Seeing the looks on Angel and Cordelia’s faces flooded my memory with pictures. Doyle, the Irish guy that got visions of people in trouble. I should have remembered. I had only met him for a moment before he and Cordelia had left. Angel had told me a few days later he had died. The pain was evident in the eyes of the two brunettes.
Movement down the hall caught my eye again. The woman had ducked back around the corner. “Angel,” I said quietly. “There was a woman, light brown hair, waifish, watching all this with a great deal of interest. She just went around that corner.” As he and Cordy strode off to investigate, Spike stood before me.
“Did you really mean that, pet?”
I knew what he was talking about. Vampire hearing and all that. He had heard what I said to Angel. “Yeah, I really did.”
I grabbed his hand and began walking off in the direction Angel and Cordy had left in. As I glanced over at Spike, I saw a smile of contentment on his face. I think in his heart, he really thought Angel was more important. That he had a free pass some how and I would always go back to him. Perhaps in the past, but not anymore. Spike was mine, and I was going to protect him from whomever or whatever, as I knew he would do the same for me.
We came upon Angel, Cordy, and the girl, who was hanging up her cell phone.
Angel smiled knowingly at her. “Can we have a word with you, Eve?”
I watched with amusement as Cordy manhandled the woman into Angel’s office. “Spike,” Angel said as he picked up the phone to call the rest of his gang, “watch Eve. If she moves, eat her.”
Spike smirked down at Eve where she was sitting in a chair. He stood in front of her and shifted to game face.
Cordelia and I stood looking out the windows. “I’ve made my decision about the training stuff,” she said quietly to me.
“Oh yeah? And what did you decide?” I asked her.
“I want to go to London, but not right away. Will you train me for a week or two first? I just don’t want to feel helpless. When Spike attacked me, all I could think of was that if I was trained like you, I could have stopped him from biting me. I mean, even though I know now he was just…taste testing me.”
I smiled ironically at her. “Don’t count on it. Spike is by far the most accomplished fighter I have ever come across. Except for fighting a hellgod, fighting Spike is the closest I have ever come to being beaten by another warrior. He had the upper hand once and the only thing that saved me was my mom hitting him over the head with an axe. That’s why Spike is, or was my sparring partner. I never had to hold back and worry about hurting him. I knew it would be a challenge.”
“I’ll still spar with you, Slayer.” He leered at me suggestively, his gold eyes flashing. Even in game face, he was stunning.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Ha Ha, Big Bad. Actually, you can help me train Cordelia.” I turned back to her. “He’s killed two Slayers in his day. Who better to teach you than me, the longest living Slayer in history, and a vampire heralded as the ‘Slayer of Slayers?’”
Spike looked Cordy over appraisingly. “Yeah, I fancy we could teach the Cheerleader to do a bit of violence.”
We were interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the gang. We all took places around Eve’s chair to interrogate her.
Angel began. “We’ve got a problem, Eve.”
“Damn right you do,” Eve snapped. “When I tell the senior partners you assaulted me…”
Angel started to speak again, cutting her off. “A couple weeks ago, a man approached Spike. Told him that the Powers that Be have some missions for him. Spike, brain trust that he is, went along with it.”
Spike looked up from his spot by the window. “Hey!” he exclaimed, insulted.
Angel stopped his pacing to stand in front of Eve. “He’s the one that told Spike to save me from the parasite. The parasite you put on me in the first place.”
Eve started to stand. “Not this again.”
Cordelia stepped up in front of her. “Get out of that chair and I will feed you those Manolo Blahniks.” She looked down at Eve’s shoes and smirked. “Which are stunning, by the way.”
“Seems to me like you and this guy are working together,” Angel mused.
Eve sat back down on her chair in a huff. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you can’t keep me here. I have to leave.” Her nervousness was apparent as her eyes darted to the door.
Angel continued as if she had not spoken at all. “But the thing that really, really pisses me off is that this guy seems to be going by the name of Doyle.” His face had slipped into a frozen mask of anger.
Eve shrugged carelessly. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” she quipped.
Cordelia walked up to her, her voice rising with each word as she jabbed her finger in Eve’s face. “It does to me. It rings a big frickin’ gong and I want to know who had the nerve to be using that name.”
Angel gently moved Cordy aside and addressed Eve again. “I’m gonna give you one chance to tell me where he is.”
“Look, “ she sneered, “I don’t know what…”
Her words were cut off by the door of office opening. A small blonde woman stuck her head in. “Excuse me, sir?”
Angel turned to look at the rude interruption. “Who are you?” he asked derisively.
The girl had the decency to look embarrassed. “Um…I’m Melody, your new secretary.”
I started to snicker. Angel looked at me questioningly. “I killed your last secretary, Harmony. Now you have a new one, Melody. If I kill her, will you get one named Rhythm?”
Spike chuckled and came to wrap his arms around my waist. He slipped into game face and ran his fangs lightly over the bite mark on my neck. “You killed Harmony? That’s my little sociopath.” He set his chin on my shoulder and stayed there.
During this exchange I kept my eyes on Eve. I was aware of how frightening the two of us must look right then. She was looking at me with unabashed fear in her eyes. This was something that I was going to play up.
“What do you want, Melody?” Angel sneered.
“Well...uh…I was wondering if I got the afternoon off too, because everyone’s gone. The building cleared out a few minutes ago.”
Angel turned from the secretary to stare at our hostage. “What’s going on, Eve?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
…
Gunn came striding back into the office. “I checked the server. A message went out. Code seven, just before the building cleared out.”
