The Sisterhood - Book One
A Buffyverse fanfic set around the end of seasons 5 and 2 respectively. Crosses over with the CW show Supernatural but knowledge of this show is unnecessary to read (and enjoy) the story.
Summary; At the end of Belonging, Cordelia ends up somewhere very different from Pylea.
Characters (in order of importance to the story); Original Character. Cordelia Chase. Angel. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Charles Gunn. Lorne/The Host.
Pairings; None (as of yet).
Chapter One
She crouched down behind the rotted tree stump, her dirty fingernails grasping the blackened bark as her head peeked out to see her surroundings. There was no wind to pull at the leaves and no chirping of birds in the sky, instead it was eerily silent and that fact sent a shiver racing down her spine.
Wishing, not for the first time, that she could spontaneously grow eyes in the back of her head, she crossed two fingers and prayed that nothing would jump up from behind her. She felt she was decently enough hidden where she was, but also had to take into account the otherworldly senses of the beasts that made this land their home.
In the distance she heard a tree branch break and she scurried closer within her hiding place.
Her skin was tingling from the hours she had spent underwater earlier and her knees protested the crouched position she was in, but she refused to move. She could deal with discomfort, even outright pain, if it meant her staying alive just a little bit longer. She was already surprised that she hadn’t been killed long ago to begin with.
Another branch broke, this one not too far from where she was hiding, and she peeked out her head again to see if she could catch a glimpse of them, preferably before they saw her. All she caught were horns and ripped clothing, before she went back behind the large tree stump and tried to steady her panicked breathing.
Her right hand went down to the leaf covered ground and she wrapped her fingers around the weapon she had made long ago out of nothing but tree, carved stone and stripped bark used as rope to tie the first two parts together. She lifted it slightly, prepared to take a sudden swing if needed.
It wasn’t needed, however, as a sudden shout brought the creature’s attention away from the prey it had smelled and it ran quick-footed in the opposite direction of where she sat. Before she could breathe a sigh of relief however, she, too, heard the noise much closer.
It was a female voice crying out for help.
It only took two seconds of vacillating between it being a trap or not before she sprang into action and followed the creature’s path. Even if it was a female monster trying to lure her out, she would never forgive herself if she didn’t make sure. She had been in this literal hell hole for so long and had never come across another human being, but was still hopeful that others existed along with her here.
It took her a bit longer than she liked to reach the clearing where the yell had originated from, because her ingrown instincts had her hiding behind almost every tree she came across. It was difficult to do otherwise when she felt that running had been her entire life, or something close to it.
When she made it to the last of the trees before it opened up into the aforementioned clearing, she stopped, held her breath and watched in awe at the scene before her.
Instead of the girl - and she was sure it was a human at first glance - frightened of the creature and screaming in pain, she was fighting it off quite well, though of course she knew very little of battle techniques. Knowing her assistance was in fact not needed, she instead settled against the tree and took in the other girl.
She was clad in what appeared to be a full bodysuit of a fabric that hardly existed whole in this place; denim. It was a dark blue color, almost the same shade as the pants she had worn long ago when she first came here. The girl - woman, she decided, as she appeared older than herself - had mahogany brown hair cut short, just above her shoulders, and was wearing hoop earrings and other assorted jewelry. She definitely looked like a newcomer in this world.
Having been so focused watching the woman, a sound like a crack but louder than a branch breaking brought her eyes to the creature, who had fallen to the ground and was no longer moving. Realizing, belatedly, that the mystery woman had won the battle, she crept slowly out of her hiding place, eyes fixed on the winning champion of what was, in fact, a very short battle.
Shortly after abandoning the tree line she stepped on a branch - a lot of that went down in this eternal, unending forest - and the woman’s head whipped around, dark brown eyes focused on the petite girl she knew others saw. Her hands began to fidget and she worried her bottom lip, wondering why she had simply assumed that she could trust this stranger not to hurt her. For all she knew, she had been battling the creature for dominance over terrain and not because she was a good, human, woman.
That all went away when the brown eyes appeared to soften. “Hi, there,” she spoke, her voice like bells whistling through the nonexistent wind.
She cleared her throat and attempted a response, but hadn’t spoken beyond screams in so long that it came out rougher than it was supposed to. “Hello.”
A frown line appeared above the eyes of the woman and she slowly made her way closer on dangerously high heeled shoes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Her concern was a river washing over her that came unexpected in this usually dark and evil place.
She let out a sigh and her whole body seemed to deflate, having decided, then and there, to put all of her trust in this mysterious woman. “Fine,” she croaked out, because technically it was true. It had been a while since she had last been spotted by the monsters of this world and even then she had successfully escaped their clutches.
The woman frowned. “You don’t seem fine, but I guess I’ll take your word for it. For now. Do you know where we are?” She looked away then, her eyes flying all over the seemingly innocuous clearing and surrounding forest.
She looked back quickly when there was a response to her question. “Hell.”
“You’re kidding, right?” But her own eyes betrayed the innocence of her words.
A long-forgotten move took her over - she believed it was called shrugging one’s shoulders - and she tried to speak a complete sentence that wouldn’t sound like a garbled mess. “I think it’s hell. There are…monsters. Everywhere.” It was her turn to let her eyes fly all over as if speaking the word itself would bring them all out, in full force.
The frown stayed on the woman’s face but did not grow larger. She did, however, walk closer until she was close enough to touch, though she didn’t quite go that far. “You mean like that one?” she asked, pointing one long nail - the color of peaches in the summer - towards the fallen body of the creature.
She nodded, deciding only to speak when needed so as not to overuse her vocal chords.
The woman turned back to look at her again. “I’ve seen plenty of that where I come from, so I doubt this is hell.” She paused and looked around for a few seconds. “Though I suppose it could be considered a form of hell, especially to those unfamiliar with…”
“With what?”
The woman looked at her, as if gauging how she would react. “With demons, sweetie.”
She was suitably shocked; upon her arrival to this place it had never occurred to her to use that word to describe the creatures she was surrounded with. Why, she couldn’t say.
“D-demons,” she spoke the word aloud herself, voice shaking. And not from disuse this time.
The woman looked sympathetic and as if she wanted to reach out and comfort her physically. She was glad that the decision was made not to, at this point she still only remembered being touched in ways intended to cause her agony and her eventual death.
She clenched her fists where they lay at her sides and kept her eyes on the ground below them, trying to wrap her head around this new phenomenon - while also wondering why this thought hadn’t occurred to her before. Now that it was pointed out to her, it felt obvious, but of course she remembered very little - if anything - of the world she originally came from, she wouldn’t even know if this was new information or not.
She brushed some hair away from her eyes and glanced back up at the woman. “Are there many demons w-where you come f-from?” Her voice was still shaky and rough, but it was easing the more she used it.
The woman looked cautious for some reason, before seemingly sighing with her whole body. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She was looking all around them, assessing the area, or maybe watching out for any more trouble coming their way. “I’m wondering if we don’t come from the same world, though,” she continued, glancing back at the younger girl with knowing eyes.
The girl’s brows furrowed and she wrapped arms around herself, as if a terrible cold had set in and settled around her bones. “Why do you say that?”
The woman seemed to almost reach out and lay a hand on the girl’s shoulder, before remembering herself halfway through the move. “Do you have a name?” she asked, changing gears for the moment.
The girl was so taken aback by the unexpected question that she had to consider the answer; no one had called her anything other than various words that meant prey for so very long, after all. “I think…” she said, trying to clear her throat of the roughness and emotions welling up. “Victoria. I think I’m called…Victoria.”
Nodding slowly, the woman fidgeted on her feet before throwing back her shoulders in determination. “Well, Victoria, it’s nice to meet you, despite the circumstances. I’m Cordelia.”
