All About Spike - A Parliament Of Monsters by Barb Cummings

A Parliament Of Monsters
By Barb Cummings

Sequel to Necessary Evils

Chapter 8

There weren't any skeletons and chittering rats in Antonia Corvini's soundproofed, climate-controlled basement, any more than there was a cobwebby pipe organ in her Danish Modern living room. That would have been too, too, Hammer Films. But the basement smelled right, redolent with the delicious tang of human fear. Evie crouched in the corner, staring narrow-eyed at the two women chained to the far wall as if her gaze could do the job her fangs couldn't. Her agreement with Spike said no killing, but it never said she couldn't suck on dead people. And they were so close to death, their dull eyes sunk deep in bruised sockets and their cinnamon skin gone sallow beneath a livid mosaic of half-healed bite-marks. Their heartbeats were a slow, syncopated thud-thud, little engines that almost couldn't. The one on the left wouldn't last out the night. Die, you juicy little bitch. Come on, croak. You musta lost four, five pints. Fucking kick it so I can get the rest. They're gonna be here any minute...

On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, a windowless white van trundled up and down the streets of Sunnydale's posher neighborhoods. Its sides were decorated with a pert, frilly-aproned blonde brandishing a feather duster, and "Maids2Go!" written beneath. No phone number or website was visible, and a search of the Yellow Pages would produce no trace of its existence. But it just went to show that if you looked hard enough, you could get decent help these days.

Tanker came clumping downstairs, followed by a saturnine vampire in an navy-blue coverall and a peaked driver's cap emblazoned with the Maids2Go logo. The driver was herding a fresh pair of terrified women in front of him. The new girls were mostly unmarked, but otherwise interchangeable with the outgoing pair: middle-aged and careworn, dark-haired and dark-eyed. They huddled together at the foot of the stairs, clutching one another fearfully, and set up a wail of dismay at the sight of their predecessors. Tanker smacked the loudest one across the face in offhand irritation, and they subsided into whimpers and murmured Spanish prayers. Evie watched with interest; some of the meals on wheels had their tongues removed, but these two could still scream. Fuckin' A.

The woman Tanker had slapped turned big tragic Bambi-eyes on Evie. "¡Por favor -- ayúdeme! ¡Tomaron mi Lupe!"

Evie sneered and flashed fang, chuckling as the woman cringed away. If they knew that they could beat her into the carpet with their handbags, if they'd had handbags, and she couldn't lift a finger to stop them--but they didn't, and for a minute, she could pretend to be the scourge of the night again. Or at least the scourge of the late afternoon.

Tanker strode across the basement and snapped open the restraints; the two women staggered as the manacles slid away from chafed wrists, barely able to stand. Tanker nuzzled the nearest one and whispered, "One for the road, sweet cheeks." Her fangs tore through the crusted scabs on the exposed neck, and Evie moaned out loud in jealousy and hunger. Tanker gave the woman a shove in Evie's direction. "Here, kid. Dig in."

The woman stumbled under the force of Tanker's blow and Evie was on her in a second, licking frantically at the sluggish flow of red. So good, so sweet, so goddam little of it--Evie pulled hard at the wound, sucking with mindless little grunts of pleasure. Nails dug deep into scrawny arms and fangs scraped raw flesh, and the woman shuddered and cried out, a long wordless gargle of despair. Ball lightning exploded behind Evie's eyes as the chip kicked in, and she dropped to the floor and howled, clutching her temples. Tanker doubled over laughing, and the driver sighed and rolled his eyes. He thrust a clipboard at Tanker. "Sign, please."

"Can't we get a third?" Tanker complained as she signed the driver's manifest.

"You're turning in two, you get two," the driver replied with a shrug. "If you blood-hogs had any self-control, we might have a few more spares on hand. We had to haul three empties out last week, we got all those border crackdowns in Arizona, the coyotes are charging a fucking fortune, container ships are stacked three deep in L.A. Harbor--half my goddam inventory is dead or wrung out with dysentery by the time it hits the States."

"Be still my shriveled-up heart." Toni Corvini swaggered down the stairs as Tanker re-fastened the manacles on the newcomers. Evie had been a little surprised to find that Corvini was a she, since Spike had called her a chap or a bloke or some other English bullshit, but Corvini had stepped straight out of Beebo Brinker , men's suits, ducktail, post-modern ennui and all. Pretty damn hot, actually, if you swung that way. Corvini inspected the merchandise with horse-trader's savvy, grasping each woman by the hair and yanking their heads up for an impassive once-over. "This one damned well better be pro-rated," she called after the driver, pointing to the scabbed-over bite-mark on the smaller woman's neck. "Next time send us some Koreans or something, huh? I'm getting sick of Mexican."

The driver shrugged and gave one of the trade-ins a shove towards the stairs. "Best we can do."

Corvini clucked her tongue in annoyance as he left, and shot a pointed glance at Evie. "Did you find Kite?"

"Tanker wouldn't give me any blood," Evie whined, balancing insolence with pleading. It was a trick, giving the impression that you were cunning but not particularly smart, but she'd discovered over the last week that she was fucking good at this Mata Hari stuff. "I'm not gonna tell you anything till I get someone to eat."

Corvini extended a finger and tipped Evie's chin up, studying her face with the same cool assessment with which she'd studied her dinner. Without warning she pulled Evie into a crushing, sharp-fanged kiss. Just as swiftly she shoved her away and drove a hard right into her jaw. Evie slammed into the wall and slid down, head spinning. "You don't take, little girl," Corvini purred. "I give. What I want, and when I want. Remember that, next time."

Next time, bitch, I'm gonna play cats-cradle with your guts and a telephone pole. Evie allowed the thought to show for an instant in curled lip and glaring eye, then tossed her head and schooled her face into lines of bland human composure. She pushed herself to her feet against the wall and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Story time. "I got in to see Kite on Wednesday night. I told him I'd gotten real snuggly with you. What he and Amherst figure is that you'll hit whatever gang the Slayer weakens most and muscle in on their grounds, so I told him you had your eye on Nguyen..."

Like her dad used to say, you only needed half bullshit mixed in to make the flowers grow. Amherst didn't see Corvini and her four piddly minions as a threat (well, three now; Freddy was Slayer fodder as of Tuesday night, but that was what he'd been sired for--he'd even been wearing a red shirt) but Corvini probably wanted to think he did. Odds were good that that was exactly what she was planning to do: for a smart vampire, it was all about territory, especially in a town as over-hunted as Sunnydale. You staked out a piece of ground inhabited by enough humans to keep you fed, and defended it against all comers.

If things had been different, Corvini's gang might not have been a bad choice to throw in with. Bitch wasn't a half-bad kisser. But as long as Evie was packing hardware in her brain, they'd never see her as anything other than a tool to be used and disposed of. Spike's crew might be losers and weirdos, but at least they were all in the same boat, all of them reduced to animal blood and regret.

She'd just gotten to the best part when Linnet dashed breathless down the stairs. "He's here!"

"We'll finish this later," Corvini said, and gestured Tanker to follow her upstairs before Evie had a chance to wonder 'He who?'

If that wasn't an engraved invitation to eavesdrop... Torn between curiosity and caution, Evie cat-footed after them and crouched low on the top stair, her fingertips brushing the exotic patterns of the handwoven Turkish carpet. She could just see the visitor over the top of the couch.

The stranger in the living room was tall and clean-cut in a soldier-on-leave kind of way. Short dark hair, disturbed apple-pie face. He smelled like family in a way human language had no words for. That indefinable vampy knack for sizing up potential rivals told her that he was no fledge, but still a long way from his century mark--probably about the same age as Corvini or Amherst, turned some time around the middle of the twentieth century. He rose as Corvini entered the room, accepted a seat on the couch, and declined an offer of blood. "I'm pleased to meet you..." He paused, doubtful. "Miss?"

Corvini didn't move to alleviate his confusion. "Lawson, is it?" She lit a cigarette and sent an elegant coil of smoke in his general direction. "Got to say I'm curious about why someone from the big bad city is slumming around here. We don't have much to interest tourists since the Hellmouth closed for business."

Lawson smiled. "I'm here on my sire's behalf, not my own. Angelus. You may have heard of him."

Another puff. "Maybe. And more recently than you have, by the sound of it."

"Angelus?" Tanker broke into incredulous laughter. "You're digging this crap out of your ass with a shovel, honey. He's all souled up and pussified these days."

"I talked to him yesterday," Lawson replied. "I was as surprised to hear from him as you are, believe me. He's had...I guess you could call it a change of heart, and he convinced me that he's got things planned. Great things. The Order of Aurelius has fallen on hard times, but that's about to change."

There was a conviction in his voice and a light in his eyes that made Evie cringe--she'd seen the like too many times before: burning in the eyes of the vampires who dug up the old Master's bones at the Anointed One's command; in the eyes of the nameless minions who gladly immolated themselves in sunlight to run Angelus's messages to the Slayer; in the eyes of Adam's followers. Whoever he was, Lawson was a man with a mission.