“What’s a code seven, Eve?” Angel asked menacingly.
“I don’t know,” Eve floundered. Under Cordelia’s glare, she added, “Seriously.”
Cordy rolled her eyes. “Okay, this is getting us nowhere. Angel, torture her.”
Angel turned confused eyes to the former cheerleader. “What?”
“What?” Eve’s voice echoed his question in a voice laced with panic.
“You heard me. Building clearing out means we don’t have a lot of time. Have at it,” Cordy rationalized.
“I just can’t…torture her...” Angel stammered.
“I can,” I stated. All eyes turned to me and I felt Spike chuckle against my neck. “Granted, I haven’t fought a human in a long time. I mean, I am the strongest person in this room. I bet if I pull my punches a little, I can break all her ribs. I could break her nose, but if I hit her too hard, I could send bone shards into her brain and then she wouldn’t b able to tell us anything.” I cracked my knuckles and hoped between killing Harmony and what I had just said, it would be enough that I wouldn’t have to hit her at all. Well, at least not too much. I stepped forward from the safety of Spike’s embrace and walked up in front of Eve.
I cocked back my fist and as I was wondering just how hard I should hit her, she cracked. Damn.
“Ok…I’ll tell you. It’s a failsafe.” I stepped back and looked to Angel as Eve continued her explanation. “Look, the senior partners were never they could keep you under their thumb, so they created a failsafe. It’s housed in the sublevels of the building.”
“What kind of failsafe?” Fred asked.
Eve shook her head. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s huge and alive…and specifically designed to destroy you,” she replied.
Angel glared at her. “How can I stop it?”
“The only way to shut it down’s in the chamber itself.”
Fred turned her confused eyes on Eve again, “Well, if that’s true, then who activated in the first place?”
Gunn nodded. “You were with us when the building cleared out.”
“Had to be someone else. Someone with the ability to slip past Wolfram and Hart’s security systems,” Wesley mused.
Lorne agreed. “Like our magically tattooed faux Doyle.”
Angel turned to where my lover stood. “Spike, I don’t wanna go in blind. Anything else you know about this guy?”
Spike shrugged. “Not much. Average size. Dresses like an urban cowboy. Got his hand chopped off once.”
Cordelia’s eyes got huge. “His hand?”
“He’s back,” Wesley stated flatly.
Angel looked contemplative. “Lindsey,” he said softly.
“Who?” I asked.
Angel ignored me and turned to Gunn, “Lock the building down, make sure he can’t get out. Don’t trust security systems. He won’t show up because of those tattoos of his.”
“There may be a way to fix that. I’ll need some help,” Wesley solemnly intoned.
“My dance card’s free,” Lorne offered.
“Take Eve, tie her to a chair or something,” Angel ordered.
Wes and Lorne nodded. They each grabbed one of her arms and drug her out of the room.
Fred turned to Angel. “Who is Lindsey?” It was nice to know that Spike and I weren’t the only ones who had no clue who this guy was or what was going on.
Cordelia answered. “A lawyer. Wolfram and Harts former golden boy, till he ran off to go find himself.”
“Yeah, he should have stayed lost,” Angel quipped.
I walked over to Fred and motioned to the elastic band holding up her hair.
“You wouldn’t happen to have another one of those, would you,” I asked.
She nodded and reached into her pocket.
Lorne came back into the office and gestured to the abundance of weapons littering the wall behind Angel’s desk. “Need a dagger, Angelwings. Apparently my blood is an ingredient in this spell.”
Fred gave me a hair elastic and I pulled my hair into a high ponytail. If we were going to fight a failsafe, I wanted to be able to see it. There was no way I was going to let Angel go alone. Not because I was concerned for his health, mind you. I was afraid what ever it was he was going to fight; he wouldn’t be able to beat it.
Angel then noted the fresh bite marks on my neck and came over to investigate. “You let him bite you?” he asked me quietly.
I looked at him and saw concern in his eyes. “He’s my lover, Angel. I love the demon and the man. He’s both and I embrace that.” I smiled at his obvious contempt for what I was saying. “And not to mention, he had his hands cut off last night and now they work fine. My blood had magical vampy healing powers, as you well remember.” I raised an eyebrow at him.
He turned to Spike. “You haven’t claimed her?”
Spike glared at him. “No, I bloody well haven’t. She hasn’t even been here twenty-four hours. We haven’t discussed it yet.”
“Claimed?” I was confused. “What does that mean exactly?”
Angel turned to me, face etched in scorn. “You are the Slayer, chosen to fight vampires. Don’t you know anything about us at all?” He shook his head sadly and I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying anything. Pompous ass. “Claiming is the vampire equivalent to marriage, usually initiated during sex.”
“Well, excuse me for assuming that I should study vampire mating rituals in order to kill you more effectively,” I glared at him. “Of course, it would make the most sense if I bond myself to Spike. We were engaged at one point after all.”
Spike grinned at me. “Good times.”
I grabbed Lorne and began waltzing around the room singing. He joined me after the fist word.
“Memories
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water colored memories
Of the way we were.”
We stopped dancing by the wall behind Angel’s desk. I pulled two swords down from the wall, and threw one to Cordy.
“Buffy, Cordy. No,” Angel started.
“Yeah, save it, Angel. You can order me around all you want, but I know my rights. And I wanna see a lawyer.” Damn, she was good. I liked this new Cordelia.
Angel nodded slowly and then turned back to Fred. “Be ready to evacuate if this thing gets past us. Get the hell out of the building.”
[Reviews - 83]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 1606 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +