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SLASH FIC: Journey to Another Hell III [BtVS/Anita Blake]
Title: Journey to Another Hell III
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Buffy/Anita Blake
Pairing: Xander/Jean-Claude/Asher
Rated: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Anita Blake Vampire Hunter.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
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After Jean-Claude had forced them back to his bedroom and they'd had a strenuous round of sex, Xander was feeling much more in the mood for demon hunting. Sex and violence, they made the world go round.
They also gave him a great big happy.
"Great, now that Anita's gone," Xander said, folding his arms under his head, "let's get down to business."
"You are a very bad man, aren't you Xander?" Jean-Claude said, a smirk tugging his lips.
Xander blew him a kiss. "That's why you like me so much. So, what do you want to do? Should we handle the problem ourselves or let Anita shoot a bunch of stuff, get herself into bigger trouble, and just generally make a gigantic dramatic ass of herself?"
Jean-Claude made a moue at him. "You really must not antagonize her so. She is hard enough to control without you daring her to attempt to kill you."
"But she's just so easy," Xander said. "And I've always liked living dangerously."
"Sometimes I truly have to believe that you have no soul," Asher said, reaching out to stroke a hand down Xander's side. "You certainly boast about it enough."
"Oh, I really don't have a soul," Xander said. "It's a whole thing from where I come from. You get Turned and your soul gives you the big bye-bye and that's that. Then the fun starts... And the blood and mayhem." He smiled sweetly.
Jean-Claude reached out to run a hand down Xander's side. "I do not know what it is about you, mon amour, but..."
Xander shrugged. "Lots of people say that. Anyways, how do you wanna handle the 'keep Anita out of jail' situation? A round of demon hunting?"
"We are not even sure that it is a demon," Asher said.
Xander snorted. "Oh, it's a demon all right. I could practically smell the sulfur and the demonic aura hanging around Anita. Someone put the whammy on her, which made her unleash the bullets like a dummy."
"What kind of demon could it be?" Jean-Claude asked.
"Who cares?" Xander said. "There's so many kinds of demons out there that there's no way to keep 'em all straight in your head. All you gotta know is that decapitation is usually the best bet... decapitation or fire. Fun, fun."
"Yes, fun," Asher said, carefully not running his hands across the perfectly smooth skin of the left side of his face that had even just recently been marred by the liquid burn of holy water scars. But he was totally over that. Decades of loss and misery had been overcome by the corrective surgery that had given him back the appearance of vampire perfection. It wasn't as though he had any internal scars or anything. Everything was perfect in his little world.
Even without a soul, Xander could smell the emotional turmoil ripping through Asher. A part of him--the nasty demon part--reveled in the torment he could feel going through his lover. But the remnants of humanity that occasionally reared a deformed mutant head had him slipping across the sheets to lay across Asher's chest.
"It's all right," he whispered in Asher's ear. "You've got me and you've got Jean-Claude and I'm proud to say that I will happily rip the heart out of anything that even thinks about bothering you, 'cause you belong to me now."
"That's an amazingly sweet sentiment coming from you," Asher said, and Xander ignored the single tear that trickled from his blue-blue eye.
Jean-Claude crept up behind Xander to wrap his arms tight around his back and loom over his shoulder, gazing down at Asher with passion burning eyes. "And you wondered what I could ever possibly see in such a monstrous boy."
"Monstrously lovely," Asher said, a smile bowing his lips. "He makes it acceptable for us to be ourselves with no pretending."
"Come on," Xander said, "humanity's way overrated. I'd rather have a good time than worry about some loser's version of morality." He began gyrating between their two sandwiching bodies. "All I wanna do is have some fun, I got a feeling I'm not the only one. All I wanna do is have some fun until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard..."
The sound of his laughter rang through the room, a chilling sound that reverberated with the inhuman cackle of a hyena scenting the weakness in a kill.
*____________________*____________________*
"I'm never letting you dress me ever again."
Jason felt his lips twitch and he forced himself not to turn his head and look at Xander. He'd already seen the outfit and he didn't want to die.
After all of Jean-Claude's not-quite begging, Xander had finally given in and let the older vampire dress him. Too bad he hadn't put any limits on what he was and wasn't willing to wear, because Jean-Claude had gone the whole nine-yards with him, probably because he had known that this was his only chance to get Xander to willingly wear clothes he picked.
The outfit consisted of gunmetal gray leather "pants" that were more like leather straps than anything else, the largest piece covering his groin area while leaving a large portion of his ass bare. The top was a painted on sheer red shirt that had had the back cut out to show off Xander's amazingly detailed black tattooed angel wings that started between his shoulder blades and went all the way down to his buttocks.
It seemed that Jean-Claude had been enamored of the angel wings for some time, because given the chance to dress Xander, he hadn't even hesitated before bringing out the cosmetics. In all, the look was like something out of a glossy magazine, but it was very not-Xander.
"At least the boots are normal," Jason offered, unable to help himself, then winced, waiting for the beat down.
Xander just snorted. "Of course the boots are normal. They're mine. Jean-Claude knows better than to mess with my footwear when I'm gonna be unleashing a beat down on someone in the near future."
"Come, mon amour, you look lovely," Jean-Claude said, sliding his arm through Xander's.
"I don't want to look lovely," Xander grumbled. "I'm supposed to be dangerous and frightening, but from the look on Jason's face when I came out... I bet I look like a girl."
"Non," Jean-Claude said, "you are definitely not feminine looking. You are dangerous and beautiful and everything I always knew you to be."
Xander glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Really?"
"Really."
Xander turned his head to look at Asher. "Well? Am I dangerous looking, or should I be in a bordello somewhere being reamed by a guy named Charlie?"
Asher cocked his head. "You are a vision."
"Hmph." Xander pouted, his glossy metallic-hued lips even fuller than usual. "Whatever."