That was the thing about becoming a vampire--you woke up surging with power and hunger and the knowledge that you could do anything, anything at all, because all the petty little rules like Keep Off The Grass and Thou Shalt Not Kill just didn't matter any longer. You were the fucking Angel of Death, the alpha and the omega, a law unto yourself--at least till some older, stronger vamp dunked your head in a toilet and made you their bitch--and it was glorious. Some vampires plunged head-first into that eternal demonic now and never came out. But others... the aimlessness got to them after awhile. Caught between human and demon, between life and death, vampires were starved for purpose and meaning. Some of them were starved enough that they'd swallow anything, no matter how stupid, like pigeons who'd eat wedding rice and explode. Or maybe that was an urban legend, though exploding pigeons sounded like fun, and damn it she'd lost the subject--oh, yeah: Lawson.

Lawson opened his briefcase and produced a photo of a lank-haired, sullen teenaged boy, no different from any of a thousand other baggy-pantsed adolescent grease farms in Southern California. "For your reference. Remember, he can pass for human, but his scent will give him away. Here's my cell number. I've already spoken to Mr. Amherst and Mr. Nguyen, and to several other interested parties. Angelus will make it well worth the while of whoever finds him." He rose, and added, "If you happen to come across any other surviving Aurelians, Angelus is very interested in their whereabouts as well."

Shit. Evie measured the distance from the stairs to the front door--only twenty feet or so, but all four of them were between her and escape. Moving with infinite care, she slipped down the hallway towards the rear of the house, coming to a halt with a hiss of frustration. Late afternoon sun blazed through the French doors, drenching the end of the hall in light. Crap, crap, crap... She turned again and backed into the bathroom, locking the door behind her, and stood tensely in the middle of the tile floor, backed up against the sink.

"Actually, we may have something for you now, though naturally I'd require some compensation for giving up such a valuable minion." Corvini turned to Linnet. "Get Evie."

Linnet's footsteps passed along the hall and back again, searching, and then she pounded on the bathroom door. "Evie! Walkies! Get your ass out here!"

Panic surged through her, and Evie beat it back with a stick. What would Spike do in a situation like this? Open that door, take on all four of them at once, and hand them their dusty asses on a platter, that's what, but OK, what would Spike do if he wasn't a century-plus-old badass who'd forgotten more about dirty street-fighting than she'd ever know?

With one regretful look at the whirlpool tub she was never going to get a chance to try out now, Evie tore a couple of outsize Egyptian cotton bath sheets from the towel rack, whipping one over her head and one around her hand. She hopped up on the side of the tub and smashed her towel-wrapped fist through the bottom pane--yeah, Spike would probably have done it bare-fisted, but that just proved she was smarter than Spike in some particulars. Linnet's fist crashed through the bathroom door at almost the same instant, flailing around for the knob.

Evie knocked the last shards of glass free, heaved herself over the sill and wriggled through the window. She landed hard and clumsy on one shoulder and rolled to her feet, fighting to keep the swaths of towel in place. Light seared her flesh through the cotton, and she ran, feet pounding, chest burning, streaking across the broad bare expanse of suburban lawn. The towel, and her shoulders, burst into flames as she leaped the fence into the neighbors' yard and stumbled blindly into the shade of the house next door. She dropped and rolled with a shriek of pain and terror, tumbling headfirst into the chlorine-scented haven of the swimming pool with a tremendous crash of water, and expelled the last of her breath in a bubbling roar of pain.

She opened her eyes to cool blue-green, and for a second she thought she'd burnt her retinas out somehow. Then she realized she was under water, sitting on the bottom of the pool. She grabbed the charred remains of the towel before it could drift away, and scooted beneath the diving board. Eerie, echoing shouts reached her from the world above, and Evie gradually realized that the searchers, presuming they'd dared to follow her at all, couldn't see her from above.

She extended an experimental fingertip beyond the protective shadow of the board, and pulled it back quickly. Her skin itched and burned in the filtered sunlight, but she couldn't burst into flame immersed in water. She was safe here, for awhile at least. The chlorine stung her burnt shoulders, and she whimpered a little bit, here where no one would ever know. She hadn't risked the sun since her first week out of the ground, and she'd forgotten how much it hurt. And Spike did this every day? Spike was a fucking idiot.

With the immediate crisis over, her thoughts scattered to the four winds. Spike. She had to let Spike know what was up. She had no illusions that Angelus cared about her in particular, but there was no sweet fucking way she intended to get caught up in some Aurelian Five-Year Plan. Angelus was one crazy bastard, and he'd gone through minions faster than the old Master had. She couldn't stay here forever--if nothing else, the family who lived here would notice her eventually, and call 911 to get the stiff out of their pool. She didn't dare go straight home while the sting was still on. Fuck, she was thinking of the crypt as home now. Pathetic. She was scheduled to meet Spike at Willy's on Saturday night; she'd just have to lay low until then. There was an attic on Fremont that Spike maintained as a safehouse and bolt-hole. Maybe she could hide there. There was a manhole a block away. If she could get to the sewers...

But most of all... What the hell was going on in L.A.?

She drifts among beautiful people in Versace and Cartier, and she can't remember how she got to the party, or who invited her. Glasses clink and voices murmur in the background, and somewhere an orchestra is playing, tinny and far away like music on wax cylinders, notes melting into the air. Supercilious eyes assess her, dismiss her; conversations die away at her approach, only to spring to life in muted laughter as she passes. She tries to mingle, flashing her brightest smile, and little knots of guests close ranks against her, presenting a wall of stark feminine spines and forbidding masculine shoulders.

It's so hot under the bright lights of the ballroom. She's parched, but the refreshment table is a million miles away, and the waiters ignore her as they glide through the crowd tending to the needs of the real guests. If she can talk to someone, it will be all right. She'll be able to explain why she's here, and that's terribly, terribly important. She starts to speak, but the words die away in a painful rasp. It must be her choker. Black velvet, classy, with a diamond solitaire, but she's fastened it too tight, and it's cutting off her air.

She lifts her hands to adjust the clasp, and for the first time she sees him: there by the punchbowl, ladling brilliant red liquid into his cut-crystal goblet. He's big, with dark hair and heavy brows--a brown-eyed handsome man. The severe cut of his evening jacket emphasizes the deep chest and broad shoulders, and if he's only an inch or two above average height now, a couple of centuries ago he was a near-giant, and he still carries himself like one.

He's the one who invited her here, she's certain, but the knowledge brings with it a chill of fear. He looks up, and when his eyes meet hers, they're yellow. Lion's eyes, killer's eyes. He raises his glass to his lips, and it's a skull he's drinking from. Blood drips from his mouth and he licks it from his lips with a smile as he takes the first step towards her.

She wants to run, but she can't move. She fumbles with the choker, but she's only pulling it tighter. It's a brand of flame across her throat, a trail of acid. He's coming closer, and his smile is a shark-grin full of nested fangs, and she's got to run, got to scream, but her limbs are made of lead and she can't open her eyes and it's hot, so hot--

Cordelia came awake with a gurgling croak, scrabbling at the constricting bandages around her neck. Her throat was on fire, but she was shaking like Katharine Hepburn and her hands were freezing, clumsy Popsicle fingers pawing at the dressing. Her head felt three times its normal size. She tried to sit up, but the room...lair? tilted wildly around her, and she fell back into the stifling tangle of blankets and rugs.

She was in an abandoned warehouse. Of course. It was always a warehouse, and it was usually abandoned. Someone had tried to make this little corner of the huge echoing space more inviting, draped canopies of old curtains across the rusty scaffolding to form a kind of yurt. A kerosene lantern burned low in one corner of the tent, and layers of old carpet and musty pillows concealed the bare boards of the floor. The skylight overhead admitted the hazy glow of an L.A. midnight, stars near-drowned in ambient light. A lithe silhouette crouched watchful against the sky, perched atop a stack of crates. At the sound of her abortive struggle to sit up, it uncoiled and vaulted down. Connor's thin anxious face peered into hers, that irritating lank hair flopping half into his eyes. "Cordelia, don't! You're going to pull all the bandages--crap. Cordy. Calm down. It's OK." He caught her frantic hands in his and pulled them down to her lap.

"Ghhhuuhhn!" OK? It's so far from OK that it's in another alphabet! Angelus is loose!

Thin, boyish hand on her forehead--and she thought her own fingers were cold. "Damn." The hand moved to her throat, surprisingly assured and gentle--well, he'd grown up in a hell dimension; he'd probably had to sew his own limbs back on more than once. Cordelia winced as his fingers probed her neck, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, to her intense embarrassment. Unboyish worry-lines creased Connor's brow. "Don't try to talk. I need to change your dressings again, and it's going to hurt."

He filled a small pan of water from a ten-gallon Coleman cooler in the corner--one of those big ones they used on construction sites, Cordelia thought vaguely. He set the pan to boil on a little propane stove, and got out bandages and salve. Connor had adapted to the world of technology with ferocious intelligence and speed--that was Darla's DNA at work, she was pretty certain. "I hope you can understand me," he said.

Well, duh.

"I think you've got a...I don't know what you call it here, but the wound's gone bad. Vampire bites are dirty. I've tried to draw the poison out--" He dipped a clean rag into the boiling water, flapped it around in mid-air to cool and in one efficient, brutal motion ripped off the old bandage and slapped the hot wet cloth across her neck.