Victoria looked up at the dark brown eyes and felt an inner strength she wasn’t expecting, as she repeated her earlier question. “Why do you think we’re from the same world, Cordelia?”
Again, the woman sighed. “Your clothing,” she spoke, gesturing to the scraps of fabric barely covering the girl’s very pale skin. “Or what’s left of it. I recognize the design.” She thought about her high school days, where she was always on top of the latest fashion - not that it had changed that much in recent years - and put the girl’s tattered outfit as being from somewhere around 1996.
Which truthfully frightened Cordelia, as it spoke volumes of how long the poor girl had been stuck in this hellish place.
Victoria looked down over herself, frowning at the mud-covered jean shorts - that had not begun as shorts - and the shirt that just covered her now bra-less chest; she’d been forced to remove said bra a long time ago, to use parts of it as a weapon. Her frown deepened as she tried to remember what the color of her shirt was called.
Purple?
Cordelia’s voice brought her back to reality. “What do you remember about where you came from?”
Before Victoria could even attempt to answer the question, however, a frightful and shrill noise came from the nearby forest and there was no longer time for conversation. Cordelia grabbed the girl’s hand - the first touch that wasn’t demonic in a very long time - and pulled her toward the opposite side of the large, open field, hiding themselves behind the tree line as they watched.
Cordelia kept Victoria behind the large tree stump, one arm slung over her back to keep her in place and protect her, while she peered out from behind the bark at the demons that were now entering the field and discovering the body of the monster she had killed earlier.
She still didn’t entirely understand where it had come from, if she was being honest. Bravery had never been her strongest suit and she would have expected herself to run screaming in the other direction. Sure, she had been aware of this world for five years now, but she was nowhere near confident enough to take on such a creature without backup. But before she had even been able to consider being afraid, the demon had laid dead on the ground.
She’d have to try and figure out why later, for right now she and Victoria needed to get to safety. The girl had been here so long - had stayed alive for so long - that she had to know where a safe place might be for them to lay low. Or at least as safe as it got in this dreary, demon-filled hellhole.
Turning to Victoria, Cordelia put a finger over her lips and then tried to use her own version of sign language and mimicry to get the girl to understand what was happening. Thankfully she was dealing with a very intelligent girl and Victoria silently communicated back at Cordelia for her to follow. They took great care in where they stepped - too dangerous to snap any more branches below their feet - as they slowly wound in and out of the dense forest, keeping a constant eye and ear on the demons sniffing around their fallen comrade’s corpse.
Cordelia had no problem taking a page out of her new friend’s book, physically following in Victoria’s slightly tinier footsteps with her own heels and using what Angel had taught her to breathe very shallowly, in case these unfamiliar creatures had enhanced hearing like so many from back where she came.
She thought of what she left behind; of the vampire, Wesley, Gunn, even the Host. She wanted to be confident that they would find her, except for one problem. This didn’t look anything like the home dimension that the green demon and his cousin had discussed.
Where was she?
“Well, then find her!” he cried out in anger and desperation, toppling over the desk and breathing heavily, though he didn’t need to.
Wesley took one step back, but his face remained the same; the vampire had been unpredictable like this ever since Cordelia had disappeared so it came as no surprise to the former Watcher. “I’ve told you already, Angel, it isn’t that simple. There are an untold number of dimensions out there, looking for her would be like…”
The vampire growled and looked up at his friend with yellow-tinted eyes. “If you compare it to a needle in a haystack, so help me, Wes…”
“English has got a point,” Gunn spoke as he stepped in between the two men, keeping his eyes on the upset vampire. “But no one’s saying we’re giving up, either. We just need to face the facts; it’ll take a while.”
“Maybe not.”
All three sets of eyes turned to the green demon standing nervously in the doorway to the now destroyed office of the old hotel, shifting back and forth on his feet and trying not to look anyone in the eye. Before Angel could take one threatening step forward, Gunn lay a hand on his chest and gestured to Wesley to do the talking.
“What have you found, Lorne?” He itched to clean his glasses but tensions were running far too high at the moment.
Angel would do well to remember that he wasn’t the only one missing Cordelia.
The demon was still a good deal shook from their recent trip to Pylea - which had proved entirely fruitless as the Seer wasn’t there - and his latest visit with his friend didn’t bode well for any of them. This time he’d have to put his foot down a bit harder, if they tried to convince him to come along. “I got a possible location, it’s not 100% though.”
Wesley and Gunn shared a glance of meaning before the Brit spoke up again. “What did your…special friend say?”
Lorne sighed and ran a hand down his face, coming deeper into the room. He raised a fallen chair back up and took a heavy seat, before talking once more. “The place that Cordelia might be in…it’s not exactly the safest.” Before anyone could speak up, he raised an open palm. “Yes, I know Pylea was pretty dangerous, too, but this is different. This is…” he blew out a breath and bent over, resting elbows on his knees. “Darkness. Emptiness.” He looked up at them all. “Pure.”
Whether it was his age, his experiences, his intelligence, or perhaps a mixture of all three, Angel was the only one who immediately understood what Lorne was saying. He fell heavily back against the wall, letting out a much deeper breath than the green demon had just seconds earlier. He uttered one word only, but the room remained silent for quite some time after.
“Purgatory.”
Cordelia was doing her best not to wince out loud at the pain in her side; they’d been walking - carefully - for so long that her lungs were burning and she was questioning just how in shape she was, especially now that her days as a cheerleader were well and truly over. When she got back home, she was so joining a gym.
It didn’t help that Victoria didn’t seem to be even remotely out of breath, looking calmly over her shoulder every now and then to make sure they weren’t being followed. Rationally, she knew that the girl had been in this place much longer and was used to the constant running for her life, but Cordelia was very rarely accused of being rational, especially in situations that invited danger into her life.
Apparently feeling confident in being far enough away from the demons, the young girl spoke up for the first time since they’d escaped the field. “There’s a cave just around the corner, I’ve been staying there for a while.” Her voice was back to sounding like rocks scraping against each other and Cordelia winced in sympathy; it must feel even worse than it sounded.
Sure enough, after a few more minutes of walking they came to the mouth of a small cave, so tiny that they had to bend over to fit inside. As deep in as they could go, Cordelia took her instructions from the silent girl and sat down when Victoria did. She brushed her hands over her dirty jean-clad thighs, screwing up her face in disgust when it only made her hands more filthy after the fact.
“There’s a small stream over here, you can wash your hands.” Now that Victoria had remembered human speech, it seemed impossible to stop her from using it. It didn’t hurt that she was in good company for the first time in…she had a difficult time remembering, if she were being honest.
Cordelia gave the girl a grateful look and carefully crawled over to where she had been indicated, staring down at her own, dirty, reflection in the surface of the clear-blue water. There were dark smudges on her cheeks, forehead and nose, one of her earrings was missing and her mascara had run from sweat. Her hair looked like a bird's nest and she could feel a hysterical laugh building up. She forcefully pushed it down as she eradicated her reflection by sticking her hands in the water and giving them a quick scrub.
When she turned her back on the small stream and took a seat, she saw that her companion had all but curled into a ball, white-blue eyes staring at her every movement. This was the first sign Cordelia had seen, since meeting her, that the girl had been living in this world for far too long.
Remembering the question she had asked right before they’d run, she took a chance and repeated it. “What do you remember about where you came from?” She kept her eyes trained on the obviously overwhelmed and frightened girl, as if she was an animal poised to run at any, tiny movement.
Victoria stayed still, staring at her new friend - and savior - giving the question the thought that it deserved. Her head ached from attempts to recall her past and she winced against the pain, lifting a hand up against her warm forehead. “I-I’m not sure…”
“It’s okay,” Cordelia spoke, a soft tone she wasn’t entirely used to using. “Give yourself plenty of time. What about…the name of your hometown? A last name? Anything?”