Jason gave a sigh of relief. He wasn't up to another round of the terrifying Xander-losing-his-mind show. Whenever Xander lost it, Jason couldn't be sure the guy wasn't going to choose him as a victim and he would rather be alive than in pieces spread around on the ground.
How someone that pretty could be that evil... even after years of dealing with inhumanly good-looking vampires, it still boggled the mind.
"I'm gonna go get the car," he said, then squirreled it out of there.
*____________________*____________________*
The first thing out of Anita's mouth when she slid into the back of the limo was, "What the hell happened to you? You look like the results of a cosmetologist's final exam." Which led to Xander's first blow up of the night.
After the drama died down a little and Xander and Anita had been dragged back to their respective corners, Jean-Claude began outlining the plan.
"Alexander believes that a demon was the reason why Anita shot the girl last night. So Richard, you will use your wolves to scent out whether the demon is still there or where it has gone. Asher, you and Damian will lead the attack if and when we find the demon. Anita... you will stay out of things as much as possible."
She opened her mouth to start her objections, but Xander loudly snorted. "Dude, are you retarded, or what? The police are on your case and you're going to jump right in the middle of a shootout situation? Come on, they've probably got all your weapons on file so they'd be able to trace any bullets right to you and your ass would be right back in jail even if we bring this thing down, 'cause come on. You're on like police probation. You're not supposed to be even close to any crime scenes. So take a step back and stop trying to be the hero before you get yourself dead."
"Like you even care," she snarked.
"You're right," he said, "I don't care. If you wanna risk your life and your future freedom being an idiot, than that's up to you. But with the Marks tying you to Jean-Claude... well, you suddenly don't have the freedom to be as much of an idiot as you wanna be, get it? Besides, you're also risking Richard's life, and even though he's kind of a stick, he's not all that bad."
"Gee, thanks," Richard said, crossing his arms.
Xander flashed him a devilish grin. "You're welcome."
Richard couldn't help his little snort of laughter. Xander was a self-proclaimed soulless monster and he certainly acted the part most of the time, but he was also honest and had a real sense of humor, even if it was kind of sick.
After years of dealing with the darker sides of monster life, Richard had come to appreciate honesty in the people he dealt with. It was just such a damn rare commodity these days that he had come to see it as one of those little things he'd thought lost and gone forever along with the bulk of his humanity.
Glancing at Anita, he once again wondered what he had seen in her.
Because of her, he had gambled and lost the last of his innocence and piece of mind. He'd killed his first person because of her, and for awhile there, he'd also probably lost his sanity for awhile. And why? Because they were supposedly in love? Because they were going to get married and live happily ever after in some storybook fairy tale of a version of St. Louis?
Thinking back, he was actually a little sickened by his naivety and all the trouble it probably would have caused him and the people that depended on him. So in a way he could kind of thank Anita for waking him up to reality, though he wished it hadn't been so painful or lasting a lesson.
She was pretty, with that cloud of dark hair and that moon pale skin, but she certainly wasn't the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and in a way that had been what had drawn him to her in the first place. She had been so human and flawed that he had deluded himself into thinking that she would never let herself be swallowed into the darker portions of his world and that if he clung to her tight enough maybe she would pull him out of the hole he had let himself be sucked into.
Instead she had drawn him deeper into the darkness, had pulled him so far down that he didn't think he was ever going to find normal ever again. He couldn't even see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore and somewhere way down deep, it really hurt.
Anita had basically forced him to come to terms with his "monster." But in doing so he had lost his humanity and that was something she just seemed incapable of understanding.
He remembered the days when he could go to dinner with his family and it felt like he was being embraced by their love and welcome, coming back to where he belonged, just one more link in the never ending chain of his family and their love. But now he felt like a stranger whenever he was around them, some changeling that had taken the place of the real Richard Zeeman.
She had made him accept his monster, but now there were some days when he felt as though that was all there was. The monster, the beast, the Alpha and the burning rage that sometimes had him losing his mind and roaring at the moon and the fates and anything else he came across for ruining his life completely.
A cool hand on his arm jerked him out of his dark thoughts. He turned his head to find Xander looking at him.
"You good?" Xander asked, the devilish light almost entirely absent from his eyes for once. In that moment, he could have been just a normal boy, maybe even one of Richard's students.
"Yeah," Richard said, ignoring the sudden ache in his chest. It was hard to believe, but Xander had once been someone's son, someone's best friend. He had once been a normal boy with a normal life and a future that he was never going to see. "Yeah, I'm good."
He may have been a werewolf and a monster, but at least he had the comfort of knowing that things could always have been worse. At least he had had the chance to grow up.
*____________________*____________________*
"This is the place?" Xander scratched the back of his head. "What a shit hole."
"Hey, watch the language," Anita snapped.
Xander just gave her a sideways look, which actually got her to shift uncomfortably. As though Ms. Bad-Attitude herself could honestly tell him to watch his language. "What's the deal, 'Nita, it's not like there's any little kids around or anything. What, you think this is suddenly a PG show or something?"
"Alexander, now is not the time for your humor," Jean-Claude said. "And Anita... you will stay with us and you will not cause any trouble."
"Uh oh, he's using his Master of the City voice," Xander whispered, "we'd all better watch out. He might decide to bring out the whips and chains."
"That's more than I needed to know about your sex life," Jason quipped, then cringed away from the dark look Jean-Claude shot him. "Sorry Mas... Jean-Claude. I'm just... I'm gonna go stand over here, yeah? Yeah."
Watching the werewolf scuttle away with his proverbial tail between his legs, Xander couldn't help snickering. "And people wonder what I see in you other than your phenomenal good looks."
"Alexander."
