Land of the Lost

by
Witling

Part One

Going through the portal felt like a quick dousing with cold water, except instead of getting wet they were suddenly reeling on a wide red plain. A desert. There was a weird look to the light, everything was sort of purple-red. The air smelled flat and strange. Harris was bent over, gasping. It took Spike a second to realize they were the only ones there.

"What the fuck—" He turned in a quick circle, hoping stupidly to see a door shimmering behind them, a neon sign reading This way back. Nothing. Just the weird sunlight and a hundred miles of red dust. The sunlight, he realized, wasn't burning him to ash. He was standing in broad daylight, and he was fine.

"I think," he said, and turned back to Harris. Who was kneeling down puking, his fingers clawing the dust. After a moment's hesitation, Spike crouched down. He felt fine, he felt better than fine. Confused, annoyed, but warm for the first time in more than a hundred years. "You feeling all right?"

Harris wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, and Spike noticed the beds of his nails were blue. The air—it smelled strange, maybe it really was strange. Harris's back was heaving like a bellows, and a line of sweat was darkening the center of his thin summer jacket.

"Hard to breathe?" Spike asked, and Harris nodded. Slowly, he eased back onto his heels, grimacing at the wet pool he'd yakked up. Already it was sinking into the cracked, dry earth.

Spike shielded his eyes with his hand and looked around. There was a blue ridge in the distance, probably hills or mountains. "Looks like Red balled things up, doesn't it?"

Harris was staring around, his face white except for two red spots of color in his cheeks. His lips were bluish too, and there was sand on his mouth where he'd wiped it. There was a little starburst of blood in the white of his good eye. He took a long, careful breath, and licked his lips.

"Where are we?"

"Not a fucking clue." Spike jumped to his feet and squinted at the blue ridge. "But I say we head for those hills."

Harris looked that way and shook his head. It took him a minute to gasp, "What—hills?"

"Trust me, they're there. You just can't see them yet."

"I can't—" Harris's breathing got the better of him, and he paused, got a handle on it, then tried again. "We should stay here."

"Why?"

"The portal—"

"You see a portal?" Spike waved a hand behind them, where the portal should have stood. "It's gone, mate. And if I know portals, there's no point hanging around waiting for it here."

Harris stared at him, breathing hard, not bothering to ask why.

"Because," Spike said, extending a hand down. "Portals don't work that way. They're going to figure out where we are, and they're going to open another portal back, but it's not going to be here."

"So…where…?"

"Again, not a fucking clue. But there's no point staying here getting sand down our backs while we wait." Spike twiddled his fingers. "Come on, get up."

Slowly, Harris put his hand in Spike's. His skin felt hot and damp. The touch of their hands seemed to spark the obvious realization in him, and he stared at Spike with new surprise.

"Like watching a penny drop." Spike felt inexplicably cheerful, all things considered. "You may be slow, but you're irritating."

"You're not—" Just that much made him buckle, his weight suddenly all on Spike's hand. Spike caught it and held him until he could lock his knees again.

"It's a good thing I'm not on fire right now, or you'd be buzzard food." Spike hauled Harris's arm around his neck and started walking. "In fact, you'd better be bloody nice to me for the next little while. I can always tell them you didn't land here with me."

He was only joking—he had the soul now, after all—but Harris's arm tightened and his breath got even shallower and faster, and soul or no soul, Spike couldn't help feeling a little bit pleased with himself. He hadn't lost his touch completely, at least.

The blue ridge turned into a line of grey cliffs, about a hundred feet high and pocked with caves. By the time they were close enough to see that much, the light was almost gone. That wasn’t a problem—Spike could still see in the dark—but he missed the warmth. It was getting very bloody cold, he realized, stumping along with Harris dangling off his shoulder.

"You all right?" he asked, tugging slightly at Harris's wrist as if he could be talking to anyone else. "Freezing to death or anything?"

Harris coughed, tried to say something, and couldn't get past a few nasty-sounding wheezes. He sounded like a man breathing through a straw. High-pitched and whistling.

"Almost there," Spike said, and picked up the pace.

They weren't almost there, though. Deserts were like that—there was too much empty space, so everything looked close when it was really miles away. Harris's breathing got worse and he started to shiver. Just a bit at first, then more violently. Finally Spike had to admit that they weren't going to get to the caves tonight, that they had to figure out something else.

"Okay," he said, stopping and easing Harris down into the dust. "You sit there a mo. I'll be right back."

