river_meimei | (no subject)

(no subject)

The statue has teeth but it's stone, the one in front of her is frozen in an impossible slavering lunge but she knows there could be more right behind her and she knows this one can move even though it can't, it couldn't but it has, and she only has two eyes and she can't break stone, and she shrieks--

--and her eyes close, just for an instant--

(and in her ears a great rushing like wind and water)

The choked remnant of her cry is a pitifully small squawk in the damp unfamiliar night.

She's huddled in the shadowed corner of a stone wall, hands clutching her head in hopeless defense.

Behind her, sloping walls rise into crenellations and turrets. It's a castle: small, sturdy, and apparently abandoned.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

River knows where to go in New York City.

But she's been there. And found nothing.

She's running blind now: casting quick glances at everything and nothing, her shoulders tight and fingers working by her sides. Whatever she's looking for, she's not finding it. Maybe she doesn't even know what it is.

And it's getting darker.

The sky's getting darker. The streets are brighter than ever.

The character of the crowd has changed: these are not people leaving work and heading home. These are people out in the night, looking for fun, and heading home is the last thing on their minds.

Some of them are looking for fun with more dead-serious intent than anyone ever brings to the office.

There are lights off in the distance: neon signs, bright flickering glitz, and hundreds of people; it's reminiscent of a tamer Beaumonde, to the quick glance of someone from another world.

But that's off in the distance. Around her now are corrugated metal covers over shop windows, and sparse bits of graffiti, and shadows between streetlights.

And a figure that steps out of a doorway to stand not quite in her path, smiling.

"Hey, gorgeous."

It's a young man, tall and wiry and not that much older than herself --

-- it's a horror with a mouthful of fangs, dead flesh animated by something ancient and gleeful and hungry --

-- his smile fading to an expression of mild concern. "You okay?"

River stares at him -- and then flinches back away from nothing, sucking in a sharp breath.

Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

"What's the matter, sweet thing?"

The concern's a flat mask, and under it he's grinning.

There's motion behind her.

(Even the orderlies wear)

You stay friends with Faith Lehane for a while, and you learn some things.

And you stay long enough at the Academy, they teach you how to see a certain way. How to move; how to think.

"Not sweet," River whispers.

There's a crate pushed up against the wall, with a forlorn and fading advertisement for oranges stapled to it. River's leg coils upwards, chambering, and lashes out hard; with a sharp crack, the wood splits. Styrofoam peanuts hemorrhage to the pavement as she spins, ducks, wrenches off a broken section of cheap pine and whirls upright.

The half-dozen other figures that have moved in behind her (almost, almost silently) all startle back at her sudden movement.

Except one, who was on a sufficiently tight hair-trigger to leap as soon as she moved and didn't quite take in the nature of the movement.

Well.

That was dumb of him, wasn't it.

River's not a Slayer. She's no stronger than any athletic girl her size. She wasn't born to kill these creatures.

But she has her own speed, faster than almost any human's, and she has her own feel for weapons, born and bred and trained and taught.

(we are of that an-tet, khef and ka)

And if her palm is pricked with splinters now, there's a vampire exploding into dust around her.

There's a vampire exploding into dust around her, halo-ing her head in the street lamp, all poetic-like.

'Course the other five idiots kinda spoil the picture. Spike leans back against a handy wall and folds his arms to watch the show. It is a nice night for killing and he'd meant to take down this lot before he got his evening cuppa, but ladies first, like Darla always said.

Besides, this is his second Slayer-in-the-rough, not counting the one who took his hands off, and Beth didn't have her heart in the game; this one doesn't seem to have any such scruples, and Spike is dead curious to see how well she dances before he cuts in.

How she dances: swiftly, and gracefully, and lethally.

There are faces morphing into monsters around her, humans who died but didn't lie down in their coffins even after the heart stopped and the soul fled, and they're snarling low and rabid.

River spins, grabs a collar and yanks -- the vampire's face contorts in surprise and anticipation as his fangs near her neck, and then in just plain surprise the instant before he vaporizes. River doesn't blink or hesitate at the ash; just darts forward, eyes narrowed with a clear deadly focus, and reverses her grip in time to stake the one making a grab for her from behind. She didn't even look at that one; she was too busy kicking another in the throat, hard enough to crunch cartilage.

