Second Verse
Chapter 5 -- Death in the Neighborhood
As it happened, Xander didn't have to tell her much of anything; Gunn had called the night before and told her all the good news about Xander getting a job as a night assistant manager at a club because of all his experience. Yeah, Xander thought with a snort as his mother congratulated him over and over. Experience at getting fired from every grocery store, fast food place, and check cashing company in the neighborhood. Despite his mother's excitement, he couldn't help looking at the woman with an unfamiliar horror. She didn't even know him. She didn't know how often he'd been fired. He doubted that she even knew how close he came to never graduating.
He felt a moment of rising resentment, and he stomped on it—hard. Looking at his mother again, Xander watched the wrinkles at her eye deepen with her smile and her gray hair bob as she practically danced around the living room doing her regular chores. She worked her ass off to keep him in food and clothes and a home, and he stood in her living room and resented her for not doing more. He felt the guilt rise up and drown the resentment and anger out of his body. Taking his mother's dry, warm hand, he pressed $100 into her palm as he tried really hard not to think about where those bills had been a few hours earlier.
"What's this?" his mother asked in a voice much softer than the one she usually used. Of course, she was usually yelling at him…yelling about not being late, about coming home to late, about going to technical school or automotive school or computer school.
"My rent for the last two months," Xander said. When he had graduated, he had promised his mother that he would pay for the difference in price between a one bedroom apartment and a two bedroom--$50 per month. Of course, those months when he didn't have the money, she never commented and never complained—okay she rarely commented and her many complaints never included the missing rent, so close enough. Certainly his mother was better than his father whose best feature was that he usually stuck to verbal and emotional abuse. "I know that I'm behind, and I'm going to get caught up," Xander promised as he also promised himself that he would start buying more of the groceries.
"Honey, you don't have to pay right now, I can wait until the end of the month," his mother offered with a small smile, leaving her hand and the $100 still extended. Xander gave her a quick hug and pushed her hand toward her body.
"Nope, I'm paying my bills like a real-live grown up, and now I'm going to go buy clothes that don't clash with the club's décor—T seems to think I have bad taste in clothing," Xander admitted with a wink.
"Well, honey," Xander's mother contracted her brow in an obvious sign of concentration before it smoothed out again. "I wish I could find a nice way of saying it, but you have atrocious taste in clothing," she finally finished.
"Now you're just ganging up on me," he gave a mock whine. "Fine, tell me where to shop for solid colors in nice fabrics without having to rob a bank."
"Well, what budget are you talking about?" she asked hesitantly.
"Boss gave me an advance just to get me to stop wearing Hawaiian shirts," He laughed even as he crossed his fingers behind his back. "$200 is burning a hole here." Yeah, he knew the whole crossing fingers thing was about as mature and sticking out his tongue, but he didn't feel like explaining the benefits of tips over a weekly paycheck, and he *really* didn't want to explain $500 in tips.
"Head over to the Garment District, between 8th and 11th," his mother suggested. "Try the Cooper building."
"Thanks mom," Xander yelled from his bedroom where he was already stripping out of his clothes and grabbing new ones for the bus ride down to the garment district. He hoped to finish his shopping and meet Gunn and crew for the late afternoon shift. He could help check out the abandoned buildings that so often turned into vampire nests without constant monitoring, and then while the guys split up to patrol the area once the sun set, he would head over to the club.
Entering the bathroom, Xander dropped the clean clothes on the bathroom counter, dropped his robe and stood under the hot shower feeling water cascade down his skin. For the first time in a long time, he felt excited. He felt like he had somewhere to be. Usually his life was a couple of hours of boring job and many hours of waiting around for Gunn to start the afternoon patrol. Now he felt like he had to get moving—like he had a purpose. Okay, that just didn't jive. The only purpose he had found included letting men touch him in ways that he still wasn't sure he liked getting touched. A face flashed across his memory as he realized that he had enjoyed at least one customer's attention.