"Auuughg!" Cordelia wrenched upwards. Connor flinched, but he kept on working, holding her down with one inhumanly powerful arm braced across her ribs while the other hand cleaned the crusted blood away from the ragged tear in her neck. Oh, God, this was going to scar. She was going to have a huge freakish scar on her neck forever, because she didn't have Slayer healing, and she sure as hell didn't have medical insurance and even if she did it would probably be some grotty HMO which didn't cover reconstructive surgery. She sobbed, once, not meaning to. She didn't want to cry because it hurt , damn it, but another sob tore loose like an iceberg calving, and then global warming set in and they all broke free, her self-control dissolving into terror and salt water. Tears burned and stung and overflowed in her eyes, not because Angelus was loose upon the world, but because she was going to be ugly, and that was the last straw.

"I'm sorry." Connor kept saying, low and anguished and desperate. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts, I've got to do it or the poison will get into your blood and you'll--"

Call Buffy, damn you. Forget about me and call Buffy, or call Faith, whichever one warms the cockles of your pervy little heart more, and tell them Angelus is loose, and you did NOT just cop a feel because I can't deal with that now.

He smeared something greasy and stinky on her throat, and wrapped the bite up in clean bandages. Yeehah, the mummy lives. Connor rocked back on his heels, all angles and shadows in the lamplight. He looked tired and drawn, wizened beyond his indeterminate years, and no wonder. He was probably living on stolen Twinkies and Slim Jims these days. Or rats. Like father, like son. Cordelia giggled, or would have if her vocal cords weren't under construction. Her head was just getting lighter and lighter, and soon it would float up to the ceiling of the warehouse and bob out through the skylight into the cool night breeze, and wouldn't that be loverly?

"Cordelia." Connor was shaking her gently. "Cordy. I have to go. I've tried, I've really tried, but you need real medicine--there's got to be a physicker somewhere in this city, right? Wait here. Don't try to get up. If you need--if you have to--there's a pan right here, see?"

No, I'm just going to die of embarrassment right here and now. When the kid whose diapers you changed ends up changing yours, there's no point in going on.

She couldn't just let him rush out there without explaining what was happening. With a groan Cordelia realized that Connor not only wouldn't have paper or pencil handy, he might not even be able to read English--somehow she doubted that a thorough grounding in the classics had been a major part of Holtz's educational goals. She watched him disappear into the shadows with all his parents' noiseless, terrible stealth, and sank back into her fusty-smelling nest, too exhausted to do more than lie there and stare up at the ceiling. How long had she been here? Days? Weeks? Her fingernails hadn't turned into claws or anything, so, days. Anything could be happening out there in the world beyond the skylight, while she lay here like a salted slug on a pile of rotting carpet in a deserted warehouse, expiring in slow motion of an infected vampire bite and her own BO.

Angel. Angelus. She'd really had the small stupid hope, in the face of all reason and experience, that she could reach him somehow--that Spike wasn't some kind of super-special vampire anomaly, and that if Angel had really loved her, that love would survive somehow in Angelus, however twisted and stunted and sickened. And she wasn't going to deny it would have been pretty delectable to have evidence of success where Buffy had once failed. But it looked like Spike was a freak of nature, after all.

He had to be. She wasn't going to think about the other possibility.

"I'm a little concerned about Angelus," Wesley said, selecting a blade from the gleaming array on the cloth-draped tray before him. "He's behaving rather erratically, don't you think?" He held the scalpel up and examined it: the blade was flaked obsidian, thin as paper, sharp as regret. He turned the next page in the grimoire, ran a finger across the intricate symbol illustrated there, and turned back to the slim dark woman cuffed naked and spreadeagled on the bed. A craquelure of dried blood glazed the woman's skin from the half-dozen mystic sigils Wesley had already incised along her limbs and torso. "The left thigh, you think? Or perhaps the right breast would be more effective?"

Lawson shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"Considerably." Wesley smiled down at the woman with an eerie benevolence. "Fred understands the need for precision in an undertaking such as this. Why, the slightest miscalculation in opening a portal can result in unimaginable agony as one's mind and body are stretched thin across dimensions and one's very soul frays away to tissue paper..." Fred shuddered in her chains, moaning into the duct tape sealing her mouth, and Wesley pressed the tip of the scalpel to one dusky nipple. A tiny bead of blood welled up, mother's milk for a demon child. "Don't pretend you don't love this, you little cocktease."

Lawson watched without much interest as Wesley bent over the small pointed breast in concentration, the scalpel carving an elaborate scrimshaw of crimson into the olive skin. Fred shivered like a fly-bedeviled mare. She'd stopped trying to reason with Wes a week ago, stopped pleading with him days ago, stopped screaming hours ago...but there was still a light in those dark doe-eyes. Wes was thorough, Lawson gave him that, but he wasn't sure if the younger vampire realized just what he was dealing with. There were some humans you couldn't drive mad because some little piece of them was already there. Not his job to hand out torture tips to the fledges, though. "So you think Angel's acting strange?" he asked.

"Mm." Wes bit the tip of his tongue in concentration. "It's difficult to say, of course, because my personal experience with Angelus has been so limited, but the Watchers' diaries chronicling his exploits in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries depict a very...focused individual."

"Focused." Lawson got up and walked over to the window, hands in pockets. "That's a good way of putting it. He was focused as all hell when he sired me."

"Quite. And yet..." Wesley stepped back to inspect his work. Satisfied, he set the scalpel aside and insinuated a hand between Fred's blood-and-sweat-streaked thighs, whipping her reluctant flesh towards climax with the same brutal efficiency as he'd cut it only minutes ago. Lawson wasn't sure if that was part of the spell or just Wes getting his rocks off. "His current plans appear nebulous, at best. The simplest way to get what he wants is to kill Spike, and yet we're explicitly forbidden to do so."

Lawson frowned. He'd only been in California a few days, but it hadn't taken that long to realize that this Angel wasn't the same person who'd sired him. Angel 2003 was madder, badder, wilder, bolder, both more and less dangerous than the vampire he'd known sixty years ago. "I don't understand why he sent me to Sunnydale. The place is wide open--three or four gangs, a dozen little packs, all of 'em too busy squabbling over crumbs to care that the Slayer's picking them off like ducks in a shooting gallery. But he wasn't interested in any of that, only in whether I'd found any of the Old Master's get still alive. When he called, I thought--" He turned away from the window, head down, scowling. "I though he had a plan. A reason for me to--" keep existing "--be here."

"We need to be prepared for his obsession with the Slayer to resurface," Wesley said, observing Fred's shuddering rictus of an orgasm as if it were occurring under a microscope. "Despite his protestations otherwise, Angelus's actions regarding her, and certain other old--" His lips twisted in distaste, and Fred writhed at a particularly vicious tweak--"acquaintances... are often emotional and illogical. It was his downfall five years ago. We must ensure history doesn't repeat itself."

"And we do that how?"

Wesley stepped away from the twitching, whimpering form on the bed and wiped his fingers fastidiously on a linen towel. "I'm considering the matter. I believe we're finished here. I must fetch Drusilla; Angel wants her to observe Mr. Crowley when he arrives." He patted Fred's cheek. "Sweet dreams, my darling."

Lawson followed him out into the corridor and stood there irresolute. He wasn't entirely familiar with the Hyperion's layout yet, and hadn't yet taken the decisive step of unpacking his bags and settling into a room of his own. He liked the Overlook ambience of the old hotel--the dark paneling, the jade and port wine and tawny gold of the carpets and wallpaper, the lingering sense that this was a place which had seen horror upon horror, where pain and despair had seeped like old blood into the very walls. But it wasn't home, not yet, and maybe never.

He turned on his heel and headed for the stairs. Maybe he'd take a walk, find someone to eat. Angel had forbidden hunting within five miles of the hotel, and he'd have to stir himself if he wanted a meal before dawn.

Angel was in his office, laying down the law to the little gang of would-be Aurelians Lawson had fetched back from Sunnydale; he glanced up as Lawson strode through the lobby, but otherwise paid him no mind. Big surprise there. Outside the hotel the air was cold and heavy with the bitter, omnipresent tang of L.A. smog, and overhead a few brave stars penetrated the haze of city lights. Lawson crossed Crenshaw and headed west on Wilshire, boots crunching against fragments of glass and gravel on the sidewalk, steady as a metronome. He stuck out a desultory thumb as cars whizzed past. He didn't really expect anyone to stop, not at this time of night, and not in a day and age when there were so many human monsters in competition with the real thing, but you'd never go hungry underestimating the stupidity of humans in general.

Rossmore, Highland, La Brea...What exactly was he doing here, running the old man's errands? Angel had called, and he'd come. Angel was his sire, but Angel had kicked him out of that sub to literally sink or swim. Angel had never bothered to introduce him to the rest of the clan--hell, Angel had never bothered, period. The fact was, he was a stranger, the outsider, the bastard son. Drusilla was the only person in the hotel besides Angel who knew him. Penn and Darla and Dalton and James and Elizabeth and Luke and the Master were names to him, nothing more, and all of them were dust now, anyway. The handful of distantly-related fledges he'd turned up in Sunnydale meant even less.

The only other name with a face to it wasn't here. Memories of miserable, sultry weeks in the summer of '44 drifted through his mind: haunting the New York docks, living off whores and transients and stevedores with blood tasting of tar and salt, Spike desperate to find a ship back to Europe and Drusilla, himself confused and overwhelmed as any new-risen fledge. Spike's impatient This is a neck, these are your teeth, the pointy bits go in there, and I'd give up those dreams of a healthy tan if I were you hadn't been much, but it was more than he'd ever gotten from Angel.