Xander shot him a naughty grin. "Come on, Jeanie, lighten up a little and come outta your bottle." He could feel that burning flame in his veins that meant he was about to totally nut out and it was the greatest thing ever. Violence and mayhem were waving at him from over the horizon and there was nothing that was going to stop him now. "We're about to get down and dirty with the evil. Scuffling around with the darkness. Ripping something to shreds just to see it bleed. It's fun-fun time in Xanderland."
"I don't think I really want to see Xanderland," Richard said, before sending Jamil off with a couple of already changed werewolves to scope out the area outside the ramshackle hut of a house.
"Everybody loves Xanderland," Xander said, smirking. "It's got the best rides and there's always a new game to play. Plus, naked fun."
Richard just looked at him for a long moment, then a faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. "You're an asshole, you know that? But at least you don't play at being anything other than what you are."
Xander let the confusion wash over him for a second, then shrugged. "Whatever, let's get to the action. The build up is boring me now."
As though responding to his words, there was a loud CRASH from behind the house, then a figure came running around the corner barely ahead of the chasing werewolves.
"Help me, help me, oh god, they're gonna kill me, help me!"
"Stop them, Richard, that's a little girl!" Anita yelled, drawing her gun and aiming it at the wolves, the weapon wavering as she tried to decide which one to shoot first.
"NO!" Richard knocked her arm down. "I don't know what that is... but that doesn't smell human." His nostrils flared then curled in disgust as he drew the scent of the supposed child in. "Whatever that is... it smells dark. Like evil given flesh."
"Thanks for the weak ass poetry," Xander said, stepping forward, "but it's playtime now."
Sidestepping Jean-Claude's reaching hand, he ran right at the creature, stopping just short of running into "her."
The girl came to a panting stop and looked at him out of pleading brown eyes. "Help me, oh god, they're gonna kill me. I'm so scared. Where's my mom and dad?"
"I don't know, sweetie," he purred, "where are your mom and dad?"
She was a pretty looking ten year old with light brown hair pulled back in two ponytails. She was wearing a generic looking blue tee-shirt and jeans. She could have been any kid anywhere, sweet and innocent and desperate to be saved from the monsters.
"I don't... I don't know where they are. I woke up and then the wolves came and..." She shrieked when a dark gray werewolf lunged at her with snapping jaws. She scrambled out of the way and ducked behind Xander, using him as a shield.
"All right, puppies, it's downtime now," he said, waving them back. "Let's let Uncle Xander handle the situation, all right."
The two wolves backed off, but not too far. Their eyes burned with an eerie human intelligence and their lips were drawn back from snarling teeth. They were actually rather pretty under the light of the moon. It almost made him want a dog of his own.
He grinned and turned to look at the girl. "So, how'd you get here?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked innocently.
"Come on, you can tell me. Was it an interdimensional portal? You got a doorway set up around here somewhere? You sneaking in for the quick feed, or have you totally immigrated to this wonderfully untouched world here?"
She backed away from him with a frightened look. "Please, mister, I don't know what you're talking about. You're scaring me and..."
"Oh, I haven't even started to scare you yet," he said, his voice low and seductive. He could feel that warm pooling in his belly that meant he was about to have a true and happy moment.
He cruised around her like a shark in ever closer circles until he could reach out a hand and brush it gently across the soft skin at the back of her neck. "Come on, baby, why don't you bring out your real face, huh? I haven't had a good fight since I came here. I mean, I don't care if I gotta kill you wearing the face of a kid, but I think it would be more of a thrill if you looked like how we both know you do."
"What... what do you..." Looking at him, the girl suddenly shook her head and flashed a bright smile. "You totally got me, huh? I guess this form didn't fool you at all, did it?"
"Nope. So why don't you let the real you come out and play?"
"Are you really sure you wanna see it, mister?" she asked in a teasing voice. "There's lots of people that run away screaming before things even start getting interesting."
"Come on, I've seen it all before," Xander said. "This close to you, I can even tell what species you are." He drew in a deep whiff of her scent. "My Willow used to play around with the Dark Arts and drew one of your kind in once. Onwerkelijk Kind, right? An unreal child, like Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, or the Princess In the Tower? "
She laughed and suddenly her skin seemed to melt away and something much larger and uglier poured forth.
Xander felt a maniacal grin stretching his face. "Rock on!"
*____________________*____________________*
Jason fought the sudden urge to jump in the car and drive off as fast as he could. Not because he got over his total freaked-outedness, but because he rather thought Jean-Claude would kill him if he ran off with the car.
What had started out as a cute kid had become a thing of nightmares. It was about ten feet tall and looked slimy and a bit like Chet Donnelley after he'd been turned into a pile of shit on the original Weird Science movie. It made Jason's skin creep to look at it and more than anything he didn't want it to touch him.
"Well, aren't you just the prettiest girl at the party," Xander cooed, then giggled, a strange, high-pitched sound that grated on the nerves.
The demon opened its slavering mouth and ROARED, a sound that had Jason covering his ears to block it out. It lunged toward Xander, moving fast enough to be nothing but a blur even in his lycanthropic vision, all gnashing teeth and huge clawed hands ready to rip and tear.
But Xander was already there, just kind of appearing up under the creature's body, his eyes glowing an eerie green and his face twisted in that monster mask it took on when he Fed. "All right!" Xander yelled, then began to laugh, a strange whooping, inhuman kind of laugh that caused a primal shiver down the spine of everyone that heard it.
Xander punched the demon hard in the chest with a slapping of meat sound, then he was a blur of frenetic energy, punching and tearing, ripping through the demon with crazy strength.
"You know, usually I would like a blade for something like this, but since this is the first real fun I've had since I've come here... I'm gonna enjoy doing this with my bare hands." With that, Xander began digging his fingers into the demon, tearing off chunks of flesh that he dropped carelessly to the wayside.