He stood under the shower fingering his scar. He wasn't sure whether it was the feeling of his own fingers pushing into the marred flesh, pushing until he felt a pressure that seemed to reach from his head all the way down through his legs, or the memory of Spike's face as Spike leaned in with long, cool fingers caressing the scar. Either way, Xander was half-aroused before he even realized that his body had hijacked the controls. With a small yip, he turned the knob toward cold. Even so, Xander ended up taking a longer than normal shower and exited the bathroom shivering with his arms covered in goose-bumps.
Luckily the shopping trip had proved so annoying that Xander had escaped without any more interruptions from Xander Jr. He deposited a couple of outfits in a small locker at the club, left the rest at home, and then went to find Gunn wearing his least favorite purple and green Hawaiian shirt.
"Damn boy, I thought you were going to stop offending the eyes," Gunn complained as Xander came through the basement door. Casey, Trey, and Fredrick took up the dusty couch, Gunn leaned against the wall, and various other young men draped themselves over low bunks, milk crates, and even an upturned shopping cart someone had hauled down. From the variety of stakes and crossbows in evidence, Xander guessed that Gunn had something planned. Fredrick was certainly fingering his beloved crossbow with more enthusiasm that usual even if his face did have that bored, I'm-too-cool-to-listen-to-anyone expression.
"Nothing's gonna make that less offensive," Luther snorted from his spot on a bunk as he waved a dismissive hand in Xander's direction.
"In which case, my choice in clothing shouldn't matter. Besides," Xander said with a shrug and a smile, "you guys bleed on my shirts with such regularity that I don't really want to wear anything nice—not like I'm trying to impress the vamps," Xander continued as he settled himself cross-legged on the floor. "Not really into dating demons, thanks."
"Can't imagine who else would have you," Luther returned quickly. "Of course, the retard school has a few possibilities for you."
"Okay, that's just ew. I don't know what worse, you calling them 'retards' or suggesting that I hit on them." Xander watched as Luther's face suddenly turned dark. Oh shit, pissed off Luther does not a healthy Xander make. "Of course," he hurried to add, "I don't really have to go that far now that they're opening that school for blind. I bet I could impress a blind girl with my manliness." Xander tried hard not to think about the one person he wanted to impress with manliness.
"Yeah, she'd have to be blind," Luther snort-laughed even as his shoulders relaxed.
"Oh, I don't know, a studly guy like me has one or two options," Xander gave a quick wink toward Alonna, Gunn's sister. He and Alonna had been in the same grade in school and were the only two in the room who had actually finished high school.
"You better not be making eyes at my sister," Gunn warned, but when Xander looked over, he could see the corner of Gunn's eyes wrinkling as Gunn attempted not to laugh. "You two are definitely on different teams tonight." That comment made Xander sit up. When the group invaded abandoned buildings looking to break up nests, Gunn usually kept the group together. If he planned to split the group into two or more teams, he was worried about something big. Xander felt the familiar fear start to uncurl in his stomach, but he clamped his mouth shut and waited for Gunn's game plan.
"Okay, Casey, Luis, Trey, Chuck, and Schilly—you're with Luther. You guys are going to the work the back of that gray tenement between the check cashing place and the Catholic church. Alonna, you're going to run back up for them. Fredrick, Pedro, Dan, Lou—you're with me. Xander's running back up for us. We're going to work the old theater on the north side."
"Didn't we just clean out the theater?" Xander asked. If he remembered right, that night had cost him a couple of bruises and a pair of jeans. He had gotten his jeans' pocket caught on the ticket booth and ripped a chunk out of them. Xander realized that if he hadn't found a new job, he shortly would have been fighting vampires naked.
"I spotted a couple of vamps right before first light," Gunn explained. "They didn't look like our typical vamps from around here—little too clean, little too put together. They had a third vamp I think I recognized from the Chinese grocer. The guy was human last week, so we may have some vamps intent on something other than just feeding. We certainly have more nest sites if the neighborhood gossips are right, so we need to clean these out now."
