last01standing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
last01standing) wrote2006-04-28 08:53 pm
last01standing) wrote2006-04-28 08:53 pm
Entry tags:
BtVS/AtS Fanfic--The Fallen (9/15)
Title- The Fallen
Rating- pg-13 (violence)
(other story info on chapter one)
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
Nine-Bad things and Good People
“Lindsey.” Eve smiled as he walked through the door of their apartment. “How did things go?”
Lindsey dropped his coat on the chair and walked towards Eve taking her by the hands. “Perfect. Spike doesn’t have a clue.”
Eve studied his face. “You sure?”
Lindsey laughed. “The senor partners won’t know what hit ‘em.”
Eve kissed him on the cheek. “And the world will crumble.” She tried to pull him towards the bed but Lindsey wouldn’t move.
He pulled away, eyes narrowing slightly. “Who said anything about the world.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Dawn! DAWN!” Buffy burst into the Hyperion, noticing the broken glass on the floor only when she stepped on it. She bent down to see that the whole floor was covered with it. The window was broken. Someone had broken in. “Dawn!”
Angel entered the room only seconds after, followed closely by Oz. “Buffy!”
Grabbing the slayer by her elbows, Angel pulled her to her feet. “Buffy get it together.”
She gazed up at him with glassy eyes. “They took her.”
Oz looked at them and nodded slightly. “I’ll go get Giles.”
Doyle entered the hotel, breathing heavily. “It’s not fair, all you guys with super powers going off and leaving us poor mortals in the dust.”
Cordelia snorted from beside him. “Us mortals. Have you forgotten about the half…”
Doyle clapped a hand over her mouth. “Let’s not tell the whole world.”
Gunn looked at the place in surprise. “What happened here?”
Willow already knew. “Oh God. Dawn.” She sunk into Tara’s embrace.
“What about me?” Dawn’s voice chirped from the staircase.
“Dawn!” Buffy disentangled herself from Angel without a second glance. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
“What did I do?” Dawn asked, confused, “Me and Andrew have been listening to music for like two hours. Completely normal and non-violent. It didn’t even have one of those advisory stickers on the CD!”
Behind her, Andrew nodded his agreement.
Giles raised an eyebrow. “May I ask what caused this sudden concern for Dawn’s well-being.”
Willow looked up. “Glory.”
“Oh dear lord. Is everyone all right?”
“Little dinged up,” muttered Gunn, answering for everyone. “But alive.” He slung his arm over his sister’s shoulder in an awkward sort of one armed hug.
Wesley had noticed the broken glass on the floor and the broken window. “What happened here?”
“Break in,” Cordelia supplied in a voice that implied the ‘duh’.
“Did they take anything?” Wesley asked curiously.
Angel glanced around the lobby. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here in ages.”
“W-w-where,” Tara stuttered, still slightly nervous about being around so many new faces, “are Xander a-a-and Anya?”
Andrew and Dawn immediately blushed. And after a second, Tara did too. “Oh.”
Giles started to polish his glasses, well aware of the fact that they were clean already. “Still. We’d best.” He coughed. “Make sure. I believe they’re in room 217.”
There was a long embarrassed pause before Oz shrugged wordlessly and went back up the stairs. He checked the numbers on the doors as he walked past them, pausing in front of 217. He knocked once. A second later a groggy voice called, “What?”
“It’s Oz. You alive?”
“What?”
Oz figured that was good enough and went back to the group. “They’re busy.”
“I don’t get it,” Cordelia said aloud. “I mean she told Buffy it wasn’t about her. Which means it’s about someone else.”
“The Fallen,” Giles said softly.
“The who now?” Gunn asked.
Giles hadn’t been aware he’d spoken aloud and he had to scramble to cover. “It’s a part of a prophesy I’ve been translating. I believe it is of particular relevance to the current situation.”
“Oh,” said Doyle slowly, “you mean with the dead people walking around and all?”
“What we miss?”a new voice came from the top of the stairs where a very disheveled Xander and Anya stood.