He found the kids staggering down Santa Monica Boulevard, just south of the Belvedere--three boys and two girls in with streaked hair and pierced noses and expensive orthodontia, a little too drunk, a little too rich, a lot too loud for their own good. What the hell they were doing there at four in the morning Lawson didn't know and didn't care. He shadowed them for a block, until one lagged behind the other four. He took the boy down from behind with a precision blow to the base of the skull, crushed his larynx and pulled the limp body into the shelter of the manicured shrubbery. No screams, no drawn-out terror, just the quick plunge of fangs into flesh and the blood hot in his mouth as he gulped down what should have been life itself. Sustenance, and nothing more. He took the boy's wallet as an afterthought and left him sprawled on the close-cropped lawn, listening idly to the heartbeat which labored and slowed behind him. He'd drunk his fill, and the kid might live, or he might not. Lawson wished he could bring himself to care one way or the other. Death should mean something. Should be a dark and glorious calling, not an act as meaningless as a man eating a Big Mac and tossing the wrapper aside.

A car flashed past, going east as he headed back, headlights sweeping along the road ahead. Brakes squealed and tires chewed gravel as the metal beast swung around, and headlights raked like claws across the night. Lawson stopped, hand raised to guard his eyes from the glare. A door slammed, another pair of boots crunched across the pavement. The driver strode forward with none of the usual caution of someone approaching a wandering hitchhiker, his lean frame haloed in halogen glory and the vast dark wings of his shadow stretched out before him. Lawson waited, mildly curious--maybe that was sufficient reason to let the guy live, for awhile, anyway, that for two seconds he'd made life interesting.

The man stopped, head cocked, his expression invisible even to vampire eyes--and then he lunged forward, enveloping Lawson in an enthusiastic and rib-crushing bear hug. "Lawson, you son of a bitch! Thought that mopey look was familiar! I haven't seen you since Paris! Where the hell have you been?"

"Spike?" Lawson broke into a grin and grabbed the smaller man's shoulders, squinting into the light. All the things he shouldn't say flitted through his mind--=Why the hell aren't you back in Sunnydale, did Angel put you up to this, is this some kind of stupid test? What came out was, "What the hell did you do to your hair?"

"This? Went blond in '76. You're behind the times, mate."

Lawson laughed and cuffed the back of his head. "No, I mean that curly shit."

Spike poked at the crisp gelled waves with a slightly self-conscious grin. "Ah, the other half likes it that way. Look, I'm headed over to Angel's place--thought I'd stop by and pay my respects as long as I was in town. Fancy a lift?" He gestured at the car. It was the same old DeSoto, a bit worse for wear, and Lawson suppressed a grin. Spike had always prided himself on keeping up with the times, but he got as attached to favorite pieces of the past as any vampire.

"Sure." Give it a week or two, and Spike would be sawing through his last nerve, but right now that reckless ebullience was exactly what he needed. "You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw your face, but I should have figured that if the old man was calling in the troops, you'd be along sooner or later."

Surprise flashed through Spike's eyes, followed by wariness. "Right," he said. "Old Home Week."

So Angel hadn't summoned him, after all. Was Spike's appearance just a huge coincidence, then? Lawson mulled that over as he followed Spike back to the car, and decided he didn't care one way or the other about that, either. "So...Drusilla's not with you?" That was ambiguous enough not to reveal what he knew, and ought to net him a little more information. Obviously something serious had come between them, or Dru wouldn't be holed up in the top floor of the Hyperion mumbling about dead babies.

Spike lit a cigarette and inhaled, stoking its tip from red to brilliant orange. He recapped the lighter, smoke trickling dragon-fashion from his nostrils. "No. Third time you come home to another bloke in your bed's the charm. We've not been chummy these last few years." He tossed Lawson cigarettes and lighter, revved the engine and shot out into traffic.

Lawson drew flame from the dully gleaming Zippo and handed it back as the nicotine bite curled down into his little-used lungs. There was no pleasure in it, but that was true of most things these days. "The hell you say." He suspected there was more to it than that. Dru had been known to wander in the old days, both literally and metaphorically, but she'd always come back--largely, Lawson suspected, because no one but Spike could put up with her for long. "I've heard...all kinds of rumors. That you fell for the Slayer and went soft. That you'd gotten cursed with a soul too, or that you'd been captured by government agents and driven insane, or..."

That earned him a sideways smirk and a cocked eyebrow. "You going to require a demonstration of how soft I'm not?"

Spike didn't look soft, and he certainly hadn't felt soft in that brief roadside embrace. "I don't have any beef with you. It's true, then?"

"Some of it. Had a government microchip shoved in my skull for awhile, kept me from killing. Fell for the Slayer. Took an at-bat for the forces of goodness and light, not that they were any too pleased about it. No soul to speak of; they were going too dear. Close call, though." Spike related this as if it were the most natural course of events in the world, his cigarette tilted at a belligerent angle which dared anyone to object.

Lawson sank back against the black leather upholstery, his mind a vast blank hole of incomprehension. "So you're... what? A good guy now? A hero? A champion?"

"Champion my arse." Spike snorted derisively. "I'm William the Bloody, and I take care of my own. Slayer and me, we're a team. Sunnydale's ours, and all in it, and as Angelus can tell you, I'm passing fond of the rest of the world as well." He might not have bothered to claim the title, but his voice held all the confidence, all the arrogance of a Master staking claim. Angel wasn't the only one who'd changed in the last sixty years. "What you do on Angel's turf is his business, but if I catch you hunting mine you're dust, auld lang syne or no." Those cool blue eyes narrowed. "And speaking of Old Granddad, calling in the troops, is he? Since when do you come when Angel whistles?"

"I could say the same for you."

Spike's suspicious, sidelong frown was all the evidence one could ask for that he didn't have a clue what Lawson was talking about, but wasn't about to admit it. "I asked first."

"I kept an eye on him, you know." Lawson watched flakes of tobacco writhe and die in the glowing coal-end of his cigarette. "Checked in every decade or so, watched him sink lower and lower till he was eating rats in the gutter. Then a couple of years ago, I hear he's a goddam hero, with the Powers That Be kissing his ass. He's got a destiny. " Lawson squeezed his eyes shut, remembering the thrum of engines and the rush of dark water and the knowledge that what he did mattered. "He owes me," he whispered. "He fucking owes me."

"Well, yeh, nice job if you can get it. Wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Peaches to pay up if I were you." Spike pulled up in front of the Hyperion, tipped his head back and blew a smoke ring. "Having a soul means never having to say you're sorry." He chucked the butt, hopped out of the car and stood looking up at the Hyperion's facade as if bracing for something, then headed for the lobby doors.

"Spike!" Lawson called after him. Spike halted and looked back, curious. "Why?"

The scarred brow and one corner of Spike's mouth flicked upwards in unison. "Why what?"

Lawson held out a hand, closed the fingers on air, grasping at nothingness. "Why did you do it? How did you do it?" Desperation and jealousy fought for first place in his voice. "I want...I need...How...how did you make it matter ? Did Angel help you?" The way he never helped me?

Spike stared at him incredulously for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed.

The child in the corner was starting to smell. Nasty unwashed thing. Needed a scrubbing with good lye soap, strong and brown, till the bones showed through. Once someone else had attended to such things. Drusilla rose to pace the small room, thin white hands rubbing thin white arms, dark liquid eyes in a thin white face, like wells someone had drowned in. Grandmama would be cross if she found a dirty little boy among the teatowels, very cross indeed, and crosses burned so in the night, a-glittering and glowing... "Spike?" she called, tearing aside the curtains. The night came prowling in through broken window panes, sniffing disdainfully at the dusty corners of the room. Drusilla stood by the window, curtains in hand, no longer certain why she was there. Grandmama was gone, and Spike was lost to her. A car crawled by in the street outside, and a wild sob escaped her. She ripped the curtain from its rings in a cloud of dust and severed threads, wrapping it around her shoulders and shivering, shivering in the cold. "All lost," she whispered, mourning for the undead.

"Drusilla. What have we told you about taking meals up to your room?"

The new one was standing in the doorway. All bright knives and dark shadows, this Wesley was, brilliant and deadly as a needle in the eye. He extended a hand, cool and imperious. "Come away from there. I spoke to Buffy earlier. I don't believe she suspects, but Cordelia may have contacted her, and a Slayer's intuition can't be discounted. We should none of us take chances."

"There was fire here," she said, lifting her eyes to the charred ceiling. "Blood on the sky. I heard my Spike call out just now. Ashes, he was, mouth stuffed full of them, tongue a burning coal."

Wesley's eyes were steel. "Spike's not here, Drusilla. He's with Buffy. Come with me. Angelus will be needing you shortly." He added in more conciliatory tones, "You needn't stay here, you know. There are plenty of rooms in better repair on the lower floors."

"Daddy doesn't love me. He sent me to Miss Minchin's and I never saw him more." Drusilla let the curtains fall from her shoulders and sat down in the high-backed chair by the green baize table. Red cushion beneath her, red carpet below--hadn't been red always, but the blood spread so. A rat bared yellow incisors and scurried away, naked pink feet with their sharp little claws scrabbling across the dead child's ankles. She took up the cards and fanned them out, sending ripples through the shallow pool of light.

