Angel Fanfic: The Dead Church (Part 1)
Angel Fanfic: The Dead Church (Part 1)
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Summary: Follows "Slightly Darker Than Black" and "Burn", the last of a three-part story arc. Justine and Wesley are on the trail of a portal that might lead to Holtz, Quar-toth and the rescue of Angel's son, but as Wesley finds his sanity again, Justine might be losing hers. Who is Wesley willing to sacrifice, in the end?
Disclaimer: Still not mine. I checked.
Warnings: You're kidding. ADULT CONTENT ANGST DARKNESS OMG.
Dedication: Still dedicated to starlet2367, who still rocks.
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Six days after leaving Los Angeles, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce had found his new home, such as it was: a reeking, seedy Mexican bar with substandard liquor. It had three distinct advantages. First, gringos were treated the same as the locals, no better or worse. Second, the owner of the bar fancied himself something of a scholar, and for a hundred dollars American his arcane library was open for reference.
Third, everybody in a place this disreputable had something to hide, and like it or not, Wesley knew he fit right in. A scar still burned on his throat where betrayal had cut him, and he had a rakish, unshaven look. He kept it that way, deliberately, and hoped that the tougher patrons of this cesspool didn't realize he still wished that the knife had cut deeper. For a few hours he'd risen out of despair, but he'd been holding to Cordelia then. There was nothing to hold to now.
He was attacked by a vision of Cordelia climaxing in Angel's arms, shuddering, her whole body responding to his touch. I'm in love with him, she'd said. Regardless of the fact that Angel had, after that illicit sexual thrill, ripped a hole in her throat and tried to drink her dry. Wesley knew all about the kind of love that devoured and raged and raped. He'd seen it at close range, in his own father's eyes, in the flinches and pallid surrender of his mother.
A voice whispered in his head, and it sounded startlingly like Justine's: Come on, don't lie to yourself. You stood there and watched them do it and it turned you on.
He flinched at the thought, even as he knew it was right. Yes, he had things to hide. Especially from himself.
A knife thumped point-first into the table six inches from his left hand, followed by the sloppy arrival of three glasses of tequila.
Speaking of Justine …
She dropped into a chair across from him, and he controlled his instinctive flash of dislike. Uncouth, unkempt, violent -- not his ideal woman in any way. She was dressed in the same stained blue jeans and ragged flannel shirt she'd been wearing for three days, and he doubted her hair had more than nodding acquaintance to a comb for longer than that. She reached out for the first glass of tequila, and he saw the evidence of yesterday's bar fight … scraped knuckles, yellowing bruises on her arm.
Her dark, insolent eyes glittered as she tossed the empty glass back on the table between them. It spun in an unsteady circle, spraying a hiccup of alcoholic drops.
"What do you want?" he asked, in as even a tone as he could manage. It didn't pay to give in to Justine's provocations.
"A little action would be nice. How long are we going to sit around this toilet, anyway? Until you grow a backbone?" Her sarcasm scorched, but he'd grown relatively fireproof these last few days.
"You're drunk." He made it a dismissal. She laughed and leaned forward, ragged auburn hair feathering over her face, and gulped down another drink without the softening benefit of salt or lime.
"Wow, look who's talking, the human sponge."
He controlled a flash of guilt. "I'm not drinking, I'm working."
"You finally cleaned them out of cheap-shit rotgut? How sad. And, news flash, teabag, piddling around with these books isn't working." She reached for the third drink, bobbled it, slopped it along the table perilously close to the hand-illuminated Ch'hashk manuscript laid out on the stained table in front of him.
He could have moved the manuscript. He grabbed Justine's wrist instead, staring at her with steady, angry eyes. "Enough," he said, very softly. "Amuse yourself somewhere else."
She didn't try to pull away, which was odd; he was holding her hard enough to dig into the bruises. Her hot, half-dreaming eyes locked on his, and she smiled.
"If you don't let go, I'm going to have to kick your ass," she said. "I've really been looking forward to that."
He had no doubt. He could feel her pulse racing through his fingers, jackhammered by adrenaline. And there was a certain dark charm to the idea, to let all of this responsibility slide and lose himself in battle with someone who richly deserved all he could inflict on her.
And vice versa.
He let her go. "If you're going to drink yourself unconscious, at least have the courtesy to do it quietly. And elsewhere."
He went back to the manuscript, or tried to. He'd gotten through four more laborious lines -- yes, there was mention of a portal nearby, the question was where -- and had started to forget that she was kicking the leg of the table when he heard a man's voice say, "Buy you a drink, chica?"
None of his business, but he looked up anyway. There was a man bent over Justine's chair, no better or worse than the rest of them in this place but with unpleasantly aggressive body language. Justine ignored him. The man shoved her chair back from the table and stepped closer. "You deaf, bitch?"
She'd have to have been blind as well. His crotch was outthrust inches from her face. She stared at it, expressionless, then slowly let her gaze drift up. She tilted her head and gave the man a razor-edged, glittering, adrenaline-fueled smile.
"That depends on who's talking." Wesley knew that sex-kitten purr, knew it meant trouble. She reached for the last glass of tequila, raised it to her lips and tossed it back without looking away from her would-be seducer. Licked her lips. "You got anything to say that won't bore me to death?"
"Maybe." He grinned back, snapped his fingers at the bartender and pointed down at Justine, held up two fingers. Ah, the universal sign language of the drunk.
At least she was being entertained, and he could get back to work, Wesley thought. But when he looked down at the manuscript it was so much nonsense, dots swimming illegibly in a sea of gold leaf and vellum. He pinched the bridge of his nose and wished, with a bone-deep desperation, that he was alone. Justine was … unbearable sometimes, like a thumb pressing on a bruise.
When he put his glasses back on, the man was still -- literally -- in Justine's face, and her grin had turned feral.
"Tell you what," she said, and seductively slithered upright, staying so close that her parted lips almost brushed the bulge in the man's pants as she rose. Promises implicit in every blatantly sexual line of her body. Wesley felt his skin tighten in response. "You tell me a few things, I'll tell you a few things, maybe something interesting will come up, how about that?"
From the man's leer, the implications weren't lost on him. "Something already came up."
"Well, isn't that flattering."
He rubbed his crotch. "All for you, querida."
Wesley opened his mouth to say something that probably wasn't wise, but Justine -- of course -- beat him to it. She looked down, blatantly measuring, then up into the man's face, and laughed. "That's it? I hope you brought friends." She put a hand flat against his chest and shoved, hard, knocked him staggering. "Don't waste my time, Tiny."
He slapped her. Wesley tensed all over at the gunshot-sharp sound, almost came to his feet and froze, heart lurching, when he saw Justine's brilliant, excited grin.
She punched the man squarely in the crotch. He choked, flushed dark red, stumbled back to collapse against a table.
Wesley winced. "Happy now?" he asked her. He made a deliberate attempt to relax his aching shoulders and look casual.
"Fucking ecstatic." She turned back to him, grabbed the hilt of the knife embedded in the table and started to yank it free. He knocked her hand away. "Hey! A girl's got the right to self-defense."
"Handle it without killing him," Wesley snapped. He took the knife and slipped it into an empty sheath at his back. His knife, anyway; he'd lent it to her for some damn-fool reason he couldn't remember. Might as well give a child a nuclear bomb.
"What about his friends?" Justine asked. She wiped her mouth, and he saw a trace of blood on her lips. Behind her, the man was getting to his feet with the help of a couple of others, equally hygienically-challenged; they were all glaring at Justine with unmistakably threatening expressions. "I’m supposed to handle them, too?"
"Your mess," he shrugged. "And you'd be angry if I didn't let you have your fun."
For just an instant he saw something in her eyes -- a flicker of -- what? Weakness? Fear? Disappointment?
"Good answer," she said, and if there'd been a hint of humanity in her, it was gone. "By the way, the night bouncer told me the one with the scar knows something about mystical portals. Want me to get the skinny?"
"If you can manage it without putting him in a coma." He went back to his manuscript, focusing hard to shove away the memory of the avid, mocking look on Justine's face as she pressed herself against a stranger.
He succeeded brilliantly.
He never even noticed when Justine and the three men left the bar.
###
"Excuse me, señor?"
It took a few long seconds for the words to penetrate, but Wesley finally pulled his attention away from an exceptionally obscure passage referring to the early Christian churches of Mexico, and looked up. The night barkeep, whose name Wesley had never bothered to ask, was hugely muscled, as well he might be to keep order in a place like El Puerco Blanco. He had the stance of a big man accustomed to having smaller men listen carefully to his words.
Wesley resisted a provocative impulse to ignore him and go back to his studies.
"La mujer," the big man said, and pointed across the room to the door. "She got herself in trouble again."
Bugger, Wesley thought in exasperation. No doubt she'd broken her playtoys worse than usual, and he'd be forced to spread around fat wads of cash to cover up the bruises. Wouldn't be the first time. I ought to just walk away and leave her. Except in a strange way, Justine mattered to him.
What did it say about him, that a woman who'd cut his throat was all he had left?
"She's fighting again." The barkeep shrugged. "Outside. Thought you should know."
"Same three who were in here?" Another indifferent shrug from the barkeep. A nasty thought floated to the surface of Wesley's mind … they might have been vampires. This place was dim and full of shadowy, furtive patrons; most of them were human, but in a place like this, it did not pay to be able to testify against your neighbors, human or demonic. They all avoided the light.
"She can handle herself," Wesley said, but his voice lacked conviction. This was the third night she'd found trouble, or it had found her. Even Justine's ferocity had to run out sometime. Certainly her luck must. He should have known that.
He shouldn't have let her get him angry.
"Go find her and get out of here," the barkeep said. "Boss's orders."
Wesley pushed back his chair and stood. The bartender grabbed the sleeve of his leather coat.
"Boss says you don't come back either, eh?"
A hot flash of temper zipped up his spine. "I've paid for a week with the books."
"Too bad," the bartender shrugged. "Blame la mujer. Bitch makes too many enemies, gets us too much attention. Gonna get herself killed, and we don't need the trouble."
"No more than I," Wesley agreed. "But as neither of us has much choice, I suggest you not try to make threats you can't fulfill. I'll be back tomorrow."
"Boss says - "
"Tomorrow." Wesley met the bartender's eyes and held the stare. "Now let go of my sleeve."
Nobody bothered him on his way through the crowd to the door; he'd only had to make one example so far, and word had gotten out. People sensed the darkness around him, he'd decided. They gave him room, like a leper, so that it didn't infect them as well.
The distorted boom of bass cut off with the closing door, and he stepped outside into a hot Zacatecas night. His boots crunched dry gravel. After the sweat-and-stale-beer reek inside, the night smelled clean and arid, spiced with dry sage.
A rich white fall of desert starlight gilded the parking lot a chill, faint blue. He listened and finally heard a scraping sound; he followed it past two battered trucks and a gleaming Harley that he rather coveted. Justine was nowhere to be seen, but there was a man on the ground behind the last truck, twitching like a partially crushed bug. Wesley crouched down. Yes, it was one of the two who'd been helping Justine's playmate back to his feet after his defeat inside.
"Where is she?" he asked. The man cursed him in Spanish. Wesley grabbed greasy hair and slammed the man's head into hard-packed dirt. "Just point."
A shaking finger gestured off into the shadows. Wesley released the man and wiped his fingers absently on his pants as he stood. Of course, it would be the shadows. That was where Justine lived … one day, it would likely be where she died. He took a step closer and heard something, heard the scuffling of feet and harsh, heavy breathing. Ripping cloth.
He flicked on his penlight flash.
Justine was standing, barely, arms twisted behind her back by one man. Wesley couldn't see her face, only the ragged auburn fall of her hair. Her stained flannel shirt gaped open, and her pants were off in a pile on the ground, revealing startlingly white, surprisingly shapely legs.
The two men were human, or at least as human as such ever were. The one in front of Justine was the one she'd humiliated; he had his hands on the fly of his jeans, unzipping or zipping up. He flashed stained teeth at Wesley.
"Walk away," he growled. "Not your business, gringo."
Justine - not quite unconscious after all -- turned her head, and Wesley met her eyes. All her arrogance, gone. Nothing left but empty desperation.
It came on him in a cold stinging rush that he'd wanted something like this to happen. Had fantasized about seeing her beaten, bloody, humiliated. Left to die. Dear God. How far had he fallen, to think that? To believe that somehow his own pain made that right?
The reality sickened him, but he couldn't let her see that -- she'd hate him for feeling pity. "Had enough fun?" he asked her, deliberately cool.
"For now," she whispered. Blood trickled from her mouth, and he had a hideous thought that she looked more vampire than human.
Wesley shifted his attention to the two men. "Let her go."
They thought it was funny, he gathered. "Or?"
"Or you might get hurt," he said mildly.
"By you?" the man sneered.
While her attacker's attention was focused elsewhere, Justine threw her weight backward, into the body of the man holding her, got both feet off the ground and kicked the man in front of her in the crotch with all the strength in her legs. His choked rattle of agony blended with the moist sound of Justine's shoulder ripping out of its socket. She didn't let it slow her down. She allowed momentum to swing her back down to her feet, bent at the waist, and flipped the man holding her over her injured shoulder. He staggered toward Wesley, who dropped him with two quick jabs, then added a hard kick to both men’s heads to put them completely out.
"By her," he said. It was pointless to quip now, but he rather enjoyed it.
Justine fell hard to her knees in the dirt, hunched forward and braced herself with her left hand. "Fuck," she muttered, and wiped blood from her mouth with the back of one shaking hand. "Guess it got away from me. Thought I had 'em."
"What's the damage?" Wesley asked, and crouched next to her.
"Right arm."
He flipped off the penlight and stuck it in his pocket, took hold of her injured arm and stretched it out.
"I need to reduce it. Ready?" he asked. Her skin was hot, her muscles trembling and jerking against the pain.
"Do it."
He twisted and pushed in one smooth motion, felt the grating hitch as the ball slid back into the socket, and Justine let out a single sharp sound that lingered in the air like a cry of passion. He caught her as she fell forward. For a long second she was limp and shaking, held up only by his arms around her.
He had to ask. "Anything -- anything else?"
"No," she said, and pushed away. She was still pale and shaking, but her attitude had bounced back nicely. "Dammit. My best shirt."
"I believe it's your only shirt," he corrected. He went to one knee, took the two halves and knotted them together. "Lucky for you, I hear the filthy homeless look is all the rage in Paris."
She laughed, but it sounded wrong. He helped her up, and held her elbow as she retrieved her blue jeans and pulled them back up bruised thighs. Her hands were shaking.
"Justine," he said. She stopped in the act of buttoning her jeans, but didn't look up. Are you all right? The words stuck in his throat, wedged tight enough to choke him. He wanted to reach out to her. Wanted to ask. Wanted to be that Wesley again, just for a moment.
He didn't even recognize his own voice when he said, "Don't do it again. Next time I leave you."
He turned and walked away.
###
The ruined mission had once had a real name, but nobody remembered it anymore. Old as the swords of Spanish invaders, it had drawn unfaithful priests and conscript worshippers since the day it was built, and no amount of incense and blessings could consecrate what was, at heart, unholy. Even the most grimly devoted had finally fled after some hushed-up scandal with a black mass and a murdered priest. That was how it had earned its name, La Iglesia Muerta, the Dead Church.
Or at least, that was what Santana Orellana had heard, back in his breathing days. A black church, buried in the jungle, slowly devoured by its own corruption.
And here it was, in glorious ruin all around him. He looked around in satisfaction, shoved a ruined pew aside, and ascended the steps to the nave. He turned and looked back at his pack -- idiots, mostly, but the best refuse of the Ciudad he'd been able to recruit and turn -- and assumed the posture of a priest at prayer. They laughed.
"Amen," he said in satisfaction. "Let's eat."
Yolanda, his hawk-faced beauty, shoved their captive forward. The girl -- Mestizo, one of the villagers from down the overgrown path -- screamed in mortal terror and tried to run. Santana sat on the cracked, overgrown altar and waited for the pack to bring her down -- and bring her down they did, not quite at the door. Yolanda knew the rules. She grabbed the girl by the foot and dragged her back screaming to dump her in a heap at his feet.
"New rule. Anyone who runs gets a two minute head start," Santana said. He was feeling generous today -- after the filth and discomfort of Mexico City, this place might as well have been the vampire's version of Club Med. He knew about Club Med. He'd worked as a waiter in Cancún, serving drinks to fat Americans and rich, tanned Europeans, and gone home every night to a two-room hut built with the discards from the foreign construction companies. Every night until the night he hadn't made it home, because he’d met a pair of sharp teeth in a dark alley, instead.
On the whole, he found he was living much better as a vampire than he ever had as a man.
Yolanda smiled. She had the face of a Mayan angel, beautiful and cruel. He'd taken her just for that face, but she'd turned out to be a very good hunter indeed. Her ancestors had slaughtered each other at a truly impressive rate, after all. It was to be expected. "Shall I let her go again? Maybe she'll give us a good game."
Santana considered it. The girl was ripe and sweet, but she was also sniveling; he hated sniveling prey. Still …
"Yes," he decided. "You. Girl. If you make it to the church door, we'll let you run home, understand? ¿Comprende?"
She nodded jerkily. He waved a hand, and the pack let her go. Yolanda shoved her off balance. Someone else shoved back. Claws slashed, and Santana sat back again as the smell of fresh blood spiced the air.
And then, inexplicably, one of his pack died. Tomás, the big one -- he had his hands in the girl's hair, pulling, and as Santana stared he collapsed into an ash-gray cloud of dust. Before he could shout a warning, another was dead, and a third. Yolanda snarled, whirled and struck at empty air.
The man who'd killed Santana's minions stood up, stakes in each hand, and put himself between the bleeding victim and the rest of the pack.
Anglo. Matted shoulder-length reddish hair. Male. Past middle age, but hard, very hard. There was a scent of danger on him. Santana came to his feet and down one step, moving slowly; the man's eyes followed him, but never disregarded the rest. Smart, this one.
"Who are you?" Santana asked in Spanish. Anglos were rare, this part of the jungle.
"Does it matter?" He had a low growl of a voice, with a Continental accent, and answered in English. Most Europeans were weak at heart, consumed with their pleasures and their comforts, but this one had never known rest, or comfort. Nor, Santana thought, had he ever wanted it. "You may as well call me Death. I will certainly deal it, unless you let me pass."
"Pass to where?" Santana asked, switching to English himself. "There's nothing here, fool. Nothing but us."
"Then you have nothing to lose by letting me pass," the man said, in a broken-glass purr. "Whereas you have everything to lose by trying to stop me."
Santana considered him for a few long seconds. Unnerving, narrow eyes, and no fear in him. Not at all.
Curious.
Santana liked a good puzzle.
"The girl?" he asked. The man shrugged.
"You may have her if you let me pass."
Not one of those fools who sought to rid the world of vampires, then ... just a fellow traveler on the road to evil. Santana grinned, gestured at his pack and drew them away. The man waited until a polite distance was achieved, then turned and took the girl by her arm. She gave him a fragile, trusting smile.
He shoved her directly at Yolanda. Yolanda hissed, opened her mouth wide as a cobra's, and buried fangs in the girl's neck. Instantly the rest of the pack fell on the girl's spasming body, grabbing for naked flesh and devouring the life from her.
The man's detachment was impressive. Santana raised his eyebrows and came down the last step, to stand directly in front of the man.
"Tu nombre?" he asked again. "I find you very curious, señor. I'd like to know your name."
The man smiled slightly, inclined his head, and said, "Daniel Holtz."
"Well, Daniel Holtz," Santana said, "welcome to the Dead Church."
And in as lightning-fast a move as his vampiric strength could manage, he struck, grabbed Holtz's arm and twisted. Bone shattered. The stake dropped from Holtz's hand, but even as Santana struck so did Holtz.
If it hadn't been for Yolanda leaping on Holtz's back and spoiling his aim, Santana would have taken the second stake in the heart; instead, the wood struck home with bruising force and buried itself just to the right. Santana hissed in pain and pulled it out; it dropped to the stone floor with a harsh wooden clatter. He hit the man very hard, hard enough to snap some mortal necks, but this one was tough. Dangerously so.
It took four vampires to hold him. Santana came closer and looked into the man's eyes. The arrogance in them displeased him.
"Welcome to the Dead Church, Daniel Holtz," he said again. "What's your hurry? You don't like us?"
He stabbed a finger out, felt the slick rubbery resistance of Daniel Holtz's eye, and the pop as his fingernail broke the surface and slid into the gelatinous wetness.
"How do you like us now?" he asked, bending close, as Holtz's ruined eye bled juices over his fingers. "Better?"
It raised a tingle of what might have been fear along his spine when Holtz failed to scream.
###
Knock knock. Now there was a joke that had never been funny back in good 'ol Sunnydale, where knocks on the door late at night - or early in the morning, for that matter - were nothing to raise a crop of chuckles. Never knew who was knocking ... or what ... and that Sunnydale mentality had gone with her to L.A.
Cordelia Chase took a hasty, cautious look out of the peephole, sighed, and wished she hadn't looked. Because there was a lime-green demon standing outside.
It only made sense that they'd send Lorne.
After all, if Cordelia Chase was going to spill her guts to anybody, it would be Lorne … Fred was too fragile, Gunn too -- well -- too much of a guy, and Angel … Angel hadn't said a word in six days. Not to her, not to anyone. And over at the Hyperion, things were going from worried to crazed. Cordelia knew that; she'd listened to enough of the updates on the phone.
Hadn't gone there, though. Hadn't been able to.
"Hey, baby doll," Lorne said when she opened the front door. He was standing there holding a shopworn bunch of carnations. They clashed with the chartreuse shirt and navy-blue shiny jacket -- which was, for Lorne, a downright sober ensemble. He thrust the flowers at her, and she had to take them in self-defense. "Sorry. I was going for something tropical, but who knew, there was a rush on orchids. Some kind of prom thing."
"Thanks," she said. She didn't move out of the doorway. He wavered, but didn't go away.
"You know, sweetie, even on Pylea, that's the signal to let the visitor in the room. Unless I've done something specifically to get uninvited." The flowers and Lorne looked just about equally wilted.
She couldn't keep the game face on, not with him. "Oh, hell. Come in if you have to."
"Gee, with so much enthusiasm, how could I resist?" He shut the door and locked it behind him. "So."
"So," she agreed, and dumped the flowers in a handy vase that Dennis floated in from the kitchen. "I guess you're here to find out what's the what."
"Kind of the plan," he nodded. "You being the big black hole of info, recently."
She fussed with carnations. "How is he?"
"I'm going out on a limb and guessing you mean Angelcakes. Between the brooding and the skulking, hard to say. He's not exactly Chatty Cathy -- ever -- but now even Fred can't get him to open up. The only time we get any reaction out of him is when we talk about getting you to come over."
"Yeah?" She froze, staring down at the stupid dyed flowers. How pathetic was it, to have to dye flowers? How humiliating was it for the flowers? "What kind of reaction does he have?"
His voice was so gentle. "He just -- goes away."
"Oh." She swallowed hard, abandoned the carnations and took a seat on the couch. Lorne eased down into a chair, facing her. "So it's that good, huh?"
"Look, there's no easy way to ask this, sweetie, so I'll just shoot from the hip, so to speak … did you and he ... " Lorne, at a loss for words. That was new. "Oh, you know. Break the rules. Which I am so praying did not happen, by the way."
"Oh God," she whispered, and closed her eyes.
"Okay, and if you said 'Oh God' rhythmically at any time that evening, I'm thinking that answers my question."
"No," she said. "We didn't. Exactly. Or -- I don't know. I guess it was kind of -- look, is he okay?"
"You mean is he evil?"
"Yeah." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Is he? Evil?"
Lorne gave it serious thought. "Creepy as this is, I'm not exactly sure. He's not brimming over with sweetness and happy thoughts, but he's not twirling mustaches and munching virgins, either."
"Well, that's something. Believe me, he had the munching thing down cold last time he was here. Okay, not a virgin, but still. Pretty thoroughly munched." She eased back the neck of her shirt and gave him a look at the scars.
Lorne's face went two shades paler, to some color Martha Stewart wouldn't have dared put in her collection.
She let the collar fall back in place. "And so I hit him with the big jolt of Cordy Power. Which was about as pleasant as a relaxing acid bath, for both of us."
"And then …?"
Then they'd fallen asleep curled together like frightened children on the couch, drawing together just for the sheer animal comfort of it; he'd been so badly wounded, so scared, and she'd been so very tired.
When she'd opened her eyes he was watching her with those dark eyes, deep as night, and all she'd wanted to do was kiss him, kiss him so deeply that she'd fall into him, lose herself in that dark, aching place …
"Sweetheart?" She jerked back to the present at Lorne's gentle question.
"Then he left," she said flatly. "At first he was kind of dazed, then … then he freaked. Like he couldn't stand to be near me. Couldn't touch me. Couldn't even look at me. I tried to talk to him but he just threw his coat over his head and ran out. I went after him, but he ducked into the sewers and lost me."
How could a guy with blazing hell-fire eyes look so sweet and compassionate? Lorne always seemed to know what she was feeling, although she knew he didn't; he just had that tell-me-all-about-it face on.
"He got back home about noon," he nodded. "Fred found him in the basement talking to himself. He's been -- quiet, since."
"So, is he quiet, like thinking it over, or quiet, like deranged and biding his time?" Would they even be able to tell? "Never mind, I don't think I want to know." So much heartache. She was tired of heartache, she'd done nothing but think about it for almost a week, working up the courage to go back to the Hyperion. "Is he okay? Generally?"