“Glory’s back,” Willow explained quickly, “and something happened here.”
“Ay caramba.” Xander whistled.
“But no one’s hurt, right?” Dawn asked, a note of panic creeping into her voice, “I mean we’re all alive and we’re all here. So maybe we can just you know figure out what to do about...”
Oz was studying the room taking inventory of its occupants. Something about the situation wasn’t quite right, it quite literally smelled weird. He reluctantly tried to concentrate on the faint smell in the room. His head was spinning slightly with exhaustion and he tried to disentangle Angel’s vampyric smell from Doyle’s not quite human one and the dozens of human smells. They wolf in him growled, but he expertly kept it down.
Tara smelled like magic.
And under it all, he finally identified the distinct metallic scent of blood.
He checked the room once more wondering how he could have missed it before. “Where’s Jesse?”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse was in fact having the worst night of his existence. And he’d had some pretty bad ones. Including the time he woke up to find his clothes floating in a lake and damn near the entire town of Sunnydale gawking at him.
He hadn’t even opened his eyes and he already had the sinking suspicion that this was much worse. He had the awkward sensation of someone who’d fallen asleep standing upright. Groaning slightly, he tried to move his arms, but there was something tying him down. He strained harder, ignoring the pain as the sharp metal chains chaffed his wrists… oh God he was in chains. The realization almost made him pass out again.
He heard voices from another room and stopped struggling. There was no way he was going to escape and something told him that attracting attention was going to get him in trouble.
Someone touched his face and he shivered involuntarily.
“I know you’re awake Jesse,” the voice whispered. “I just want to talk with you.”
Jesse squeezed his eyes shut, hoping they would just go away.
There was a heavy sigh. “Come on Jesse. I don’t like doing this the hard way.” Suddenly a hand clapped over his mouth and nose. The shock of it cause his eyes to snap open.
“There we go.”
As the world came into focus, Jesse saw who was standing in front of him. She didn’t look that much older than him. She was brown haired and blue eyed and just a little mousy looking. He couldn’t quite decide what to make of her.
“Jesse McNally,” She shook her head. “of all the people who’d died in the past eight years, you’re the one who gets a second chance. We’ve been trying to figure that out ever since you came back. You see, I could guess who was coming back. Most of them were no-brainers, but you, you took me by surprise.” She pulled a chair up and sat down in front of him. “And I sit up at night wondering, why you? What makes sixteen year old Jesse McNally more valuable than a slayer, or at least someone who has the slightest idea of what’s going on in this world. Wolfram and Hart doesn’t even have a file on you.” She leaned in closer. “I want to know everything about you. About why you’re back, because I think you’re more important than you let on?” She grinned and leaned back. “You’re going to tell me everything you know. And if you don’t cooperate...” she paused, “I’ll let the Master get it out of you.”
Jesse struggled to keep his eyes focused, but his head throbbed in protest. “I don’t know…” He swallowed to sooth his dry scratchy throat. “I don’t know anything.”
Eve tilted her head to the side. “The hard way it is.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oz fell asleep. He’d feel guilty as hell for it later, but his body couldn’t take it anymore. After he’d told them about the blood, the whole team had immediately began searching the hotel for Jesse, but Oz knew they were wasting time. He’d gone along with them anyway. There was always a chance that he was wrong.
He was only searching his second room, but his body just couldn’t take it anymore. He practically passed out on the bed.
They say that people reached a point when they were too exhausted to dream. They were wrong.
Willow lay beside him, humming tunelessly and Oz rolled over to look at her. She continued humming, not even noticing he was there. “Willow,” he whispered softly.
Willow rolled over and blinked sleepily, “Tara is that you?”
Oz blinked in mild shock, turned away and got out of bed slowly.
Someone screamed in the distance and he thought he recognized it as Jesse’s scream even though he’d never heard it before. Angel stepped out of the darkness. “You have to stop it. Things are going bad. Can’t you see it? You should see it.”
Over Angel’s shoulder, he saw Willow kissing Tara. He tried to concentration what Angel was saying, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of them.