Willie had been the Knight of Cups, riding through the sun, but she'd birthed him into darker waters and starrier skies. Her bad dog's teeth were blunted, but she gave him the card with bite, right in the middle of the table: Knight of Swords, reversed, a spike right through the head. Humming to herself, Drusilla clasped the deck to her breast and swayed to her feet, spinning in place like a humming-top. Better to shuffle the world than the cards. Giggling and dizzy she fell to the chair again and laid the cards out, snap-snap-snap. Wesley made as if to stop her, and then reconsidered, standing back and observing her with cobra intensity.

"This covers him, and that crosses him. You see?" She pointed to the first two cards, the Fool on the precipice, and the Tower struck by lightning, and clapped her hands in delight. "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!"

Wesley made an impatient noise. "Go on."

Drusilla shot him a glance from beneath lowered lashes, sly and sweet. "Angelus gifted me a deck of human skin, once, all the cards tattooed and flayed so prettily from the bones. This one's not so nice, and the cards are all greasy." There was no honey between her thighs which could tempt this one--his heart and his loins were given elsewhere, torn in two right down the middle. But there were things he craved. She could see them, black worms behind the eyes. "Daddy doesn't love you, either."

Hands gripped the elaborate twist of her hair, jerked her head back with punishing force. Wesley's face loomed above her, steel turned to gold, the savage demon's mask poised to strike, and oh, her throat and breast so deliciously exposed! "No, he does not. But it is my understanding that love is optional in our present condition."

Drusilla shivered. "Pincers," she whispered. "Pinchers, tongs, pokers all a lovely cherry red..."

"All in good time, my dear." He shoved her back down into her chair. "Continue."

"This is beneath him, though she says otherwise." She turned up another card from the top of the deck, the maiden binding the lion's jaws with her bare hands. "This is behind him." The Magician, reversed. "Nasty little man. Blue sparks to tame a demon, blue sparks to set one free." Wesley was frowning now, trying to put the pieces together, but didn't he see that the pattern was already complete? "This crowns him, and this lies before him." Five men battling with staves, and a heart pierced with three swords. "Trouble and heartbreak, but isn't that just, when my cruel, cruel love broke my heart all into pieces? And never offered me a new one, no, not once!"

Her hands trembled as she turned over the final cards. Three cups spilt and two yet standing; the Moon, singing shrill mad songs in the night, Circe singing Ulysses home--that was her card, her very own. A happy family dancing beneath a rainbow sky. And the very, very, very last card: Death on his white horse, riding to a sunless dawn.

Wesley inhaled sharply. "Something is coming."

Drusilla's tongue ran round the circuit of her teeth. "Something's already here. My Spike's come to see Angelus, and Daddy wants to tear his cruel heart all asunder. Oh, I can't have that. It belonged to me once, and I'll not have it trampled by swine, no--if Daddy's got no use for it I'll take it back and eat it myself." She gnashed sharp white teeth. "Snap-snap." She rose to her feet, scattering the forgotten cards across the bloodstained carpet.

Wesley cried out as the future fluttered to the ground in leaves of cardboard. "Drusilla," he said tightly, "What do you mean, Spike's come to see Angelus? Does Buffy know--?"

Drusilla looked around the room as if she'd never seen it before. Flies were gathering on the dirty little boy's eyes, but she paid no mind to that. She was a princess, above such things, and soon she'd have servants and cakes and the heart of her brave knight--though perhaps not the rest of him, because he'd vexed her a great deal, Spike had, and she didn't love him any more, no, not the least little bit. But Daddy would bring him home and spank him for her, and perhaps read them a story with a very, very nasty ending. "His chariot passed by," she explained with a beneficent smile. "All trailing banners and clouds of glory. I shall come downstairs now," she announced, "and have tea."

Wesley extended a stiff, angry arm and Drusilla pressed her fingers to her lips, stifling a squeak of delight. He was as brave as any other, but no knight--his heart was a shard of ice, and did it ever warm there'd be none of it left. But for now, for now...

She left the room and danced down the hallway, past other rooms with things that were also beginning to smell, light of heart for the first time in oh, forever.

The Hyperion at four AM might as well have existed in a different dimension than the Hyperion at four PM. Dark foliage rustled ominously overhead, and Spanish moss would not have been out of place. Bernard Crowley walked stiffly through the courtyard and up the steps leading to the lobby doors, grateful for the years of discipline in subduing the uneasy flutter in his stomach at the presence of the supernatural. He paused on the threshold, his hand resting on the push bar. He needed no invitation to enter, but reluctance seized him nonetheless--or not so much reluctance, perhaps, as prudence. Through the submarine ripple of the heavy glass he could see that only a tithe of the electric lights were burning, their place usurped by the banks of candles more acceptable to vampire eyes.

The door opened with the same silent efficiency as on his last visit, but the lobby had changed. Heaps of smashed glass and broken furniture drifted in the corners, left over from his initial abduction of Angel, and added to by later struggles. Two or three filing cabinets, their drawers gaping and the folders in disarray, had been pulled out into the center of the irregular pentagram painted on the floor and partially burnt; flakes of charred paper and blistered paint littered the lobby. The detritus found in most vampire lairs--scraps and bones, victims' cast-offs--either hadn't yet had time to accumulate, or Angelus kept a tighter ship than most masters, but that this was no longer a habitation of humankind was painfully clear.

A little pack of vampires trooped single file out of Angel's office, half of them game-faced and glancing nervously back over their shoulders. The last one in line dragged a feebly-twitching body behind it, drawing a new smear of red across one point of the pentagram. Trying not to speculate on the identity of the victim, Crowley stepped aside and waited for them to pass. He'd known in a distant, intellectual way that there would be broken eggs involved in making his omelette. He hadn't counted on having to walk on the shells.

Two of the vampires broke formation and prowled over to him, snuffling and growling low in their throats, all golden eyes and hungry grins. A whipcrack voice from the balcony overhead barked out, "Back, all of you!" and the minions cringed away like wheat before the storm.

Crowley looked up; a tall slender man in casual dress whose features were strangely familiar was descending the staircase, a languid, sloe-eyed succubus in grey silk and silver crepe draped on one arm. Pale as asphodel and thin as bone, Her lips were red, her looks were free... "Drusilla," he whispered, the name catching in his throat as a hundred tales of insubstantial dread rose up in its wake.

Drusilla roused at the sound of her name, a corpse-flower stirring to the semblance of life. She smiled at him with the seductiveness of a little child and twined one dark glossy plait around her finger. "You're not a nice old man at all." She lifted an entreating face to her escort and whispered, "May we have him for tea? He'd be dry and crumbly, like autumn leaves on toast."

"Not now, Drusilla," the tall man chided her. "He's a guest." He waved the minions off. "The rest of you, your dinner's in the basement. It's all you'll get, so don't waste any. Go to your quarters once you've fed, and report to me in the evening for your assignments." He nudged the moaning thing on the floor with the toe of his shoe. "And dispose of this. We can't afford to pamper cripples." He turned a tight, professional smile on Crowley. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, at your service. Do excuse the mess, Mr. Crowley. We're in the middle of a renovation, and our office manager has taken an unscheduled leave of absence."

Wesley... Crowley's heart lurched in his chest as fingers colder than Drusilla's closed around it. This was Roger's boy--accent on the was ; Roger's boy no longer. He forced himself to meet the eyes in which no flicker of humanity remained, to take the dead hand and shake it. It didn't help that some cynical part of his mind was imagining Roger Wyndam-Pryce's acerbic reaction as something along the lines of, Vampire a whole week and still only a minion, boy? I expected better of you than that! "You haven't... spoken to your father recently, have you?"

"Not of late," Wesley replied. A golden sheen obscured the gunmetal-blue of his eyes. "But I'm quite looking forward to our next visit. Have a seat, and I'll let Angelus know you're here."

He'd been a fool to believe this could be--no, that it would be--done without spilling innocent blood. Too late to reverse that. Angelus had worked quickly, more quickly than he'd have thought possible, drawing to him all the fragments of his nightmare past and raising up new horrors to fill the gaps in the line. He didn't want to use those failsafes he'd warned Angelus about, not yet, but neither could he allow this to go on. Crowley skirted the piles of rubbish and sat gingerly down on the circular settee in the center of the lobby. Drusilla drifted away from her squire and pirouetted thistledown-light over to the front doors, her filmy skirts flaring out around her thin calves. For all her angularity she did not resemble a child; her body was a woman's, attenuated to bladelike sharpness, and her eyes, huge and dark as the night sky overhead, were freighted with torment at odds with her physical lightness. She pressed her forehead pressed forlornly to the glass. "Spike?"

Crowley shuddered. His cell phone shrilled, shattering his morbid speculation, and he fished it hastily out of his pocket. Who could possibly be calling at this hour? "Hello?"

"Mr. Crowley," said Gregson's bland voice. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, but we physicians keep such irregular hours. I'm sure you understand."

"Indeed. I was already awake, as it happens. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

The crisp flap of papers being shuffled carried across the aether. "I couldn't help noticing when I checked my messages today that there was no word from you about my payment. Last week you assured me that it would be in my hands by now."

Watchers didn't sweat, but they might feel a certain amount of heat from time to time. Crowley glanced over at the window into Angelus's office. Wesley was leaning against the doorframe, handing Angelus a small silver disk, a CD or DVD of some sort. The vampires' conversation was conducted in voices too low for him to hear, but the important question was, could they hear him? It was very possible, but they were distracted, and even vampires had to be paying attention to what they heard to make much of it. Crowley cupped his hand over his mouth and lowered his voice. "There's been a delay in the delivery," he hissed. "I'm taking steps to deal with the problem now."

"Ah? I'm pleased to hear it. I should like to pay a visit to the patient and see how he's doing. Perhaps make an adjustment or two in the stimulant balance--with such a delicate and untested device, it would be a shame if it were to fail due to some unanticipated...bug."

Crowley went cold. "That would indeed be...unfortunate. Dr. Gregson, I am not in the habit of dishonoring my commitments. You will receive your payment shortly. Goodbye."

He slumped against the teal leatherette, fingers massaging weary eyes. He was too old for this. He'd left his vengeance untended for too many years, and instead of a grand Jacobean tragedy he was the inheritor of a tangle of petty bureaucratic details, each of which had to be shepherded to its tedious conclusion. He sighed and picked up the phone again, holding it tensely to one ear as it rang and rang again.

"Yeah?" a sleepy voice answered.

"Robin? Bernard Crowley. I'm sorry to wake you--"

"Wha--Bernard?" Crowley heard blankets being disarranged. "Are you all right? What's the matter? Do you need--"

"Have you found the bag?" Crowley interrupted. "Forgive my brusqueness, my dear boy, but the matter's rather urgent."

"Bernard, it's four in the morning. Couldn't this wait until, oh, five or six?"

"No, it could not. I need it immediately." A note of desperation threaded Crowley's voice. He wondered what Wood would make of it. "I know the artifacts have sentimental value to you, but you've always known it was yours on loan. It belongs to the Council."

"As a matter of fact, no, I never knew that until you started badgering me for it last week." Wood sounded irritated, though perhaps that was understandable given the hour. "The Council's gotten along without it for twenty-five years. I've got very little left of my mother, and since when have you been so concerned with what the Council wants?"

Obstinate boy! He could be so like his mother. "I've...discovered some new leads."

Wood's voice was infinitely weary. "We've already talked about this. We've tried this already. Whatever's in that bag, you can't use it. I can't use it. There's only one person who can use it--two people--so if you've got new leads let's take those leads and the bag to one of the Slayers and let them slay."

He didn't have time for this. Minutes were slipping like water through his fingers. "I'm not a fool, Robin, and I didn't raise you to be one. The current Slayers are unreliable at best, traitors at worst. Buffy Summers is the last person--"

"Can we be sure of that? We've never met the woman. She's had some problems with the Council, but so did my mother. Look, I've got tomorrow--" More indistinct fumbling noises and a groan of dismay-- "=today free. I'll drive up to Sunnydale and give her the once-over. If she's trustworthy, I'll give her the bag. If not..."

Crowley pressed a hand to his temple to still the pounding in his head. "No! It is absolutely essential--"

But Wood had hung up, and repeated attempts at redial only netted his voice mail. Crowley deflated, squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel the vampires' arrogant gazes beating down upon his shoulders, and he straightened, arming himself for battle once more.

"Mr. Crowley, Angelus will see you now." Wesley recaptured Drusilla and led her back to the office, where she clung to his elbow and stared at Crowley in fascination, her head tipped sideways and her black-cherry lips parted to show just the hint of pearl. Crowley edged past her with furled umbrella at guard, stiff and cautious as a cat on wet pavement. He'd not counted on her presence, and wished mightily that he'd had the chance to take a few mystical precautions.

The office wasn't the shambles that the lobby was, but the decor had changed in subtle ways. The stacks of case files and most of the occult reference books were gone, replaced by a more eclectic selection of literature. The weapons which had once resided in the case in the lobby now adorned the wall behind the desk, and the small objets d'art scattered across the shelves had a disturbing edge to them. Angelus, elegant in Natazzi charcoal herringbone and burgundy silk, was lounging in the huge leather chair, examining the disk Wesley had given him. He set it aside when Crowley entered and leaned forward. "Mr. Crowley. You've met Drusilla and Wesley already. Wish I could say it was a pleasure, but that would be a big fat lie, wouldn't it?" A pale wormlike something rolled under his elbow, and the vampire picked the severed finger off his desk blotter with a grimace of annoyance, licked blood off the raw end and tossed it at the trash can. It bounced off the rim with a meaty splat and dissolved into dust in mid-air. Apparently, in some less savory part of the Hyperion, its owner had just been disposed of. Angelus folded bloodstained hands together on the desk. "Whatever can I do for you?"

"Fulfill the terms of our agreement, for one. It's been a week," Crowley snapped. "I think it's reasonable to expect some amount of progress in that time."

"You're all skin and no bones," Drusilla observed, tip-toeing up and tilting her whole body at an acute angle. She froze, an undead Degas, peering at Crowley through her fingers. "I could fill the hollow bits with candy."

Angelus's smile reached his eyes, and that was what was most disturbing about it. "Mr. Crowley, what exactly did you expect? Me to breeze down to Sunnydale, slap Spike with my glove and challenge him to a duel to the death?"

Crowley drew himself up with a sneer that needed no artifice. "I didn't expect this..." He waved a hand, indicating Wesley and the now-departed minions in the office beyond. "...exercise in self-aggrandizement."

"You said it yourself when you hired me, Mr. Crowley. Killing Spike isn't an easy assignment. I'm more than two and a half centuries old, and I didn't rack up that many birthday candles by taking stupid chances. You've waited thirty years. A few more weeks aren't going to kill you." Angelus smirked. "Well, maybe at your age, they will, but rest assured I've got more pain planned for Spike than you could possibly imagine. I'm a professional."

This wasn't going as he'd envisioned it. "Be that as it may, I must insist that you refrain from creating any more vampires. I want William the Bloody dead, not half of Los Angeles. I remind you, sir, that I am not without recourse. I can cause you to revert to your more conscientious self within twelve hours."

Angelus traded an inscrutable look with Wesley. "A lot of things can happen in twelve hours, Mr. Crowley."

"Indeed. Please consider also that there are things besides drugs which I might have arranged to be inserted into a vampire's heart in the case of an emergency."

Those flat eyes and the long silence might have boded anything. At last Angelus nodded. "Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. C. The Sweathogs are right behind you."

Angel bounded to his feet as the front door of the hotel closed behind Bernard Crowley and rubbed his hands together. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Mr. Crowley has kindly dropped the keys to the cellblock door into our laps. It's jailbreak time." He swung around the desk and caught Drusilla's hands up in his own. "Drusilla, my gem, did you hear everything he said?" She nodded, her eyes wide and bright, delighted as a child with a secret. "And did you hear everything he didn't say?" Another nod. "Good. You've done so well, I'll have to think of a special treat for you. Now tell me: What's in the bag the Watcher's trying to give Gregson?"

Drusilla curled her arms above her head, swaying back and forth to her own silver-bell laughter. "All manner of cats, and they'll come out hissing."

"Damn it, Dru--" Angel reined in his exasperation. He'd never been as patient at cozening Drusilla as Spike was, but he knew that getting angry would just make her more incoherent.

She wasn't listening anyway; her eyes were fixed on eternity. "Old and cold and dark it is at the bottom of the well, deep, deeper, deepest, but this is deeper yet, out of time, out of mind, altogether out of the world. Our forefathers and foremothers, another quartet. Black is the color of my true love's heart, black and blue and burning, always burning." She blinked, coming to herself, and pouted. "You set me afire once, and burnt my face all off, but I didn't mind because I'm always burnt on the inside."

Angel caught her around the waist and pulled her close with a calculating brutality, twisting her slender wrist till the bones ground together and she hissed in pleasure. "I'll set you aflame again once I've got that bag, sweet, build you a bonfire of the old man's bones."

"Oooh, you say such dreadful things, it makes me all tingly." Drusilla shimmied against him, fangs snapping a hairsbreadth away from his cheek.

"Wes, I need you to go to Sunnydale. Take my car, and take Dru with you, if you think she'll be useful and you can keep her under control." Angel checked his watch against his innate sense of the night's passage. "If you leave now, you can get there just before dawn, and once in Sunnydale you can get anywhere you need to through the sewers. Find this Robin Wood, and get me that bag."

Wesley nodded, but made no move for the door. "Wouldn't it be far simpler to kill Spike? I realize he's a formidable foe in hand-to-hand combat, but this is the twenty-first century. There's no need to engage him in combat at all. A soft-nosed bullet in the brain will disable him quite nicely, and a follow-up crossbow bolt will dispose of him completely."

All the best minions started out as a pain in the ass, Angel reminded himself. "Yeah, and I could take half the town out with a truckload of fertilizer, too. Want to know why I don't?"

"Actually, yes, I would." Wesley's eyes met his, full of cool, barely-masked defiance.

Angel sauntered over to the taller man and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "I can give you three good reasons." His fingers dug into the meat of Wesley's shoulder with inexorable pressure, centuries of power pitted against a bare week free of the grave. "Number one, I don't want Spike dead." A small noise escaped Wesley's clenched teeth, a cry of pain or pleasure or denial. He clutched Angel's wrist with both hands, just as Cordelia had, and with as little effect. "Number two, even if I did want to kill Spike, I'm an artist. My object all sublime, Wes." The muscles in Wesley's thighs were trembling now, his whole body rigid with the effort of remaining upright. "And number three..." Angel leaned closer, meeting those blued-steel eyes with his own. "We're not in it to the death. That's not what exalts us above the beasts. We're in it to the pain. You're learning that, with Fred, but what you've got to realize is that every kill we make deserves that much artistry."

Tendons bowed and joints buckled, and Wesley collapsed to his knees, his head thrown back and his eyes squeezed shut. Angel never slackened his grip. He stooped, his tongue tracing the corded muscles of Wesley's bared throat from clavicle to stubbled chin, felt the body beneath him tense and shudder as he passed over the angry welt of scar tissue. The Judas mark of Justine's knife was eternal, now. "You're a good boy, Wesley," he murmured. "Staying at home, balancing the checkbook, keeping the minions in line, and here I am fussing over the prodigal son. It's not fair, is it? What did you do to deserve this?" He vamped out, fangs indenting the skin on either side of the scar, and growled, "Answer me!"

Drusilla watched wide-eyed and avid, twig-thin fingers caressing her own throat. Angel's fangs drew blood, and Wesley choked out, "Betrayed you...sire," and went limp, his spine curling in supplication.

One minute longer, and Angel's grip loosened. Wesley's head rested on his thigh, and Wesley's hands still clutched the hand which held him down. Angel stroked the short disordered hair and smiled. "Yes. Yes, you did. That's why you're here, Wes. To pay. That's why you'll do as I tell you, forever and without question." The bent shoulders shook, and the head beneath his hand nodded. "Good. Now, once you have the bag..." God, this was perfect, circumstance and opportunity unfolding like a puzzle-box with only one solution. "Kill him, and make it ugly. Stick around long enough to make sure Buffy finds the body, and that when she does, there's a heart-rending picture of Mommy the dead Slayer somewhere on it, and a memento or two carelessly left behind by his killer. Spike smokes Marlboro Reds, doesn't he?"

"I wouldn't know, but why--oh." Wesley's voice fell to a respectful hush. "That's...brilliant. On so many levels. Angelus, you truly are a master."

Angel waved a modest hand. "I do my best. Now get out of here before the sun catches you."

He sank down behind the desk as the chastened Wesley departed with Drusilla twirling dreamily in his wake, and contemplated the framed photos of Connor and of Cordelia. It had taken him a long time to realize what was truly important, and then only when Connor had stolen it from him. The Order of Aurelius had never meant anything to him. The Master's dreams of bringing back the Old Ones had been sentimental stupidity--even the debased lineages of demons still walking the earth considered vampires half-breed trash; to an Ascended One, vampires would be less than vermin. But old Heinrich Nest had gotten one thing right: he'd known the power of family.

No pain he'd suffered in the depths of Acathla's realm could match the agony of realizing that it was Buffy's sword which had delivered him there, and that he'd deserved to go. No demonic torment matched the anguish of seeing Connor snatched from his arms by his best friend, or the realization that his son had returned only to condemn him to a watery prison for eternity. Hell, his hell, wasn't pitchforks and flames. Hell was other people, and he had never, for one minute, truly escaped it. He lived in hell, with every soul-dogged step he took. He created his own hell and drew it around him like a cloak, telling himself it was necessary, even noble. Even now, he could feel his soul squirming and stretching in its anesthetized cocoon. No... I shouldn't... They need...

Is this the work of love? he'd asked his sire once, long ago. You never made me happy, he'd spat at her two and a half centuries later, and he hadn't been lying; no more had the air he'd breathed or the beat of his heart had made him happy as a living man, but they were as essential to his existence as she had been. Happiness and love were fragile, human things, cobwebs easily brushed aside by time and chance. The passions of demons ran deeper, darker, more enduring.

His fingers traced the line of Connor's jaw, seeking out the fleeting resemblance to his mother's delicate blond beauty. Hell could not be escaped; the trick, then, was to bend Hell to your will. He would have this child of Darla's loins and his, have him, hold him, mark him, break him. He would have Cordelia, have her bountiful body and her barbed tongue, and Wesley with his yearning and sword's-edge loyalty, and Spike with his killer's hands and bruised poet's heart. Mark all of them, brand them to the bone, bind and preserve them or destroy them as seemed good. And then...

"...Buffy, and this is Dawn," said a voice in the lobby, proud as any indulgent sire, "and this is my girl Will--brilliant demon she makes, don't she?"

Spike was standing in the doorway to the office, showing off a fan of dog-eared photos to Lawson. In the last few years he'd abandoned the punk trappings one by one, and now he looked disturbingly normal--he could have passed for anyone's unusually good-looking, athletic, and sunlight-averse next-door neighbor, and if Buffy's neighbors noticed the battered knuckles at such odds with those elegant hands, they'd never be gauche enough to bring it up. Any day now he'd ditch the bleach for a trendy brown buzz cut, and the travesty would be complete.

Under Angel's scrutiny Spike stuffed the photographs hastily back into his wallet and the wallet back into his hip pocket. "Seems I've missed an episode or two. You mind explaining what's going on?"

Angel set the picture of Connor down and allowed himself a rush of nostalgia. The bitterness and rivalry couldn't be banished entirely, but they'd had good times, too. Spike brought that bitterness on himself with his unreasonable assumptions that human love could run in tandem with demonic desire, but with the soul clubbed into submission, Angel could admit that some of the bad blood could be laid at his own doorstep. "That might be a little difficult, Spike. I didn't expect you tonight. This is a surprise." And a potential problem; had Spike spoken to anyone else in L.A. who might provide an alibi for his upcoming debut as a murder suspect? "Wesley will be just devastated to have missed you. Lawson, take a walk."

Lawson gave him a searching look, but as always, obeyed orders and left without a word. He'd have to have a talk with that boy later and see what nonsense Spike had been feeding him; Lawson was still an unknown quantity in too many ways. Spike folded his arms across his chest and rocked ever so slightly on the balls of his feet, glancing around the room and taking in the alterations with narrowed eyes. "Yeh? And how is tall, dork, and stubbly?"

Ignoring the question, Angel strolled over and thumped him in the (still intimidatingly firm, if no longer quite as concave) stomach. "You look to be living well, boy. Come on, you can tell me--going off the leash when your girlfriend's not looking?"

Spike's left eyebrow migrated northwards, and he didn't relax in the slightest. "Sorry to disappoint. Domestic life, and all. Tara's a wizard with the pig's blood. Almost doesn't taste like shit when she makes it."

Angel began a slow, shark-like circling, while Spike eyed him warily. "Tara? The boring one, isn't she?"

"I wouldn't put it that way. She's why I'm here, in fact--she's in the market for some Mohra blood, and Buffy says you killed one of them a few years back. Thought I'd drop by and ask for some grandfatherly advice." He jerked a thumb at the devastated lobby. "But if I only get one question, I'm a bit more curious why the place looks like the Baudelaire orphans are chained up in the attic, and why you've got Unkie Lawson press-ganging fledges in my territory without a by-your-leave." Spike took a deep breath, head cocked, brows knit, and his frown deepened to a look of...well, it wasn't horror; he wasn't that far gone in his imitation of humanity. More like confused irritation. "Bugger, Pryce got turned, didn't he? I can smell the difference. Is that why the place is smashed up? And...sodding hell, Dru's been here! Was it her?" He grabbed Angel's shirt-front. "Tell me, you great beetle-browed gorilla!"

With great effort, Angel kept a straight face. "Yeah, sure, Spike. That's it. Drusilla turned Wesley. Now I've got to hunt them both down and kill them." The dawning panic in Spike's eyes was tasty enough to eat with a spoon. "Wanna help, you being a certified good guy and all?"

Spike stared at him, throat working, suspicion growing, and very slowly, he released his hold on Angel's collar. "Angelus?" he whispered. There was caution and wonder and confusion in his eyes, and fear--oh, yeah, under that swaggering exterior Spike knew fear, and plenty of it. "No. You still reek of soul." He looked around. "Where's everyone else? You haven't gone and turned all of them, have you?"

"Not yet. You think I should?"

Spike shook his head, bewildered. "What's got into you? This is going to kill Buffy!"

He pulled that out with the air of a magician flinging his best trick on the mercy of a tough house, and Angel laughed. "That's the idea." He threw a playful punch, pulled it short. "You don't get it yet, do you? I've moved beyond the whole soul/no-soul dichotomy, Spike. It's overrated. I've got a new gig now, and I'm putting the band back together. Whaddya say?"

"What do I say?" Spike bellowed. "Are you barking? You've spent the last two years looking down your nose 'cause I'm not moral enough to suit your lofty standards! Maybe you can switch the evil on and off like a leaky tap, but it's not that bleeding easy for me! Do you have any idea how many people I don't especially want to kill these days? Hundreds, mate! Maybe thousands!" He drove his point home with a fist-thump on the nearest bookshelf, toppling an entire row of existentialist philosophy. "What do you fucking expect me to say?"