"Okay? Pumpkin, his son's lost in some hell-dimension with his worst enemy, Wesley's gone Benedict Arnold, and you ... " Lorne shook his head.
"Me what? What did I do, besides get a tooth tattoo and try to save his life? And love him, Lorne? You know I love him. You of all people."
"I know," Lorne murmured. "I'm just not so sure it was a great idea to, you know, make it that special kind of love."
"Yeah," she sighed. "Me neither."
They stayed in the living room. She thought about offering coffee, but didn't want him to see the kitchen, which still worse for wear; honestly, she hardly wanted to go in there, most of the time. Too many heartbreaking memories.
"No word from Wes?" she asked, without much hope. Lorne shrugged.
"Did you really think there would be?"
She shook her head. Thought about things, and wished she could think about nothing for a change. That would be nice. Thinking of nothing but clothes and parties and getting a makeover. But it wasn't happening for her.
To be fair, it had stopped happening before she ever moved to L.A., but still ...
"Should I try and see him?" she asked.
"Wes?"
"Angel, you goof."
Lorne looked at her for so long she got uncomfortable looked somewhere else. Her eyes fell on something lying on the floor, next to the couch.
A dried, dead rose, all its beauty destroyed. Her mouth went dry.
"I don't know," Lorne finally said. "I just don't know, baby doll. But I do know one thing."
"What?" She blinked and pulled her attention back to him.
"If Connor doesn't come home, it might not matter what any of us does."
He stood up to go. She reached out and caught his wrist -- his skin was cool, faintly scaled, and up close he had a much better manicure than she did, the bastard.
The look between them stretched. Deepened. Lorne's face became oddly -- well -- interested.
Then she got it. She looked down at herself.
"Hey!" she squeaked. "Are you looking down my shirt, you perv?"
He sighed. "Do yourself justice. You're a fully lickable bit of vanilla goodness, sweetie."
"I thought you -- you were -- "
"Oh, please." She'd never seen a smile like that on Lorne's lips before -- wicked, delighted, definitely sexy. It was almost enough to make her forget that it was a demon smiling at her. "Snappy dresser, carry a hell of a tune, full of witty repartee, yes. Gay, no. Not that there aren't some luscious munchables floating around the other side of the gene pool, too, but I've always been one for the curves."
"Oh." She pulled her shirt together. "So much for treating you like one of the girls."
"Oh, no, honey, you go right ahead. Frilly nightgowns are my favorite."
She shook herself out of the mental image of Lorne in a frilly nightgown and focused. "Angel," she commanded. "Spill. What do you know?"
He lost the playful look. Lost everything but the deep ruby seriousness in his eyes.
"I know he's coming apart," he said. "He doesn't have a center anymore. You and Wes -- you were his touchstones. Won't take much to send him all the way over the edge."
"News flash, Lorne, he already jumped." Boy howdy. She couldn't forget how far, or that he'd taken her with him.
"Not into evil," Lorne clarified. "Into eternity. That boy's looking to die."
###
It was a long walk home through back alleys and dark tunnels, but that was good; it gave Lorne time to think about things. In the largest sense, it was really none of his business. He'd thought that before going over to Cordelia's and having the heart-to-heart, too. It being none of his business didn't seem likely to stop him and besides, it was his business, at least a bit. He'd talked to Angel that day, and he'd tried to stop what was coming, and he'd failed. Angel had gone from him to Cordelia, to do ... the Powers spare him the details, but whatever it had been, it was bad. Good. Whatever.
Long walk, big thoughts, not much in the way of conclusions. Typical. At least he got exercise.
Lorne stepped back in the entrance of the Hyperion and shut the door. The big lobby was furnished with shadows and a smell of neglect that hadn't been there a few weeks ago. The hotel, Lorne sensed, was a consciousness all its own -- not too bright, but perceptive. It responded to Angel most of all, and his despair and depression had soaked into the walls and floors and furniture like stagnant water.
Speaking of Angel, he was on the lurk again. In the shadows, facing away from him. Lorne stopped a little distance away, light on his feet and ready to run, and counted the odds on which would be the better plan: avoid Angel and go upstairs, or say something now.
The odds were better if he kept his mouth shut. But he'd never been very good at playing the odds. "Well, at least now I know," he said.
"Know what?" A dry, light tone, nothing of Angel in it at all. Just sound and air that came out of Angel's lungs no warmer than it went in.
"What the deal is with you and Cordelia. That's what all this dark broody penance is about. You tripped over your libido and fell."
Angel didn't make a sound as he turned, not a rustle of cloth, not a scuff of shoes on carpet. It was as if he levitated around until that pale, indistinct face appeared. Dead man walking, Lorne thought, and shivered in spite of himself. He knew lots of things worse than vampires. Lots. They just weren't standing in the room with him.
"Fell? Oh yeah," Angel rasped. "Fell, hit bottom, bounced down a couple of flights. Should have been there, Lorne. It was one hell of a show. Want me to hum a few bars?"
The thought made Lorne's stomach clench.
"Umm, no. But maybe you should talk to the person who can give you some perspective about this. It's dark in here, Angelcakes. Maybe you need Cordelia's light."
It was the exactly wrong thing to say. Angel's eyes flared like a wild animal's in headlights, and Lorne took a giant step backward as if a little extra space would keep something like Angel from killing something like him.
"Never." It was the harshest, most painful whisper Lorne had ever heard. "I can't."
"Can't what?"
"See her. Talk to her." Angel swallowed hard. "Touch her. Ever again."
There was so much despair and desire in him that Lorne couldn't think of a thing to say.
Angel disappeared into the darkness under the stairs, and Lorne let him go.
###
Mexico.
It was well after midnight by the time Wesley and Justine reached the motel. A cheap, featureless place a few miles down the road from the bar, its main attraction was its low weekly rates and a relative lack of wildlife scuttling the bathroom tiles. Fighting evil, like crime, did not pay, and Wesley's meager savings were fast dwindling, even at the high dollar-to-peso exchange rate. Sharing a room was a necessary cost-saving measure.
It was not as much of a sacrifice as Wesley had feared at first. Traveling with a woman like Cordelia would have meant bags of designer originals, trays of makeup, hot rollers, facials, nail polishes, perfumes. Justine brought nothing but a single change of clothes and a bottle of vodka. The bottle of vodka was long gone, and the change of clothes was in rags. Justine had not fared much better.
"Don't suppose you have any painkillers," she said. She sounded tired -- no, worse than tired. Exhausted. She sank down on the single sagging bed, cradling her injured arm.
"Actually, I do," he said. "They're in the bathroom. I'll get some ice to bring down the swelling."
He fetched it from the rattling, rusted machine outside, twisted cubes into a washcloth, and came back into the room.
Justine, sitting on the bed with her back to him, slid the tattered rags of her shirt off her shoulders.
Wesley paused in the act of shutting the door and held utterly still. The golden glow of the lamplight traced the elegant, strong curve of her back, and her spine had a tactile beauty that tugged at his fingertips and begged to be touched. But the light also caught on thick raised scars, bled-over bruises. Whatever pain Justine had, she deserved -- he knew that. But beauty had moved him all his life, and it moved him now, despite everything.
She crossed her arms across her breasts as she turned to look over her shoulder at him -- the first truly feminine thing he'd ever seen her do. Sculpture, he thought, and felt another shock. Brutal, murderous Justine was beautiful enough to have come from the hand of Michelangelo himself. The tragedy of it was painful.
She was watching him warily, frowning a little; he wondered what she'd seen in his face, wondered what frightened her about it. For once, he felt no animosity toward her.
"Ice," he said, and held it up. She nodded. He sat down behind her on the bed and applied the makeshift cold pack to her right shoulder. She hissed, but didn't move.
"Hold it there," he said. She folded her left hand over it and pressed it in place while he touched some of the worst of her bruises with light fingertips. A massive dark area over her kidneys worried him. He pressed and felt her flinch. "Any pain?"
"No, except when you're shoving your fist through my back." She was trembling. He felt the fine, delicate vibration through his fingertips. "Don't worry about it. Nothing broken."
He explored a hand-sized, dark-blue stain over her lower left ribs. Something grated, and he heard her hiss.
"Okay, nothing big broken, anyway," she amended. "Quit fussing. I'll live."
"You're not a Slayer, Justine. You have to let yourself heal. Not unless you want to lose even worse next time."
She stiffened. "I didn't lose. I was saving my strength."
"Try saving your life. You don't have to fight every man in sight."
"Girl's gotta stay in shape. Besides, what am I supposed to do? Sit around like you and read? Give me a break. I'm not the bookish type."
"Consider it a vacation," he said. "Rest. Relax. Find some hobby besides getting yourself beaten bloody."
The satin curve of her skin drew him on a level beyond thought. He touched his fingertips lightly to the back of her neck and drew them slowly, gently down the length of her spine. Nothing in his mind but the sensation of skin on skin, the way hers pebbled into gooseflesh under his touch. The two of them sat, frozen, unspeaking and somehow not silent at all.
Look at me, he thought. He needed to see her face, see what she was thinking. But she didn't turn. She finally got up off the bed, walked into the bathroom, and shut the door. He stared down at his hand and felt the phantom sensation of her skin against his fingertips.
God help him. He hadn't seen this coming.
###
In the bathroom, Justine stared at herself in the mirror, at her chalk-pale, discolored face and tried to remember the last time she'd seen herself without bruises.
She couldn't. She also couldn't remember the last time she'd gone to sleep without the help of a handful of pills, or gone into a fight without a hit of crystal meth to get herself wired. Or the last time she'd felt a man's light, delicate touch running down her spine ...
"Dammit," she whispered. She unzipped Wesley's toiletry kit, felt pain drill in her shoulder and dropped the bottle of pills. It rolled behind the toilet. She cursed again and scrambled after it, twisted, felt something stab her side hard enough to dizzy her. Broken ribs. She opened the bottle and dry-swallowed two, considered the level of pain, and swallowed two more.
When she closed her eyes she could still feel two things, two tactile, distinct impressions.
Wesley's fingertips traveling slowly down her back.
A knife in her hand slicing through his neck.
"Stop fucking thinking," she whispered, and pulled her knees up against her chest, crouched there next to the toilet against the cold white tile.
Wesley had touched her so very gently. Wesley had said, Next time I leave you.
She covered her mouth with both hands and ruthlessly swallowed the sobs.
###
When she came out, dressed in a ragged oversized t-shirt, Wesley was already lying in bed, reading. He didn't look at her, but she felt his attention shift like a blazing spotlight. She got into bed without comment, turned away from him on her side, and pulled her knees up for comfort.
"Justine," he said. There was a rasp to his voice, the ghost of her knife passing through his throat. "Tell me why."
"Why what?"
"I understand why you were loyal to Holtz. I even understand why you tried to kill me." That was difficult for him to say, she could feel it. She heard the dry rustle of pages as he set his book aside on the nightstand. "But why do this to yourself?"
"You mean hang out with you?"
"Partly." She felt the smile in his voice, knew it was bitter as much as amused. "Why do this?"
He touched a bruise on her neck, one with a dull hot aching core. She resisted an urge to push back against his hand, transform ache into pain. Pain was good. You couldn't overthink it.
"Better than being dead," she heard herself say, and it surprised her. The desolation in her voice surprised her even more. "I thought you knew that."
He did, of course. "It's not much better."
When she didn't reply, he sighed and reached up to switch off the light. It was warm in the room, but she felt cold, chilled by distance and time and damage. She shivered and burrowed deeper into the sheets, searching for oblivion.
Oblivion wasn't there, wouldn't come. It was one thing she couldn't bludgeon into obedience. Wesley's warm animal heat at her back made her made her shake, made her sick with self-loathing. She listened to his quiet, even breathing and realized he might actually go to sleep, just go to sleep without touching her.
She had the bizarre, terrifying thought that if he went to sleep she might just fade out into the darkness, as if she'd never existed at all.
No.
She turned over, rolled, and pinned him flat underneath her weight. She couldn't see his face in the dark, but she felt his whole body tense. She knew it was flashing across his mind in a red blur, the sense memory of her killing him that night in the park.
He could have struck back. He had the strength, and she was wounded.
He didn't.
She parted her legs and straddled him. She heard the uneven hitch in his breathing when she moved her hips in a slow, hard circle against him, felt his muscles fight against a need to push back.
She wanted him to touch her, put his hands on her. He didn't.
"What in God's name do you want, Justine?" There was more of a rasp to his voice here, in the anonymous dark. She leaned forward and found his lips, kissed him hard. She could feel the hot, pulsing need inside of him, tasted it in his mouth and tongue.
"Same thing you oh-so-obviously do, big boy."
His voice was thick and rough, but still reasonable. "Why?"
It stunned her, because as soon as she heard the question she knew the answer.
"I'll tell you," he said, there in the dark. "Because you want control of me, Justine. But I'm not going to give it to you."
