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bakedbakermom · 7 months

Text

Stained

Chapter 6: Subterranean // start at the beginning

tagging @today-in-fic @ao3feed-msr

subterranean adjective 1. beneath the ground 2. hidden; secret --- Before she can move forward, Scully must first look back.

She is weightless light dancing through the clouds; she is a floating mote on an endless ocean; she is cradled in a bower of roots buried deep within the warm, dark earth. She is in all of these places, and nowhere, at once.

She is not alone; she is with a woman, or she is with three, or she is with every woman who has ever been or will be. The woman is barely more than a girl, rose-blooming and doe-eyed in the fullness of her youth; she is a mother, soft-eyed and soft-armed font of life; she is a crone, withered and stooped, the milky-eyed abyss. She is Scully’s mother, her sister, her daughter. She is all of these things in turns and at once.

Scully knows this with all the surety of a dreamer, who can hold wonder and nonsense in either hand and see no difference.

They touch her face with one hand, three, a thousand—spotted with age, plump with the last dreams of baby fat, roughened palms that smell of milk and bread. They stroke her cheek as a mother would, thumbing away the bright and shining tears spilling from her eyes. In their touch she feels peace, forgiveness, the promise of a place lush and quiet where she can lay down and let go.

“We see you,” they say in a chorus of voices, in one voice and in the silence beneath the world. “We see you both.”

Scully’s memories flash before her like a shuffling deck of cards, like a thumb rifling through a book. Laughing in a cemetery as rain pelted down around them. Drums and fire and a swinging axe, and his fingers brushing her hair away from her face. Superstars of the Superbowl. A hospital, a revolver, his hand trembling as the barrel moves toward her like a dark eye. The hallway with a sting in her neck and the barest brush of his lush bottom lip against hers before darkness closed in.

These and so many more, pouring through her like a torrent, like a firestorm, her soul laid bare before the Morrígna who watch with a loving and sorrowful gaze on their ever-shifting face.

And then a brick wall slamming into her, a locked box where her memories should be. The Morrígna frown, their hands patting the air or the water or the surface of the darkness. “You are incomplete,” they say, confusion in every voice, infinite brows knitting above infinite eyes. “What comes next must be faced with no lies, no secrets. The flame must be pure if it is to burn the darkness away.”

Scully wants to tell them no, wants to beg them to leave the lid and the locks and the chains where they are. She doesn’t want to see what’s inside.

But already she is falling, hands clawing toward the surface as she is sucked down into the darkness, and then—

Silver starlight trickled through the trees. The scent of wet grass hung in the air like a memory or a promise and the night breeze tasted of wilting flowers, the sweet and cloying lushness of decay. A hush lay over the cemetery, heavy and deep as six feet of damp earth.

A hush broken only by the sounds of an old and familiar argument.

“What the hell are we even doing out here Mulder?” Scully asked, though it was mostly rhetorical. She knew he wouldn’t really listen; he never did. She just needed to hear something more than the bone-dry whisper of the wind in the trees and the deep silence of the dead. “It’s two in the morning, the coffee ran out an hour ago, and neither of us has slept in two days. Can we just give it up for the night, go back to the motel, and get some sleep?”

“Not a chance, Scully,” he said from his perch atop a particularly massive gravestone. It was a family plot, with the earliest death dating back over two hundred years to the town’s founding; the most recent was only a few days ago, a boy named Edward Butters who was three months shy of his twentieth birthday. His mother and father’s names had already been inscribed, birth dates carved in stone but blank spaces where their deaths would someday go; how sad, she thought, for a parent to bury their child. She thought of her own daughter’s grave, just a few hours’ drive to the south, and wondered if she might find time to lay flowers on it before they left California.

Mulder spit a sunflower seed shell into the freshly turned earth, where funeral footprints were still clearly visible; the flowers beside the stone had barely begun to wilt. “Anyway,” he continued, oblivious to her train of thought, “we’re not hunting. We’re waiting. I have it on good authority that this young man is going to rise from his grave.”

“Mulder, your ‘good authority’ is a nineteen year old girl who thinks she’s a witch, that you met in a chatroom called Myth or Myth-staken: the Truth about the Supernatural World. I autopsied that boy myself; believe me when I say if he wasn’t dead when I started, he absolutely was by the time I finished.”

“See that’s the thing about this town—the dead don’t always stay that way.”

Scully dug her knuckles into her orbital sockets, fighting back a yawn and a migraine. The young man in the grave at her feet was just the latest in a string of what Mulder claimed were vampire slayings and she insisted were the work of a serial killer: a young man would be found dead and drained of blood, and then on the night of his funeral, his grave would be robbed and the body of his lover left in his place, covered in gray ash, her own heart clasped in her lifeless hands. What became of the men, no one was yet sure, but here they were on a stakeout—no pun intended—hoping to find out.

The cycle had repeated four times already, with the death of Edward Butters marking the beginning of the fifth. The males had all died in the same way: a cluster of puncture wounds to the neck—something the local coroner had listed as “neck rupture”—through which nearly all of their blood had been removed. Moderate amounts of blood had been found inside the victims’ mouths and stomachs, suggesting it had been ingested close to time of death. The blood matched the saliva found around the puncture wounds, but had not been connected to any suspects yet.

The female victims, on the other hand, had met a variety of more brutal ends. Scully shuddered, recalling the crime scene photographs and autopsy reports that Mulder’s little cadre of internet friends had sent, projected three feet tall on the screen back in their basement office as he enthused all over her about the potentiality of a vampire serial killer. All suffered various degrees of brutalization; two had broken arms, one a fractured collarbone. Bite marks had been found on all of them, but never in the same places: thigh, arm, torso, throat, breasts—all had been bitten in one or more of the victims, but always different patterns, different teeth impressions, often but not exclusively accompanied by clusters of deep punctures.

The saliva around the bite marks was a match to each woman’s partner, and their hearts had all been carved from their chests with the same blade, possibly while they were still alive.

Both Mulder and Scully agreed there had to be two killers working together, but that was where the agreement ended; Scully thought they had to be taking samples from the dead boys to use in the murder of the girlfriends, whereas Mulder thought the second killer in each case was the dead boy in question.

“And the dust found on the female victims?” she had asked.

“That’s what happens when a vampire is staked through the heart.”

Scully could only roll her eyes so hard before worrying they would fall right out of her head—no matter what her knowledge of anatomy might insist. “So your theory ,” she’d said, clenching her fists to keep from making sarcastic air quotes, “is that there is a vampire out there somewhere changing these young men—”

“Siring,” he corrected. “New vampires are ‘sired’ or ‘turned.’”

“Of course they are. So there is a vampire siring these men, siccing them on their own girlfriends, and then staking them when the deed is done?”

“See, Scully,” he’d said, grabbing their plane tickets off the desk and his jacket from its hook on the door, “it’s like we share a mind.”

Yeah , she thought, looking around the dark and silent cemetery, and I have custody of it six days a week . She kicked mud off her shoes and began to pace around the grave site, trying to work some blood into her chilled limbs. She had wanted to stay in the car, but the cemetery was so expansive that they hadn’t been able to park anywhere with a view of this particular grave. She longed for a fresh thermos of coffee, the blanket she had started packing for long nights like these, the trashy novel she’d picked up in the airport and had only barely gotten to start.

She stepped a few paces away, studying the names of Edward Butters’ neighbors. The headstones stretched in all directions, row after row, until they disappeared into the mist. So many graves for such a small town . And this was just one of dozens of graveyards nearby. A chill ran down her spine. “Mulder, shouldn’t guarding the grave of a potential vampire who could rise any minute be the responsibility of your precious Slayer and her friends? They’re the ones who called us in on this, after all.”

No response.

“Mulder?” she called, heart lurching painfully in her chest. Her hand moved to the holster at her back and she crept back toward the grave, crouching to keep her head below the level of the gravestones as best she could. She drew her gun as she came around the front of the large stone, hoping that she would startle him, hoping he would tease her for getting spooked, hoping they could share a laugh and then leave together.

But Mulder was nowhere to be seen.

Scully clutched her weapon tightly with one hand, reaching down to touch the damp soil with the other. The grave itself was still intact, but skid marks marred the mounded earth as if from a brief struggle, and then two deep lines from something being dragged. She eyed the woods in the distance, the open ground between here and there, wondering how a man of Mulder’s size could have been subdued and moved so quickly and quietly. I was only a few yards away.

She had no warning; one moment she was crouched on a fresh grave and the next she was on her back, head ringing like a gong. Her vision swam as she tried to aim her gun, but it was knocked from her hands. Something—no, some one— pressed their weight into her chest and she gasped for breath. A hand closed around her throat, impossibly strong, and though she thrashed and tried to roll her attacker, they cut off her air with ruthless efficiency; her vision turned black at the edges, her struggles weakened, and then the darkness came flooding in.

—

Pain. That was the first thing Scully knew when she came back to herself, a throbbing ache throughout her body and a bright, clear agony behind her eyes. The overwhelming waves of it almost pushed her out of consciousness again, but she forced herself to breathe, slowly, in and out, checking in with herself piece by piece. Her fingers and toes wiggled without tingling; nothing seemed broken or dislocated; and though she tasted blood in her mouth, and the pounding in the back of her head was a sure sign she had a concussion, she was surprised to find herself otherwise intact.

Unfortunately, she was also bound quite tightly, ankles together and wrists behind her back in what felt like metal shackles.

Experimentally, she cracked open one eye. Even the dim light speared like a hot needle into her brain, and the world swam; her stomach revolted violently, and she might have collapsed if she wasn’t already on the ground.

“Oh look, it’s waking up,” cooed a soft, feminine voice. “Look, foxy, it stirs.”

Scully fought through the pain and nausea and forced her eyes open again, glancing quickly around the dark, damp cavern before landing on the sickening tableau at its center.

