Title: Blood for Blood 3. South

Pairing: (Riley/Graham)

Author: otsoko

Summary: Riley and Graham arrive in Belize, after a fitful plane flight.

Rating: NC-17

Content: Riley/Graham SLASH!

Category: Blood for Blood #3

Spoilers: BtVS, Season 5

Distribution: Help yourself, just let me know.

Feedback: It really helps to know someone is reading it. Criticisms welcome.

Disclaimer: Joss owns them. just playing. promise

ACK: For the beta-ing and encouragement, Mistress Ace and Wirrrn. May the words of your mouth and your Kiwil sacrifices be acceptable in Lord Chak's sight, and may he water your fields and gardens with his blood.

Blood For Blood 3: South

by Otsoko
*******

Flying south from San Antonio, Riley fell asleep, and I managed to grab some shut-eye.

I started to dream about Riley, about me and Riley, and that dream got interrupted. Again. By the same damned nightmare.

Forrest.

The real Forrest, the way he used to be before Adam got a hold of him and turned him into whatever the fuck kind of monster they turned him into.

I woke up in a panic, breathing hard.

Damn!

I thought that nightmare was gonna be over with, now that Riley was back inside, back on the team, back where he belonged.

But it was the same damned dream. Forrest just standing there, telling me with a sad smile that he was all right now. That he barely remembered the bad stuff, that his memories were all of the good times, the three of us hanging out, shooting the shit, and being there for each other. Telling me I was a good guy, when I was ...

But that part about me having a soul of ice, and being a stray dog ... that hurt, man. That hurt.

Forrest was telling me that I had to take care of Riley. Like it was my duty or something. The Forrest in the dream, I mean. Which I guess it was. You didn't go through what we had gone through together without owing something... And you didn't feel what I felt for him without wanting to do something, do anything. Fuck! Like Riley cared, like he even fucking noticed... Slayer dropped a book on his head, and he was gone. She was the only person in the universe.

Forrest had me sussed out a long time ago. He had caught the looks I had been giving Riley, and then I caught his smirks. But I worked at being a friend to Riley. I saw how he looked at Buffy, saw how he felt about her. It would have been tons easier to hate her, try to break them apart. But Riley looked so damned happy with her, I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. Besides, trying to boff your squad leader wasn't usually a good career move.

I knew from the slightly sly grin on the dream-Forrest's face that he wanted to tell me 'I told ya so' about Buffy and Riley. He had said from the beginning that she was gonna fuck up his life. And OK, he had been right. Riley had hooked up with the slayer and within months he went from being the finest Marine I'd ever known, the toughest guy I'd ever met, into being a total basket case.

And OK, Buffy was amazing in action. You had to be impressed. I'd totally want her on my side in a fight in a dark alley. But what kind of whack-job was a girl who used to have a fucking vampire for a boyfriend?

OK, maybe I didn't have any room to be too judgmental about who somebody fell for...

================================

OK, as far as towns go, Belmopan wasn't much. Capital of a country, right? More like a bunch of buildings in the middle of tropical nowhere. Not that it mattered, we didn't see much of it. They marched us off the transport and into a truck and we hightailed it west out of town along a road. OK, what passed for a road, more like a dirt track, barely wide enough for the truck. Didn't get to see much because they kept the back of the truck closed, so as not to arouse suspicion among the locals of an American invasion or something.

We were joined by the local liaison guy, some guy from the Belize national police. Don't know why, but I sort of thought that Belize being in Central America the guy would be some Latin guy named 'Jose' or something. But this guy was seriously Black, and talked like he came straight from Jamaica or one of those islands. "Belize used to be British Honduras, mon. British colony," he said with this laugh when I asked him about it.

He gave us a briefing while we were being jolted around The truck must have made a good 20 miles an hour over the road.

One of the guys made some comment about taking the bad road, and the Belizan guy just laughed and said we were lucky we weren't here during rainy season, when it was really slow going.

Kinda had Belize figured out for one of those places that had two speeds: slow and stop.

The Belizan cop started the briefing as we jolted through along the rutted road. "What we got is some trouble in the West, near the border. We been getting these reports from the villages that missionaries been disappearin'. We send a constable in, and don't hear from him again. Only real story we get is from this Mayan village. Seems like there is a tribe of some kind of demon creature takin' over the area. Can't tell you much more than that, except the activity seems to be centered in this area." He pointed to a spot on the map where there was three points in a triangle. Didn't know that symbol from my map-reading course.

"What's that place?"

"Mayan ruins. Thousand years ago it was the center for the whole region, now it's a bunch of old temples overgrown with jungle."

"How about the local villagers?"

"They're not sayin' much. Some mumbo-jumbo about Xibalba, the underworld, and how it's turning over and covering the land, and a cenote that they're saying is the portal between the underworld and this world. Seems like somebody opened up the portal."

"Cenote?" the Colonel asked.

"Yeah. The whole area is covered with 'em. Giant sinkholes in the limestone, filled with water. In the old days, the Maya used to throw their sacrifices down 'em, appease the gods or demons or whatever."

I looked over at the map, and found Belmopan and the road we were on. It didn't come close to where we were supposed to be headed. It sort of dead-ended at a river.

"We move in by boat?" I asked.

"Only way in."

I nodded. I glanced over at Riley. He wasn't paying us any attention. He was cradling his weapon like it was his only friend, and staring straight ahead at the canvas covering of the truck.

We reached the river and pulled the two inflatable rafts off the roof, and launched them, just like in training. In less than a minute, they had gotten the outboards going and we were headed upstream. Into some kind of dark green wilderness, complete with the requisite stinging insects and snakes swimming across the water. One of the guys sort of reached out at a snake as we went by and got a sharp "Careful, mon!" from the Belizan cop. "He bite you, you dead within a minute."

The guy yanked his hand back in-board real fast, and then looked to see if the constable was pulling his chain. He wasn't.

It seemed like we were on that river forever. Trees overhead, the sounds of these chattering black monkeys everywhere, all kinds of birds and crap. Perfect place for that eco-tourism stuff, if it weren't for that pesky demon infestation.

Riley was sitting beside me, almost motionless. I could tell from the way he never let go of his weapon that he was itching to use it. I was hoping that he was just ready to get back into action, get back on the team.

Last thing I needed, we needed, was for somebody to be going all Rambo on us.

Finally after about three hours, the Belizan cop pointed to a clearing on the river bank and we pulled over and pulled the inflatables out of the water. The Colonel called for chow, and we pulled out the MREs and dug in. The Colonel discussed the sitch with the constable and then called me and Bauer over.

"Two squads. You two take point. Bauer and I'll take the right flank, Miller'll take the left. The Mayan ruins are about half a click in. We move out in ten. Keep your eyes open."

"Yes, sir," Bauer and me both said.

I got my squad together. "Come on, Finn." He looked at me for a second, like he couldn't quite grasp that he wasn't leading this time. He swallowed once and nodded, grabbed his weapon and stood up.

I looked at him, "This gonna be a problem, Ri?"

He shook his head.

"OK, guys. This is a simple clean and sweep. We move in on this Mayan ruin place. We track the HSTs, we find the HSTs, we kill the HSTs. There may be villagers or the missionaries around. Stay alert. I want minimum collateral damage. Any questions?"

There were no questions.

OK, maybe this old Mayan city was only half a click in, but the jungle was so thick that ten meters in, you couldn't even tell that there was a river back there. I headed down the jungle path, eyes darting left and right, ears listening for anything out of the ordinary, the sound of someone's -- or something's -- footfall. Full alert mode.

END PART 3