"That's not what this says." She moved against him again, and felt the hard, hot column of his cock straining against those ridiculous cloth pajama bottoms. She heard the breath rush out of him. "All I have to do is take off your pants. You'll fuck me. You know you will."
And then he did touch her, just the way she'd wanted him to - gentle, tracing touches along her arms, her throat, down lightly over her breasts. Touches as if he couldn't stop himself.
And then he grabbed her and threw her down, hard, next to him on the bed, and the assertion of his strength was so sudden and complete that it left her stunned. She felt a lightning bolt of fear rip through her. Next he'd be on top of her, and then -
-- wasn't that what she'd wanted?
But he didn't climb on top of her. He let go.
She gasped for breath and turned on her side again, curled her knees in, and tried to slow down her racing heartbeat. God, God, it was all broken, all chaos, nothing clear and nothing clean. Not even this.
He was on his side, spooned against her back. Close, but not quite touching.
Then he moved closer, and the heat of his skin melted into hers, a caress that reached from her neck down to the soles of her feet. She could still feel his erection pressing hard against her, throbbing with its own feverish beat. His hand rested lightly on the curve of her hip.
He touched his lips to the back of her neck and whispered, "Sleep. You're safe."
She had been prepared to defend herself against every kind of attack, but she had no defense against understanding. The shakes started, racked her in shudders like sobs but without the luxury of tears. She felt as if she might shake herself apart, and all she could do was press herself against his warmth, praying for sleep, praying for a morning that felt as if it would never, ever come.
He put his arm around her, and a sense of great safety folded over her with it. It was stupid, ridiculous, meaningless. He was just a man. Bled like any other man, God knew she'd proved that. But his silent, unforced presence had a sense of strength to it like nothing she'd ever known. Wesley just was. Without hearing him say it she knew that if men came and dragged her off the bed and ripped away her dignity and forced her down on her knees with the taste of her own blood and humiliation in her mouth …
He wouldn't leave her. He was the first man she had ever met, including Holtz, who wouldn't turn around and walk away. I wish …
Before she understood what she was wishing for, it was gone, and she was asleep.
###
Los Angeles.
The vision hit Cordelia around midnight. No pain -- she didn't get pain from them anymore -- but a sense of horror and urgency that drove her right out of bed, trying to think what to do about it, how to stop it. No Wesley available, and God, she'd never needed him more. She needed to talk, needed to think ... Gunn, Fred ... she couldn't put them in the middle of this, it was too big. Too ugly.
Too personal.
Strangely, the vision was already fading, like a dream; she remembered a flash of electric-blue eyes, golden skin, some kind of Greek outfit that was so very toga party. She knew who that was ...
... but then it was gone, too.
What the hell ...?
All she remembered was the important thing.
I know how to get him back. I know!
She paced, silk gown whispering over the carpet. Dennis put a chair in her path, but she went around it, straightened the photographs on the mantel over the tiled fireplace. Her family. The old Scooby Gang, back when the world was new and high school was the biggest pain in the ass there was, even counting vampires.
"I need help," she said aloud. Dennis's invisible hand pressed her shoulder, and she patted it even though she couldn't really feel it. "Thanks, Dennis, but a little more help than the Casper kind."
Dennis floated over something she hadn't seen in a while ... her old Tommy Hilfiger plaid address book. "Right. Thanks. Good idea."
She flipped pages. Nope, dead; nope, undead (and still bad); nope, total loser, and why hadn't she scratched his name out of her address book, anyway?
She paused in the "H" section. Speaking of people she should have scratched off her list ...
"I'm going to regret this," she said to herself. Or maybe to Dennis. "Who's kidding who? I'm already regretting it. Why wait?"
She dialed half the number, and hung up. She kept her hand on the phone receiver, picked it up, dialed half, and hung up again. She actually got a couple of steps away before she turned back, sat down on the sofa, and picked up the handset again.
She dialed the number and managed -- barely -- not to hang up. Sitting through two rings was enough to stretch her to the breaking point, and she shivered with the need to hang up, right now, before it was too --
"Hello?" He actually sounded awake. Too late to pretend it was all a dream.
"Xander Harris?" She aimed a beauty-queen pep-squad smile at the empty living room, trying to squeeze charm into her voice. "Hi! So! How are you?!"
Ten long seconds before he said, as if he didn't believe it, "Cordelia?"
"In the flesh! So!" Her brain had turned into strawberry Jell-o. God, why in the hell had she done this? What had she been thinking? "So! What's new at the Hellmouth? Meet any interesting new demons at the Bronze -- "
He cut her off. "You're kidding, right? What, you called to gloat in the middle of the night?" Xander sounded -- angry. Dark and moody and absolutely not like the goofy, funny guy she'd left behind. Great. What was it about her that turned every guy she met dark? "Yeah, you heard right. The wedding's off. Boo hoo. Get your kicks in now, Queen C, because I'm all out of the whipping boy business."
"Wait, I didn't -- wedding? What wedding? Wait, you and -- and Demon Girl? Married?"
"Her name's Anya, which you sure ought to know, seeing as you summoned her to make my life a living hell and boy, you have so succeeded."
"You married Anya?"
"Obviously you missed the off part of the wedding being off." Xander was silent a few seconds. "So you really don't know."
Cordelia had only intended this to be the hi-how-are-you portion of the conversation, right before she cut to what she really wanted, but she was frozen by the idea that Xander, of all people, should have had a wedding. Even if the wedding was off. Because that meant he'd actually been engaged. And plans had been made. Expensive jewelry -- Xander? -- had been exchanged.
"I left her at the church," he was saying. "Funny, right? Big joke all around. Much laughter down here in Hellmouth-land. First I screwed it up with you, now Anya -- "
The idea of it was too, too strange. Anya in a wedding dress was enough to overload her brain. Anya at a church in a wedding dress … she shook herself out of the trance. "You know, entertaining as this might be if I actually still cared, Xander, I need some info from Giles. I tried the Magic Box but -- "
"Giles is gone."
Her heart thudded to a dull stop. "Gone?"
He must have heard the shock in her voice. "Not six feet under, gone, leaving on a jet plane gone. I think he had it up to here with all us wacky kids, got a craving for warm beer, something like that."
"I needed to ask him -- " She let out a sigh. It didn't matter. "Dammit. Well, okay. Let me talk to Willow, she's big with the spells."
Wrong, again; she heard the stubborn protective tone snap into place. "Willow's not doing the magic thing anymore, and you'd better not get her back into it, Cordelia, or I swear -- "
"Whoa, Altar Boy, not really in the loop here. Willow's not Spell Girl anymore?"
"She got hooked on the magicks," he said. "It was bad for a while. Real bad. But she's getting better."
"You can get hooked on magick? Whoa. Making a mental note about that one ... Well, wait a minute, Willow's not doing the spells, Giles is gone -- who's your brains? I mean, obviously it's not you." This conversation, Cordelia thought, was why she didn't call Sunnydale very often. Talking to these people was like climbing back into an old cheerleader uniform -- all the old habits came flooding back. Like saying the cruel and unusual and excusing herself because it was also true. "Sorry, Xander, I didn't mean it like that."
"Was that an apology? All right, who are you and what have you done with the real Cordelia, pod person?"
She laughed and curled up on the sofa, smiling for real now, not just to make with the happy. "They giving you a hard time? For, you know?"
"Let's see, I invited a hundred people, including my oh-so-very-hated-relatives, made my friends dress up in ugly outfits, not to mention paid for a honeymoon I didn't use. Why would they ever give me a hard time?" Xander sighed. "No, actually. They've been really -- decent about it."
Cordy twirled phone cord around her finger. "And Anya?"
"Eh. Not so much."
"Which is so not surprising. So what was it? Another girl?" She couldn't stop that thin edge of anger from slicing through, and felt him wince. "Okay, that probably wasn't fair. Unless it was another girl."
"No! It was just -- I'm not ready, Cordy. You know about my family. Not like I have a lot of faith in the sacred institution of wedded bliss." He was quiet a long time, and she wondered just how much he'd actually talked to the others. "Anyway. You called for a reason, right?"
"Right. I'm trying to find out more about a demon dimension called Quar-toth. Like, how to get there. And back. The back part's crucial."
"Spelling?" Xander asked.
"Like I'd know. I've been through all the books here and I'm scoring zip. Maybe something at the Magic Box -- "
"Yeah, I'll take a look …" His voice faded out. "Oh."
"Let me guess. Anya's at the Magic Box."
"Seems likely. It's her shop now."
"Okay." She sucked in a breath and tried for cheery again. "I'll call her. No problem."
"No. No, I don't mind. It's important …?"
"Yeah," she said. "It's important." And she proceeded to tell him the whole story … the birth of Connor, Angel's strangeness, Wesley kidnapping the baby, Holtz. She omitted the fact that Angel had come as close as she'd ever want to see to becoming what they all feared. She also glossed over the biting, but she put a hand over the healing scar on her throat. "If we don't get Connor back -- "
"I get the picture," Xander said. He sounded different, solid, someone she could trust. And looking back on it, she realized that she'd always trusted him, because Xander was the one who never wavered, never backed away, never let his feelings stop him from doing what needed to be done. Buffy had the strength. Xander had -- and this was quite the revelation -- the courage. "I'll hit the books. Call you at home?"
"I'll be here," she promised. Nowhere else to go, really. She didn't think the Hyperion was a safe haven, at least not yet.
"I'll be here," she repeated, and hung up.
###
Xander proved to be a morning person, and he proved it by ringing Cordelia's phone at ohmyGod before dawn, just about an hour after she'd finally gotten to sleep. As surprises go, it wasn't especially pretty, and neither was she -- fresh out of an unquiet sleep, hair tangled and matted with sweat, her favorite Snoopy nightshirt as wrinkled as if she'd pulled it out of the bottom of the laundry. God, she needed coffee. Espresso. Gallons of the stuff.
"Hang on," she said to whatever Xander was chattering about. She thumped the phone down on the kitchen counter and spooned grounds into the coffee maker. Instant morning, just add caffeine. When the machine started sputtering and steaming, she picked up the phone again. "Speak."
He made a barking sound. She resisted the impulse to invoke some big whacking demon powers and strangle him through the phone cord. "All righty then, Queen C. You know, I thought time in L.A. would really improve your 'tude, but -- "
"Xander." She cut him off. "Taunting hours are over. We are now in full relaying-of-information mode. Spill it or -- "
"Or what?" Xander asked smugly. He knew she was down to her last phone-a-friend, damn him.
"Or I'll come back to Sunnydale and tell everybody we're dating again. Including what's-her-name. Vengeance girl."
He made a creeped-out noise. "Okay, no need to get nasty. This Quar-toth had only a couple of references to it, in the books Giles didn't let just anybody read … not that they could, dead languages and all …"
"Meander toward a point, Xander."
"Quar-toth's a demon dimension, all right, but it's not just another demon dimension. You've heard of Hell? Well, this is the place Hell calls 'the bad place.' They send things there that Hell thinks are too mean and evil."
"Great." Cordelia looked down at the floor. Fresh scars in the linoleum there from Angel's fingernails -- claws -- whatever. And the bleached-out Rorschach stains of her own blood. It threatened to make her remember all of what had happened here -- the dark, the sex, Angelus -- and she brought herself back to the practical. I am so totally losing my security deposit. There. That was of the practical. "So how do we get there?"
"Hello, this is the listening-for-comprehension part of the exercise, Cordy. Quar-toth is Hell for Hellspawn, so how about we don't get there! And plus, that 'we' thing that's referring to somebody else, because I may be outrageously stupid, but not competing for the Darwin Awards just yet, thank you very much." He was chattering because he was nervous. She knew all about that. It didn't get less annoying -- or less sweet -- with time. "Besides, you can't get there."
"And finally he gets to the point. Can't why exactly?"
"Because Quar-toth doesn't have any portals. Also no windows, no doors, and for sure no cable TV. So again, why go?"
"Things have to get there somehow. Evil things, right? Things Hell doesn't want?"
Xander hesitated a long time. "Cordy, you don't want to do this."
"You know what? I really don't. I'm tired, I can't sleep, I reek like a horse, and my hair would make a bag lady ashamed. Also I need coffee." She sucked in a deep, deep breath, held it, and let it out in a cleansing stream. "How. Do. I. Get. There?"
"I've always wanted to say this," he said. "Go to Hell."
That's what she was afraid of. "You mean literally. As in, the fiery pit of. That place Dante went for vacation."
"You're awfully up on it for a girl who wouldn't turn pages because she might ruin a manicure. Yep. Not so tough to find a door to Hell, by the way, any bingo parlor or Marilyn Manson concert oughta do it. From Hell to Quar-toth, it may be a little bit tougher, but there's definitely a portal." Xander hesitated. "Cordy. Tell me you're not thinking of -- "
"Yeah, totally," she jeered. "Like I hit my head and woke up Buffy. Please."