Finally, Angel grabbed him by the shoulders. “You can’t trust us, Oz. You can’t...”
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Willow’s eyes bulge, Tara held her firmly by the neck. Oz pushed past Angel and launched himself at Tara, feeling the familiar changes sweep over him. Her snarled, claws clashing and knock her to the ground, instinctively going for the throat.
And suddenly it was Vercua he was killing, her blood on his hand, on his face. Shocked, he reverted back to human form and slumped backwards, a million excuses running through his head ‘it was the wolf, she was going to kill Willow.’
Angel was there again, eyes golden, face distorted, fangs glittering in the dim light. “You don’t know true evil.”
Just for a second he saw Doyle’s dead body in front of him, throat marred by the tell-tale mark of a vampire.
Laughing, Tara appeared in front of him. “Willow’s not the one you have to worry about.” She held up a glass jar filled with a sort of glittering mist, her face glowed eerily in the light. “You hero types really have to get your act together.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Angel and Doyle walked down the streets in companionable silence. They’d hit all of Angel’s current sources and a few of old Doyle’s old ones and they’d come out with very little on the whereabouts of Glory or Jesse. Despite the events that had occurred, Angel couldn’t help but feel a little bit content. Doyle and Cordelia were alive. If he didn’t have an impending apocalypse on his hands, he’d be feeling almost… lighthearted.
“So,” Doyle’s friendly voice broke the silence, “you feel like telling me what exactly happened that got you into Wolfram and Hart?”
“What do you know about Wolfram and Hart?” Angel asked, only mildly surprised.
“Enough,” Doyle said shortly. “I used to know some guys involved with them. Couple of ‘em just disappeared.” He stopped walking. “Jus’ between us. What do they have on you?”
Angel blinked.
“’Cause there’s somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me.” Doyle shoved his hands in the pocket of his borrowed jacket and Angel couldn’t help but notice just how wrong he looked without his old beat up leather jacket. Earlier Doyle had admitted that his jacket had been ruined when he’d come back. He didn’t offer the details, but Angel had suspected that he hadn’t had an easy time in his first moments back. He’d gathered enough information to know that everyone had appeared in the exact same place they’d died. And in Doyle’s case that was about twenty feet above a fairly large body of water. “Don’t go all broody stoicism guy on me now.”
Angel stared at his old friend and took an unnecessary breath and let a name escape his lips. “Connor.”
Doyle frowned, playing with the sleeves of his oversized jacket. “Who’s Connor?”
“Connor…” Angel was suddenly uncomfortable, not sure if this was something he could share. He hadn’t told anyone. No one knew about Connor… No one… but Eve.
The sudden realization strengthened his resolve and he met Doyle’s eyes. “Connor is my son.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eve entered his room, wiping something red off her hands and onto her shirt. Lindsey closed the door behind her. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Lindsey! I didn’t see you.”
Lindsey had his eyes focused on her hands. “Who’s blood is that?” he asked unsteadily, visions of a murdered colleague’s blood on his face.
“No one’s,” Eve said quickly. “I’m just going to go get dressed.”
Lindsey caught her by the wrist. “Who’s blood is that?” he demanded, “Eve! Tell me!”
She shook him loose. “It’s not mine.”
She walked out of the room and Lindsey heard the bathroom door slam in the distance. In a daze, he walked into the bedroom and lay down to stare at the ceiling.
It’s not mine.
He didn’t know if he should be relieved or horrified, but either way he was hit with the uneasy revelation that he was no longer in control of the situation. What had started out as a way to get back at Angel and the senior partners had spiraled into something far too big. He just wanted to shake things up a little, get back at Wolfram and Hart for ruining his life.
But now there was blood. Not a lot, but it only took a little for things to get messy. He wasn’t even remotely in the loop anymore.
“And the world will crumble.”
Lindsey had the sickening feeling that he was in over his head.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“OZ!” Willow was suddenly shaking him. “Oz! What what’s wrong! C’mon Oz wake up!”
Oz was jarred into awareness. “Doyle.”
“Doyle?” Willow frowned. “He’s with Angel. They’re out looking for Jesse.”
“No,” Oz mumbled, quickly getting off the bed and moving towards the doorway, “he’s in trouble. He’s going to kill him.”
“Who’s going to kill him?” Willow asked fearfully, following him out the door.
Oz’s stared straight at her, but his face betrayed no emotion. “Angel is.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“That’s some baggage,” Doyle said heavily as they made their way down the nearly abandoned street. “You gone to see him?”
“Once.” Angel admitted, "He looked…” He swallowed. “he looked happy.”
“You had no other choice, man. You did the right thing.” After a long paused, Doyle added, “You know that, right?”
Angel knew, but until that moment, he hadn’t known how much he needed to hear it aloud. He looked at his friend and actually smiled. “Thanks…” He stumbled and doubled over as a pain seized his chest.
Doyle put a hand on his shoulder. “Angel man, you okay?”
Angel suddenly realized what was happening and looked up at Doyle with wide eyes. “Run.”
“Hey! If something’s going wrong, I’m not leavin’ you all to yourself. I got some pride you know.”
Another wave of pain sent Angel crashing to his knees. “Doyle, dammit, you don’t get it. Just run! Get out of here!”
Something about the tone of his voice made Doyle listen and he turned slowly and started to sprint down the street.
Angel looked skywards as his eyes flashed golden and he screamed.
Then the pain subsided and he stood up and took in his surroundings.
And Angelus started to laugh.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The top floor of the Hyperion was filled with light as the dark energies illuminated the white chalk outline of a pentagram in the middle of the room. A female voice chanted a haunting spell and the candles at the points of the pentagram flickered in an unseen breeze and went out.
The light in the room began to become more concentrated as it slowly condensed into a jar at in front of the spellcaster.
She spoke the last worlds of the spell and quickly put the lid on the jar.
The room was completely dark now save the flickering light imprisoned in the jar, the spellcaster grabbed it and surveyed her works, face illuminated by the light of Angel’s soul.
Tara smiled to herself as she began to clean up the supplies. They didn’t suspect a thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 10 |
Rating- pg-13 (violence)
(other story info on chapter one)
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
Nine-Bad things and Good People
“Lindsey.” Eve smiled as he walked through the door of their apartment. “How did things go?”
Lindsey dropped his coat on the chair and walked towards Eve taking her by the hands. “Perfect. Spike doesn’t have a clue.”
Eve studied his face. “You sure?”
Lindsey laughed. “The senor partners won’t know what hit ‘em.”
Eve kissed him on the cheek. “And the world will crumble.” She tried to pull him towards the bed but Lindsey wouldn’t move.
He pulled away, eyes narrowing slightly. “Who said anything about the world.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Dawn! DAWN!” Buffy burst into the Hyperion, noticing the broken glass on the floor only when she stepped on it. She bent down to see that the whole floor was covered with it. The window was broken. Someone had broken in. “Dawn!”
Angel entered the room only seconds after, followed closely by Oz. “Buffy!”
Grabbing the slayer by her elbows, Angel pulled her to her feet. “Buffy get it together.”
She gazed up at him with glassy eyes. “They took her.”
Oz looked at them and nodded slightly. “I’ll go get Giles.”
Doyle entered the hotel, breathing heavily. “It’s not fair, all you guys with super powers going off and leaving us poor mortals in the dust.”
Cordelia snorted from beside him. “Us mortals. Have you forgotten about the half…”
Doyle clapped a hand over her mouth. “Let’s not tell the whole world.”
Gunn looked at the place in surprise. “What happened here?”
Willow already knew. “Oh God. Dawn.” She sunk into Tara’s embrace.
“What about me?” Dawn’s voice chirped from the staircase.
“Dawn!” Buffy disentangled herself from Angel without a second glance. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
“What did I do?” Dawn asked, confused, “Me and Andrew have been listening to music for like two hours. Completely normal and non-violent. It didn’t even have one of those advisory stickers on the CD!”
Behind her, Andrew nodded his agreement.
Giles raised an eyebrow. “May I ask what caused this sudden concern for Dawn’s well-being.”
Willow looked up. “Glory.”
“Oh dear lord. Is everyone all right?”
“Little dinged up,” muttered Gunn, answering for everyone. “But alive.” He slung his arm over his sister’s shoulder in an awkward sort of one armed hug.
Wesley had noticed the broken glass on the floor and the broken window. “What happened here?”
“Break in,” Cordelia supplied in a voice that implied the ‘duh’.
“Did they take anything?” Wesley asked curiously.
Angel glanced around the lobby. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here in ages.”
“W-w-where,” Tara stuttered, still slightly nervous about being around so many new faces, “are Xander a-a-and Anya?”
Andrew and Dawn immediately blushed. And after a second, Tara did too. “Oh.”
Giles started to polish his glasses, well aware of the fact that they were clean already. “Still. We’d best.” He coughed. “Make sure. I believe they’re in room 217.”
There was a long embarrassed pause before Oz shrugged wordlessly and went back up the stairs. He checked the numbers on the doors as he walked past them, pausing in front of 217. He knocked once. A second later a groggy voice called, “What?”
“It’s Oz. You alive?”
“What?”
Oz figured that was good enough and went back to the group. “They’re busy.”
“I don’t get it,” Cordelia said aloud. “I mean she told Buffy it wasn’t about her. Which means it’s about someone else.”
“The Fallen,” Giles said softly.
“The who now?” Gunn asked.
Giles hadn’t been aware he’d spoken aloud and he had to scramble to cover. “It’s a part of a prophesy I’ve been translating. I believe it is of particular relevance to the current situation.”
“Oh,” said Doyle slowly, “you mean with the dead people walking around and all?”
“What we miss?”a new voice came from the top of the stairs where a very disheveled Xander and Anya stood.
“Glory’s back,” Willow explained quickly, “and something happened here.”
“Ay caramba.” Xander whistled.
“But no one’s hurt, right?” Dawn asked, a note of panic creeping into her voice, “I mean we’re all alive and we’re all here. So maybe we can just you know figure out what to do about...”
Oz was studying the room taking inventory of its occupants. Something about the situation wasn’t quite right, it quite literally smelled weird. He reluctantly tried to concentrate on the faint smell in the room. His head was spinning slightly with exhaustion and he tried to disentangle Angel’s vampyric smell from Doyle’s not quite human one and the dozens of human smells. They wolf in him growled, but he expertly kept it down.
Tara smelled like magic.
And under it all, he finally identified the distinct metallic scent of blood.
He checked the room once more wondering how he could have missed it before. “Where’s Jesse?”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse was in fact having the worst night of his existence. And he’d had some pretty bad ones. Including the time he woke up to find his clothes floating in a lake and damn near the entire town of Sunnydale gawking at him.
He hadn’t even opened his eyes and he already had the sinking suspicion that this was much worse. He had the awkward sensation of someone who’d fallen asleep standing upright. Groaning slightly, he tried to move his arms, but there was something tying him down. He strained harder, ignoring the pain as the sharp metal chains chaffed his wrists… oh God he was in chains. The realization almost made him pass out again.
He heard voices from another room and stopped struggling. There was no way he was going to escape and something told him that attracting attention was going to get him in trouble.
Someone touched his face and he shivered involuntarily.
“I know you’re awake Jesse,” the voice whispered. “I just want to talk with you.”
Jesse squeezed his eyes shut, hoping they would just go away.
There was a heavy sigh. “Come on Jesse. I don’t like doing this the hard way.” Suddenly a hand clapped over his mouth and nose. The shock of it cause his eyes to snap open.
“There we go.”
As the world came into focus, Jesse saw who was standing in front of him. She didn’t look that much older than him. She was brown haired and blue eyed and just a little mousy looking. He couldn’t quite decide what to make of her.
“Jesse McNally,” She shook her head. “of all the people who’d died in the past eight years, you’re the one who gets a second chance. We’ve been trying to figure that out ever since you came back. You see, I could guess who was coming back. Most of them were no-brainers, but you, you took me by surprise.” She pulled a chair up and sat down in front of him. “And I sit up at night wondering, why you? What makes sixteen year old Jesse McNally more valuable than a slayer, or at least someone who has the slightest idea of what’s going on in this world. Wolfram and Hart doesn’t even have a file on you.” She leaned in closer. “I want to know everything about you. About why you’re back, because I think you’re more important than you let on?” She grinned and leaned back. “You’re going to tell me everything you know. And if you don’t cooperate...” she paused, “I’ll let the Master get it out of you.”
Jesse struggled to keep his eyes focused, but his head throbbed in protest. “I don’t know…” He swallowed to sooth his dry scratchy throat. “I don’t know anything.”
Eve tilted her head to the side. “The hard way it is.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oz fell asleep. He’d feel guilty as hell for it later, but his body couldn’t take it anymore. After he’d told them about the blood, the whole team had immediately began searching the hotel for Jesse, but Oz knew they were wasting time. He’d gone along with them anyway. There was always a chance that he was wrong.
He was only searching his second room, but his body just couldn’t take it anymore. He practically passed out on the bed.
They say that people reached a point when they were too exhausted to dream. They were wrong.
Willow lay beside him, humming tunelessly and Oz rolled over to look at her. She continued humming, not even noticing he was there. “Willow,” he whispered softly.
Willow rolled over and blinked sleepily, “Tara is that you?”
Oz blinked in mild shock, turned away and got out of bed slowly.
Someone screamed in the distance and he thought he recognized it as Jesse’s scream even though he’d never heard it before. Angel stepped out of the darkness. “You have to stop it. Things are going bad. Can’t you see it? You should see it.”
Over Angel’s shoulder, he saw Willow kissing Tara. He tried to concentration what Angel was saying, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of them.
Finally, Angel grabbed him by the shoulders. “You can’t trust us, Oz. You can’t...”
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Willow’s eyes bulge, Tara held her firmly by the neck. Oz pushed past Angel and launched himself at Tara, feeling the familiar changes sweep over him. Her snarled, claws clashing and knock her to the ground, instinctively going for the throat.
And suddenly it was Vercua he was killing, her blood on his hand, on his face. Shocked, he reverted back to human form and slumped backwards, a million excuses running through his head ‘it was the wolf, she was going to kill Willow.’
Angel was there again, eyes golden, face distorted, fangs glittering in the dim light. “You don’t know true evil.”
Just for a second he saw Doyle’s dead body in front of him, throat marred by the tell-tale mark of a vampire.
Laughing, Tara appeared in front of him. “Willow’s not the one you have to worry about.” She held up a glass jar filled with a sort of glittering mist, her face glowed eerily in the light. “You hero types really have to get your act together.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Angel and Doyle walked down the streets in companionable silence. They’d hit all of Angel’s current sources and a few of old Doyle’s old ones and they’d come out with very little on the whereabouts of Glory or Jesse. Despite the events that had occurred, Angel couldn’t help but feel a little bit content. Doyle and Cordelia were alive. If he didn’t have an impending apocalypse on his hands, he’d be feeling almost… lighthearted.
“So,” Doyle’s friendly voice broke the silence, “you feel like telling me what exactly happened that got you into Wolfram and Hart?”
“What do you know about Wolfram and Hart?” Angel asked, only mildly surprised.
“Enough,” Doyle said shortly. “I used to know some guys involved with them. Couple of ‘em just disappeared.” He stopped walking. “Jus’ between us. What do they have on you?”
Angel blinked.
“’Cause there’s somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me.” Doyle shoved his hands in the pocket of his borrowed jacket and Angel couldn’t help but notice just how wrong he looked without his old beat up leather jacket. Earlier Doyle had admitted that his jacket had been ruined when he’d come back. He didn’t offer the details, but Angel had suspected that he hadn’t had an easy time in his first moments back. He’d gathered enough information to know that everyone had appeared in the exact same place they’d died. And in Doyle’s case that was about twenty feet above a fairly large body of water. “Don’t go all broody stoicism guy on me now.”