Harris didn't say anything, which was troubling. Spike left him slumped in a pile and trotted out on a quick recce for firewood. Bushes, tumbleweeds, anything that would burn. There wasn't much. He mostly found little tussocks of dead grass and bare twigs, nothing worth collecting. Then he stumbled over a dead tree half-buried in a drift of dust: jackpot. He hauled it out and broke off its branches, lit it up with his Zippo, and went to get Harris.

Harris was unconscious, or asleep. Spike decided to go with the latter.

The flames were strange, like everything else. They were redder than the flames he was used to, and they didn't throw as much heat. Still, when he spilled Harris carefully off his shoulders onto the ground, the fire seemed to do him good. He opened his eyes and lay blinking at it, opening and closing his mouth.

"You look like a fish," Spike told him.

Harris gave him a baffled, dopey look.

"Of all the people to get chucked through the revolving door with." Spike sat down beside Harris's head and lit a cigarette. "Remind me to have a private word with Red when we get back."

Harris's eyelids sank, and his breathing steadied to a shallow, constant gasping. Spike smoked moodily, watching the red flames eat the wood. When his cigarette was gone he sighed, zipped Xander's jacket all the way up to his chin, then settled down into the dust beside him and stared up at the unfamiliar stars.

He woke to a red dawn and a momentary panic before he remembered the new state of things. Someone was breathing fast, too fast and shallow. Harris. Harris couldn't breathe here, oh yeah, right.

Spike sat up slowly, wiping grit from his eyes. Harris was already sitting up, trying to stand by the look of it. He lost his balance and caught himself with his palm against the ground, wavered, and seemed ready to go down completely.

Spike reached out and caught his leg, just above the knee. He could feel the muscle working hard, rigid and trembling.

"Going somewhere?" he asked, looking around vaguely for his cigarettes.

Then something bludgeoned him in the middle of his back, knocking him into the dirt. He rolled with it, confused and pissed and already back on his feet, his face peeling open, the teeth out. Something was on top of Harris, something huge and dusty and furry, riding him into the ground with big claws in his shoulders. It looked like a cat. Maybe it was. It had a tail, so Spike grabbed the tail and yanked, and there was a complicated snapping sound and the cat screamed and whipped around and came at him instead.

It was some kind of mountain lion maybe, some prehistoric version ten feet long without the tail, with dusty flanks and a lean belly and no fear at all. It came at him like he was prey, like he was mountain lion food. Fast and vicious, swiping with its long sharp claws. He dodged the cut and roared back, feeling ten times the vamp he'd ever felt before, something in the air or the light giving him full animal license. It was as if something had snapped, or fallen into place. It felt absolutely right, absolutely good. The cat danced forward with its front paw out, playing him like a mouse, and he stepped into the claws, caught them, and broke its arm. Leg. Whatever.

It screamed again and started a windmilling scramble with its back legs, ears flat against its skull, fangs exposed. He hung on and it tried to bite him, so he caught its head and bore it down, tore into its neck with his teeth, and drank hot cat blood direct from the tap. It tasted meaty and rich, intoxicating. He could feel its hind legs struggling, trying to gain purchase and disembowel him even as he killed it. He bled it until the struggles stopped, until it was just a warm lax cat asleep in the sun.

The blood haze didn't fade, though. When he could tell the cat was dead he pushed it away and staggered back, wiping his mouth and feeling the hard sharp press of his fangs against his arm. He felt drunk, half-crazy, totally brilliant. Violence sang tribute songs to itself in his brain, in his spine. He turned and saw Harris lying belly-up in the dust, eyes wide, struggling to breathe.

"You see that?" He reached down, grabbed the cat's head, and hauled it up to eye level. Bloody froth dropped from its mouth. Its eyes were dull and orange. The same color as his own, almost. "You owe me one, Harris."

Harris nodded, crawling backward in the dust. He was afraid, Spike realized. With the realization came a rush of power and almost sexual pleasure, a feeling he hadn't had in years. Foggily, he wondered if he should be doing this. If he should be feeling any of this, or if it was something he should try to stop. He didn’t want to stop it. He wanted Harris to see what the real Spike was like, the real William the Bloody. Not the domesticated version, the California version, the one with the soul and the human friendships. He was a master fucking vampire, and for the first time in ages, he actually felt like it.

"You owe me one," he said again, dropping the cat and walking over to stand with one leg on either side of Harris's chest. With the toe of one boot, he nudged Harris's ribs. "You owe me two, actually. You'd be dead twice now, if it weren't for me."

Harris was nodding, gasping, his eyes fixed on Spike's face. Something fell onto his forehead—a drop of blood. Spike wiped his mouth, examined the blood on it, then flicked it onto Harris. He was starting to feel strange, sort of woolly and confused. "I'm going…for a walk."