"Well, in a word... thanks." Angel slung a companionable arm around the younger vampire's shoulders, grinning as all that lean muscle went rigid beneath his touch. He didn't expect this to be easy. He'd once tried to destroy the entire world to wipe out the memory of a Slayer's kisses and his own loathed pretensions of humanity. Spike had betrayed his demon heritage to help save it, not just once, but again and again. "You think I don't know how hard this is for you? You're right, I don't--but I know how hard it is for me, and I've got a soul. I know how damn near impossible it is some nights to wake up and walk among them, knowing you could reach out and--"

"Yeh, yeh, blood, power, insatiable craving," Spike interrupted, shaking off the arm. "Got the memo. I'm over that bit. Mostly. It's the moral conundrums that keep me up days. Such as WHAT THE HELL TO DO WITH WESLEY WYNDAM-PONCE!" He stormed across the office and flopped down in Angel's chair, glaring up at his grandsire. "We're running short of bloody Orbs of Thessulah, you know!"

"Yeah, pity about that. Look, the point is, you've run a hell of a race. I don't know another vampire in the world who could do what you've done--hell, I don't know another vampire who'd want to." Angel leaned against the desk and clapped in slow, ironic applause. "Congratulations, Spike, you're the Temple Grandin of vampires. But the fact is, you're at a dead end. You've come as far as you can go without a soul, and since Buffy bites the dust if you try to get your soul back...well, you're at a bit of an impasse, aren't you? There's a glass ceiling on the side of goodness and light that you're never going to break through, and you've never struck me as a guy who's willing to settle for second best. Drusilla misses her boy. I miss him, too." For a second all pretense dropped. "I never had--I could never want--a better second than you, Spike."

A flight of might-have-beens took wing in those terrifying clear blue eyes. Twenty years they'd traveled together, twenty years of joyful, uncomplicated fighting and feeding and fucking, twenty years when it hadn't been Buffy's back that Spike had been watching. Family. Seconds ticked by as Spike sat transfixed by memory, and then he shook his head, slowly, and with something akin to regret. "It's too late for that, Angelus. Far too late. Haven't been a boy in a very long time." There was a wry and sorrowful amusement in his voice. "And barring that once, I never was yours, was I now?"

"I'm not talking about the past, Spike. I'm talking about the future." Angel leaned close and let his voice drop to a low, tantalizing purr. "We're not constrained by good and evil, you and me. There's a few hundred people you don't want to kill? Great. Don't kill 'em. There's six billion more out there that you don't give a damn for. And if it's Buffy you're worried about, hell, boy, you can make her one of us and bring her along if you want."

Quick as that, the nostalgic shadows crumbled away to nothing, and Spike's eyes chilled to chips of blue ice. "I'll see us both dust before I let that happen, grandsire. And come to that," he snarled, "I don't recall either you nor Dru missing me much when you had one another to amuse yourselves. 'Oooh, come along, Spike, let's be a family again, there's a few continents left you haven't worn horns on yet!'" His shoulders slumped. "You've had your little game, so just trot your soul out of storage and tell me where the others are. Took a liking to that skinny bird with the taco fetish when I was up here last, and if you've made a balls-up of turning her--"

He wasn't going to get any farther with this tonight. Best wait for Wesley's little project to bear its bitter fruit. Spike was nothing if not stubborn. He might as well have a little fun. "Balled her up?" Angel drawled. "Some one of these days you're gonna have to get over the Mommy issues, Willie-boy, and accept that she really did think that you were a talentless little milksop. In vampirism veritas--oof!"

In retrospect, cooler heads prevailing and such, throwing the desk had probably been a tactical error. For one thing, while it had knocked Angel back through the door and half-way across the lobby with an extremely satisfying crash, it had also jammed in the door-frame, and was now blocking the entire door of the office, trapping him inside while his furious grandsire systematically dismantled it on his way to getting back inside. Luckily Angel's taste in furniture was as rarefied as his taste in clothing, and the doorframe itself was sturdy pre-War construction. It was going to take even Angel awhile to smash through several layers of solid mahogany.

Spike shoved the last bookshelf into place front of the window between the office and the lobby and sat down in the swivel chair. He hooked one leg over the arm and twirled back and forth while he contemplated his options. Obviously he had to get out of here and let Buffy know what was afoot...but exactly what was afoot? Had Angel gone evil, or had those three months in a pineapple under the sea finally caught up and sent him off his chump? The buggering soul was still firmly in place, he was certain of that, but it seemed to be firing a few cylinders short, and that was...incredibly confusing.

Shouts and snarls drifted in from the lobby, where a dozen strange vampires had erupted from the basement and were now milling around in confusion. Angel had called up the reserves. Luckily the reserves had about enough brain between them to fit into a teaspoon, but any moment now someone would come up with the bright idea of smashing the window and pushing over the shelves. There was a vent overhead, but ducts in the real world were never as convenient and spacious as the movies made them out to be, and like as not it would dead-end in an air-conditioning filter somewhere. No, he'd have to fight his way out.

The desk shivered in place, and an ominous cracking sound filled the room. Spike eyed the handy display of weaponry on the wall behind him--no crossbows, worse luck, but Angel probably hadn't wanted something that could so easily be turned against him in easy reach. Swords weren't his best weapon, but better than nothing, and if he could find something with a left-handed guard... Bypass the rapiers; for all their swashbuckling allure, a piercing weapon wouldn't do enough damage to slow a vamp down. Hand-and-a-half broadsword--no good; the fucking thing was almost as tall as he was. Hah, saber! Not a flimsy modern fencing sword but a good old-fashioned cavalry model that made no bones about being forged to kill. Short enough to use in close quarters, and vamp strength would make up for the lack of a charging horse behind it. He could lop a few heads off with this thing. Spike made a few experimental passes from high guard and crouched, waiting.

Outside in the lobby, the confused yammering had resolved into a chant of "One, two, three, pull!" With a wall-jarring shudder the desk toppled forward, peeling jagged shards of wood from the doorframe as it tore free. Before it hit the ground Spike was surging through the gap, coming down on the desk with bared fangs and a blood-curdling roar. The nearest minion slipped and scrabbled under the unexpected extra weight, and a wild yell ended in a crunching gurgle as the desk crashed down. Spike wrenched a two-foot fragment of pine from the doorframe and plunged it into the heart of the minion to his right as he whirled past, and feinted from the head to the side, sword-blade whistling through the dispersing cloud of dust to find a temporary home in the left-hand minion's gut. Gore sprayed scattershot across the floor--bloody hell, was a mass slaughter in the vicinity going to set that pentagram doojigger off? Too late to worry about that now.

The minion whose belly he'd laid open was staring down at his innards in horror, frantically trying to stuff the shiny pink loops of blood-slick intestine back where they belonged. The three who'd taken his place were jittering just out of range, clutching makeshift stakes and nerving themselves for a mass attack. Spike balanced en garde atop the teetering desk, the tip of his blade revolving in deceptively lazy circles, ready to lash out in any direction. "Come one, come all, step right up and don't be shy! Bring the kiddies! Plenty of fun to be had for all!"

The stand-off couldn't last forever. One of the minions ventured half an inch too close, and leaped back with a yell, forearm sliced open to the bone. A quick glance showed that four of the most competent-looking of the minions were guarding the front door, and several others had disappeared, along with Angel himself, probably to get those--

twang!

Twist, lunge, slice, and one wooden shaft skidded along the blade and exploded into splinters as Spike tossed the sword from his left hand to his right and plucked the second bolt out of the air. In one deadly swooping motion he spun and aimed--just like darts--and hurled it back along its fatal arc. One of the two startled faces on the balcony dissolved into dust. Before the second archer could blink Spike clamped his blade between his teeth and leaped for the balcony, caught the railing in both hands and back-flipped up and over--Douglas sodding Fairbanks, eat your heart out. The minion was still cranking a new bolt into position when Spike's sword clove a Northwest Passage between head and shoulders. He leaned over the balcony and roared, "You want to try that again, you cowardly bastards?" Bloody stupid, since catching a crossbow bolt in mid-flight wasn't a sitter even for a vampire as fast on the draw as he was, but they'd pissed him off. He hopped up onto the railing and flung his arms wide. "Come on, you sorry pieces of graveyard trash, is that all you've got? Afraid of one bloke with a pointy stick? Thought you were demons, not spaniel puppies!"

Another crossbow bolt sizzled through the air and clipped his thigh as he dodged, stinging like fuck-all. Blood seeped into frayed denim. "Missed again!" he yelled. And then the minions were parting around Angelus's striding form as the bog-trotting bastard marched up the stairs like Sherman to Atlanta, leather longcoat billowing behind him. He stopped at the head of the stairs, standing foursquare with those massive shoulders looking to block the whole fucking landing, wielding a broadsword the size of the Sears Tower and a smile that would have frozen the blood of Genghis Khan. "You want to play, Spike? Come pick on someone your own size."

He'd promised Buffy he wouldn't get into trouble. He should run. Scarper. Turn tail. Make like Brave Sir Robin and break for the door. He'd been lucky so far, but there were still seven, eight minions left, and Lawson and Wesley and Dru would show up any minute, and Christ, he couldn't run a sword through Dru in cold blood, could he? Untrained fledges were one thing, but he'd never, in all his days, managed to beat Angel in a fair fight.

Spike took a fresh grip on his sword, shook the blood and dust from his eyes, tongue-tip curling between his teeth in anticipation. Ignoring the burning in his thigh, he spun in place on the rail, stretched out one hand with an exultant grin and crooked a finger, beckoning. The fool upon the precipice. "Well, what are you waiting for, mate? Bring it on."

Continued in Chapter 9