The girl squinted her eyes as she looked inward for an answer; any answer. Images swirled through her mind’s eye but she couldn’t seem to grasp hold of any of them. Whenever she tried, it was a picture of this place that stood out; hiding in a wet hole as sniffing monsters hovered in the area, running as fast as she could from a snake-like creature, the stinging of sharp fangs in her side on the rare occasion that she didn’t escape fast enough.
But nothing from before this place…only feelings. Safety, warmth, a smell she couldn’t name. But no cold, hard facts.
Cordelia sensed this and swallowed her sigh. “It’s okay, Victoria. You know your name, that’s good enough for me. We can always figure out the rest later.”
Her head popped up and she tilted her head just a bit to the side. “Later?”
“Yeah, later. I’ve got people looking for me. It might take them a while, but they’ll come. And then you can return to my world with us.” She tried a smile, but it felt almost wrong at the moment.
Victoria still looked confused and then she got a look on her face that Cordelia would have called humor on anyone else. “But…there is no way out.” She shook her head. “Did you think I never searched?”
Truthfully she hadn’t considered this. But it made sense. Victoria had probably looked for a way out for a long time after she first wound up here - however that happened - before eventually succumbing to the world she was in, forced to run and hide and do what she could to stay alive. Cordelia felt like an idiot for making assumptions. “My friends…they have ways, Victoria, they’ll find a way. I promise.”
But the girl shook her head again. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” And then she turned her back.
The conversation was well and truly over…for the moment.
Lorne was still sitting in the only chair that was in one piece, while Gunn had taken a seat on the floor and Wesley and Angel leaned against opposite walls. The quiet had ruled for a while, though no one knew quite how long it had been. No one had spoken a word since Angel informed them all of what Lorne had learned.
They desperately wanted to cling to the small chance that the demon’s friend had been wrong and Cordelia was not stuck somewhere with such a dangerous reputation; and that was just within the media of movies and books. There was no saying what the reality was actually like.
But they couldn’t just sit here; certainly not forever.
“What exactly do you know about this place, Angel?” Wesley spoke, making everyone jump a bit, including the vampire.
Angel sighed and leaned back fully against the wall, his eyes on the ceiling as he spoke. “Not much, but I’ve heard rumors. Apparently it’s the place that demons with souls go when they die. That is, their souls go there.”
Lorne was softly shaking his head and Wesley gestured for him to speak up. “Sorry to burst a bubble there, Angelcakes, but you’ve got a sour source.” He sighed deeply and slowly stood up, raking his eyes over all three of them; he’d been hoping never to have to bring this up. “The creatures you fight on a nightly basis are not, in fact, demons. The correct term would be monsters.”
All three were understandably confused. “What’s the difference?” Gunn asked, not being anything but curious in his inquiry.
“Oh, there’s a big difference, my chocolate eclair,” Lorne replied, a humorless grin on his face. “Pray you never meet an actual demon, they’re much worse than monsters.” Another sigh. “Anyway, to continue the earlier thought, Angel was halfway right. Purgatory is where the soul of monsters go when they die. It’s full of them…and in this place…it’s said that they have corporeal form.”
Everyone immediately finished what Lorne wasn’t saying in their minds, but it was Wesley who spoke up. “So, what you’re saying is…if Cordelia is, indeed, stuck there, she is…”
Angel continued for the stumped, shocked man. “Surrounded by monsters.” He turned abruptly to the horned demon…was he even a demon? “Can they be killed there? If they’re already dead?”
Lorne didn’t look confident. “That’s a very good question.”
Gunn really didn’t have the capacity to take this all in right now. He raised his open palms and closed his eyes for a moment. “Alright, moving on. How exactly are we supposed to get into this place?”
Everyone looked back at Lorne, who felt like he would never stop sighing. “All she gave me was a name. I can only guess that this person will have the answer to that one.” He reached for his iridescent blue coat and swung it around his back. “And maybe other answers, as well.”
The others quickly followed him, Angel the last one out. He looked over the destruction of the office that belonged to Wesley now and frowned. “Wherever you are,” he whispered, softly shutting his eyes. “Please be safe.”
“You have to remember to be careful, okay?” She brushed a hand through the auburn hair, staring deep into the white-blue eyes.
Victoria nodded her head. “I always am, mother, and you worry too much.” She gave a small smile as she turned away. She pushed the pack higher up on her shoulder and looked over her shoulder as she walked down the stony path. “I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“I love you, Vicky!” her mother called out as she got in her car and started the engine.
She rolled down the window and leaned out with a smile. “I don’t know why, but thanks.”
Her mother’s laugh followed her down the driveway and out onto the main road.
Victoria sat up suddenly, surprising Cordelia enough that she fell halfway into the stream of water behind her. “Oomph,” she let out as the back of her jean-suit soaked through to the skin. A grimace on her face, she righted herself and sat back against the wall of earth behind her. “Do you always wake up like that?” she asked, brushing her back and not looking at the girl.
Who was being very quiet.
Cordelia finally looked up to see that Victoria was sitting still, almost like a statue, no breeze to even move her tangled hair around. She frowned and squinted her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on; did the girl sleepwalk? Her eyes were clouded over, but Cordelia had no experience with people who had that particular, subconscious, habit.
She rose from the ground as much as she could, half crawling over to the girl’s side and taking a seat beside her. Still not comfortable touching her too much, afraid to scare her off like a cornered animal, she leaned in close and whispered her name. “Victoria?”
The girl only blinked once before turning to face Cordelia, not seeming the least bit shocked at how close the woman was to her own face. “What is it?” she croaked out, though her voice sounded better after she had gotten a bit of rest.
Slowly Cordelia shook her head. “Are you okay? You were acting weird before.”
Victoria tried to remember what she’d been dreaming…but it was as out of her grasp as her memories seemed to be. “I think that I remembered…” she put a hand to her forehead, a habit she couldn’t recall having before. “It’s gone now.”
Cordelia sighed in sympathy with the young girl, feeling a need to reach out and rub one of her shoulders; she ignored this need. “Well, maybe it just means that it’ll take some time, right? It’s progress.”
Unless, of course, Victoria had been having dreams like this for a while and just hadn’t been aware, alone as she had been in this place until now. But Cordelia knew better than to mention that; she did have some tact, after all.
Victoria brushed some hair away from her eyes and turned to look at the other woman again. “Will your friends know where to find us?” She wasn’t suddenly feeling hopeful but wanted the conversation away from her missing memories.
“I’m sure they’ll have some way of letting me know they’re here. If not, we’ll just go out now and then and look. We’ll be careful, of course,” she tacked on at the end, when Victoria got a crazed look in her eyes, at the thought of going back out there.
Victoria looked down at her hands, covered in filth, leaves and earth. She softly rubbed at them, frowning as she subconsciously continued to try and recall that dream. There had been something about it; a warmth she wasn’t used to. Nightmares were what she knew, but this was new.
There was also a smell she couldn’t put her finger on, that had remained even after she woke.
Keeping her eyes on scarred, dirty hands, she spoke again. “It’s hardly ever dark here.”
Cordelia wasn’t sure what had prompted the girl to speak, but she wasn’t about to break her concentration. She stayed perfectly still and waited for Victoria to continue her thought.
“I don’t know if this place has a sun, I’ve never seen one, but it’s almost always light. The dark…it rarely comes.” She scrubbed a little harder against the dirt on her skin, eyes stinging with tears that she refused to let fall. “I think…I remember it being dark more often back…back home.”
Cordelia nodded to herself; at least it was something, even if it wasn’t much.
Victoria turned to finally look at the other woman. “Is it like that where you’re from?”
The brunette got comfortable against the cave wall and rested her hands in her lap. “Yes. There are twenty-four hours in each day and, depending on where in the world you are, just under half of that is dark. Especially in winter. During the summer, the dark only lasts for a few hours.”
The girl copied Cordelia’s move and leaned back against the hard rock, looking out over the tiny cave with the small stream. “Tell me more,” she said, letting her eyes close as she drifted; not quite asleep but not fully awake either.
Cordelia let a small smile play on her lips, glancing at the peaceful looking girl. “Well, let’s see…my world has warm food on every street corner. Showers with great water pressure. Silk.” She frowned. “It’s not perfect, but…” She looked all around the cave. “It’s paradise compared to this,” she whispered to herself, glancing back at Victoria to see that the girl had fallen back asleep.
She smiled again and got comfortable herself; it had been a long day.
And wasn’t that an understatement.
Dirk had been open for business for just over twenty-three years now, and in that time he’d seen his fair share of weirdness. Certainly one vampire accompanied by two humans and a green demon with red horns was nothing new and he barely raised a brow when the foursome walked through the door of his herbal store.
“What can I help you with, gentlemen?” he asked, keeping one hand under his counter, fingers tight around the hilt of a bejeweled knife. One could never be too safe in the big city, after all.
Lorne walked forward and tried on a smile that he knew fell kind of flat. “Aggie sent me.”
Dirk nodded and took his hand off the knife, smiling a bit at the group. “In that case, welcome.” He walked around the counter to join them in the main space of the small shop. “She called me earlier, said you might be coming by. You gents looking for Purgatory?”
Angel knew his emotions were a bit out of control at the moment. Everything this past year, with Darla and Drusilla, combined with Cordelia’s sudden disappearance, wasn’t making him feel very fluffy and he was realizing that it was probably best to let the others take the lead. He could feel the demon deep inside, clamoring to be let out to rain down destruction the longer his friend was gone. He stood at the edge of the small room and simply listened.
“Yes, Aggie mentioned you might know of a way to get us in,” Lorne said, nervous about the term ‘we’ but knowing it wasn’t a discussion to be had right now.
Dirk shook his head with a frown. “I don’t know what that girl’s been smoking, but she steered you wrong. Sure, I know my fair share about that place, but that includes there being no way in. Unless you’re a monster fixing to get yourself killed, of course.”
Angel forced down a growl as Wesley stepped up beside Lorne. “I’m not sure I understand; our friend was trapped there by a portal, surely that means it can be done?”
The shopkeeper rubbed his chin as he considered the foursome. “I ain’t never heard of that before, but I guess it’s not impossible. What exactly where the circumstances surrounding this friend of yours?”
While Wesley and Gunn filled Dirk in, Lorne stepped up to the large window where the vampire was frowning, deep in thought. “I’m sorry about this, shortcake, Aggie’s never given bad intel before.”
Angel lifted his head to look at the demon. “It’s not your fault,” he sighed, letting his arms fall to his sides.
Lorne always knew how to read the vampire, even without a song to help him out. “It isn’t yours, either.”
Angel didn’t say anything more.
“Guys,” Gunn called out, waving the two preternatural beings over to the small table on the other end of the room. They were done filling the shopkeeper in and needed all ears for this. “Repeat that for us, Dirk,” he said, once the vampire and demon had joined him and Wesley.
He pulled out some papers and lay them on the table. “My father studied Purgatory his whole life, trying to find a way to harness its mystical power for himself; he never found it. However, he did learn a lot about it.” He unfolded what looked like a map and placed a flat palm down on it. “There isn’t technically a way inside, although it’s been speculated that you can ride the wave of a dying monster inside. It can’t be just any monster, though, it has to be an Alpha.”
Gunn frowned. “What the hell’s that?”
Dirk smiled and looked up at the taller man. “The first of every kind of monster; everything has a parent, Mr. Gunn, even evil creatures.” He looked back down at the paper. “Most of the Alpha’s have been destroyed, and whoever is left have gotten very good at hiding.”
He tapped the paper a few times. “This is a map of Purgatory, though of course it might not be precise; it was supposedly drawn up by someone claiming to have been there, but there is no real way of verifying that.”
Wesley leaned in over the table, adjusting the glasses on his head. “Well, it certainly doesn’t look anything like I’d expected.”
Dirk smiled again. “Fiction has a way of getting most things wrong, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce,” he said, glancing over at Angel. “Isn’t that right, vampire?”
Angel just nodded, his eyes fixed on what appeared to be a map of a large, unending forest, with few clearings and rivers dotted here and there; he couldn’t help but question the validity of the map. He had been to hell - or, at the very least, a hell dimension - and he doubted that a place like Purgatory would look like this.
It seemed almost…peaceful.
“Victoria, run!” Cordelia shouted, digging her long fingernails into the belly of the demon that had a hand wrapped around her midsection. “Get out of here!”
The girl was wavering, wanting to be safe but also not wanting to lose her new friend. She waffled back and forth on her bare feet, teeth sinking into her bottom lip as desperate eyes flew from Cordelia caught in a monster’s grasp to the rest of the forest and any of the dozen hiding places she had found over the years. What was she supposed to do?
Cordelia continued to struggle with the strange-looking demon - it looked almost human, if not for the teeth - praying that the girl would listen to her and get herself far, far away from here. She wasn’t sure how this would end, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty. For her or the demon.
Maneuvering herself around just enough to get the room needed, she threw her elbow deep into the gut of the demon with as much force as she could muster; it worked and the demon loosened its grip on her. She forced her way out of its arms fully and turned around, getting into a fighting position that she’d seen the Slayer do on several occasions.
The demon with the sharp teeth smiled at her, probably assuming that she was just a weak little human - which it may be right about, but still, no need to gloat - and charged at her. She threw out her leg and used its own momentum against it, watching as it tumbled to the ground. Before it could get back up, she kicked it in the back and then ran.
She grabbed Victoria’s hand - not bothering to scold her for not listening - and started to run as fast as her feet would carry her. She heard the girl occasionally cry out behind her, as her feet were bare and no doubt being ripped up by the branches and rocks on the ground, but they couldn’t afford to stop, even for a second. She bit back her own sympathy and pulled on Victoria’s hand, trying to tell her to move faster.
They could hear the demon pursuing them in the distance.
The forest rarely changed as they ran and Cordelia couldn’t help the stray thought that wondered just how Victoria - and the demons - could tell anything apart from anything else. Maybe she just had a horrible sense of direction? As they entered yet another tiny part of the forest that were missing enough trees to be called a small field, a body came out of nowhere and crashed into the two women, sending them barreling to the ground, scraping up their exposed skin in the process.
Cordelia immediately crawled over to crouch protectively over Victoria and stared up into unfamiliar eyes that seemed almost human. The man smiled, sharp teeth identical to the demon that’d had her in its grip before, before winking and rushing off to fight the pursuing monster that was now reaching the area.
She could feel Victoria’s hands clutching at her denim-suit as she watched the two creatures fighting all around them, bashing into trees and throwing punches that made her teeth ache just to listen to. She wondered what was going on; were they fighting over the right to eat them? But the other one…what was with that wink? She wasn’t sure if they could afford to wait around and find out and grabbed Victoria’s hand again.
Just as they were getting ready to run again, the ‘friendly’ demon chopped the head off the other one and turned to them, dipping his hat at them and smiling. “You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for you,” he said, a thick Southern accent coating his words.
Cordelia was stunned almost silent. “Huh?”
To be continued in Chapter Two; Who is the stranger that saved Cordelia and Victoria and why has he been looking for the girl? Will Angel and the gang ever find a way to get their friend and Seer back?