The sun was giving him a headache. He felt ill. He needed to move, to get away from the sound of Harris's gasps.

He wandered out into the desert, leaving behind the dead cat with the flies already hovering over it, and Harris. Flecked with blood and breathing hard.

By the time he wandered back, he felt almost normal again. His body was loose and tired, as if he'd been fighting for hours. He wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep.

Harris wasn't with the cat, but he'd left a weaving, staggering set of tracks leading toward the cliffs. The cat, Spike noticed, was practically decapitated. He didn't remember biting that deep, or that hard. But he remembered the taste of the blood, and the feeling of something in him finally seated just right, finally doing its job. It was bizarre, like remembering a dream in which everything is perfect in the world. He stood for a couple of minutes looking down at the cat, then started in the direction of Harris's tracks.

It took half an hour to catch up with him. He was sitting on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chest and his forehead on his knees, not moving. When Spike crouched down beside him and touched his shoulder, he started and almost toppled over.

"You all right?" Spike checked Harris's neck, remembering the way the cat had pinned him. No marks as far as he could see, thank God. "Any bites?"

Harris was staring at him, his eyes wide and frightened, and Spike frowned. "What?" He remembered he had dried blood on his face, all down his throat. "Sorry—can't really wash up around here."

That didn't seem to make Harris feel any better, and Spike had a faint intuition that he'd done something wrong. Well, he'd killed the thing that was trying to kill Harris. Trying to kill them both. That had to be worth something, didn't it?

"Stop looking at me like that," he said irritably, and held out his hand. "Come on, you'll never make it at that pace."

Harris swallowed and closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around as if he were looking for something, anything, any other option than this. Again, Spike felt a faint twinge. Against his own best judgment, he said, "I'm not going to hurt you, all right?"

Harris gave him an uncertain look. There were blue circles under his eyes, and the cords in his neck were standing out. He was exhausted, Spike realized. Probably couldn't sleep properly, if he couldn't breathe. What a fucking mess.

"Come on," he said again. "Let's just get there and find somewhere to kip. They'll get us back soon." He stopped just short of saying, Promise.

Harris dipped his chin, took a long shivering breath, and raised his arm. Spike pulled him to his feet. They started walking for the cliffs.

Part Two

It was late afternoon by the time they got there, and the sun had been broiling the whole way. Spike's skin felt itchy and tight, and he wondered if he could still get sunburn. Harris was exhausted, a dead weight dangling off Spike's shoulder. His breathing sounded a bit better, but his lips were parched white and the sun had cooked his brain. He kept trying to say things, little fragments of words like torn-up slips of paper dropping all over the desert along the way.

"Uh-huh," Spike said, to be agreeable. "Is that so. You don't say."

The shadow of the cliffs was small but it was enough, and there was water in a little rivulet coming down the rock into a pool. All kinds of tracks in the dust, but no time to think about that right now. Spike put Harris down in the shade and went to soak his shirt in the water. First he washed his face and neck off—the blood was caked and itching badly. Then he came back and dripped the shirt over Harris's face, into his open mouth. It cooled him off and after a few minutes he opened his eyes and stared up in confusion.

"Still alive," Spike said, smiling. "Long odds, but who's keeping track?"

Harris licked his lips, reached for the shirt, and when Spike gave it to him, sucked on it. It was strangely affecting to see. His throat worked and his fingers tightened desperately into the material. Spike watched with candid interest, unsure why he even wanted to.

Finally, Harris rubbed the cool damp cloth over his eyes and let out a soft moan. He took a breath, looked around, and said, "Africa?"

"Portal."

Harris's face fell, and Spike felt a stab of pity. He took the shirt and carried it back to the pool to soak it again. "You breathing any better?"

Harris took an experimental breath, then another. "Yeah," he said, sitting halfway up and propping himself on his elbows. "I…think so."

"Sounds like it." Spike pulled the shirt out of the water and wrung it halfway dry. "Keep that on you for a bit. You got baked today, walking here."

Harris took the shirt and pressed it to his face without argument. Spike stood studying the wide red plain, the wavering purple heat, the lack of any movement. At least, any movement he could see.

"When do we get another portal?" Harris asked, from beneath Spike's wet T-shirt.

Spike put his thumbs into the small of his back and popped the vertebrae with a sigh. "Not a fucking clue."