It was the most uneven fight Jason had ever seen. The demon, furiously roaring and twisting and turning gouged huge furrows out of the ground with its every footstep. It was strong and fierce and should have been the clear victor of the fight, but Xander was a monster, that was the only explanation. He ripped through the demon as though it was a normal human, plunging his hands and arms deep into its flesh to rip out gobbets until he hit the final prize and, his face twisting with effort as he grunted hard, pulled its black-black heart clear out of its chest to crush between his palms right in front of it.
The demon gave a final wheezing cry, then collapsed with a ground-shaking thud, still shivering but already dead.
"Well, that was fun," Xander said, dropping the heart with a splattering plop on the ground. "I was hoping it would put up more of a fight, though. Still, beggars can't be choosers, right?"
He turned and Jason flinched. His eyes blazed with green fire, his lips drawn back in a fierce grin. His chest still heaved with the last of his physical effort, but it was obvious that he could have gone another ten rounds or more and not even been ready to stop. His hands were curled at his sides, dripping with dark blood that hissed and sizzled as it struck the ground.
Xander looked at them all, taking in their horrified expressions, then blinked hard. When he opened his eyes, they were that warm dark chocolate again, though that only made it worse. Those all-too human orbs in that snarling monster face, his forehead ridged and his teeth jagged and razor sharp.
"It looks like we missed all the fun," a smooth as ice voice suddenly said.
"Ah, I knew you were there the minute you showed up," Xander said. "Why don't you come out and say hello... Narcissus, honey?"
Narcissus came out from beneath the shadows with that smooth gliding walk of his. He was followed by four hulking werehyenas and Bacchus trailed at his shoulder like he was on an invisible leash.
Xander wiped his gory hands off on the handkerchief Narcissus tossed him and rolled his shoulders with a cracking of tension. His face had smoothed back into its normal boy-next-door handsomeness, the monster tucked away for later. "You're looking rather festive," he purred. "I love the dress. Bronze is totally your color."
Narcissus smiled brushed a hand over his sleeve. "Well, I remember you saying you have fond memories of bronze, so... I thought if we were coming to visit you I should at least do something to make you think of home."
"You're such an angel, Narcie. I don't know why so many people don't like you." Xander stepped away from demon corpse as though it wasn't there. "You're one of my favorite people here, you know? I totally wanna get the chance to play with you."
"Oh, I dream of the night, dear Alexander," Narcissus moaned, his eyes heavy-lidded and his hips swaying a little in place. "I think we could teach each other some truly wonderful things."
"Call me some time," Xander said, walking over to stand next to Jean-Claude. "We'll have a party. Everyone invited."
Narcissus laughed and waved his hand at his people. "Come on, Alexander didn't need our company this time. Maybe next time he'll let us play."
Jason felt a shiver of dread go down his spine as the werehyenas slipped back into the darkness and disappeared like they were never there.
Maybe the breeze had been going the wrong direction. Maybe they were just abnormally quiet. Whatever it was, the werehyenas had been there and he hadn't even smelled or sensed them watching. And judging by the looks on everyone else's face, they hadn't either. Only Xander, with his knowing grin, had known the werehyenas were there.
Xander brushed his hands together. "Well, that was fun." He grinned at Jean-Claude. "Let's go home. I'm feeling a little... peckish."
"Wait a fucking minute!" Anita yelled, shaking off Asher's restraining hands. "I demand an explanation. What the hell was that... that thing? Why was Narcissus here? And..."
Xander held up his hand. "I told you, that was a demon. Just 'cause you didn't want to believe me doesn't make it not real. And about Narcissus... no."
"No? What fucking 'no'?" She crowded against him, aggression rising from her in near palpable waves.
Xander gave her a calm look, his murderous tendencies tamped down by the fresh demon kill. "Look Anita, I don't want to play your fucking games. Narcissus is my business and you're gonna leave it alone unless you want me to hurt you. Now, we're all gonna go home. You're gonna call the police and say you found a reference to a creature called the Onwerkelijk Kind from wherever it is you get your monster information. The police are gonna come out and find this dead body and that's gonna be that."
"Oh yeah, well who are they gonna think killed it?" Anita demanded.
Xander smiled. "Why, your dear friend Mr. Death did the deed, didn't you know? If you check up on the hitman bulletin boards, why, all the news is about how Death was offered the job of killing the freaky demon creature that liked to play with cops' heads and make them do stupid ass shit. He even made $50,000 for the job. I know, chump change for him, but everyone knows he likes a challenge."
"What... how did you..."
"Come on, this is the 21st century, right?" Xander laughed. "Kids learn how to use the intarweb in high school, and even though I didn't have much time for the learning, I did pick up a few things before I died. Now," he turned to Jean-Claude, "can we get home so I can get a little help with this chub I'm sporting?" He cupped his crotch with one hand suggestively.
"Oh Alexander, you are insatiable," Jean-Claude said, amusement lurking in his eyes.
Jason thought the old Jean-Claude would have been disgusted by someone as childish and thuggish as Xander could be, but strangely, Jean-Claude seemed to get off on it. All the outrageous things Xander did only seemed to make Jean-Claude like him more, as weird as that was.
The longer Xander was around them, the more monstrous Jean-Claude and Asher seemed to become, the thin veneer of civility peeling back to show what was inside. It should have been horrifying and frightening and all that bad stuff, but a part of Jason actually seemed to like it. And that was a bit scarier than anything else.
The savage enjoyment Xander took in violence and the way his every word seemed to pull tighter the masks people wore only made it easier for Jason to see what he was becoming. He was food for the vampires. He was a hedonistic whore, selling his blood for the chance to wallow in luxury while never even contemplating what his future was going to be.
He had long since come to accept the fact that he wasn't ever going to be old. But now he was accepting the fact that he wasn't going to be human either.