A Buffyverse fanfic set around the end of seasons 5 and 2 respectively. Crosses over with the CW show Supernatural but knowledge of this show is unnecessary to read (and enjoy) the story.
Summary; At the end of Belonging, Cordelia ends up somewhere very different from Pylea.
Characters (in order of importance to the story); Original Character. Cordelia Chase. Angel. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Charles Gunn. Lorne/The Host.
Pairings; None (as of yet).
Chapter One
She crouched down behind the rotted tree stump, her dirty fingernails grasping the blackened bark as her head peeked out to see her surroundings. There was no wind to pull at the leaves and no chirping of birds in the sky, instead it was eerily silent and that fact sent a shiver racing down her spine.
Wishing, not for the first time, that she could spontaneously grow eyes in the back of her head, she crossed two fingers and prayed that nothing would jump up from behind her. She felt she was decently enough hidden where she was, but also had to take into account the otherworldly senses of the beasts that made this land their home.
In the distance she heard a tree branch break and she scurried closer within her hiding place.
Her skin was tingling from the hours she had spent underwater earlier and her knees protested the crouched position she was in, but she refused to move. She could deal with discomfort, even outright pain, if it meant her staying alive just a little bit longer. She was already surprised that she hadn’t been killed long ago to begin with.
Another branch broke, this one not too far from where she was hiding, and she peeked out her head again to see if she could catch a glimpse of them, preferably before they saw her. All she caught were horns and ripped clothing, before she went back behind the large tree stump and tried to steady her panicked breathing.
Her right hand went down to the leaf covered ground and she wrapped her fingers around the weapon she had made long ago out of nothing but tree, carved stone and stripped bark used as rope to tie the first two parts together. She lifted it slightly, prepared to take a sudden swing if needed.
It wasn’t needed, however, as a sudden shout brought the creature’s attention away from the prey it had smelled and it ran quick-footed in the opposite direction of where she sat. Before she could breathe a sigh of relief however, she, too, heard the noise much closer.
It was a female voice crying out for help.
It only took two seconds of vacillating between it being a trap or not before she sprang into action and followed the creature’s path. Even if it was a female monster trying to lure her out, she would never forgive herself if she didn’t make sure. She had been in this literal hell hole for so long and had never come across another human being, but was still hopeful that others existed along with her here.
It took her a bit longer than she liked to reach the clearing where the yell had originated from, because her ingrown instincts had her hiding behind almost every tree she came across. It was difficult to do otherwise when she felt that running had been her entire life, or something close to it.
When she made it to the last of the trees before it opened up into the aforementioned clearing, she stopped, held her breath and watched in awe at the scene before her.
Instead of the girl - and she was sure it was a human at first glance - frightened of the creature and screaming in pain, she was fighting it off quite well, though of course she knew very little of battle techniques. Knowing her assistance was in fact not needed, she instead settled against the tree and took in the other girl.
She was clad in what appeared to be a full bodysuit of a fabric that hardly existed whole in this place; denim. It was a dark blue color, almost the same shade as the pants she had worn long ago when she first came here. The girl - woman, she decided, as she appeared older than herself - had mahogany brown hair cut short, just above her shoulders, and was wearing hoop earrings and other assorted jewelry. She definitely looked like a newcomer in this world.
Having been so focused watching the woman, a sound like a crack but louder than a branch breaking brought her eyes to the creature, who had fallen to the ground and was no longer moving. Realizing, belatedly, that the mystery woman had won the battle, she crept slowly out of her hiding place, eyes fixed on the winning champion of what was, in fact, a very short battle.
Shortly after abandoning the tree line she stepped on a branch - a lot of that went down in this eternal, unending forest - and the woman’s head whipped around, dark brown eyes focused on the petite girl she knew others saw. Her hands began to fidget and she worried her bottom lip, wondering why she had simply assumed that she could trust this stranger not to hurt her. For all she knew, she had been battling the creature for dominance over terrain and not because she was a good, human, woman.
That all went away when the brown eyes appeared to soften. “Hi, there,” she spoke, her voice like bells whistling through the nonexistent wind.
She cleared her throat and attempted a response, but hadn’t spoken beyond screams in so long that it came out rougher than it was supposed to. “Hello.”
A frown line appeared above the eyes of the woman and she slowly made her way closer on dangerously high heeled shoes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Her concern was a river washing over her that came unexpected in this usually dark and evil place.
She let out a sigh and her whole body seemed to deflate, having decided, then and there, to put all of her trust in this mysterious woman. “Fine,” she croaked out, because technically it was true. It had been a while since she had last been spotted by the monsters of this world and even then she had successfully escaped their clutches.
The woman frowned. “You don’t seem fine, but I guess I’ll take your word for it. For now. Do you know where we are?” She looked away then, her eyes flying all over the seemingly innocuous clearing and surrounding forest.
She looked back quickly when there was a response to her question. “Hell.”
“You’re kidding, right?” But her own eyes betrayed the innocence of her words.
A long-forgotten move took her over - she believed it was called shrugging one’s shoulders - and she tried to speak a complete sentence that wouldn’t sound like a garbled mess. “I think it’s hell. There are…monsters. Everywhere.” It was her turn to let her eyes fly all over as if speaking the word itself would bring them all out, in full force.
The frown stayed on the woman’s face but did not grow larger. She did, however, walk closer until she was close enough to touch, though she didn’t quite go that far. “You mean like that one?” she asked, pointing one long nail - the color of peaches in the summer - towards the fallen body of the creature.
She nodded, deciding only to speak when needed so as not to overuse her vocal chords.
The woman turned back to look at her again. “I’ve seen plenty of that where I come from, so I doubt this is hell.” She paused and looked around for a few seconds. “Though I suppose it could be considered a form of hell, especially to those unfamiliar with…”
“With what?”
The woman looked at her, as if gauging how she would react. “With demons, sweetie.”
She was suitably shocked; upon her arrival to this place it had never occurred to her to use that word to describe the creatures she was surrounded with. Why, she couldn’t say.
“D-demons,” she spoke the word aloud herself, voice shaking. And not from disuse this time.
The woman looked sympathetic and as if she wanted to reach out and comfort her physically. She was glad that the decision was made not to, at this point she still only remembered being touched in ways intended to cause her agony and her eventual death.
She clenched her fists where they lay at her sides and kept her eyes on the ground below them, trying to wrap her head around this new phenomenon - while also wondering why this thought hadn’t occurred to her before. Now that it was pointed out to her, it felt obvious, but of course she remembered very little - if anything - of the world she originally came from, she wouldn’t even know if this was new information or not.
She brushed some hair away from her eyes and glanced back up at the woman. “Are there many demons w-where you come f-from?” Her voice was still shaky and rough, but it was easing the more she used it.
The woman looked cautious for some reason, before seemingly sighing with her whole body. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She was looking all around them, assessing the area, or maybe watching out for any more trouble coming their way. “I’m wondering if we don’t come from the same world, though,” she continued, glancing back at the younger girl with knowing eyes.
The girl’s brows furrowed and she wrapped arms around herself, as if a terrible cold had set in and settled around her bones. “Why do you say that?”
The woman seemed to almost reach out and lay a hand on the girl’s shoulder, before remembering herself halfway through the move. “Do you have a name?” she asked, changing gears for the moment.
The girl was so taken aback by the unexpected question that she had to consider the answer; no one had called her anything other than various words that meant prey for so very long, after all. “I think…” she said, trying to clear her throat of the roughness and emotions welling up. “Victoria. I think I’m called…Victoria.”
Nodding slowly, the woman fidgeted on her feet before throwing back her shoulders in determination. “Well, Victoria, it’s nice to meet you, despite the circumstances. I’m Cordelia.”