Spike went foraging for firewood again, leaving Harris propped against the base of the cliff, staring pensively out into the desert. There wasn't much wood around, not until he found a bigger rivulet of water coming down from the rocks, making a little stream surrounded by grass and bushes. It must have been bigger, once—there were dead bushes and little dead trees all around. He snapped a couple of them off at the base and dragged them into a pile. It was dusk again by the time he started back to get Harris.

He felt good, he realized. The air was cool and purple, more beautiful than the tropical sunsets people paid thousands for back in the real world. The rock beside him was still warm from the sun, and he dragged the fingers of his left hand along it as he walked, just for the feel. He'd eaten well, and he felt sleepy and content. If he had to get tossed through a portal, he could have done a lot worse. In fact, he was starting to feel a bit as though this was a better deal than the world he'd come from. All it needed was whiskey and cigarettes, and maybe a couple of racetracks, and it'd be perfect.

Approaching the pool, it took him a couple of seconds to realize that Harris wasn't alone there anymore. It was actually baffling at first—who the hell was that, standing shaking a stick at Harris's head? Spike's brain felt slow and syrupy. Some kind of monkey. Or a man in a monkey suit, maybe.

The monkey brought the stick down hard on Harris's shoulder. Harris's head cracked the rock behind him, and he rolled sideways and tried to scramble to his feet. The monkey hit his legs, yelling. Did monkeys yell?

It didn't matter, because Spike was already running, covering the distance between them in a couple of seconds, getting there just as the stick came up again, and roaring. Yelling. He was yelling, like the monkey, but it felt like a roar, like his guts and tonsils were vibrating with the sound, like the air was shaking in front of him. He was in game face, but it felt different. More advanced, more complete. Like it wasn't just his fangs dropping, the ridges welling up, some piddling half-human threat display watered down by centuries of lurking in the shadows. It felt like everything about him took part in it, head to toe, like his shoulders rose six inches and his lungs grew. Like he gained actual mass. A mass of rage and teeth. He felt like something very old and strong was clambering out of him, something he'd never known was there at all.

The monkey—it was a man, some kind of man, with a distorted monkeyish face—turned and screamed when it saw him. It was terrified, he could smell the fear rolling off it. In a perfect ecstasy of fury, he launched himself into it. He could feel it hitting him with its club, faint distant taps on his shoulders and back. He ignored that, digging deep into its skin with his fingers, plowing wet furrows. The smell of blood sprang into the air. There were high-pitched mewling sounds, choking sounds. It kicked and struggled, and he held it down, reared back to look into its stupid fucking face, its rolling eyes. It had been hitting Harris with that stick of its. He ought to use that stick to gut it.

Instead he tore its throat out, his fangs shearing through fur and skin and tendons, meeting with a gritty click. The blood jumped out and smacked him in the face, and he drank it in. It was ranker than the cat blood, but just as rich with adrenaline. With fear. Everything here feared him. He was the strongest thing in the wilderness, the king of the castle. The knowledge surged through him and he cradled the body almost lovingly as he drank the heart to silence.

Then he was rolling off it, drunk and disoriented, every nerve sizzling like a match end on bare flesh. He landed in the water, which shocked him to his feet. Harris was crouched against the rock, staring up at him with wide eyes.

"You—" He staggered through the water and dropped to his knees beside Harris, reaching out to pull the collar of his shirt aside. The club was on the ground beside the corpse; it was heavy wood, with a knot in the end. There was a purple welt on Harris's shoulder, another one on the side of his neck. "You okay?"

Harris said nothing. He was breathing badly again, hard and fast, his hands locked into the rock behind him. Staring at the corpse. Shock. Woozily, Spike pushed Harris's head to the other side, and saw more welts. There was blood on his skin—no, that was from Spike's own hands. He realized he was covered in blood. Then he realized he was still in game face.

It took a few seconds of effort to make the fangs retreat, which gave him a dim, faint shadow of a thought. Didn't they usually disappear the moment he wanted them to? It didn't matter. Harris was hurt. They had to get to the little oasis, to the pile of wood that Spike could make into a fire. He had to make sure Harris was all right, that was all that mattered.

"Here." He stood up and pulled Harris to his feet, then had a strange, black moment where he couldn't feel his feet. When he came to, Harris was struggling to hold them both up, his hands grappling with Spike's shoulders.

"Spike--?" He sounded scared, half suffocated.

"I'm okay." He was. He could see again, he knew where he was. It was a blip, that was all. How long had it been since he'd felt that, the dizzy sensation of standing up too fast? Not since he'd died. "Come on, let's go."