"If something's up, maybe we should ask around first, maybe during daylight tomorrow," Xander commented. Most vamps around the neighborhood were vicious, mindless killers, and 'put together' vamps making little vampire families out of neighborhood guys sounded pretty strange. Xander had reached the point that he could pretty much predict a vampire's next move, but these guys sounded like they were changing the rules. Definitely not of the good, Xander decided.
"I think vamp bait's got a point," Dan agreed, nodding his head toward Xander even while he used the group's favorite nickname.
"We do what we gotta do, whether vamp bait's balls are too small to do the job or not," Luther insisted as he pushed himself to his feet. "Can't have them breeding up." Xander watched as a fine tremor made Luther's large frame shiver. He could sympathize. As the only member of the group to actually experience a vampire bite, he didn't look forward to a repeat performance, and the thought of being turned made his stomach ache. He still remembered the feeling as Gunn swung the baseball bat into the face of the vampire who had attached himself to Xander's neck. Xander shivered as he recalled his torn neck with his blood and the vampire's blood running down his shoulder. Luther had shot at the vamp, but the bloodsucker had disappeared into the night leaving Xander confused, scared, and "in the know" about vampires for the first time in his life.
"Some of us just have bigger brains than balls, that's all" is what Xander said, despite his sympathetic thoughts. Showing sympathy for Luther wasn't a smart move; Xander had already learned that lesson. "And I'm really hoping that came out in a 'I have really big brains way' and not a 'I have really small balls way.'"
"Listen vamp bait, it ain't your fight," Luther took a step forward and Xander quickly stood up, despite the fact that he knew Luther wouldn't actually hit him…well…he was fairly sure at least.
"Back off, both of you," Gunn interjected as he stepped away from the wall and took a position in the middle of the group. "We have a job here." Without another word, Gunn turned and left the abandoned basement, leaving his crew to follow him into the afternoon sun.
When Gunn and his half of the crew reached the theater with the late afternoon sun still bright, Xander felt the familiar fear start to uncurl in his stomach. He was back up, meaning he didn't have a place at the front line; he held back and pulled any injured to safety and yelled his head off if vamps grabbed someone: two jobs at which he excelled. The building was beyond decrepit with peeling paint, and in several places, boards so warped they appeared to be peeling off the building along with the paint. The once-proud sign now had two corners broken off and an entire display of broken light bulbs. Inside, Xander knew it would smell of dust and rot and something vague but putrid, but when Xander slipped in under a broken board, the smell that hit him wasn't nearly as nice as that.
"What the…" Fredrick choked before his voice cut off. Vamps during the day were sluggish, but still able to put up quite a fight with enough warning. Xander could hear the other four ahead of him, their short staccato breaths sounding their displeasure at the smell even as he heard small gagging noises from Fredrick behind him. Xander couldn't place the smell, but if pushed he thought he would probably compare it to fifty dead and decomposing cats lying next to a pool of ammonia.
He struggled to take shallow breaths in through the collar of his shirt which he had pulled up around his nose. If there weren't vamps in here, there sure as hell was something else. His backpack with various supplies hit his butt with each step and he reached back to steady it before something clinked together and alerted the nest. The lobby had pools of sunlight that only highlighted the worn carpet and layers of dirt, but the hall into which they traveled only allowed in tiny slits and slivers of light through the worn roof, which did little more than illuminate the dust floating through the air. Xander kept his eyes focused on Gunn, worried about losing sight of him.
When Gunn froze, Xander moved to the side of the hall they were traveling through so that he wouldn't be in the way when the fight started. Slowly, he lowered himself to one knee so that he made a smaller target—despite their human appearance, vamps hunted like animals, going for the large or quickly moving targets first and sometimes even passing by Xander without even giving him a second glance. Xander had developed a technique where he waited for a vamp to rush by him and then staked him in the back. At least that's how it worked in his mind. In reality it included having the vamp rush by and right before Xander staked him in a leg or dropped his stake. He really couldn't blame Gunn for leaving him on permanent back-up duty.