Victoria looked up at the dark brown eyes and felt an inner strength she wasn’t expecting, as she repeated her earlier question. “Why do you think we’re from the same world, Cordelia?”
Again, the woman sighed. “Your clothing,” she spoke, gesturing to the scraps of fabric barely covering the girl’s very pale skin. “Or what’s left of it. I recognize the design.” She thought about her high school days, where she was always on top of the latest fashion - not that it had changed that much in recent years - and put the girl’s tattered outfit as being from somewhere around 1996.
Which truthfully frightened Cordelia, as it spoke volumes of how long the poor girl had been stuck in this hellish place.
Victoria looked down over herself, frowning at the mud-covered jean shorts - that had not begun as shorts - and the shirt that just covered her now bra-less chest; she’d been forced to remove said bra a long time ago, to use parts of it as a weapon. Her frown deepened as she tried to remember what the color of her shirt was called.
Purple?
Cordelia’s voice brought her back to reality. “What do you remember about where you came from?”
Before Victoria could even attempt to answer the question, however, a frightful and shrill noise came from the nearby forest and there was no longer time for conversation. Cordelia grabbed the girl’s hand - the first touch that wasn’t demonic in a very long time - and pulled her toward the opposite side of the large, open field, hiding themselves behind the tree line as they watched.
Cordelia kept Victoria behind the large tree stump, one arm slung over her back to keep her in place and protect her, while she peered out from behind the bark at the demons that were now entering the field and discovering the body of the monster she had killed earlier.
She still didn’t entirely understand where it had come from, if she was being honest. Bravery had never been her strongest suit and she would have expected herself to run screaming in the other direction. Sure, she had been aware of this world for five years now, but she was nowhere near confident enough to take on such a creature without backup. But before she had even been able to consider being afraid, the demon had laid dead on the ground.
She’d have to try and figure out why later, for right now she and Victoria needed to get to safety. The girl had been here so long - had stayed alive for so long - that she had to know where a safe place might be for them to lay low. Or at least as safe as it got in this dreary, demon-filled hellhole.
Turning to Victoria, Cordelia put a finger over her lips and then tried to use her own version of sign language and mimicry to get the girl to understand what was happening. Thankfully she was dealing with a very intelligent girl and Victoria silently communicated back at Cordelia for her to follow. They took great care in where they stepped - too dangerous to snap any more branches below their feet - as they slowly wound in and out of the dense forest, keeping a constant eye and ear on the demons sniffing around their fallen comrade’s corpse.
Cordelia had no problem taking a page out of her new friend’s book, physically following in Victoria’s slightly tinier footsteps with her own heels and using what Angel had taught her to breathe very shallowly, in case these unfamiliar creatures had enhanced hearing like so many from back where she came.
She thought of what she left behind; of the vampire, Wesley, Gunn, even the Host. She wanted to be confident that they would find her, except for one problem. This didn’t look anything like the home dimension that the green demon and his cousin had discussed.
Where was she?
“Well, then find her!” he cried out in anger and desperation, toppling over the desk and breathing heavily, though he didn’t need to.
Wesley took one step back, but his face remained the same; the vampire had been unpredictable like this ever since Cordelia had disappeared so it came as no surprise to the former Watcher. “I’ve told you already, Angel, it isn’t that simple. There are an untold number of dimensions out there, looking for her would be like…”
The vampire growled and looked up at his friend with yellow-tinted eyes. “If you compare it to a needle in a haystack, so help me, Wes…”
“English has got a point,” Gunn spoke as he stepped in between the two men, keeping his eyes on the upset vampire. “But no one’s saying we’re giving up, either. We just need to face the facts; it’ll take a while.”
“Maybe not.”
All three sets of eyes turned to the green demon standing nervously in the doorway to the now destroyed office of the old hotel, shifting back and forth on his feet and trying not to look anyone in the eye. Before Angel could take one threatening step forward, Gunn lay a hand on his chest and gestured to Wesley to do the talking.
“What have you found, Lorne?” He itched to clean his glasses but tensions were running far too high at the moment.
Angel would do well to remember that he wasn’t the only one missing Cordelia.
The demon was still a good deal shook from their recent trip to Pylea - which had proved entirely fruitless as the Seer wasn’t there - and his latest visit with his friend didn’t bode well for any of them. This time he’d have to put his foot down a bit harder, if they tried to convince him to come along. “I got a possible location, it’s not 100% though.”
Wesley and Gunn shared a glance of meaning before the Brit spoke up again. “What did your…special friend say?”
Lorne sighed and ran a hand down his face, coming deeper into the room. He raised a fallen chair back up and took a heavy seat, before talking once more. “The place that Cordelia might be in…it’s not exactly the safest.” Before anyone could speak up, he raised an open palm. “Yes, I know Pylea was pretty dangerous, too, but this is different. This is…” he blew out a breath and bent over, resting elbows on his knees. “Darkness. Emptiness.” He looked up at them all. “Pure.”
Whether it was his age, his experiences, his intelligence, or perhaps a mixture of all three, Angel was the only one who immediately understood what Lorne was saying. He fell heavily back against the wall, letting out a much deeper breath than the green demon had just seconds earlier. He uttered one word only, but the room remained silent for quite some time after.
“Purgatory.”
Cordelia was doing her best not to wince out loud at the pain in her side; they’d been walking - carefully - for so long that her lungs were burning and she was questioning just how in shape she was, especially now that her days as a cheerleader were well and truly over. When she got back home, she was so joining a gym.
It didn’t help that Victoria didn’t seem to be even remotely out of breath, looking calmly over her shoulder every now and then to make sure they weren’t being followed. Rationally, she knew that the girl had been in this place much longer and was used to the constant running for her life, but Cordelia was very rarely accused of being rational, especially in situations that invited danger into her life.
Apparently feeling confident in being far enough away from the demons, the young girl spoke up for the first time since they’d escaped the field. “There’s a cave just around the corner, I’ve been staying there for a while.” Her voice was back to sounding like rocks scraping against each other and Cordelia winced in sympathy; it must feel even worse than it sounded.
Sure enough, after a few more minutes of walking they came to the mouth of a small cave, so tiny that they had to bend over to fit inside. As deep in as they could go, Cordelia took her instructions from the silent girl and sat down when Victoria did. She brushed her hands over her dirty jean-clad thighs, screwing up her face in disgust when it only made her hands more filthy after the fact.
“There’s a small stream over here, you can wash your hands.” Now that Victoria had remembered human speech, it seemed impossible to stop her from using it. It didn’t hurt that she was in good company for the first time in…she had a difficult time remembering, if she were being honest.
Cordelia gave the girl a grateful look and carefully crawled over to where she had been indicated, staring down at her own, dirty, reflection in the surface of the clear-blue water. There were dark smudges on her cheeks, forehead and nose, one of her earrings was missing and her mascara had run from sweat. Her hair looked like a bird's nest and she could feel a hysterical laugh building up. She forcefully pushed it down as she eradicated her reflection by sticking her hands in the water and giving them a quick scrub.
When she turned her back on the small stream and took a seat, she saw that her companion had all but curled into a ball, white-blue eyes staring at her every movement. This was the first sign Cordelia had seen, since meeting her, that the girl had been living in this world for far too long.
Remembering the question she had asked right before they’d run, she took a chance and repeated it. “What do you remember about where you came from?” She kept her eyes trained on the obviously overwhelmed and frightened girl, as if she was an animal poised to run at any, tiny movement.
Victoria stayed still, staring at her new friend - and savior - giving the question the thought that it deserved. Her head ached from attempts to recall her past and she winced against the pain, lifting a hand up against her warm forehead. “I-I’m not sure…”
“It’s okay,” Cordelia spoke, a soft tone she wasn’t entirely used to using. “Give yourself plenty of time. What about…the name of your hometown? A last name? Anything?”