"Where are we going?" Harris allowed himself to be half-carried, half-dragged. It wasn't far. They just had to get there, and then Harris could sleep and Spike could stay awake and watch. It wasn't a perfect world if it kept attacking Harris. It wasn't a perfect world if Harris got hurt. If Harris got hurt, Spike was going to kill everything in sight, and burn the desert to glass.

At the oasis, Spike lowered Harris to the ground by the stream and watched him find the water with his hands. He watched Harris drink and wash his face, then remembered the fire. It was cold, he had to make a fire. His own hands were shaking, and the Zippo didn't strike until the third try. Then it caught, and the flames leapt up red and purple, and he leaned back onto his heels and let his eyelids fall halfway. His body was thrumming, loose and warm.

"Spike?"

He fell back, startled, onto his ass in the sand. Harris was standing beside him, the fire lighting the side of his face. There was a bruise along his cheek, another one starting just under the collar of his shirt. He looked gaunt and exhausted and worried.

"What?" Spike gathered himself, blinking. Had he been asleep? How long had Harris been standing there? "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. You just—" Harris glanced at Spike's chest, then back to his face. "Spike, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He got up and looked around, brushing sand off his ass. "Where's my shirt?"

Harris pulled it out of his jacket pocket, a damp, rumpled mess. Spike took it and shrugged it on. It smelled like Harris. That gave him a momentary warmth, and he remembered the club coming down, Harris scrambling to get away. He was pissed again. Exhausted, but pissed.

Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he walked to the stream and washed the dried blood off as much of himself as he could reach. Behind him, Harris sat quietly beside the fire. Again, Spike saw the club coming down. Something occurred to him.

"That fucker hit you in the face?"

He looked back over his shoulder, and saw Harris touch his cheekbone briefly. "Yeah."

"Which side?"

Momentary puzzlement, then understanding. "The bad one. It's okay. I can see okay."

That was pure luck. If it had hit him in the good eye, he'd have been blinded. A new sense of Harris's vulnerability swamped him, and he crouched in the darkness beside the stream, staring at nothing. Christ, Harris hadn't eaten in two days. He needed food. What the hell was he going to eat here? Roast monkey?

Spike groaned and wiped his face, then stood up when he realized Harris was walking toward him.

"Spike." His breathing sounded better again, thank God. "Come get warm, okay?"

Spike sniffed and wiped water off his nose. "Yeah. Okay." He was just tired, that was all. He wasn't thinking straight. He just needed a minute to sit still and recuperate, get his wind back. There was going to be another portal soon, and then they'd be back home, and everything would be fine.

Harris led him back to the fire, then sat down next to him and gave him a cracked half-smile. "I'm officially voting this Suckiest Alternate Universe Ever." His good eye was exhausted and bloodshot.

"Not so bad." Spike felt for his cigarettes, pulled them out, and found one miraculously unbroken. "Could have been one of those worlds without shrimp."

"The horror."

They sat a couple of minutes in silence, watching the fire burn. Spike offered Harris the cigarette, and for the first time ever, he took it. It made him cough until his eyes watered. Spike took it back without comment.

When he'd finally got his breath back, Harris gasped, "Was that…a person?"

"Looked like a monkey to me."

"It was yelling at me. I think it was mad."

"Yeah?" Spike took a long, hard drag. "Well now it's dead."

Harris was looking at him strangely, he realized. He frowned. "It was fucking hitting you, or didn't you notice?"

"Yeah." Harris shifted uncomfortably, and Spike remembered the blows to his legs. "I know. But Spike…"

There was silence for a minute. Spike flicked the cigarette end into the fire.

"Do you think, maybe, that there's something kind of…different about you?" Harris's voice was tentative, careful, as if he thought Spike might turn and backhand him without warning.

"Different how?"

"Well, you're kind of..." Harris swallowed. "You seem a little more intense, is all."

Spike frowned at his feet. "Things keep trying to bite your head off, Harris. You want me to be fine with that?"

"No. And listen, I haven't said thank you yet for half of what I have to say thank you for. I already owe you my firstborn child, I know that. I'd be totally and completely dead right now if you hadn't done what you did."

Spike pursed his lips, staring at the dust on his boots. He had a strange, warm feeling in his belly and thighs. What Harris was saying felt good. It felt right. He wanted…he didn't know what he wanted. Something that didn't make any sense.

"But—" Harris said, and stopped again. He seemed not to know what to say next.

"But what?"

"You're kind of freaking me out," Harris said quietly.

"You're an idiot," Spike said, and got up to go back and fetch the monkey-thing's club. If he was going to go off looking for some kind of food, he wanted Harris to be able to defend himself.