... Continued in The Dead Church (Part 2) ...
---------------------------------------------
Summary: Follows "Slightly Darker Than Black" and "Burn", the last of a three-part story arc. Justine and Wesley are on the trail of a portal that might lead to Holtz, Quar-toth and the rescue of Angel's son, but as Wesley finds his sanity again, Justine might be losing hers. Who is Wesley willing to sacrifice, in the end?
Disclaimer: Still not mine. I checked.
Warnings: You're kidding. ADULT CONTENT ANGST DARKNESS OMG.
Dedication: Still dedicated to starlet2367, who still rocks.
---------------------------------------------
Six days after leaving Los Angeles, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce had found his new home, such as it was: a reeking, seedy Mexican bar with substandard liquor. It had three distinct advantages. First, gringos were treated the same as the locals, no better or worse. Second, the owner of the bar fancied himself something of a scholar, and for a hundred dollars American his arcane library was open for reference.
Third, everybody in a place this disreputable had something to hide, and like it or not, Wesley knew he fit right in. A scar still burned on his throat where betrayal had cut him, and he had a rakish, unshaven look. He kept it that way, deliberately, and hoped that the tougher patrons of this cesspool didn't realize he still wished that the knife had cut deeper. For a few hours he'd risen out of despair, but he'd been holding to Cordelia then. There was nothing to hold to now.
He was attacked by a vision of Cordelia climaxing in Angel's arms, shuddering, her whole body responding to his touch. I'm in love with him, she'd said. Regardless of the fact that Angel had, after that illicit sexual thrill, ripped a hole in her throat and tried to drink her dry. Wesley knew all about the kind of love that devoured and raged and raped. He'd seen it at close range, in his own father's eyes, in the flinches and pallid surrender of his mother.
A voice whispered in his head, and it sounded startlingly like Justine's: Come on, don't lie to yourself. You stood there and watched them do it and it turned you on.
He flinched at the thought, even as he knew it was right. Yes, he had things to hide. Especially from himself.
A knife thumped point-first into the table six inches from his left hand, followed by the sloppy arrival of three glasses of tequila.
Speaking of Justine …
She dropped into a chair across from him, and he controlled his instinctive flash of dislike. Uncouth, unkempt, violent -- not his ideal woman in any way. She was dressed in the same stained blue jeans and ragged flannel shirt she'd been wearing for three days, and he doubted her hair had more than nodding acquaintance to a comb for longer than that. She reached out for the first glass of tequila, and he saw the evidence of yesterday's bar fight … scraped knuckles, yellowing bruises on her arm.
Her dark, insolent eyes glittered as she tossed the empty glass back on the table between them. It spun in an unsteady circle, spraying a hiccup of alcoholic drops.
"What do you want?" he asked, in as even a tone as he could manage. It didn't pay to give in to Justine's provocations.
"A little action would be nice. How long are we going to sit around this toilet, anyway? Until you grow a backbone?" Her sarcasm scorched, but he'd grown relatively fireproof these last few days.
"You're drunk." He made it a dismissal. She laughed and leaned forward, ragged auburn hair feathering over her face, and gulped down another drink without the softening benefit of salt or lime.
"Wow, look who's talking, the human sponge."
He controlled a flash of guilt. "I'm not drinking, I'm working."
"You finally cleaned them out of cheap-shit rotgut? How sad. And, news flash, teabag, piddling around with these books isn't working." She reached for the third drink, bobbled it, slopped it along the table perilously close to the hand-illuminated Ch'hashk manuscript laid out on the stained table in front of him.
He could have moved the manuscript. He grabbed Justine's wrist instead, staring at her with steady, angry eyes. "Enough," he said, very softly. "Amuse yourself somewhere else."
She didn't try to pull away, which was odd; he was holding her hard enough to dig into the bruises. Her hot, half-dreaming eyes locked on his, and she smiled.
"If you don't let go, I'm going to have to kick your ass," she said. "I've really been looking forward to that."
He had no doubt. He could feel her pulse racing through his fingers, jackhammered by adrenaline. And there was a certain dark charm to the idea, to let all of this responsibility slide and lose himself in battle with someone who richly deserved all he could inflict on her.
And vice versa.
He let her go. "If you're going to drink yourself unconscious, at least have the courtesy to do it quietly. And elsewhere."
He went back to the manuscript, or tried to. He'd gotten through four more laborious lines -- yes, there was mention of a portal nearby, the question was where -- and had started to forget that she was kicking the leg of the table when he heard a man's voice say, "Buy you a drink, chica?"
None of his business, but he looked up anyway. There was a man bent over Justine's chair, no better or worse than the rest of them in this place but with unpleasantly aggressive body language. Justine ignored him. The man shoved her chair back from the table and stepped closer. "You deaf, bitch?"
She'd have to have been blind as well. His crotch was outthrust inches from her face. She stared at it, expressionless, then slowly let her gaze drift up. She tilted her head and gave the man a razor-edged, glittering, adrenaline-fueled smile.
"That depends on who's talking." Wesley knew that sex-kitten purr, knew it meant trouble. She reached for the last glass of tequila, raised it to her lips and tossed it back without looking away from her would-be seducer. Licked her lips. "You got anything to say that won't bore me to death?"
"Maybe." He grinned back, snapped his fingers at the bartender and pointed down at Justine, held up two fingers. Ah, the universal sign language of the drunk.
At least she was being entertained, and he could get back to work, Wesley thought. But when he looked down at the manuscript it was so much nonsense, dots swimming illegibly in a sea of gold leaf and vellum. He pinched the bridge of his nose and wished, with a bone-deep desperation, that he was alone. Justine was … unbearable sometimes, like a thumb pressing on a bruise.
When he put his glasses back on, the man was still -- literally -- in Justine's face, and her grin had turned feral.
"Tell you what," she said, and seductively slithered upright, staying so close that her parted lips almost brushed the bulge in the man's pants as she rose. Promises implicit in every blatantly sexual line of her body. Wesley felt his skin tighten in response. "You tell me a few things, I'll tell you a few things, maybe something interesting will come up, how about that?"
From the man's leer, the implications weren't lost on him. "Something already came up."
"Well, isn't that flattering."
He rubbed his crotch. "All for you, querida."
Wesley opened his mouth to say something that probably wasn't wise, but Justine -- of course -- beat him to it. She looked down, blatantly measuring, then up into the man's face, and laughed. "That's it? I hope you brought friends." She put a hand flat against his chest and shoved, hard, knocked him staggering. "Don't waste my time, Tiny."
He slapped her. Wesley tensed all over at the gunshot-sharp sound, almost came to his feet and froze, heart lurching, when he saw Justine's brilliant, excited grin.
She punched the man squarely in the crotch. He choked, flushed dark red, stumbled back to collapse against a table.
Wesley winced. "Happy now?" he asked her. He made a deliberate attempt to relax his aching shoulders and look casual.
"Fucking ecstatic." She turned back to him, grabbed the hilt of the knife embedded in the table and started to yank it free. He knocked her hand away. "Hey! A girl's got the right to self-defense."
"Handle it without killing him," Wesley snapped. He took the knife and slipped it into an empty sheath at his back. His knife, anyway; he'd lent it to her for some damn-fool reason he couldn't remember. Might as well give a child a nuclear bomb.
"What about his friends?" Justine asked. She wiped her mouth, and he saw a trace of blood on her lips. Behind her, the man was getting to his feet with the help of a couple of others, equally hygienically-challenged; they were all glaring at Justine with unmistakably threatening expressions. "I’m supposed to handle them, too?"
"Your mess," he shrugged. "And you'd be angry if I didn't let you have your fun."
For just an instant he saw something in her eyes -- a flicker of -- what? Weakness? Fear? Disappointment?
"Good answer," she said, and if there'd been a hint of humanity in her, it was gone. "By the way, the night bouncer told me the one with the scar knows something about mystical portals. Want me to get the skinny?"
"If you can manage it without putting him in a coma." He went back to his manuscript, focusing hard to shove away the memory of the avid, mocking look on Justine's face as she pressed herself against a stranger.
He succeeded brilliantly.
He never even noticed when Justine and the three men left the bar.
###
"Excuse me, señor?"
It took a few long seconds for the words to penetrate, but Wesley finally pulled his attention away from an exceptionally obscure passage referring to the early Christian churches of Mexico, and looked up. The night barkeep, whose name Wesley had never bothered to ask, was hugely muscled, as well he might be to keep order in a place like El Puerco Blanco. He had the stance of a big man accustomed to having smaller men listen carefully to his words.
Wesley resisted a provocative impulse to ignore him and go back to his studies.
"La mujer," the big man said, and pointed across the room to the door. "She got herself in trouble again."
Bugger, Wesley thought in exasperation. No doubt she'd broken her playtoys worse than usual, and he'd be forced to spread around fat wads of cash to cover up the bruises. Wouldn't be the first time. I ought to just walk away and leave her. Except in a strange way, Justine mattered to him.
What did it say about him, that a woman who'd cut his throat was all he had left?
"She's fighting again." The barkeep shrugged. "Outside. Thought you should know."
"Same three who were in here?" Another indifferent shrug from the barkeep. A nasty thought floated to the surface of Wesley's mind … they might have been vampires. This place was dim and full of shadowy, furtive patrons; most of them were human, but in a place like this, it did not pay to be able to testify against your neighbors, human or demonic. They all avoided the light.
"She can handle herself," Wesley said, but his voice lacked conviction. This was the third night she'd found trouble, or it had found her. Even Justine's ferocity had to run out sometime. Certainly her luck must. He should have known that.
He shouldn't have let her get him angry.
"Go find her and get out of here," the barkeep said. "Boss's orders."
Wesley pushed back his chair and stood. The bartender grabbed the sleeve of his leather coat.
"Boss says you don't come back either, eh?"
A hot flash of temper zipped up his spine. "I've paid for a week with the books."
"Too bad," the bartender shrugged. "Blame la mujer. Bitch makes too many enemies, gets us too much attention. Gonna get herself killed, and we don't need the trouble."
"No more than I," Wesley agreed. "But as neither of us has much choice, I suggest you not try to make threats you can't fulfill. I'll be back tomorrow."
"Boss says - "
"Tomorrow." Wesley met the bartender's eyes and held the stare. "Now let go of my sleeve."
Nobody bothered him on his way through the crowd to the door; he'd only had to make one example so far, and word had gotten out. People sensed the darkness around him, he'd decided. They gave him room, like a leper, so that it didn't infect them as well.
The distorted boom of bass cut off with the closing door, and he stepped outside into a hot Zacatecas night. His boots crunched dry gravel. After the sweat-and-stale-beer reek inside, the night smelled clean and arid, spiced with dry sage.
A rich white fall of desert starlight gilded the parking lot a chill, faint blue. He listened and finally heard a scraping sound; he followed it past two battered trucks and a gleaming Harley that he rather coveted. Justine was nowhere to be seen, but there was a man on the ground behind the last truck, twitching like a partially crushed bug. Wesley crouched down. Yes, it was one of the two who'd been helping Justine's playmate back to his feet after his defeat inside.
"Where is she?" he asked. The man cursed him in Spanish. Wesley grabbed greasy hair and slammed the man's head into hard-packed dirt. "Just point."
A shaking finger gestured off into the shadows. Wesley released the man and wiped his fingers absently on his pants as he stood. Of course, it would be the shadows. That was where Justine lived … one day, it would likely be where she died. He took a step closer and heard something, heard the scuffling of feet and harsh, heavy breathing. Ripping cloth.
He flicked on his penlight flash.
Justine was standing, barely, arms twisted behind her back by one man. Wesley couldn't see her face, only the ragged auburn fall of her hair. Her stained flannel shirt gaped open, and her pants were off in a pile on the ground, revealing startlingly white, surprisingly shapely legs.
The two men were human, or at least as human as such ever were. The one in front of Justine was the one she'd humiliated; he had his hands on the fly of his jeans, unzipping or zipping up. He flashed stained teeth at Wesley.
"Walk away," he growled. "Not your business, gringo."
Justine - not quite unconscious after all -- turned her head, and Wesley met her eyes. All her arrogance, gone. Nothing left but empty desperation.
It came on him in a cold stinging rush that he'd wanted something like this to happen. Had fantasized about seeing her beaten, bloody, humiliated. Left to die. Dear God. How far had he fallen, to think that? To believe that somehow his own pain made that right?
The reality sickened him, but he couldn't let her see that -- she'd hate him for feeling pity. "Had enough fun?" he asked her, deliberately cool.
"For now," she whispered. Blood trickled from her mouth, and he had a hideous thought that she looked more vampire than human.
Wesley shifted his attention to the two men. "Let her go."
They thought it was funny, he gathered. "Or?"
"Or you might get hurt," he said mildly.
"By you?" the man sneered.