The girl squinted her eyes as she looked inward for an answer; any answer. Images swirled through her mind’s eye but she couldn’t seem to grasp hold of any of them. Whenever she tried, it was a picture of this place that stood out; hiding in a wet hole as sniffing monsters hovered in the area, running as fast as she could from a snake-like creature, the stinging of sharp fangs in her side on the rare occasion that she didn’t escape fast enough.
But nothing from before this place…only feelings. Safety, warmth, a smell she couldn’t name. But no cold, hard facts.
Cordelia sensed this and swallowed her sigh. “It’s okay, Victoria. You know your name, that’s good enough for me. We can always figure out the rest later.”
Her head popped up and she tilted her head just a bit to the side. “Later?”
“Yeah, later. I’ve got people looking for me. It might take them a while, but they’ll come. And then you can return to my world with us.” She tried a smile, but it felt almost wrong at the moment.
Victoria still looked confused and then she got a look on her face that Cordelia would have called humor on anyone else. “But…there is no way out.” She shook her head. “Did you think I never searched?”
Truthfully she hadn’t considered this. But it made sense. Victoria had probably looked for a way out for a long time after she first wound up here - however that happened - before eventually succumbing to the world she was in, forced to run and hide and do what she could to stay alive. Cordelia felt like an idiot for making assumptions. “My friends…they have ways, Victoria, they’ll find a way. I promise.”
But the girl shook her head again. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” And then she turned her back.
The conversation was well and truly over…for the moment.
Lorne was still sitting in the only chair that was in one piece, while Gunn had taken a seat on the floor and Wesley and Angel leaned against opposite walls. The quiet had ruled for a while, though no one knew quite how long it had been. No one had spoken a word since Angel informed them all of what Lorne had learned.
They desperately wanted to cling to the small chance that the demon’s friend had been wrong and Cordelia was not stuck somewhere with such a dangerous reputation; and that was just within the media of movies and books. There was no saying what the reality was actually like.
But they couldn’t just sit here; certainly not forever.
“What exactly do you know about this place, Angel?” Wesley spoke, making everyone jump a bit, including the vampire.
Angel sighed and leaned back fully against the wall, his eyes on the ceiling as he spoke. “Not much, but I’ve heard rumors. Apparently it’s the place that demons with souls go when they die. That is, their souls go there.”
Lorne was softly shaking his head and Wesley gestured for him to speak up. “Sorry to burst a bubble there, Angelcakes, but you’ve got a sour source.” He sighed deeply and slowly stood up, raking his eyes over all three of them; he’d been hoping never to have to bring this up. “The creatures you fight on a nightly basis are not, in fact, demons. The correct term would be monsters.”
All three were understandably confused. “What’s the difference?” Gunn asked, not being anything but curious in his inquiry.
“Oh, there’s a big difference, my chocolate eclair,” Lorne replied, a humorless grin on his face. “Pray you never meet an actual demon, they’re much worse than monsters.” Another sigh. “Anyway, to continue the earlier thought, Angel was halfway right. Purgatory is where the soul of monsters go when they die. It’s full of them…and in this place…it’s said that they have corporeal form.”
Everyone immediately finished what Lorne wasn’t saying in their minds, but it was Wesley who spoke up. “So, what you’re saying is…if Cordelia is, indeed, stuck there, she is…”
Angel continued for the stumped, shocked man. “Surrounded by monsters.” He turned abruptly to the horned demon…was he even a demon? “Can they be killed there? If they’re already dead?”
Lorne didn’t look confident. “That’s a very good question.”
Gunn really didn’t have the capacity to take this all in right now. He raised his open palms and closed his eyes for a moment. “Alright, moving on. How exactly are we supposed to get into this place?”
Everyone looked back at Lorne, who felt like he would never stop sighing. “All she gave me was a name. I can only guess that this person will have the answer to that one.” He reached for his iridescent blue coat and swung it around his back. “And maybe other answers, as well.”
The others quickly followed him, Angel the last one out. He looked over the destruction of the office that belonged to Wesley now and frowned. “Wherever you are,” he whispered, softly shutting his eyes. “Please be safe.”
“You have to remember to be careful, okay?” She brushed a hand through the auburn hair, staring deep into the white-blue eyes.
Victoria nodded her head. “I always am, mother, and you worry too much.” She gave a small smile as she turned away. She pushed the pack higher up on her shoulder and looked over her shoulder as she walked down the stony path. “I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“I love you, Vicky!” her mother called out as she got in her car and started the engine.
She rolled down the window and leaned out with a smile. “I don’t know why, but thanks.”
Her mother’s laugh followed her down the driveway and out onto the main road.
Victoria sat up suddenly, surprising Cordelia enough that she fell halfway into the stream of water behind her. “Oomph,” she let out as the back of her jean-suit soaked through to the skin. A grimace on her face, she righted herself and sat back against the wall of earth behind her. “Do you always wake up like that?” she asked, brushing her back and not looking at the girl.
Who was being very quiet.
Cordelia finally looked up to see that Victoria was sitting still, almost like a statue, no breeze to even move her tangled hair around. She frowned and squinted her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on; did the girl sleepwalk? Her eyes were clouded over, but Cordelia had no experience with people who had that particular, subconscious, habit.
She rose from the ground as much as she could, half crawling over to the girl’s side and taking a seat beside her. Still not comfortable touching her too much, afraid to scare her off like a cornered animal, she leaned in close and whispered her name. “Victoria?”
The girl only blinked once before turning to face Cordelia, not seeming the least bit shocked at how close the woman was to her own face. “What is it?” she croaked out, though her voice sounded better after she had gotten a bit of rest.
Slowly Cordelia shook her head. “Are you okay? You were acting weird before.”
Victoria tried to remember what she’d been dreaming…but it was as out of her grasp as her memories seemed to be. “I think that I remembered…” she put a hand to her forehead, a habit she couldn’t recall having before. “It’s gone now.”
Cordelia sighed in sympathy with the young girl, feeling a need to reach out and rub one of her shoulders; she ignored this need. “Well, maybe it just means that it’ll take some time, right? It’s progress.”
Unless, of course, Victoria had been having dreams like this for a while and just hadn’t been aware, alone as she had been in this place until now. But Cordelia knew better than to mention that; she did have some tact, after all.
Victoria brushed some hair away from her eyes and turned to look at the other woman again. “Will your friends know where to find us?” She wasn’t suddenly feeling hopeful but wanted the conversation away from her missing memories.
“I’m sure they’ll have some way of letting me know they’re here. If not, we’ll just go out now and then and look. We’ll be careful, of course,” she tacked on at the end, when Victoria got a crazed look in her eyes, at the thought of going back out there.
Victoria looked down at her hands, covered in filth, leaves and earth. She softly rubbed at them, frowning as she subconsciously continued to try and recall that dream. There had been something about it; a warmth she wasn’t used to. Nightmares were what she knew, but this was new.
There was also a smell she couldn’t put her finger on, that had remained even after she woke.
Keeping her eyes on scarred, dirty hands, she spoke again. “It’s hardly ever dark here.”
Cordelia wasn’t sure what had prompted the girl to speak, but she wasn’t about to break her concentration. She stayed perfectly still and waited for Victoria to continue her thought.
“I don’t know if this place has a sun, I’ve never seen one, but it’s almost always light. The dark…it rarely comes.” She scrubbed a little harder against the dirt on her skin, eyes stinging with tears that she refused to let fall. “I think…I remember it being dark more often back…back home.”
Cordelia nodded to herself; at least it was something, even if it wasn’t much.