Gunn's plans usually included covering him while he helped the wounded and shoved ammunition or replacement stakes into the fighters' hands. Xander could count his kills on one hand. Xander clutched his stake tighter as he saw a vamp come around the door that led to the main auditorium. Within seconds, he could hear the growl as the yellowed eyes caught the little available light and shone it back like cat's eyes. Gunn abandoned stealth and leapt toward the vampire. Xander's breath caught in fear as the vamp's hands rose to fight off the attack, but Gunn had moved more quickly than the unsuspecting vamp couldn't counter and the eyes disappeared into a cloud of ash that Xander could hardly see.
"Lights!" Gunn shouted, and Xander scrambled for his heavy duty, yellow and black flashlight. Now the dark hid just the monsters, and Xander rushed to flick on the light, and other hands had flicked on their flashlights before dropping them to the ground. No one could afford to hold the lights, so Xander just scooted around and turned the flashlights to better illuminate the door, so he didn't actually see the first wave attack. When he scooted back to the wall with his stake clutched, Xander quickly looked for each man. Was everyone alright?
Pedro and Dan were fighting in the middle of a cloud of ash that spoke of their success; Lou had his back up against the wall, but he held his own since he had his back to a slight indent where a water fountain once stood, so the vamps had to come at him one by one, which meant they turned to dust one to one when confronted with a giant crucifix hanging from Lou's neck, the holy water gun in his left hand and the stake in his right. However, when Xander looked for Fredrick, who should have been at his side, the small man with his crossbow was missing.
"Where's Fredrick?" Xander yelled as he alerted the team to the missing member. Nearly at the door, Gunn started edging back, keeping the wall of the hall to his back as he fought two vamps at once. One vamp disintegrated, but a hard backhand sent Gunn flying, and Xander rushed in, throwing a towel soaked in holy water with one hand while he held his stake high in the other. Gunn recovered almost immediately and lunged forward with the stake to dust the offending vamp.
"Where'd you last see him?" Gunn gasped as he stood up.
"I lost him when I moved the lights—almost immediately," Xander felt panic pushing reason right out of his mind as he felt a desire to start screaming Fredrick's name.
"He pass you?" Gunn asked.
"No"
"Then he got pulled into the main room," Gunn said as he started forward. Xander looked around for backup; vamps had pushed Dan and Pedro back toward the lobby where the two of them used the pools of sunlight from the broken boards to their advantage. Lou had three vamps still trying to get at him, but his system was working well, so Xander hated to call for him and force him to leave the safety of the alcove to take on all three vamps at once. In a heartbeat, Xander made up his mind and grabbed a flashlight before following Gunn down the hall and toward the main auditorium. He wanted to point out that if Gunn helped Lou then Lou could back up Gunn, but he doubted Gunn would take the time. The last member of the crew lost to a vampire had died seconds before rescue, and Xander worried that Gunn wasn't thinking straight now that another member of the crew had disappeared.
Xander crossed the threshold and a cold hand immediately grabbed the wrist holding the light. A sharp twist sent the light flying back out into the hallway, and Xander could only hear the scuffles as someone—either Gunn or Fredrick—fought for his life.
"What the…" a strange voice inquired as the hand quickly released Xander. Before Xander had time to wonder why, he had plunged his hand into the darkness and felt the wood sink into flesh before that flesh turned to dust. The sudden change in resistance sent Xander stumbling forward, away from the door and the flashlight. His outstretched hand jammed into an old theater seat, and Xander spun around as he felt the hairs on his neck rise. Even though he couldn't see, he felt the air move around him and he smelled cologne that did not belong in this room that reeked of decay and rot. Xander stuck the stake into the darkness again, but encountered nothing. Pulling back toward the seat, Xander tried to convince himself that he only imagined a demon stalking him from the shadows.