While her attacker's attention was focused elsewhere, Justine threw her weight backward, into the body of the man holding her, got both feet off the ground and kicked the man in front of her in the crotch with all the strength in her legs. His choked rattle of agony blended with the moist sound of Justine's shoulder ripping out of its socket. She didn't let it slow her down. She allowed momentum to swing her back down to her feet, bent at the waist, and flipped the man holding her over her injured shoulder. He staggered toward Wesley, who dropped him with two quick jabs, then added a hard kick to both men’s heads to put them completely out.
"By her," he said. It was pointless to quip now, but he rather enjoyed it.
Justine fell hard to her knees in the dirt, hunched forward and braced herself with her left hand. "Fuck," she muttered, and wiped blood from her mouth with the back of one shaking hand. "Guess it got away from me. Thought I had 'em."
"What's the damage?" Wesley asked, and crouched next to her.
"Right arm."
He flipped off the penlight and stuck it in his pocket, took hold of her injured arm and stretched it out.
"I need to reduce it. Ready?" he asked. Her skin was hot, her muscles trembling and jerking against the pain.
"Do it."
He twisted and pushed in one smooth motion, felt the grating hitch as the ball slid back into the socket, and Justine let out a single sharp sound that lingered in the air like a cry of passion. He caught her as she fell forward. For a long second she was limp and shaking, held up only by his arms around her.
He had to ask. "Anything -- anything else?"
"No," she said, and pushed away. She was still pale and shaking, but her attitude had bounced back nicely. "Dammit. My best shirt."
"I believe it's your only shirt," he corrected. He went to one knee, took the two halves and knotted them together. "Lucky for you, I hear the filthy homeless look is all the rage in Paris."
She laughed, but it sounded wrong. He helped her up, and held her elbow as she retrieved her blue jeans and pulled them back up bruised thighs. Her hands were shaking.
"Justine," he said. She stopped in the act of buttoning her jeans, but didn't look up. Are you all right? The words stuck in his throat, wedged tight enough to choke him. He wanted to reach out to her. Wanted to ask. Wanted to be that Wesley again, just for a moment.
He didn't even recognize his own voice when he said, "Don't do it again. Next time I leave you."
He turned and walked away.
###
The ruined mission had once had a real name, but nobody remembered it anymore. Old as the swords of Spanish invaders, it had drawn unfaithful priests and conscript worshippers since the day it was built, and no amount of incense and blessings could consecrate what was, at heart, unholy. Even the most grimly devoted had finally fled after some hushed-up scandal with a black mass and a murdered priest. That was how it had earned its name, La Iglesia Muerta, the Dead Church.
Or at least, that was what Santana Orellana had heard, back in his breathing days. A black church, buried in the jungle, slowly devoured by its own corruption.
And here it was, in glorious ruin all around him. He looked around in satisfaction, shoved a ruined pew aside, and ascended the steps to the nave. He turned and looked back at his pack -- idiots, mostly, but the best refuse of the Ciudad he'd been able to recruit and turn -- and assumed the posture of a priest at prayer. They laughed.
"Amen," he said in satisfaction. "Let's eat."
Yolanda, his hawk-faced beauty, shoved their captive forward. The girl -- Mestizo, one of the villagers from down the overgrown path -- screamed in mortal terror and tried to run. Santana sat on the cracked, overgrown altar and waited for the pack to bring her down -- and bring her down they did, not quite at the door. Yolanda knew the rules. She grabbed the girl by the foot and dragged her back screaming to dump her in a heap at his feet.
"New rule. Anyone who runs gets a two minute head start," Santana said. He was feeling generous today -- after the filth and discomfort of Mexico City, this place might as well have been the vampire's version of Club Med. He knew about Club Med. He'd worked as a waiter in Cancún, serving drinks to fat Americans and rich, tanned Europeans, and gone home every night to a two-room hut built with the discards from the foreign construction companies. Every night until the night he hadn't made it home, because he’d met a pair of sharp teeth in a dark alley, instead.
On the whole, he found he was living much better as a vampire than he ever had as a man.
Yolanda smiled. She had the face of a Mayan angel, beautiful and cruel. He'd taken her just for that face, but she'd turned out to be a very good hunter indeed. Her ancestors had slaughtered each other at a truly impressive rate, after all. It was to be expected. "Shall I let her go again? Maybe she'll give us a good game."
Santana considered it. The girl was ripe and sweet, but she was also sniveling; he hated sniveling prey. Still …
"Yes," he decided. "You. Girl. If you make it to the church door, we'll let you run home, understand? ¿Comprende?"
She nodded jerkily. He waved a hand, and the pack let her go. Yolanda shoved her off balance. Someone else shoved back. Claws slashed, and Santana sat back again as the smell of fresh blood spiced the air.
And then, inexplicably, one of his pack died. Tomás, the big one -- he had his hands in the girl's hair, pulling, and as Santana stared he collapsed into an ash-gray cloud of dust. Before he could shout a warning, another was dead, and a third. Yolanda snarled, whirled and struck at empty air.
The man who'd killed Santana's minions stood up, stakes in each hand, and put himself between the bleeding victim and the rest of the pack.
Anglo. Matted shoulder-length reddish hair. Male. Past middle age, but hard, very hard. There was a scent of danger on him. Santana came to his feet and down one step, moving slowly; the man's eyes followed him, but never disregarded the rest. Smart, this one.
"Who are you?" Santana asked in Spanish. Anglos were rare, this part of the jungle.
"Does it matter?" He had a low growl of a voice, with a Continental accent, and answered in English. Most Europeans were weak at heart, consumed with their pleasures and their comforts, but this one had never known rest, or comfort. Nor, Santana thought, had he ever wanted it. "You may as well call me Death. I will certainly deal it, unless you let me pass."
"Pass to where?" Santana asked, switching to English himself. "There's nothing here, fool. Nothing but us."
"Then you have nothing to lose by letting me pass," the man said, in a broken-glass purr. "Whereas you have everything to lose by trying to stop me."
Santana considered him for a few long seconds. Unnerving, narrow eyes, and no fear in him. Not at all.
Curious.
Santana liked a good puzzle.
"The girl?" he asked. The man shrugged.
"You may have her if you let me pass."
Not one of those fools who sought to rid the world of vampires, then ... just a fellow traveler on the road to evil. Santana grinned, gestured at his pack and drew them away. The man waited until a polite distance was achieved, then turned and took the girl by her arm. She gave him a fragile, trusting smile.
He shoved her directly at Yolanda. Yolanda hissed, opened her mouth wide as a cobra's, and buried fangs in the girl's neck. Instantly the rest of the pack fell on the girl's spasming body, grabbing for naked flesh and devouring the life from her.
The man's detachment was impressive. Santana raised his eyebrows and came down the last step, to stand directly in front of the man.
"Tu nombre?" he asked again. "I find you very curious, señor. I'd like to know your name."
The man smiled slightly, inclined his head, and said, "Daniel Holtz."
"Well, Daniel Holtz," Santana said, "welcome to the Dead Church."
And in as lightning-fast a move as his vampiric strength could manage, he struck, grabbed Holtz's arm and twisted. Bone shattered. The stake dropped from Holtz's hand, but even as Santana struck so did Holtz.
If it hadn't been for Yolanda leaping on Holtz's back and spoiling his aim, Santana would have taken the second stake in the heart; instead, the wood struck home with bruising force and buried itself just to the right. Santana hissed in pain and pulled it out; it dropped to the stone floor with a harsh wooden clatter. He hit the man very hard, hard enough to snap some mortal necks, but this one was tough. Dangerously so.
It took four vampires to hold him. Santana came closer and looked into the man's eyes. The arrogance in them displeased him.
"Welcome to the Dead Church, Daniel Holtz," he said again. "What's your hurry? You don't like us?"
He stabbed a finger out, felt the slick rubbery resistance of Daniel Holtz's eye, and the pop as his fingernail broke the surface and slid into the gelatinous wetness.
"How do you like us now?" he asked, bending close, as Holtz's ruined eye bled juices over his fingers. "Better?"
It raised a tingle of what might have been fear along his spine when Holtz failed to scream.
###
Knock knock. Now there was a joke that had never been funny back in good 'ol Sunnydale, where knocks on the door late at night - or early in the morning, for that matter - were nothing to raise a crop of chuckles. Never knew who was knocking ... or what ... and that Sunnydale mentality had gone with her to L.A.
Cordelia Chase took a hasty, cautious look out of the peephole, sighed, and wished she hadn't looked. Because there was a lime-green demon standing outside.
It only made sense that they'd send Lorne.
After all, if Cordelia Chase was going to spill her guts to anybody, it would be Lorne … Fred was too fragile, Gunn too -- well -- too much of a guy, and Angel … Angel hadn't said a word in six days. Not to her, not to anyone. And over at the Hyperion, things were going from worried to crazed. Cordelia knew that; she'd listened to enough of the updates on the phone.
Hadn't gone there, though. Hadn't been able to.
"Hey, baby doll," Lorne said when she opened the front door. He was standing there holding a shopworn bunch of carnations. They clashed with the chartreuse shirt and navy-blue shiny jacket -- which was, for Lorne, a downright sober ensemble. He thrust the flowers at her, and she had to take them in self-defense. "Sorry. I was going for something tropical, but who knew, there was a rush on orchids. Some kind of prom thing."
"Thanks," she said. She didn't move out of the doorway. He wavered, but didn't go away.
"You know, sweetie, even on Pylea, that's the signal to let the visitor in the room. Unless I've done something specifically to get uninvited." The flowers and Lorne looked just about equally wilted.
She couldn't keep the game face on, not with him. "Oh, hell. Come in if you have to."
"Gee, with so much enthusiasm, how could I resist?" He shut the door and locked it behind him. "So."
"So," she agreed, and dumped the flowers in a handy vase that Dennis floated in from the kitchen. "I guess you're here to find out what's the what."
"Kind of the plan," he nodded. "You being the big black hole of info, recently."
She fussed with carnations. "How is he?"
"I'm going out on a limb and guessing you mean Angelcakes. Between the brooding and the skulking, hard to say. He's not exactly Chatty Cathy -- ever -- but now even Fred can't get him to open up. The only time we get any reaction out of him is when we talk about getting you to come over."
"Yeah?" She froze, staring down at the stupid dyed flowers. How pathetic was it, to have to dye flowers? How humiliating was it for the flowers? "What kind of reaction does he have?"
His voice was so gentle. "He just -- goes away."
"Oh." She swallowed hard, abandoned the carnations and took a seat on the couch. Lorne eased down into a chair, facing her. "So it's that good, huh?"
"Look, there's no easy way to ask this, sweetie, so I'll just shoot from the hip, so to speak … did you and he ... " Lorne, at a loss for words. That was new. "Oh, you know. Break the rules. Which I am so praying did not happen, by the way."
"Oh God," she whispered, and closed her eyes.
"Okay, and if you said 'Oh God' rhythmically at any time that evening, I'm thinking that answers my question."
"No," she said. "We didn't. Exactly. Or -- I don't know. I guess it was kind of -- look, is he okay?"
"You mean is he evil?"
"Yeah." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Is he? Evil?"
Lorne gave it serious thought. "Creepy as this is, I'm not exactly sure. He's not brimming over with sweetness and happy thoughts, but he's not twirling mustaches and munching virgins, either."
"Well, that's something. Believe me, he had the munching thing down cold last time he was here. Okay, not a virgin, but still. Pretty thoroughly munched." She eased back the neck of her shirt and gave him a look at the scars.
Lorne's face went two shades paler, to some color Martha Stewart wouldn't have dared put in her collection.
She let the collar fall back in place. "And so I hit him with the big jolt of Cordy Power. Which was about as pleasant as a relaxing acid bath, for both of us."
"And then …?"
Then they'd fallen asleep curled together like frightened children on the couch, drawing together just for the sheer animal comfort of it; he'd been so badly wounded, so scared, and she'd been so very tired.
When she'd opened her eyes he was watching her with those dark eyes, deep as night, and all she'd wanted to do was kiss him, kiss him so deeply that she'd fall into him, lose herself in that dark, aching place …
"Sweetheart?" She jerked back to the present at Lorne's gentle question.
"Then he left," she said flatly. "At first he was kind of dazed, then … then he freaked. Like he couldn't stand to be near me. Couldn't touch me. Couldn't even look at me. I tried to talk to him but he just threw his coat over his head and ran out. I went after him, but he ducked into the sewers and lost me."
How could a guy with blazing hell-fire eyes look so sweet and compassionate? Lorne always seemed to know what she was feeling, although she knew he didn't; he just had that tell-me-all-about-it face on.
"He got back home about noon," he nodded. "Fred found him in the basement talking to himself. He's been -- quiet, since."
"So, is he quiet, like thinking it over, or quiet, like deranged and biding his time?" Would they even be able to tell? "Never mind, I don't think I want to know." So much heartache. She was tired of heartache, she'd done nothing but think about it for almost a week, working up the courage to go back to the Hyperion. "Is he okay? Generally?"
