(no subject)

[river_meimei]

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.

Comments

[river_meimei]

"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."

[bloodandnicotine]

When she says "bloody" Spike can't help but look at his hands. They're practically unmarked, this time out. He never says, never even thinks, clean.

Now Spike takes the step back because he remembers a voice like hers, remembers nonsense words that speak straight to some part of the brain that's older than logic or language.

The shiver under Spike's skin is revulsion and pity and nostalgia and arousal and more than a hint of fear. Once before he'd ripped out his heart and thrown it over the windmill for a girl who saw the hidden truth and missed the bloody great taxicab right in front of her. He doesn't want to want to do it again.

Unconsciously Spike's hand goes to his face. He doesn't think of his human visage as a mask, more like... an expression, like a grin or a frown. Real enough as far as it goes. Just not everything. But if there's one thing he knows, it's not to argue with the crazy girl when she's having a vision. Automatically he drops into his Dru-coaxing voice, soothing yet solemn. "Yes, pet," he says. "Me too. Now what does this door look like?"

[river_meimei]

"Tell you what she sees--" River's voice is rising, spiralling upwards with anger and frustration and, now, something like fear -- but it's not of him. Not of what's in front of her.

"Twenty needles in her brain, wait while the crows are circling. I shoot," she says, voice trembling with too much stress and too little control, "with my mind. I have a mission and I will find it," and then the stake's jammed into the pocket of her long coat and she's running, running into the darkness with her tangled hair flying back from her white strained face.

[bloodandnicotine]

Clearly he's out of practice. Spike shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets. It's early yet; plenty of time to have a coffee and a pint of blood down the takeaway and find someone to kill.