A creature—there was no other word to describe it—held Mulder on his knees like a spider wrapped around a fly, its legs twined around him from behind and pinning him against itself. It was dressed in tatters of what might once have been a lovely dress, maybe even a bridal gown, but now the beads were dull and the fabric gray with age, stained with what could only be blood—both the bright red splashes of fresh and the brown, flaking remnants of old. It had one clawed hand clenched in his hair, holding him in place. Its other hand held both of his wrists behind his back.

Mulder’s shirt was dark and clinging to his chest; it took Scully a moment to realize it was soaked with his blood. The creature had punctured his neck and was lapping tenderly at the little fountain of crimson. Not punctured , Scully realized as its face caught the dim light from the candles scattered around the space. Bitten . The thing turned its yellow eyes to her, beneath a monstrous brow of bumps and ridges, and smiled, revealing teeth sharp and long and smeared with blood. Scully felt a deep chill settle into her very bones.

She was staring at a vampire.

Her limbs began to tremble, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. The pounding in her head doubled and redoubled until bright colors exploded across her vision like fireworks. She felt herself slipping into hysteria.

Then Mulder moaned, a weak and tiny noise in the darkness. His eyes were open but rolling wildly inside his head. The sound hit her like a splash of cold water. It washed away the mindless terror, leaving her with a more familiar, focused kind of fear. Survive now, scream endlessly later , she told herself.

“Mulder!” she called, or tried to. Her voice was barely more than a painful rasp, and she wondered distantly if her larynx was bruised. “Mulder,” she tried again, clearer this time, “can you hear me?”

“Scully?” he finally answered, woozily. His swimming eyes focused on her for a brief moment before sliding away again. He sounded drunk, and his skin was so pale. How long had she been unconscious? How long had that thing been feeding on him?

“He’s a tasty little foxy,” the vampire mused, licking languidly from his collarbone to his ear, like a child with an enormous ice cream cone. It hummed in satisfaction as it swallowed. “I just couldn’t resist taking a little taste before the party. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of fun to be had.”

Its laugh was the rattle of bones in the pit, the rustle of a coiling snake, the rasp of stone against a blade. Scully’s heart thundered in her chest, the pressure of it setting off more bursts of color in her vision. The claw in Mulder’s hair tightened, wrenching his head to one side until his neck strained nearly to the breaking point, exposing the long, golden line of his throat; the artery there throbbed beneath the skin, skittering with fear like a trapped animal. His eyes found hers again, wide and wild and pleading.

The vampire reared back like a cobra, then buried its fangs in his throat.

Blood gushed around its mouth, spilling in thick rivulets down Mulder’s shirt. His spine arched and he thrashed in its grip until she thought he would snap his neck, but the vampire didn’t seem to notice. Strange, primitive sounds of fear came from his mouth, a whimpering counterpoint to the vampire’s slurping moans of pleasure. It held him until his struggles weakened and he sagged in its grasp, his head rolling on his red-stained neck like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

All Scully could do was watch, straining against her cuffs until she bruised and bled against the edges of them, crying out his name in helpless fury as the light drained from his eyes.

When Mulder was limp and glassy-eyed, the vampire lifted its own wrist to its mouth and bit down; thick, black blood trickled from the wound. It held the blood out to him like a gift, and he turned away with a weak sound of protest. “Don’t be rude, little foxy,” it chided, pulling his head backwards and jamming a cruel finger into his mouth to pry open his lips. “Lettie’s got a treat for you.”

Blood dripped into his protesting mouth, and the thing that called itself Lettie pinched his nose shut until he was forced to swallow.

The vampire released him and he sagged bonelessly to the floor. He gave one last, weak cry of, “Scully,” and then lay horribly, finally still.

She screamed and struggled toward him as best she could with her arms and legs bound, inch by agonizing inch. The rough stone scraped skin off her cheek, her knuckles, her knees; it tore at her clothing, and somewhere along the way she lost a shoe.

“Poor little pet,” the vampire crooned, watching her struggle with a mocking pout. Its voice rubbed against the inside of her skin like sandpaper. “I know it hurts.”

She was just a few feet away from his body when Lettie stepped into her path and leaned down close to her, the sickly sweet scent of blood and death clinging to it like a perfume. She cringed away, but it didn’t attack; it simply grabbed her chin in its vice grip until she had no choice but to meet its glowing, golden eyes. “It’s going to hurt so, so much more when he wakes up.”

It let go, almost dismissively, and left the cavern in a swish of tattered cloth.

Finally Scully wriggled her way across the cold, damp stone to where her partner lay. “Mulder?” she said in a trembling voice. “Mulder, please. Wake up.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she nudged him with her hip. He didn’t move. She managed to sit up, then rested her head on his chest, praying to hear a heartbeat.

She was met with only silence.

Not one but TWO major character deaths in one fic!? Yes, I am a deeply terrible person. You're welcome. Picture me kicking my feet, blushing and twirling my hair as I read your comments.

#stained #my writing #my fanfic #crossover #txt #the x files #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #fox mulder #dana scully #buffy summers #willow rosenberg #tara maclay #xander harris #rupert giles #spike btvs #anya jenkins

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