"Okay? Pumpkin, his son's lost in some hell-dimension with his worst enemy, Wesley's gone Benedict Arnold, and you ... " Lorne shook his head.
"Me what? What did I do, besides get a tooth tattoo and try to save his life? And love him, Lorne? You know I love him. You of all people."
"I know," Lorne murmured. "I'm just not so sure it was a great idea to, you know, make it that special kind of love."
"Yeah," she sighed. "Me neither."
They stayed in the living room. She thought about offering coffee, but didn't want him to see the kitchen, which still worse for wear; honestly, she hardly wanted to go in there, most of the time. Too many heartbreaking memories.
"No word from Wes?" she asked, without much hope. Lorne shrugged.
"Did you really think there would be?"
She shook her head. Thought about things, and wished she could think about nothing for a change. That would be nice. Thinking of nothing but clothes and parties and getting a makeover. But it wasn't happening for her.
To be fair, it had stopped happening before she ever moved to L.A., but still ...
"Should I try and see him?" she asked.
"Wes?"
"Angel, you goof."
Lorne looked at her for so long she got uncomfortable looked somewhere else. Her eyes fell on something lying on the floor, next to the couch.
A dried, dead rose, all its beauty destroyed. Her mouth went dry.
"I don't know," Lorne finally said. "I just don't know, baby doll. But I do know one thing."
"What?" She blinked and pulled her attention back to him.
"If Connor doesn't come home, it might not matter what any of us does."
He stood up to go. She reached out and caught his wrist -- his skin was cool, faintly scaled, and up close he had a much better manicure than she did, the bastard.
The look between them stretched. Deepened. Lorne's face became oddly -- well -- interested.
Then she got it. She looked down at herself.
"Hey!" she squeaked. "Are you looking down my shirt, you perv?"
He sighed. "Do yourself justice. You're a fully lickable bit of vanilla goodness, sweetie."
"I thought you -- you were -- "
"Oh, please." She'd never seen a smile like that on Lorne's lips before -- wicked, delighted, definitely sexy. It was almost enough to make her forget that it was a demon smiling at her. "Snappy dresser, carry a hell of a tune, full of witty repartee, yes. Gay, no. Not that there aren't some luscious munchables floating around the other side of the gene pool, too, but I've always been one for the curves."
"Oh." She pulled her shirt together. "So much for treating you like one of the girls."
"Oh, no, honey, you go right ahead. Frilly nightgowns are my favorite."
She shook herself out of the mental image of Lorne in a frilly nightgown and focused. "Angel," she commanded. "Spill. What do you know?"
He lost the playful look. Lost everything but the deep ruby seriousness in his eyes.
"I know he's coming apart," he said. "He doesn't have a center anymore. You and Wes -- you were his touchstones. Won't take much to send him all the way over the edge."
"News flash, Lorne, he already jumped." Boy howdy. She couldn't forget how far, or that he'd taken her with him.
"Not into evil," Lorne clarified. "Into eternity. That boy's looking to die."
###
It was a long walk home through back alleys and dark tunnels, but that was good; it gave Lorne time to think about things. In the largest sense, it was really none of his business. He'd thought that before going over to Cordelia's and having the heart-to-heart, too. It being none of his business didn't seem likely to stop him and besides, it was his business, at least a bit. He'd talked to Angel that day, and he'd tried to stop what was coming, and he'd failed. Angel had gone from him to Cordelia, to do ... the Powers spare him the details, but whatever it had been, it was bad. Good. Whatever.
Long walk, big thoughts, not much in the way of conclusions. Typical. At least he got exercise.
Lorne stepped back in the entrance of the Hyperion and shut the door. The big lobby was furnished with shadows and a smell of neglect that hadn't been there a few weeks ago. The hotel, Lorne sensed, was a consciousness all its own -- not too bright, but perceptive. It responded to Angel most of all, and his despair and depression had soaked into the walls and floors and furniture like stagnant water.
Speaking of Angel, he was on the lurk again. In the shadows, facing away from him. Lorne stopped a little distance away, light on his feet and ready to run, and counted the odds on which would be the better plan: avoid Angel and go upstairs, or say something now.
The odds were better if he kept his mouth shut. But he'd never been very good at playing the odds. "Well, at least now I know," he said.
"Know what?" A dry, light tone, nothing of Angel in it at all. Just sound and air that came out of Angel's lungs no warmer than it went in.
"What the deal is with you and Cordelia. That's what all this dark broody penance is about. You tripped over your libido and fell."
Angel didn't make a sound as he turned, not a rustle of cloth, not a scuff of shoes on carpet. It was as if he levitated around until that pale, indistinct face appeared. Dead man walking, Lorne thought, and shivered in spite of himself. He knew lots of things worse than vampires. Lots. They just weren't standing in the room with him.
"Fell? Oh yeah," Angel rasped. "Fell, hit bottom, bounced down a couple of flights. Should have been there, Lorne. It was one hell of a show. Want me to hum a few bars?"
The thought made Lorne's stomach clench.
"Umm, no. But maybe you should talk to the person who can give you some perspective about this. It's dark in here, Angelcakes. Maybe you need Cordelia's light."
It was the exactly wrong thing to say. Angel's eyes flared like a wild animal's in headlights, and Lorne took a giant step backward as if a little extra space would keep something like Angel from killing something like him.
"Never." It was the harshest, most painful whisper Lorne had ever heard. "I can't."
"Can't what?"
"See her. Talk to her." Angel swallowed hard. "Touch her. Ever again."
There was so much despair and desire in him that Lorne couldn't think of a thing to say.
Angel disappeared into the darkness under the stairs, and Lorne let him go.
###
Mexico.
It was well after midnight by the time Wesley and Justine reached the motel. A cheap, featureless place a few miles down the road from the bar, its main attraction was its low weekly rates and a relative lack of wildlife scuttling the bathroom tiles. Fighting evil, like crime, did not pay, and Wesley's meager savings were fast dwindling, even at the high dollar-to-peso exchange rate. Sharing a room was a necessary cost-saving measure.
It was not as much of a sacrifice as Wesley had feared at first. Traveling with a woman like Cordelia would have meant bags of designer originals, trays of makeup, hot rollers, facials, nail polishes, perfumes. Justine brought nothing but a single change of clothes and a bottle of vodka. The bottle of vodka was long gone, and the change of clothes was in rags. Justine had not fared much better.
"Don't suppose you have any painkillers," she said. She sounded tired -- no, worse than tired. Exhausted. She sank down on the single sagging bed, cradling her injured arm.
"Actually, I do," he said. "They're in the bathroom. I'll get some ice to bring down the swelling."
He fetched it from the rattling, rusted machine outside, twisted cubes into a washcloth, and came back into the room.
Justine, sitting on the bed with her back to him, slid the tattered rags of her shirt off her shoulders.
Wesley paused in the act of shutting the door and held utterly still. The golden glow of the lamplight traced the elegant, strong curve of her back, and her spine had a tactile beauty that tugged at his fingertips and begged to be touched. But the light also caught on thick raised scars, bled-over bruises. Whatever pain Justine had, she deserved -- he knew that. But beauty had moved him all his life, and it moved him now, despite everything.
She crossed her arms across her breasts as she turned to look over her shoulder at him -- the first truly feminine thing he'd ever seen her do. Sculpture, he thought, and felt another shock. Brutal, murderous Justine was beautiful enough to have come from the hand of Michelangelo himself. The tragedy of it was painful.
She was watching him warily, frowning a little; he wondered what she'd seen in his face, wondered what frightened her about it. For once, he felt no animosity toward her.
"Ice," he said, and held it up. She nodded. He sat down behind her on the bed and applied the makeshift cold pack to her right shoulder. She hissed, but didn't move.
"Hold it there," he said. She folded her left hand over it and pressed it in place while he touched some of the worst of her bruises with light fingertips. A massive dark area over her kidneys worried him. He pressed and felt her flinch. "Any pain?"
"No, except when you're shoving your fist through my back." She was trembling. He felt the fine, delicate vibration through his fingertips. "Don't worry about it. Nothing broken."
He explored a hand-sized, dark-blue stain over her lower left ribs. Something grated, and he heard her hiss.
"Okay, nothing big broken, anyway," she amended. "Quit fussing. I'll live."
"You're not a Slayer, Justine. You have to let yourself heal. Not unless you want to lose even worse next time."
She stiffened. "I didn't lose. I was saving my strength."
"Try saving your life. You don't have to fight every man in sight."
"Girl's gotta stay in shape. Besides, what am I supposed to do? Sit around like you and read? Give me a break. I'm not the bookish type."
"Consider it a vacation," he said. "Rest. Relax. Find some hobby besides getting yourself beaten bloody."
The satin curve of her skin drew him on a level beyond thought. He touched his fingertips lightly to the back of her neck and drew them slowly, gently down the length of her spine. Nothing in his mind but the sensation of skin on skin, the way hers pebbled into gooseflesh under his touch. The two of them sat, frozen, unspeaking and somehow not silent at all.
Look at me, he thought. He needed to see her face, see what she was thinking. But she didn't turn. She finally got up off the bed, walked into the bathroom, and shut the door. He stared down at his hand and felt the phantom sensation of her skin against his fingertips.
God help him. He hadn't seen this coming.
###
In the bathroom, Justine stared at herself in the mirror, at her chalk-pale, discolored face and tried to remember the last time she'd seen herself without bruises.
She couldn't. She also couldn't remember the last time she'd gone to sleep without the help of a handful of pills, or gone into a fight without a hit of crystal meth to get herself wired. Or the last time she'd felt a man's light, delicate touch running down her spine ...
"Dammit," she whispered. She unzipped Wesley's toiletry kit, felt pain drill in her shoulder and dropped the bottle of pills. It rolled behind the toilet. She cursed again and scrambled after it, twisted, felt something stab her side hard enough to dizzy her. Broken ribs. She opened the bottle and dry-swallowed two, considered the level of pain, and swallowed two more.
When she closed her eyes she could still feel two things, two tactile, distinct impressions.
Wesley's fingertips traveling slowly down her back.
A knife in her hand slicing through his neck.
"Stop fucking thinking," she whispered, and pulled her knees up against her chest, crouched there next to the toilet against the cold white tile.
Wesley had touched her so very gently. Wesley had said, Next time I leave you.
She covered her mouth with both hands and ruthlessly swallowed the sobs.
###
When she came out, dressed in a ragged oversized t-shirt, Wesley was already lying in bed, reading. He didn't look at her, but she felt his attention shift like a blazing spotlight. She got into bed without comment, turned away from him on her side, and pulled her knees up for comfort.
"Justine," he said. There was a rasp to his voice, the ghost of her knife passing through his throat. "Tell me why."
"Why what?"
"I understand why you were loyal to Holtz. I even understand why you tried to kill me." That was difficult for him to say, she could feel it. She heard the dry rustle of pages as he set his book aside on the nightstand. "But why do this to yourself?"
"You mean hang out with you?"
"Partly." She felt the smile in his voice, knew it was bitter as much as amused. "Why do this?"
He touched a bruise on her neck, one with a dull hot aching core. She resisted an urge to push back against his hand, transform ache into pain. Pain was good. You couldn't overthink it.
"Better than being dead," she heard herself say, and it surprised her. The desolation in her voice surprised her even more. "I thought you knew that."
He did, of course. "It's not much better."
When she didn't reply, he sighed and reached up to switch off the light. It was warm in the room, but she felt cold, chilled by distance and time and damage. She shivered and burrowed deeper into the sheets, searching for oblivion.
Oblivion wasn't there, wouldn't come. It was one thing she couldn't bludgeon into obedience. Wesley's warm animal heat at her back made her made her shake, made her sick with self-loathing. She listened to his quiet, even breathing and realized he might actually go to sleep, just go to sleep without touching her.
She had the bizarre, terrifying thought that if he went to sleep she might just fade out into the darkness, as if she'd never existed at all.
No.
She turned over, rolled, and pinned him flat underneath her weight. She couldn't see his face in the dark, but she felt his whole body tense. She knew it was flashing across his mind in a red blur, the sense memory of her killing him that night in the park.
He could have struck back. He had the strength, and she was wounded.
He didn't.
She parted her legs and straddled him. She heard the uneven hitch in his breathing when she moved her hips in a slow, hard circle against him, felt his muscles fight against a need to push back.
She wanted him to touch her, put his hands on her. He didn't.
"What in God's name do you want, Justine?" There was more of a rasp to his voice here, in the anonymous dark. She leaned forward and found his lips, kissed him hard. She could feel the hot, pulsing need inside of him, tasted it in his mouth and tongue.
"Same thing you oh-so-obviously do, big boy."
His voice was thick and rough, but still reasonable. "Why?"
It stunned her, because as soon as she heard the question she knew the answer.
"I'll tell you," he said, there in the dark. "Because you want control of me, Justine. But I'm not going to give it to you."