He strained to hear something useful, but he could only hear the sounds of struggle to his right. He didn't dare interfere or Gunn might stake him or he might stake Gunn or maybe he would just trip Gunn and then the vampire would eat him. Xander realized too late that his small curling fear had turned into out and out panic and mental babbling. It still beat out-loud babbling, Xander justified mentally as he tried to squint enough to see something.
His eyes obliged him by adjusting to the dark enough to vaguely make out two figures struggling four or five feet away. Xander still couldn't tell who was who. He turned, and quickly decided he had more immediate problems. A vampire stood three feet from him, slowly circling with his eyes invisible in the dark, so probably using his human face. Xander continued to move his head as if he was scanning the room even though he had spotted his opponent. While appearing to aimlessly turn from side to side, Xander turned his body and his stake-arm to the vamp, and then without warning, plunged his stake straight at the vampire's body.
For a fraction of a second, Xander felt pride and fight-lust and anger all surge up, but the sound of struggling precluded any drawn out victory dances. He sped back out to the hallway and grabbed his flashlight. He heard Lou ask something, but he didn't even take the time to actually decode the words, he simply dashed back into the auditorium and pointed the flashlight toward the fighting couple. Immediately Xander could tell the vampire from Gunn, and just as immediately, Gunn shied away from the light, blinded by the sudden beam.
"Fuck," Gunn swore and Xander felt a body move past him and Lou leaped in and plunged his stake deep into the last vampire.
"God, Gunn, I'm sorry," Xander started.
"It's alright. You couldn't tell who to help without some light," Gunn waved Xander off even as Xander tried to push closer. "Find Fredrick," Gunn ordered Lou who quickly took off down the aisle with his own retrieved flashlight.
"But I caught you right in the eyes. I'm really sorry," Xander continued.
"Stop it," Gunn ordered sharply. Xander froze for a moment, unsure about whether Gunn was actually mad or not. "Stop apologizing," Gunn amended after glancing at Xander's face. "You get yourself any vamps?" Gunn asked with more enthusiasm. Gunn looked at Xander strangely, rubbing his head in obvious distress, probably over Fredrick.
"Two," Xander revealed, grateful that he hadn't totally embarrassed himself. "One when I first came through the door and one right before the light." Xander knew in his head that Gunn's approval shouldn't change how he felt about himself. More importantly, more episodes of Oprah than he was willing to admit to having watched meant that he knew he shouldn't look to Gunn's approval to make him happy. But damn it, Gunn's approval changed Xander's opinion of himself, and Gunn's approval made him happy.
"God, you got two of them in this dark?" Gunn asked in a quiet, gravelly voice.
"The first one was more accident than on purpose," Xander admitted sheepishly. Oh well, there went that bit of approval. "But the second one, I kept calm and just waited for my eyes to adjust enough for me to see his outline," Xander continued, mentally cataloguing the number of things he had done right. He waited for the expected praise, but Gunn simply stood there in the glow of the flashlight looking at Xander strangely. Seconds passed and then more seconds. "What?" Xander finally asked fearfully.
"Nothing," Gunn quickly replied. "Just listening for Lou and Fredrick." Xander studied the deep lines around Gunn's mouth. Sure enough, Gunn's hand moved to rub his bald head nervously again—an ominous portent. Xander considered the man, but then it dawned on him that they hadn't heard either Lou or Fredrick, which couldn't mean anything good.
"Lou?" Gunn called out.
"Here. Nothing yet." After hearing Lou's reply from the back projection room, Gunn took the flashlight from Xander's hand and started walking toward the front. Xander knew there was a room that could double as a stage if the screen was lifted, so he started to follow Gunn. "No, just head back to the others and let them know what's up," Gunn ordered as he continued down the aisle toward the front. Xander stood there near the door, confused and tilting between hurt and anger, but he finally simply followed orders and went to find Dan and Pedro.
