they didn't want to and Xander was happy with his life as one of the vampires' people. Being one of the only merpeople in the Midwest made him a star attraction at the Circus and a bit of a novelty among the other shifters at Guilty Pleasures where he occasionally filled in if one of the other dancers called in. He'd never admitted it to Willow or Buffy but he had kind of liked filling in for the dancers on his ill-fated cross-country trip. Spike had quite the GP fan base as well and had convinced Xander to share the stage with him once. Reflecting back Xander realized that that dance had been the turning point in their relationship.
Spike growled in response to his question.
"He'll have me to go through if he does."
"What has the two of you looking so grave, mes amis?" Jean-Claude's liquid velvet voice washed over them.
Xander shrugged but Spike spoke up.
"What exactly does this Cape Cod Master want with Xan?" he demanded.
"Certainly not to take him away, if that is what you were thinking. He wishes merely to ask a favor."
Xander and Spike shared a look.
"What kind of favor?" Xander asked.
Several moments later found them in front of Samuel, the Master of the City of Cape Cod, and his wife, Leucothea or Thea. The siren was a very beautiful woman, nearly six feet tall with pale skin and hair. A circlet of silver rested on her white-blonde head, three pearls set into it with tiny diamonds surrounding them. Her eyes were black, marking her as other. Xander had seen his own eyes take on that color, usually when he was all fishy but sometimes when his emotions ran high they changed from his normal brown to that black to the grey green of his hyena. Those black eyes studied Xander more intensely than he liked.
"Alexander," Thea said, circling him. "I have heard many things about you."
"Well, uh, don't believe everything you hear," Xander said nervously. She was reminding him, uncomfortably, of a shark.
"But I would very much like to believe this of you."
"Believe what?" he asked, fighting the urge to hide behind Spike.
"That you are what I seek," Thea breathed, stepping close.
"And what's that?"
"A siren," she whispered then leaned in and kissed him.
Demon magnet, Xander Harris, strikes again.
Her power pushed at his defenses and he swallowed it down. Xander was immediately surrounded by the scent and sound of the sea, he could smell the salt on the air, taste it in Thea's mouth. There was a song in his head, words he couldn't quite hear, a tune he lost as soon as he'd heard it. A voice whispered through his head.
/You are/
Suddenly there were hands on his shoulders and he was pulled away from those salty lips, that haunting song. Xander came back to himself slowly, blinking black eyes as he met Spike's concerned blue. Looking down at himself he found a tail instead of legs, his new pants shredded. Great. Just great.
"What happened?" he asked around sharpened teeth.
"What did you do to him!" Spike demanded.
Thea was looking far too pleased with herself and Samuel was trying his best to keep his face blank but the pleasure shown out of his eyes.
"Thank you, my boy," he said to Xander. "You may have just saved my family."
"Huh?" was Xander's articulate reply.
Thea knelt beside him, ignoring Spike's growl of warning, and stared at Xander with a look in her dark eyes he couldn't quite decipher. Xander cuddled into Spike, as relaxed as he could be given the situation. Normally he was self-conscious when he was half-naked, especially when it was the bottom half uncovered, even in his half hyena form, but the fish form was different. Mers were like real fish when they had their tails, everything was on the inside. Normally, when they bred, the females would lay eggs in a special nursery and the males would swim over the clutch and release their own brand of caviar to fertilize them, so no outside equipment equaled no embarrassment for the Xan-man, or mer-man as the case may be.
"How's that?" Spike asked.
It was Thea who answered.
"I thought myself the last of my kind but he is as I am. A siren. Or he will be after he is brought into his power then he will bring our sons into theirs."
Samuel drew his wife to her feet.
"Thea, dear, perhaps we should allow him some time to acclimate himself to the idea."
"What idea?" Xander asked, his confusion bleeding the black from his eyes and the scales from his lower body. Suddenly finding himself naked, Xander grabbed the remains of his pants and covered Xander Jr. who was no longer inside his fishy self but hanging in the proverbial breeze.
"You are a siren, Alexander. One who has not been brought into his power but one nonetheless. I could bring you into that power. I could make you shine like a jewel in the depths of the sea."
"How?" he asked, somewhat afraid of the answer. If he was completely honest with himself, Thea scared the shit out of him.
"We lay together and my power will call to yours, opening you to it."
"We have to have sex?" he shouted then blushed as everyone who wasn't already watching the spectacle they had made turned to look.
"We are creatures of flesh, it is our way."
"Wait, wait, wait just a minute," Xander said, rising to his feet, destroyed jeans clutched to his crotch. "You said that if I get brought into my power that then I can bring your sons into theirs."
Thea nodded.
"You want me to have sex with your sons!"
Xander was proud of himself. As hysterical as he felt, he sounded calm when he spoke. Thea looked confused.
