{"id":680,"date":"2015-06-20T23:31:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T22:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/goteamfiction.com\/dir\/?p=680"},"modified":"2015-12-11T09:29:15","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T09:29:15","slug":"in-the-company-of-wolves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goteamfiction.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/20\/in-the-company-of-wolves\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Company of Wolves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Title:<\/strong> In the Company of Wolves
\nAuthor: Samsom<\/strong>
\nSummary:<\/strong> Don\u2019t go walking in the woods after dark.<\/i> It\u2019s good advice.
\nRating:<\/strong> R
\nChallenge:<\/strong> N\/C
\nCharacters:<\/strong> Cordelia, Angel, & Drusilla
\nDisclaimer:<\/strong> Not mine. All characters belong to Whedon, ME, Fox. I\u2019m playing.
\nNotes:<\/strong> Beta’d by DamnSkippytoo.<\/strong> Ficlet-length darkness.<\/p>\n

\n

Don\u2019t go walking in the woods after dark.<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a cautionary warning from a fairy tale, Cordelia thinks. So what if every mother and father in Sunnydale repeats the same warning? Parents do that.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t stray from the path.<\/i><\/p>\n

She knows that one too. Same story, same bad ending.<\/p>\n

She looked it up once, on the internet, because she knew that the woodsman saving Red Riding Hood in the nick of time must have been tacked on. She\u2019s attended too many funerals of friends to believe heroes lurked in bushes waiting to save innocent girls.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not like she\u2019s some little waif lost in the woods. She\u2019s stranded in the park, that\u2019s all. By a date who turned out to be a creep.<\/p>\n

And she\u2019s not wearing red. She\u2019s wearing plum, an autumn color suited to her skin tone, according to the personal shopper her father hired to take her to Rodeo Drive on her last birthday. Her hair is up, not tucked into a hood.<\/p>\n

She keeps her eyes on the ribbon of white in front of her, the path that leads to the other side of the park and to Sunnydale proper. She doesn\u2019t look too deeply into the woods that border the path on either side of her, because she\u2019s not afraid of something looking back.<\/p>\n

The moon is bright, lighting her way like a lantern, and the stars are like diamonds that she can wish on if she wants to, and her daddy will make those wishes come true.<\/p>\n

But try as she does, she can\u2019t keep from seeing out of the corners of her eyes.<\/p>\n

Daddy took her to get her eyes checked last summer, and the doctor told her she had excellent peripheral vision. She wishes now that she didn\u2019t. She wants to be vision poor and needing glasses, because then she wouldn\u2019t see the girl in white drifting on the edge of the path, in and out of the woods like a firefly, silent like Cordelia\u2019s nightmares.<\/p>\n

A world of silence in the heart of the park, with only the whisper of the trees bending in the breeze.<\/p>\n

If she screams, she wonders if it would be silent as well.<\/p>\n

Then it disappears again into the black woods only to reappear on the other side of the path closer to Cordelia\u2019s trembling foot falls.<\/p>\n

Close enough to hear the slow pounding of her heart, the sluggish push of her blood through her veins.<\/p>\n

The firefly stops dancing and pauses, and like a wraith from an Irish legend, it turns slowly and focuses its pale marble face on Cordelia.<\/p>\n

If she keeps walking, if she keeps her eyes on the path in front of her and not go into the woods, she won\u2019t need the woodsman to live. She can ignore what\u2019s in the corner of her vision like she ignores the ass-kissing freshman girls in school, like she ignores her mother\u2019s glassy eyes at dinner time.<\/p>\n

If she just keeps her eyes ahead of her.<\/p>\n

Closer comes the firefly<\/i><\/p>\n

If she just keeps her eyes in front \u2013<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n

And Cordelia stops on the path.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moon whispers to me,\u201d the firefly tells her, pale hand with veins like ropes under her skin touching Cordelia\u2019s face. \u201cDo you know what it tells me, hmmm?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordelia turns her head slowly.<\/p>\n

Not a wolf, not really. A dead girl, seventeen at best, hair wound with ribbons and curls, blue eyes bloodshot red, old dress with tattered edges and cobwebs snarled in the lacing at her breasts.<\/p>\n

Her lost mind and vacant eyes can\u2019t hide the cunning or the hunger, though.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s the wolf after all, dressed in the skin of a waif.<\/p>\n

Sharp white teeth under her blood stained lips, and a sickly smile that keeps edging off her mouth like a lop-sided toupee off a bald man\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

The crickets chirping suddenly breaks through the silence of Cordelia\u2019s fear, and she swallows the mouthful of saliva that had gathered in the back of her mouth as she walked along the path.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the same, it says, you an\u2019 me.\u201d Drifting around Cordelia\u2019s frozen body, hands on her shoulders, colder than snow, squeezing her flesh. \u201cYou see pretty things, drink sweet fear,\u201d she whispers in a sotto voice. \u201cBut then he comes and makes them unpretty again, takes the fear and makes it small.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing in front of Cordelia again, eyes gazing at her and Cordelia can\u2019t stop from staring back, lost in the void she sees, the nonsensical words like the brushings of a fly against her skin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can play, now that we\u2019re sisters an\u2019 all,\u201d she says, doing a little jig, hunching her back like the wicked witch and pointing into Cordelia\u2019s face. \u201cYou can show me the pretty things.\u201d She stops and straightens. \u201cWouldn\u2019t you like that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the waif sheds her skin and shows the wolf beneath, hissing through her sharpened fangs.<\/p>\n

What big teeth you have<\/i><\/p>\n

Then it rears back like a snake about to strike and she closes her eyes, ready to swing her fist. Ready to run. Ready to die.<\/p>\n

She\u2019ll never know which.<\/p>\n

The wolf cries out in the darkness beyond Cordelia\u2019s closed eyes and she opens them to see the waif again.<\/p>\n

Angel has no axe, but he\u2019s got his fist tangled in the girl\u2019s ribbons and curls, and he\u2019s holding her still.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuiet now, Drusilla,\u201d he whispers quietly. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to get me mad, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaddy,\u201d Drusilla wails in a grieving voice. \u201cGrandmother said you were dead, but I knew you weren\u2019t, the stars told me so.\u201d Reaching up, she tries to touch his face but he pulls away from her seeking fingers.<\/p>\n

He pushes her away and tells her to leave in a voice sounding like it\u2019s been dragged over gravel and broken glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake Spike and leave town, Drusilla, don\u2019t make me kill you too.\u201d<\/p>\n

She stands like a lost little girl, trembling in her tattered dress, hair hiding her tear-streaked face.<\/p>\n

\u201cDaddy,\u201d she whispers entreatingly, her fingers bunching into her dress, tearing the fabric and scoring the skin beneath.<\/p>\n

Angel flinches at the name, guilt and revulsion mixing with something darker than the woods around them in his face.<\/p>\n

Cordelia watches him.<\/p>\n

An urge to hurt, maybe.<\/p>\n

She watches his hands tremble.<\/p>\n

An urge to turn Drusilla\u2019s weeping into wails.<\/p>\n

She watches the swirls of a distant light gathering in his eyes.<\/p>\n

And the wails into screams.<\/p>\n

He moves suddenly, and takes Cordelia\u2019s arm in a loose grip.<\/p>\n

His face is calm, neutral.<\/p>\n

Reassuring.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re safe now,\u201d he tells her, and she blinks at the insanity of his words.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll lead her out of the woods, back to the safety of town and people.<\/p>\n

She knows this, and trusts in it.<\/p>\n

But she also knows, as he leads her away, that she\u2019s still in the company of a wolf.<\/p>\n

~End~<\/strong><\/p>\n

Samsom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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