And it really wasn't that bad.
=THE END=
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Buffy/Anita Blake
Pairing: Xander/Jean-Claude/Asher
Rated: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Anita Blake Vampire Hunter.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
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After Jean-Claude had forced them back to his bedroom and they'd had a strenuous round of sex, Xander was feeling much more in the mood for demon hunting. Sex and violence, they made the world go round.
They also gave him a great big happy.
"Great, now that Anita's gone," Xander said, folding his arms under his head, "let's get down to business."
"You are a very bad man, aren't you Xander?" Jean-Claude said, a smirk tugging his lips.
Xander blew him a kiss. "That's why you like me so much. So, what do you want to do? Should we handle the problem ourselves or let Anita shoot a bunch of stuff, get herself into bigger trouble, and just generally make a gigantic dramatic ass of herself?"
Jean-Claude made a moue at him. "You really must not antagonize her so. She is hard enough to control without you daring her to attempt to kill you."
"But she's just so easy," Xander said. "And I've always liked living dangerously."
"Sometimes I truly have to believe that you have no soul," Asher said, reaching out to stroke a hand down Xander's side. "You certainly boast about it enough."
"Oh, I really don't have a soul," Xander said. "It's a whole thing from where I come from. You get Turned and your soul gives you the big bye-bye and that's that. Then the fun starts... And the blood and mayhem." He smiled sweetly.
Jean-Claude reached out to run a hand down Xander's side. "I do not know what it is about you, mon amour, but..."
Xander shrugged. "Lots of people say that. Anyways, how do you wanna handle the 'keep Anita out of jail' situation? A round of demon hunting?"
"We are not even sure that it is a demon," Asher said.
Xander snorted. "Oh, it's a demon all right. I could practically smell the sulfur and the demonic aura hanging around Anita. Someone put the whammy on her, which made her unleash the bullets like a dummy."
"What kind of demon could it be?" Jean-Claude asked.
"Who cares?" Xander said. "There's so many kinds of demons out there that there's no way to keep 'em all straight in your head. All you gotta know is that decapitation is usually the best bet... decapitation or fire. Fun, fun."
"Yes, fun," Asher said, carefully not running his hands across the perfectly smooth skin of the left side of his face that had even just recently been marred by the liquid burn of holy water scars. But he was totally over that. Decades of loss and misery had been overcome by the corrective surgery that had given him back the appearance of vampire perfection. It wasn't as though he had any internal scars or anything. Everything was perfect in his little world.
Even without a soul, Xander could smell the emotional turmoil ripping through Asher. A part of him--the nasty demon part--reveled in the torment he could feel going through his lover. But the remnants of humanity that occasionally reared a deformed mutant head had him slipping across the sheets to lay across Asher's chest.
"It's all right," he whispered in Asher's ear. "You've got me and you've got Jean-Claude and I'm proud to say that I will happily rip the heart out of anything that even thinks about bothering you, 'cause you belong to me now."
"That's an amazingly sweet sentiment coming from you," Asher said, and Xander ignored the single tear that trickled from his blue-blue eye.
Jean-Claude crept up behind Xander to wrap his arms tight around his back and loom over his shoulder, gazing down at Asher with passion burning eyes. "And you wondered what I could ever possibly see in such a monstrous boy."
"Monstrously lovely," Asher said, a smile bowing his lips. "He makes it acceptable for us to be ourselves with no pretending."
"Come on," Xander said, "humanity's way overrated. I'd rather have a good time than worry about some loser's version of morality." He began gyrating between their two sandwiching bodies. "All I wanna do is have some fun, I got a feeling I'm not the only one. All I wanna do is have some fun until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard..."
The sound of his laughter rang through the room, a chilling sound that reverberated with the inhuman cackle of a hyena scenting the weakness in a kill.
*____________________*____________________*
"I'm never letting you dress me ever again."
Jason felt his lips twitch and he forced himself not to turn his head and look at Xander. He'd already seen the outfit and he didn't want to die.
After all of Jean-Claude's not-quite begging, Xander had finally given in and let the older vampire dress him. Too bad he hadn't put any limits on what he was and wasn't willing to wear, because Jean-Claude had gone the whole nine-yards with him, probably because he had known that this was his only chance to get Xander to willingly wear clothes he picked.
The outfit consisted of gunmetal gray leather "pants" that were more like leather straps than anything else, the largest piece covering his groin area while leaving a large portion of his ass bare. The top was a painted on sheer red shirt that had had the back cut out to show off Xander's amazingly detailed black tattooed angel wings that started between his shoulder blades and went all the way down to his buttocks.
It seemed that Jean-Claude had been enamored of the angel wings for some time, because given the chance to dress Xander, he hadn't even hesitated before bringing out the cosmetics. In all, the look was like something out of a glossy magazine, but it was very not-Xander.
"At least the boots are normal," Jason offered, unable to help himself, then winced, waiting for the beat down.
Xander just snorted. "Of course the boots are normal. They're mine. Jean-Claude knows better than to mess with my footwear when I'm gonna be unleashing a beat down on someone in the near future."
"Come, mon amour, you look lovely," Jean-Claude said, sliding his arm through Xander's.
"I don't want to look lovely," Xander grumbled. "I'm supposed to be dangerous and frightening, but from the look on Jason's face when I came out... I bet I look like a girl."
"Non," Jean-Claude said, "you are definitely not feminine looking. You are dangerous and beautiful and everything I always knew you to be."
Xander glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Really?"
"Really."
Xander turned his head to look at Asher. "Well? Am I dangerous looking, or should I be in a bordello somewhere being reamed by a guy named Charlie?"
Asher cocked his head. "You are a vision."
"Hmph." Xander pouted, his glossy metallic-hued lips even fuller than usual. "Whatever."