"That's not what this says." She moved against him again, and felt the hard, hot column of his cock straining against those ridiculous cloth pajama bottoms. She heard the breath rush out of him. "All I have to do is take off your pants. You'll fuck me. You know you will."
And then he did touch her, just the way she'd wanted him to - gentle, tracing touches along her arms, her throat, down lightly over her breasts. Touches as if he couldn't stop himself.
And then he grabbed her and threw her down, hard, next to him on the bed, and the assertion of his strength was so sudden and complete that it left her stunned. She felt a lightning bolt of fear rip through her. Next he'd be on top of her, and then -
-- wasn't that what she'd wanted?
But he didn't climb on top of her. He let go.
She gasped for breath and turned on her side again, curled her knees in, and tried to slow down her racing heartbeat. God, God, it was all broken, all chaos, nothing clear and nothing clean. Not even this.
He was on his side, spooned against her back. Close, but not quite touching.
Then he moved closer, and the heat of his skin melted into hers, a caress that reached from her neck down to the soles of her feet. She could still feel his erection pressing hard against her, throbbing with its own feverish beat. His hand rested lightly on the curve of her hip.
He touched his lips to the back of her neck and whispered, "Sleep. You're safe."
She had been prepared to defend herself against every kind of attack, but she had no defense against understanding. The shakes started, racked her in shudders like sobs but without the luxury of tears. She felt as if she might shake herself apart, and all she could do was press herself against his warmth, praying for sleep, praying for a morning that felt as if it would never, ever come.
He put his arm around her, and a sense of great safety folded over her with it. It was stupid, ridiculous, meaningless. He was just a man. Bled like any other man, God knew she'd proved that. But his silent, unforced presence had a sense of strength to it like nothing she'd ever known. Wesley just was. Without hearing him say it she knew that if men came and dragged her off the bed and ripped away her dignity and forced her down on her knees with the taste of her own blood and humiliation in her mouth …
He wouldn't leave her. He was the first man she had ever met, including Holtz, who wouldn't turn around and walk away. I wish …
Before she understood what she was wishing for, it was gone, and she was asleep.
###
Los Angeles.
The vision hit Cordelia around midnight. No pain -- she didn't get pain from them anymore -- but a sense of horror and urgency that drove her right out of bed, trying to think what to do about it, how to stop it. No Wesley available, and God, she'd never needed him more. She needed to talk, needed to think ... Gunn, Fred ... she couldn't put them in the middle of this, it was too big. Too ugly.
Too personal.
Strangely, the vision was already fading, like a dream; she remembered a flash of electric-blue eyes, golden skin, some kind of Greek outfit that was so very toga party. She knew who that was ...
... but then it was gone, too.
What the hell ...?
All she remembered was the important thing.
I know how to get him back. I know!
She paced, silk gown whispering over the carpet. Dennis put a chair in her path, but she went around it, straightened the photographs on the mantel over the tiled fireplace. Her family. The old Scooby Gang, back when the world was new and high school was the biggest pain in the ass there was, even counting vampires.
"I need help," she said aloud. Dennis's invisible hand pressed her shoulder, and she patted it even though she couldn't really feel it. "Thanks, Dennis, but a little more help than the Casper kind."
Dennis floated over something she hadn't seen in a while ... her old Tommy Hilfiger plaid address book. "Right. Thanks. Good idea."
She flipped pages. Nope, dead; nope, undead (and still bad); nope, total loser, and why hadn't she scratched his name out of her address book, anyway?
She paused in the "H" section. Speaking of people she should have scratched off her list ...
"I'm going to regret this," she said to herself. Or maybe to Dennis. "Who's kidding who? I'm already regretting it. Why wait?"
She dialed half the number, and hung up. She kept her hand on the phone receiver, picked it up, dialed half, and hung up again. She actually got a couple of steps away before she turned back, sat down on the sofa, and picked up the handset again.
She dialed the number and managed -- barely -- not to hang up. Sitting through two rings was enough to stretch her to the breaking point, and she shivered with the need to hang up, right now, before it was too --
"Hello?" He actually sounded awake. Too late to pretend it was all a dream.
"Xander Harris?" She aimed a beauty-queen pep-squad smile at the empty living room, trying to squeeze charm into her voice. "Hi! So! How are you?!"
Ten long seconds before he said, as if he didn't believe it, "Cordelia?"
"In the flesh! So!" Her brain had turned into strawberry Jell-o. God, why in the hell had she done this? What had she been thinking? "So! What's new at the Hellmouth? Meet any interesting new demons at the Bronze -- "
He cut her off. "You're kidding, right? What, you called to gloat in the middle of the night?" Xander sounded -- angry. Dark and moody and absolutely not like the goofy, funny guy she'd left behind. Great. What was it about her that turned every guy she met dark? "Yeah, you heard right. The wedding's off. Boo hoo. Get your kicks in now, Queen C, because I'm all out of the whipping boy business."
"Wait, I didn't -- wedding? What wedding? Wait, you and -- and Demon Girl? Married?"
"Her name's Anya, which you sure ought to know, seeing as you summoned her to make my life a living hell and boy, you have so succeeded."
"You married Anya?"
"Obviously you missed the off part of the wedding being off." Xander was silent a few seconds. "So you really don't know."
Cordelia had only intended this to be the hi-how-are-you portion of the conversation, right before she cut to what she really wanted, but she was frozen by the idea that Xander, of all people, should have had a wedding. Even if the wedding was off. Because that meant he'd actually been engaged. And plans had been made. Expensive jewelry -- Xander? -- had been exchanged.
"I left her at the church," he was saying. "Funny, right? Big joke all around. Much laughter down here in Hellmouth-land. First I screwed it up with you, now Anya -- "
The idea of it was too, too strange. Anya in a wedding dress was enough to overload her brain. Anya at a church in a wedding dress … she shook herself out of the trance. "You know, entertaining as this might be if I actually still cared, Xander, I need some info from Giles. I tried the Magic Box but -- "
"Giles is gone."
Her heart thudded to a dull stop. "Gone?"
He must have heard the shock in her voice. "Not six feet under, gone, leaving on a jet plane gone. I think he had it up to here with all us wacky kids, got a craving for warm beer, something like that."
"I needed to ask him -- " She let out a sigh. It didn't matter. "Dammit. Well, okay. Let me talk to Willow, she's big with the spells."
Wrong, again; she heard the stubborn protective tone snap into place. "Willow's not doing the magic thing anymore, and you'd better not get her back into it, Cordelia, or I swear -- "
"Whoa, Altar Boy, not really in the loop here. Willow's not Spell Girl anymore?"
"She got hooked on the magicks," he said. "It was bad for a while. Real bad. But she's getting better."
"You can get hooked on magick? Whoa. Making a mental note about that one ... Well, wait a minute, Willow's not doing the spells, Giles is gone -- who's your brains? I mean, obviously it's not you." This conversation, Cordelia thought, was why she didn't call Sunnydale very often. Talking to these people was like climbing back into an old cheerleader uniform -- all the old habits came flooding back. Like saying the cruel and unusual and excusing herself because it was also true. "Sorry, Xander, I didn't mean it like that."
"Was that an apology? All right, who are you and what have you done with the real Cordelia, pod person?"
She laughed and curled up on the sofa, smiling for real now, not just to make with the happy. "They giving you a hard time? For, you know?"
"Let's see, I invited a hundred people, including my oh-so-very-hated-relatives, made my friends dress up in ugly outfits, not to mention paid for a honeymoon I didn't use. Why would they ever give me a hard time?" Xander sighed. "No, actually. They've been really -- decent about it."
Cordy twirled phone cord around her finger. "And Anya?"
"Eh. Not so much."
"Which is so not surprising. So what was it? Another girl?" She couldn't stop that thin edge of anger from slicing through, and felt him wince. "Okay, that probably wasn't fair. Unless it was another girl."
"No! It was just -- I'm not ready, Cordy. You know about my family. Not like I have a lot of faith in the sacred institution of wedded bliss." He was quiet a long time, and she wondered just how much he'd actually talked to the others. "Anyway. You called for a reason, right?"
"Right. I'm trying to find out more about a demon dimension called Quar-toth. Like, how to get there. And back. The back part's crucial."
"Spelling?" Xander asked.
"Like I'd know. I've been through all the books here and I'm scoring zip. Maybe something at the Magic Box -- "
"Yeah, I'll take a look …" His voice faded out. "Oh."
"Let me guess. Anya's at the Magic Box."
"Seems likely. It's her shop now."
"Okay." She sucked in a breath and tried for cheery again. "I'll call her. No problem."
"No. No, I don't mind. It's important …?"
"Yeah," she said. "It's important." And she proceeded to tell him the whole story … the birth of Connor, Angel's strangeness, Wesley kidnapping the baby, Holtz. She omitted the fact that Angel had come as close as she'd ever want to see to becoming what they all feared. She also glossed over the biting, but she put a hand over the healing scar on her throat. "If we don't get Connor back -- "
"I get the picture," Xander said. He sounded different, solid, someone she could trust. And looking back on it, she realized that she'd always trusted him, because Xander was the one who never wavered, never backed away, never let his feelings stop him from doing what needed to be done. Buffy had the strength. Xander had -- and this was quite the revelation -- the courage. "I'll hit the books. Call you at home?"
"I'll be here," she promised. Nowhere else to go, really. She didn't think the Hyperion was a safe haven, at least not yet.
"I'll be here," she repeated, and hung up.
###
Xander proved to be a morning person, and he proved it by ringing Cordelia's phone at ohmyGod before dawn, just about an hour after she'd finally gotten to sleep. As surprises go, it wasn't especially pretty, and neither was she -- fresh out of an unquiet sleep, hair tangled and matted with sweat, her favorite Snoopy nightshirt as wrinkled as if she'd pulled it out of the bottom of the laundry. God, she needed coffee. Espresso. Gallons of the stuff.
"Hang on," she said to whatever Xander was chattering about. She thumped the phone down on the kitchen counter and spooned grounds into the coffee maker. Instant morning, just add caffeine. When the machine started sputtering and steaming, she picked up the phone again. "Speak."
He made a barking sound. She resisted the impulse to invoke some big whacking demon powers and strangle him through the phone cord. "All righty then, Queen C. You know, I thought time in L.A. would really improve your 'tude, but -- "
"Xander." She cut him off. "Taunting hours are over. We are now in full relaying-of-information mode. Spill it or -- "
"Or what?" Xander asked smugly. He knew she was down to her last phone-a-friend, damn him.
"Or I'll come back to Sunnydale and tell everybody we're dating again. Including what's-her-name. Vengeance girl."
He made a creeped-out noise. "Okay, no need to get nasty. This Quar-toth had only a couple of references to it, in the books Giles didn't let just anybody read … not that they could, dead languages and all …"
"Meander toward a point, Xander."
"Quar-toth's a demon dimension, all right, but it's not just another demon dimension. You've heard of Hell? Well, this is the place Hell calls 'the bad place.' They send things there that Hell thinks are too mean and evil."
"Great." Cordelia looked down at the floor. Fresh scars in the linoleum there from Angel's fingernails -- claws -- whatever. And the bleached-out Rorschach stains of her own blood. It threatened to make her remember all of what had happened here -- the dark, the sex, Angelus -- and she brought herself back to the practical. I am so totally losing my security deposit. There. That was of the practical. "So how do we get there?"
"Hello, this is the listening-for-comprehension part of the exercise, Cordy. Quar-toth is Hell for Hellspawn, so how about we don't get there! And plus, that 'we' thing that's referring to somebody else, because I may be outrageously stupid, but not competing for the Darwin Awards just yet, thank you very much." He was chattering because he was nervous. She knew all about that. It didn't get less annoying -- or less sweet -- with time. "Besides, you can't get there."
"And finally he gets to the point. Can't why exactly?"
"Because Quar-toth doesn't have any portals. Also no windows, no doors, and for sure no cable TV. So again, why go?"
"Things have to get there somehow. Evil things, right? Things Hell doesn't want?"
Xander hesitated a long time. "Cordy, you don't want to do this."
"You know what? I really don't. I'm tired, I can't sleep, I reek like a horse, and my hair would make a bag lady ashamed. Also I need coffee." She sucked in a deep, deep breath, held it, and let it out in a cleansing stream. "How. Do. I. Get. There?"
"I've always wanted to say this," he said. "Go to Hell."
That's what she was afraid of. "You mean literally. As in, the fiery pit of. That place Dante went for vacation."
"You're awfully up on it for a girl who wouldn't turn pages because she might ruin a manicure. Yep. Not so tough to find a door to Hell, by the way, any bingo parlor or Marilyn Manson concert oughta do it. From Hell to Quar-toth, it may be a little bit tougher, but there's definitely a portal." Xander hesitated. "Cordy. Tell me you're not thinking of -- "
"Yeah, totally," she jeered. "Like I hit my head and woke up Buffy. Please."
... Continued in The Dead Church (Part 2) ...