When Gunn and Lou followed a few minutes later, no one had to ask about Fredrick. Gunn pressed his lips so tightly that they were little more than thin lines, and Lou had an uncharacteristic shine in his eyes. Gunn blew by the group of men waiting in the dusty old lobby amid broken counters and dirty burgundy carpeting. He practically charged at the gap in the boards and pushed himself out into the alley. The sun still had a good hour left in the day, and normally the group would be celebrating, drinking, and maybe making a quick "supply run" during which Xander would excuse himself, but today Gunn led the group wordlessly back to home base.
Xander tried to get close enough to Lou to ask, but the man kept moving away. Of course he did, Xander told himself. He was supposed to keep an eye on everyone, shout a warning at the first sign of trouble. Instead, he was caught with his back turned and Fredrick had died. Xander's eyes dropped to the chipped and cracked sidewalk as he allowed himself to slowly gravitate to the back of the group which was now short one man.
He remembered Fredrick teaching him how to shoot a crossbow—the two of them had stood in an empty lot covered in half-collapsed cardboard boxes and weeds and broken needles. Over and over he shot and missed the red circles Fredrick had painted on the side of the large piece of cardboard he had propped up against the side of a convenience store. Fredrick had stood behind him, moving his foot into a better position, showing him how to hold the crossbow, helping him pull back the string. For hours they worked until his shoulders ached and his fingers threatened to never unbend again, but Fredrick never complained. The only comments Fredrick made all day were words of encouragement and an enthusiastic congratulations when his arrow finally nicked the corner of the target.
The memory of those words caused the corners of his lips begin to curl into a small smile, but then an image entered his mind: the image of Fredrick lying on the cold, dirty floor of the theatre with his neck torn open. Or even worse, maybe the vamps had turned him so that Gunn had to stake him before Fredrick even woke. Or maybe Gunn had arrived in time to see Fredrick die with his breath gurgling out of his bloody mouth. Xander shuddered. Not knowing made it even worse, and he couldn't believe that a few seconds of his carelessness had killed Fredrick. He shouldn't have gone. He knew that he just wasn't focused today with thoughts of a certain blond filling his thoughts. He should have begged off, then Fredrick would have survived.
He continued to put one foot in front of the other as he followed the survivors, but he desperately wanted to just go home and forget the evening. The only thing that kept him moving was the knowledge that he deserved everything the rest of them were going to say when they found out. The crew had lost men before, but no one had ever been snatched during a fight; Gunn's system made sure of that. Out of all the nests they had invaded and all the street fights, they always came home together because the back up always yelled the warning in time. He had done it right himself a dozen times; after all, he only had to yell for help before the vamp pulled Fredrick away. Gunn had been close enough to save him as had Lou. The system had always worked before; at least Gunn's system made sure of that when the person playing back-up wasn't a complete fuck-up.
Before he realized he had even reached the building, he found himself mindlessly entering the familiar basement. Xander spared the couch a quick glance, but he could only see Fredrick sitting back with a familiar half-bored look on his face—the expression Fredrick had worn as the Gunn had given the assignments for the evening just an hour or two earlier. In fact, the other team hadn't even arrived back.
He saw the confused faces on the few members of the group who hadn't gone hunting: Tomas had stayed home on the injured reserve list and Gilly and Gwen mostly just acted like den mothers—the sisters had sort of moved in on the group after losing their apartment. One of them knew Alonna. Now, the three of them looked from one face to another until the widening of the eyes and the quick gasps told Xander that they noticed the missing member. He waited for someone to point out the obvious, but the other members each found a quiet corner without commenting on Fredrick's absence or his own guilt.
He looked around for either Gunn or Lou, needing to know how Fredrick had died, but the two men were sitting together in the far corner, and the stiff backs and cold stares made it clear that they wanted no interruptions as they whispered to each other. He moved into the opposite corner and lowered himself to the cold concrete with his back against the cinderblock wall. He pulled his knees up under him, lowered his forehead to rest on the kneecaps, folded his arms around his head, and allowed the silent tears to fall in the relative privacy of his own limbs.