Jason gave a sigh of relief. He wasn't up to another round of the terrifying Xander-losing-his-mind show. Whenever Xander lost it, Jason couldn't be sure the guy wasn't going to choose him as a victim and he would rather be alive than in pieces spread around on the ground.
How someone that pretty could be that evil... even after years of dealing with inhumanly good-looking vampires, it still boggled the mind.
"I'm gonna go get the car," he said, then squirreled it out of there.
*____________________*____________________*
The first thing out of Anita's mouth when she slid into the back of the limo was, "What the hell happened to you? You look like the results of a cosmetologist's final exam." Which led to Xander's first blow up of the night.
After the drama died down a little and Xander and Anita had been dragged back to their respective corners, Jean-Claude began outlining the plan.
"Alexander believes that a demon was the reason why Anita shot the girl last night. So Richard, you will use your wolves to scent out whether the demon is still there or where it has gone. Asher, you and Damian will lead the attack if and when we find the demon. Anita... you will stay out of things as much as possible."
She opened her mouth to start her objections, but Xander loudly snorted. "Dude, are you retarded, or what? The police are on your case and you're going to jump right in the middle of a shootout situation? Come on, they've probably got all your weapons on file so they'd be able to trace any bullets right to you and your ass would be right back in jail even if we bring this thing down, 'cause come on. You're on like police probation. You're not supposed to be even close to any crime scenes. So take a step back and stop trying to be the hero before you get yourself dead."
"Like you even care," she snarked.
"You're right," he said, "I don't care. If you wanna risk your life and your future freedom being an idiot, than that's up to you. But with the Marks tying you to Jean-Claude... well, you suddenly don't have the freedom to be as much of an idiot as you wanna be, get it? Besides, you're also risking Richard's life, and even though he's kind of a stick, he's not all that bad."
"Gee, thanks," Richard said, crossing his arms.
Xander flashed him a devilish grin. "You're welcome."
Richard couldn't help his little snort of laughter. Xander was a self-proclaimed soulless monster and he certainly acted the part most of the time, but he was also honest and had a real sense of humor, even if it was kind of sick.
After years of dealing with the darker sides of monster life, Richard had come to appreciate honesty in the people he dealt with. It was just such a damn rare commodity these days that he had come to see it as one of those little things he'd thought lost and gone forever along with the bulk of his humanity.
Glancing at Anita, he once again wondered what he had seen in her.
Because of her, he had gambled and lost the last of his innocence and piece of mind. He'd killed his first person because of her, and for awhile there, he'd also probably lost his sanity for awhile. And why? Because they were supposedly in love? Because they were going to get married and live happily ever after in some storybook fairy tale of a version of St. Louis?
Thinking back, he was actually a little sickened by his naivety and all the trouble it probably would have caused him and the people that depended on him. So in a way he could kind of thank Anita for waking him up to reality, though he wished it hadn't been so painful or lasting a lesson.
She was pretty, with that cloud of dark hair and that moon pale skin, but she certainly wasn't the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and in a way that had been what had drawn him to her in the first place. She had been so human and flawed that he had deluded himself into thinking that she would never let herself be swallowed into the darker portions of his world and that if he clung to her tight enough maybe she would pull him out of the hole he had let himself be sucked into.
Instead she had drawn him deeper into the darkness, had pulled him so far down that he didn't think he was ever going to find normal ever again. He couldn't even see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore and somewhere way down deep, it really hurt.
Anita had basically forced him to come to terms with his "monster." But in doing so he had lost his humanity and that was something she just seemed incapable of understanding.
He remembered the days when he could go to dinner with his family and it felt like he was being embraced by their love and welcome, coming back to where he belonged, just one more link in the never ending chain of his family and their love. But now he felt like a stranger whenever he was around them, some changeling that had taken the place of the real Richard Zeeman.
She had made him accept his monster, but now there were some days when he felt as though that was all there was. The monster, the beast, the Alpha and the burning rage that sometimes had him losing his mind and roaring at the moon and the fates and anything else he came across for ruining his life completely.
A cool hand on his arm jerked him out of his dark thoughts. He turned his head to find Xander looking at him.
"You good?" Xander asked, the devilish light almost entirely absent from his eyes for once. In that moment, he could have been just a normal boy, maybe even one of Richard's students.
"Yeah," Richard said, ignoring the sudden ache in his chest. It was hard to believe, but Xander had once been someone's son, someone's best friend. He had once been a normal boy with a normal life and a future that he was never going to see. "Yeah, I'm good."
He may have been a werewolf and a monster, but at least he had the comfort of knowing that things could always have been worse. At least he had had the chance to grow up.
*____________________*____________________*
"This is the place?" Xander scratched the back of his head. "What a shit hole."
"Hey, watch the language," Anita snapped.
Xander just gave her a sideways look, which actually got her to shift uncomfortably. As though Ms. Bad-Attitude herself could honestly tell him to watch his language. "What's the deal, 'Nita, it's not like there's any little kids around or anything. What, you think this is suddenly a PG show or something?"
"Alexander, now is not the time for your humor," Jean-Claude said. "And Anita... you will stay with us and you will not cause any trouble."
"Uh oh, he's using his Master of the City voice," Xander whispered, "we'd all better watch out. He might decide to bring out the whips and chains."
"That's more than I needed to know about your sex life," Jason quipped, then cringed away from the dark look Jean-Claude shot him. "Sorry Mas... Jean-Claude. I'm just... I'm gonna go stand over here, yeah? Yeah."
Watching the werewolf scuttle away with his proverbial tail between his legs, Xander couldn't help snickering. "And people wonder what I see in you other than your phenomenal good looks."
"Alexander."