"You are a lover of men," she said. "I had heard that you enjoyed women as well, were these rumors wrong? Do you find intercourse with me distasteful?"
"What? No! And, and not men, just man, one, man and how, how do you know that your kids even wanna have sex with me? I mean, maybe they don't like guys that way and aren't you married? I don't think Sammy would like you and me getting together very much and..."
"My husband knows that there are certain things that must be done and Sampson does enjoy both sexes though he prefers women."
Xander turned away and began pacing, a habit he'd picked up from Spike, and raked a hand through his hair, nudity momentarily forgotten.
"This is just too weird and pants, I need some pants. Excuse me."
With that he very calmly fled the room.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Spike was uncharacteristically silent as Xander searched for some pants in the collection of clothing that seemed to accumulate from the different shifters that frequented the underground living quarters at the Circus. Xander had just pulled on a pair of grey slacks made out of some kind of soft material when a knock sounded at the door.
"Who is it?" Spike demanded.
Instead of a reply the door opened and a man roughly Xander's age entered the room. Spike glared. He knew who the man was.
"What do you want?"
"I've come to apologize for my mother," Sampson said, quietly shutting the door. "She gets a bit carried away at times."
Spike snorted derisively.
"You don't say?"
"Spike," Xander said softly. He was so tired all of a sudden; he just wanted the night to be over. The vampire crossed his arms, leaned against a wall, and was silent. Xander turned to the new man in the room.
"You're, uh, Sampson, right?"
Sampson nodded and held out a hand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Alexander."
The move surprised Xander. JC had told them that Samuel ran a very formal kiss and a handshake was far from a formal vamp greeting. Shrugging internally he took the offered hand and gave it a firm shake.
"It's Xander," he said. "Only my parents called me Alexander."
"Xander then," Sampson said with a smile. He moved to the small table and set of four chairs in one corner and motioned for the other men to sit before taking his own seat and speaking. "As I said before, I've come to apologize for Mother's actions and to maybe explain our situation."
"Go for it," Xander said. "This is already one of the weirdest nights of my life and for me that's saying something."
Sampson smiled then sobered.
"My mother is not human," he said. "She never was and she does not think as a human would. She is very nearly desperate to have myself and my brothers brought into our siren powers, even if those means seem somewhat extreme to humans or former humans."
"Your dad said something about me saving his family," Xander said into the silence. "What did he mean?"
The entire episode with Thea and Samuel had been replaying in Xander's head since he'd left the main room.
"The only way to bring a siren into his or her powers is sex with another siren," Sampson said and Xander nodded. "Several years ago she tried to bring me into my powers. I said no and she stopped, she didn't understand why I was so horrified but she accepted my answer."
Spike's jaw clenched as a vivid memory of his own, albeit newly turned, mother coming on to him flashed through his brain. Xander put a comforting hand on the blonde's shoulder as Sampson quickly continued.
"You must understand that Mother comes from a time where she and her people were worshipped as gods."
"The gods were always screwing their own family members," Spike said. At Xander's look he jumped to his own defense. "What? I went to school."
Sampson nodded.
"Our Mother does not think it wrong for her to be the one to bring our powers on-line and now that my brothers are getting to be of age my father fears that she may try to awaken their powers. I am nearly seventy years old but my brothers are only seventeen and Father and I do not believe their wills to be as strong as mine yet, Father doesn't believe that they would be able to stand up to her if she pushed enough. He has threatened to kill her if she tries, as he did when she came to me, but I fear that the temptation to add so much power to our family may be too much for her."
Xander sighed, rubbing his hands over his face.
"So if I don't let her bring my powers on-line then she might go for your little brothers and then your dad will kill her but if I do let her make me a siren then I'm supposed to have sex with you and your two brothers."
"That is what Mother plans," Sampson said.
"God, I really wanna help you guys out but this is just so wrong on so many different levels! It's like ... incest by proxy."
Sampson chuckled.
"That may be but if you are willing, I could speak with Mother, maybe convince her that there would be no rush to bring our powers once you were a siren. Buy us all some time, so to speak. You would be immortal, or close to it, so there would be no rush, we could let things happen naturally and give us all, well, years to think on it."
Xander sighed again and looked to Spike.
"What do you think?" he asked.
The vampire was silent for a moment.
"Normally I'd say that I don't wanna share you and their family be damned, but it's up to you, Xan. I may not like it but I'll support your decisions and all that rot."
Xander was quiet again then took a breath.
"I'll do it, the siren thing. Maybe with me around it'll take the pressure off your parents but that's the only sex I'm having with your family 'till I can wrap my mind around this a little better."
Sampson looked relieved.
"Thank you, Xander. I will tell my parents."
He rose to leave.
"We are in your debt."