Victoria turned to finally look at the other woman. “Is it like that where you’re from?”
The brunette got comfortable against the cave wall and rested her hands in her lap. “Yes. There are twenty-four hours in each day and, depending on where in the world you are, just under half of that is dark. Especially in winter. During the summer, the dark only lasts for a few hours.”
The girl copied Cordelia’s move and leaned back against the hard rock, looking out over the tiny cave with the small stream. “Tell me more,” she said, letting her eyes close as she drifted; not quite asleep but not fully awake either.
Cordelia let a small smile play on her lips, glancing at the peaceful looking girl. “Well, let’s see…my world has warm food on every street corner. Showers with great water pressure. Silk.” She frowned. “It’s not perfect, but…” She looked all around the cave. “It’s paradise compared to this,” she whispered to herself, glancing back at Victoria to see that the girl had fallen back asleep.
She smiled again and got comfortable herself; it had been a long day.
And wasn’t that an understatement.
Dirk had been open for business for just over twenty-three years now, and in that time he’d seen his fair share of weirdness. Certainly one vampire accompanied by two humans and a green demon with red horns was nothing new and he barely raised a brow when the foursome walked through the door of his herbal store.
“What can I help you with, gentlemen?” he asked, keeping one hand under his counter, fingers tight around the hilt of a bejeweled knife. One could never be too safe in the big city, after all.
Lorne walked forward and tried on a smile that he knew fell kind of flat. “Aggie sent me.”
Dirk nodded and took his hand off the knife, smiling a bit at the group. “In that case, welcome.” He walked around the counter to join them in the main space of the small shop. “She called me earlier, said you might be coming by. You gents looking for Purgatory?”
Angel knew his emotions were a bit out of control at the moment. Everything this past year, with Darla and Drusilla, combined with Cordelia’s sudden disappearance, wasn’t making him feel very fluffy and he was realizing that it was probably best to let the others take the lead. He could feel the demon deep inside, clamoring to be let out to rain down destruction the longer his friend was gone. He stood at the edge of the small room and simply listened.
“Yes, Aggie mentioned you might know of a way to get us in,” Lorne said, nervous about the term ‘we’ but knowing it wasn’t a discussion to be had right now.
Dirk shook his head with a frown. “I don’t know what that girl’s been smoking, but she steered you wrong. Sure, I know my fair share about that place, but that includes there being no way in. Unless you’re a monster fixing to get yourself killed, of course.”
Angel forced down a growl as Wesley stepped up beside Lorne. “I’m not sure I understand; our friend was trapped there by a portal, surely that means it can be done?”
The shopkeeper rubbed his chin as he considered the foursome. “I ain’t never heard of that before, but I guess it’s not impossible. What exactly where the circumstances surrounding this friend of yours?”
While Wesley and Gunn filled Dirk in, Lorne stepped up to the large window where the vampire was frowning, deep in thought. “I’m sorry about this, shortcake, Aggie’s never given bad intel before.”
Angel lifted his head to look at the demon. “It’s not your fault,” he sighed, letting his arms fall to his sides.
Lorne always knew how to read the vampire, even without a song to help him out. “It isn’t yours, either.”
Angel didn’t say anything more.
“Guys,” Gunn called out, waving the two preternatural beings over to the small table on the other end of the room. They were done filling the shopkeeper in and needed all ears for this. “Repeat that for us, Dirk,” he said, once the vampire and demon had joined him and Wesley.
He pulled out some papers and lay them on the table. “My father studied Purgatory his whole life, trying to find a way to harness its mystical power for himself; he never found it. However, he did learn a lot about it.” He unfolded what looked like a map and placed a flat palm down on it. “There isn’t technically a way inside, although it’s been speculated that you can ride the wave of a dying monster inside. It can’t be just any monster, though, it has to be an Alpha.”
Gunn frowned. “What the hell’s that?”
Dirk smiled and looked up at the taller man. “The first of every kind of monster; everything has a parent, Mr. Gunn, even evil creatures.” He looked back down at the paper. “Most of the Alpha’s have been destroyed, and whoever is left have gotten very good at hiding.”
He tapped the paper a few times. “This is a map of Purgatory, though of course it might not be precise; it was supposedly drawn up by someone claiming to have been there, but there is no real way of verifying that.”
Wesley leaned in over the table, adjusting the glasses on his head. “Well, it certainly doesn’t look anything like I’d expected.”
Dirk smiled again. “Fiction has a way of getting most things wrong, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce,” he said, glancing over at Angel. “Isn’t that right, vampire?”
Angel just nodded, his eyes fixed on what appeared to be a map of a large, unending forest, with few clearings and rivers dotted here and there; he couldn’t help but question the validity of the map. He had been to hell - or, at the very least, a hell dimension - and he doubted that a place like Purgatory would look like this.
It seemed almost…peaceful.
“Victoria, run!” Cordelia shouted, digging her long fingernails into the belly of the demon that had a hand wrapped around her midsection. “Get out of here!”
The girl was wavering, wanting to be safe but also not wanting to lose her new friend. She waffled back and forth on her bare feet, teeth sinking into her bottom lip as desperate eyes flew from Cordelia caught in a monster’s grasp to the rest of the forest and any of the dozen hiding places she had found over the years. What was she supposed to do?
Cordelia continued to struggle with the strange-looking demon - it looked almost human, if not for the teeth - praying that the girl would listen to her and get herself far, far away from here. She wasn’t sure how this would end, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty. For her or the demon.
Maneuvering herself around just enough to get the room needed, she threw her elbow deep into the gut of the demon with as much force as she could muster; it worked and the demon loosened its grip on her. She forced her way out of its arms fully and turned around, getting into a fighting position that she’d seen the Slayer do on several occasions.
The demon with the sharp teeth smiled at her, probably assuming that she was just a weak little human - which it may be right about, but still, no need to gloat - and charged at her. She threw out her leg and used its own momentum against it, watching as it tumbled to the ground. Before it could get back up, she kicked it in the back and then ran.
She grabbed Victoria’s hand - not bothering to scold her for not listening - and started to run as fast as her feet would carry her. She heard the girl occasionally cry out behind her, as her feet were bare and no doubt being ripped up by the branches and rocks on the ground, but they couldn’t afford to stop, even for a second. She bit back her own sympathy and pulled on Victoria’s hand, trying to tell her to move faster.
They could hear the demon pursuing them in the distance.
The forest rarely changed as they ran and Cordelia couldn’t help the stray thought that wondered just how Victoria - and the demons - could tell anything apart from anything else. Maybe she just had a horrible sense of direction? As they entered yet another tiny part of the forest that were missing enough trees to be called a small field, a body came out of nowhere and crashed into the two women, sending them barreling to the ground, scraping up their exposed skin in the process.
Cordelia immediately crawled over to crouch protectively over Victoria and stared up into unfamiliar eyes that seemed almost human. The man smiled, sharp teeth identical to the demon that’d had her in its grip before, before winking and rushing off to fight the pursuing monster that was now reaching the area.
She could feel Victoria’s hands clutching at her denim-suit as she watched the two creatures fighting all around them, bashing into trees and throwing punches that made her teeth ache just to listen to. She wondered what was going on; were they fighting over the right to eat them? But the other one…what was with that wink? She wasn’t sure if they could afford to wait around and find out and grabbed Victoria’s hand again.
Just as they were getting ready to run again, the ‘friendly’ demon chopped the head off the other one and turned to them, dipping his hat at them and smiling. “You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for you,” he said, a thick Southern accent coating his words.
Cordelia was stunned almost silent. “Huh?”
To be continued in Chapter Two; Who is the stranger that saved Cordelia and Victoria and why has he been looking for the girl? Will Angel and the gang ever find a way to get their friend and Seer back?
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