Xander shot him a naughty grin. "Come on, Jeanie, lighten up a little and come outta your bottle." He could feel that burning flame in his veins that meant he was about to totally nut out and it was the greatest thing ever. Violence and mayhem were waving at him from over the horizon and there was nothing that was going to stop him now. "We're about to get down and dirty with the evil. Scuffling around with the darkness. Ripping something to shreds just to see it bleed. It's fun-fun time in Xanderland."
"I don't think I really want to see Xanderland," Richard said, before sending Jamil off with a couple of already changed werewolves to scope out the area outside the ramshackle hut of a house.
"Everybody loves Xanderland," Xander said, smirking. "It's got the best rides and there's always a new game to play. Plus, naked fun."
Richard just looked at him for a long moment, then a faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. "You're an asshole, you know that? But at least you don't play at being anything other than what you are."
Xander let the confusion wash over him for a second, then shrugged. "Whatever, let's get to the action. The build up is boring me now."
As though responding to his words, there was a loud CRASH from behind the house, then a figure came running around the corner barely ahead of the chasing werewolves.
"Help me, help me, oh god, they're gonna kill me, help me!"
"Stop them, Richard, that's a little girl!" Anita yelled, drawing her gun and aiming it at the wolves, the weapon wavering as she tried to decide which one to shoot first.
"NO!" Richard knocked her arm down. "I don't know what that is... but that doesn't smell human." His nostrils flared then curled in disgust as he drew the scent of the supposed child in. "Whatever that is... it smells dark. Like evil given flesh."
"Thanks for the weak ass poetry," Xander said, stepping forward, "but it's playtime now."
Sidestepping Jean-Claude's reaching hand, he ran right at the creature, stopping just short of running into "her."
The girl came to a panting stop and looked at him out of pleading brown eyes. "Help me, oh god, they're gonna kill me. I'm so scared. Where's my mom and dad?"
"I don't know, sweetie," he purred, "where are your mom and dad?"
She was a pretty looking ten year old with light brown hair pulled back in two ponytails. She was wearing a generic looking blue tee-shirt and jeans. She could have been any kid anywhere, sweet and innocent and desperate to be saved from the monsters.
"I don't... I don't know where they are. I woke up and then the wolves came and..." She shrieked when a dark gray werewolf lunged at her with snapping jaws. She scrambled out of the way and ducked behind Xander, using him as a shield.
"All right, puppies, it's downtime now," he said, waving them back. "Let's let Uncle Xander handle the situation, all right."
The two wolves backed off, but not too far. Their eyes burned with an eerie human intelligence and their lips were drawn back from snarling teeth. They were actually rather pretty under the light of the moon. It almost made him want a dog of his own.
He grinned and turned to look at the girl. "So, how'd you get here?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked innocently.
"Come on, you can tell me. Was it an interdimensional portal? You got a doorway set up around here somewhere? You sneaking in for the quick feed, or have you totally immigrated to this wonderfully untouched world here?"
She backed away from him with a frightened look. "Please, mister, I don't know what you're talking about. You're scaring me and..."
"Oh, I haven't even started to scare you yet," he said, his voice low and seductive. He could feel that warm pooling in his belly that meant he was about to have a true and happy moment.
He cruised around her like a shark in ever closer circles until he could reach out a hand and brush it gently across the soft skin at the back of her neck. "Come on, baby, why don't you bring out your real face, huh? I haven't had a good fight since I came here. I mean, I don't care if I gotta kill you wearing the face of a kid, but I think it would be more of a thrill if you looked like how we both know you do."
"What... what do you..." Looking at him, the girl suddenly shook her head and flashed a bright smile. "You totally got me, huh? I guess this form didn't fool you at all, did it?"
"Nope. So why don't you let the real you come out and play?"
"Are you really sure you wanna see it, mister?" she asked in a teasing voice. "There's lots of people that run away screaming before things even start getting interesting."
"Come on, I've seen it all before," Xander said. "This close to you, I can even tell what species you are." He drew in a deep whiff of her scent. "My Willow used to play around with the Dark Arts and drew one of your kind in once. Onwerkelijk Kind, right? An unreal child, like Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, or the Princess In the Tower? "
She laughed and suddenly her skin seemed to melt away and something much larger and uglier poured forth.
Xander felt a maniacal grin stretching his face. "Rock on!"
*____________________*____________________*
Jason fought the sudden urge to jump in the car and drive off as fast as he could. Not because he got over his total freaked-outedness, but because he rather thought Jean-Claude would kill him if he ran off with the car.
What had started out as a cute kid had become a thing of nightmares. It was about ten feet tall and looked slimy and a bit like Chet Donnelley after he'd been turned into a pile of shit on the original Weird Science movie. It made Jason's skin creep to look at it and more than anything he didn't want it to touch him.
"Well, aren't you just the prettiest girl at the party," Xander cooed, then giggled, a strange, high-pitched sound that grated on the nerves.
The demon opened its slavering mouth and ROARED, a sound that had Jason covering his ears to block it out. It lunged toward Xander, moving fast enough to be nothing but a blur even in his lycanthropic vision, all gnashing teeth and huge clawed hands ready to rip and tear.
But Xander was already there, just kind of appearing up under the creature's body, his eyes glowing an eerie green and his face twisted in that monster mask it took on when he Fed. "All right!" Xander yelled, then began to laugh, a strange whooping, inhuman kind of laugh that caused a primal shiver down the spine of everyone that heard it.
Xander punched the demon hard in the chest with a slapping of meat sound, then he was a blur of frenetic energy, punching and tearing, ripping through the demon with crazy strength.
"You know, usually I would like a blade for something like this, but since this is the first real fun I've had since I've come here... I'm gonna enjoy doing this with my bare hands." With that, Xander began digging his fingers into the demon, tearing off chunks of flesh that he dropped carelessly to the wayside.