Angel stared at his old friend and took an unnecessary breath and let a name escape his lips. “Connor.”
Doyle frowned, playing with the sleeves of his oversized jacket. “Who’s Connor?”
“Connor…” Angel was suddenly uncomfortable, not sure if this was something he could share. He hadn’t told anyone. No one knew about Connor… No one… but Eve.
The sudden realization strengthened his resolve and he met Doyle’s eyes. “Connor is my son.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eve entered his room, wiping something red off her hands and onto her shirt. Lindsey closed the door behind her. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Lindsey! I didn’t see you.”
Lindsey had his eyes focused on her hands. “Who’s blood is that?” he asked unsteadily, visions of a murdered colleague’s blood on his face.
“No one’s,” Eve said quickly. “I’m just going to go get dressed.”
Lindsey caught her by the wrist. “Who’s blood is that?” he demanded, “Eve! Tell me!”
She shook him loose. “It’s not mine.”
She walked out of the room and Lindsey heard the bathroom door slam in the distance. In a daze, he walked into the bedroom and lay down to stare at the ceiling.
It’s not mine.
He didn’t know if he should be relieved or horrified, but either way he was hit with the uneasy revelation that he was no longer in control of the situation. What had started out as a way to get back at Angel and the senior partners had spiraled into something far too big. He just wanted to shake things up a little, get back at Wolfram and Hart for ruining his life.
But now there was blood. Not a lot, but it only took a little for things to get messy. He wasn’t even remotely in the loop anymore.
“And the world will crumble.”
Lindsey had the sickening feeling that he was in over his head.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“OZ!” Willow was suddenly shaking him. “Oz! What what’s wrong! C’mon Oz wake up!”
Oz was jarred into awareness. “Doyle.”
“Doyle?” Willow frowned. “He’s with Angel. They’re out looking for Jesse.”
“No,” Oz mumbled, quickly getting off the bed and moving towards the doorway, “he’s in trouble. He’s going to kill him.”
“Who’s going to kill him?” Willow asked fearfully, following him out the door.
Oz’s stared straight at her, but his face betrayed no emotion. “Angel is.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“That’s some baggage,” Doyle said heavily as they made their way down the nearly abandoned street. “You gone to see him?”
“Once.” Angel admitted, "He looked…” He swallowed. “he looked happy.”
“You had no other choice, man. You did the right thing.” After a long paused, Doyle added, “You know that, right?”
Angel knew, but until that moment, he hadn’t known how much he needed to hear it aloud. He looked at his friend and actually smiled. “Thanks…” He stumbled and doubled over as a pain seized his chest.
Doyle put a hand on his shoulder. “Angel man, you okay?”
Angel suddenly realized what was happening and looked up at Doyle with wide eyes. “Run.”
“Hey! If something’s going wrong, I’m not leavin’ you all to yourself. I got some pride you know.”
Another wave of pain sent Angel crashing to his knees. “Doyle, dammit, you don’t get it. Just run! Get out of here!”
Something about the tone of his voice made Doyle listen and he turned slowly and started to sprint down the street.
Angel looked skywards as his eyes flashed golden and he screamed.
Then the pain subsided and he stood up and took in his surroundings.
And Angelus started to laugh.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The top floor of the Hyperion was filled with light as the dark energies illuminated the white chalk outline of a pentagram in the middle of the room. A female voice chanted a haunting spell and the candles at the points of the pentagram flickered in an unseen breeze and went out.
The light in the room began to become more concentrated as it slowly condensed into a jar at in front of the spellcaster.
She spoke the last worlds of the spell and quickly put the lid on the jar.
The room was completely dark now save the flickering light imprisoned in the jar, the spellcaster grabbed it and surveyed her works, face illuminated by the light of Angel’s soul.
Tara smiled to herself as she began to clean up the supplies. They didn’t suspect a thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 10 |