No quarter given, and none asked.

No prisoners.

Four of them are left, only three still upright; they're backing away, circling, the shock wearing off.

"Another goddamn Slayer," one of them spits.

"Yeah," breathes the first one to speak to her, his eyes alight. "Weird. She didn't smell like one. Still doesn't. 'Sup with that, gorgeous?"

What makes Spike's flesh creep -- and impresses him most -- is the way her face doesn't change. Oh, a little squint, like maybe she wore glasses before the Slayer package kicked in, but otherwise floating serene above the carnage.

Yet another vamp drops in from a nearby fire escape. Not sporting, that. Spike sticks out a leisurely combat boot -- well, leisurely for a vampire -- to trip the bloke up and send him sprawling at her feet.

River doesn't thank him.

She does dispatch the vampire promptly, though, so maybe that counts.

There's only one left to circle slowly with her, the one who keeps calling her gorgeous; his eyes gleam with interest, and with hunger.

Hers are cold.

"You killed all my guys, gorgeous," he says, in a tone of mild good-humored reproach; he might be saying something like you stepped on my coat. "I mean, I can get more, but all of them? In like two minutes? Is harsh, that's all I'm sayin'."

"I can see you," River murmurs, low and deadly.

And there -- a smile, faint and incongruously sweet.

"Stole the skin for a mask."

A sidestep, a double-feint, and then -- blindingly fast for human eyes, just about normal for a Slayer -- a strike.

Her strike goes through empty air; he's two paces to the right, turning lightly on one foot and lashing out at her with the other.

The kick takes her solidly in the ribs, sends her staggering back.

Spike catches her against his chest -- a classic hero move, if he were six inches taller and three stone heavier. As it is they both stumble back a step or two before preternatural strength wakes up and trumps physics. Then she kicks *Spike* in the chest, knocking him clear out of her way, and launches herself at Mr. One Adjective again.

This is getting boring -- the bloke, not the girl. She talks like Dru and fights like Buffy; Spike could be in a lot of trouble here, not even counting from the stake.

Then again, Spike likes trouble. He scrambles to his feet and throws a punch at the last vamp standing.

The vampire staggers sideways, a snarl jarred out of him by the fist that just hit his jaw.

River's foot slams up towards his scraggly goatee.

That one's a glancing blow, and it hits him on the shoulder rather than the face as he ducks away, retreating.

He's not smiling anymore, especially not as his glance settles for a moment on Spike.

"'Kay then," he says, and the smile starts to come back. "Catch you later, gorgeous."

And he sidesteps into a darkened doorway, and is gone.

He's gone; River's eyes track him for only a moment before she rounds on Spike.

She doesn't attack, not yet, but there's a stake clenched tight in one hand and a wall to her back, and a taut and lethal wildness in her eyes, like a predator cornered.

Spike should step back, show his throat, but be damned if he's gonna. His own fault for sitting out the first dance but his gums ache to sprout fangs; hell, his knuckles ache to split against someone's cheekbones. He's not gonna pick a fight with this bint just for the pure hell of it -- he doesn't know her that well yet -- but the just-a-harmless-puppy routine that Angel's so perfected isn't in him tonight.

He manages at least to keep the teeth back and let the fists go. "Hello, l-" love, he starts to say, then snarls -- his unknown rival has cornered the pet name market tonight. "You're new in town." It isn't quite a question.

"You're not."

She hovers on the stretched-wire border between attack and flight, but if she flees it won't be for fear; there's nothing in her right now but the killer, and the frail and trembling jesses holding it back.

"Not in any town on earth," he agrees with a razor-edged smile. It's hyperbole -- not like he spent his hundred odd years traveling round with an atlas and a number two sodding pencil -- but not by much. The edge, that's for himself. Mostly. Not her, anyway. A little for Angel, who even has to win at being older, more jaded and more tired.

"I'm Spike," he adds, belatedly. Not one of his better nights for repartee.

"Bloody."

A beat; she flinches a little, free hand jerking slightly. Not the hand with the stake -- that one's steady. Like the proverbial rock.

"I," she says, and the killing edge has receded a little but the tension is if anything greater.

"There's masks, and -- you too. You too. There are teeth in the grass and under the walls and -- I need to find the door."