It was the most uneven fight Jason had ever seen. The demon, furiously roaring and twisting and turning gouged huge furrows out of the ground with its every footstep. It was strong and fierce and should have been the clear victor of the fight, but Xander was a monster, that was the only explanation. He ripped through the demon as though it was a normal human, plunging his hands and arms deep into its flesh to rip out gobbets until he hit the final prize and, his face twisting with effort as he grunted hard, pulled its black-black heart clear out of its chest to crush between his palms right in front of it.
The demon gave a final wheezing cry, then collapsed with a ground-shaking thud, still shivering but already dead.
"Well, that was fun," Xander said, dropping the heart with a splattering plop on the ground. "I was hoping it would put up more of a fight, though. Still, beggars can't be choosers, right?"
He turned and Jason flinched. His eyes blazed with green fire, his lips drawn back in a fierce grin. His chest still heaved with the last of his physical effort, but it was obvious that he could have gone another ten rounds or more and not even been ready to stop. His hands were curled at his sides, dripping with dark blood that hissed and sizzled as it struck the ground.
Xander looked at them all, taking in their horrified expressions, then blinked hard. When he opened his eyes, they were that warm dark chocolate again, though that only made it worse. Those all-too human orbs in that snarling monster face, his forehead ridged and his teeth jagged and razor sharp.
"It looks like we missed all the fun," a smooth as ice voice suddenly said.
"Ah, I knew you were there the minute you showed up," Xander said. "Why don't you come out and say hello... Narcissus, honey?"
Narcissus came out from beneath the shadows with that smooth gliding walk of his. He was followed by four hulking werehyenas and Bacchus trailed at his shoulder like he was on an invisible leash.
Xander wiped his gory hands off on the handkerchief Narcissus tossed him and rolled his shoulders with a cracking of tension. His face had smoothed back into its normal boy-next-door handsomeness, the monster tucked away for later. "You're looking rather festive," he purred. "I love the dress. Bronze is totally your color."
Narcissus smiled brushed a hand over his sleeve. "Well, I remember you saying you have fond memories of bronze, so... I thought if we were coming to visit you I should at least do something to make you think of home."
"You're such an angel, Narcie. I don't know why so many people don't like you." Xander stepped away from demon corpse as though it wasn't there. "You're one of my favorite people here, you know? I totally wanna get the chance to play with you."
"Oh, I dream of the night, dear Alexander," Narcissus moaned, his eyes heavy-lidded and his hips swaying a little in place. "I think we could teach each other some truly wonderful things."
"Call me some time," Xander said, walking over to stand next to Jean-Claude. "We'll have a party. Everyone invited."
Narcissus laughed and waved his hand at his people. "Come on, Alexander didn't need our company this time. Maybe next time he'll let us play."
Jason felt a shiver of dread go down his spine as the werehyenas slipped back into the darkness and disappeared like they were never there.
Maybe the breeze had been going the wrong direction. Maybe they were just abnormally quiet. Whatever it was, the werehyenas had been there and he hadn't even smelled or sensed them watching. And judging by the looks on everyone else's face, they hadn't either. Only Xander, with his knowing grin, had known the werehyenas were there.
Xander brushed his hands together. "Well, that was fun." He grinned at Jean-Claude. "Let's go home. I'm feeling a little... peckish."
"Wait a fucking minute!" Anita yelled, shaking off Asher's restraining hands. "I demand an explanation. What the hell was that... that thing? Why was Narcissus here? And..."
Xander held up his hand. "I told you, that was a demon. Just 'cause you didn't want to believe me doesn't make it not real. And about Narcissus... no."
"No? What fucking 'no'?" She crowded against him, aggression rising from her in near palpable waves.
Xander gave her a calm look, his murderous tendencies tamped down by the fresh demon kill. "Look Anita, I don't want to play your fucking games. Narcissus is my business and you're gonna leave it alone unless you want me to hurt you. Now, we're all gonna go home. You're gonna call the police and say you found a reference to a creature called the Onwerkelijk Kind from wherever it is you get your monster information. The police are gonna come out and find this dead body and that's gonna be that."
"Oh yeah, well who are they gonna think killed it?" Anita demanded.
Xander smiled. "Why, your dear friend Mr. Death did the deed, didn't you know? If you check up on the hitman bulletin boards, why, all the news is about how Death was offered the job of killing the freaky demon creature that liked to play with cops' heads and make them do stupid ass shit. He even made $50,000 for the job. I know, chump change for him, but everyone knows he likes a challenge."
"What... how did you..."
"Come on, this is the 21st century, right?" Xander laughed. "Kids learn how to use the intarweb in high school, and even though I didn't have much time for the learning, I did pick up a few things before I died. Now," he turned to Jean-Claude, "can we get home so I can get a little help with this chub I'm sporting?" He cupped his crotch with one hand suggestively.
"Oh Alexander, you are insatiable," Jean-Claude said, amusement lurking in his eyes.
Jason thought the old Jean-Claude would have been disgusted by someone as childish and thuggish as Xander could be, but strangely, Jean-Claude seemed to get off on it. All the outrageous things Xander did only seemed to make Jean-Claude like him more, as weird as that was.
The longer Xander was around them, the more monstrous Jean-Claude and Asher seemed to become, the thin veneer of civility peeling back to show what was inside. It should have been horrifying and frightening and all that bad stuff, but a part of Jason actually seemed to like it. And that was a bit scarier than anything else.
The savage enjoyment Xander took in violence and the way his every word seemed to pull tighter the masks people wore only made it easier for Jason to see what he was becoming. He was food for the vampires. He was a hedonistic whore, selling his blood for the chance to wallow in luxury while never even contemplating what his future was going to be.
He had long since come to accept the fact that he wasn't ever going to be old. But now he was accepting the fact that he wasn't going to be human either.
And it really wasn't that bad.
=THE END=