Part 5
“Any news yet?”
The hope in Cordelia’s voice nearly broke David’s heart. He shook his head slowly.
“Give them time, little one. They don’t move at the same speed humans do.”
“But if they wait too long, it’ll be too late! Angel needs me.” She sounded determined, as if going back were a foregone conclusion.
“They’re considering it, that’s all I can tell you.”
“They are?” Cordelia was suddenly breathless, her eyes shining with hope. She squealed, then trapped him in a bear hug that would’ve threatened his life if it could have been destroyed. “You’re the best, Davy!”
David sighed then returned her hug, squeezing her gently. His mind wandered back to the surreal meeting he’d had with his superiors. He’d finally psyched himself up to go speak with Raphael, the general of his order, and it made him unaccountably nervous. Inquiring as to Rafael’s whereabouts, he’d discovered that the general was in chambers with the Powers themselves. As everyone was welcome at these meetings, he’d entered quietly and listened in on the proceedings.
“This problem will not go away.” The female Power’s voice was mellifluous, “We must intervene.”
“Sister,” the large man to her right intoned, “we have intervened without being heard. Our Champion’s ears are deaf to our cries.”
Rafael stood, his wings spread magnificently behind him as he bowed deeply before the tribunal. “Great ones, our enemies have masked our Champion’s eyes, have covered his ears with their hands. They distract him with their own petty business and we are not able to penetrate their barrier.”
The woman frowned. “We knew it would be difficult if we allowed him to infiltrate the lair of the Wolf, Ram, and Hart. We should have anticipated this.”
For the first time, the other being, a gender-neutral angel, spoke up. “We did anticipate it,” it reminded them gently. “But we felt we could overcome it.”
“It does not matter,” the man said. “What we should’ve done is past. Now we must concern ourselves with fixing this current problem. Our champion did well when he restored the happiness of his son, but now that happiness is threatened.”
“And the life of our Champion hangs in the balance,” the woman added. “We cannot allow these evil lower beings to prevail. We must get word to him.”
“How?” The angel asked, its face serene. “He no longer has a seer to give him our messages.”
“We can send a vision to another of his associates,” the man suggested. “The other vampire or the girl.”
The woman shook her head. “No. The other vampire would retain the visions permanently, and we have other plans for him. He is destined to help the Slayer as he did before. We cannot interfere with that. And the girl? She would not survive a vision of this magnitude. Neither would her lover.”
“And the other human?” the man countered.
“He has been corrupted,” the woman dismissed him. “The Wolf, Ram, and Hart have infected his essence and would detect our presence. He cannot be used.”
They fell silent as the last of their options was taken away from them, the only sound in the room the faint fluttering of wings.
In the audience, David shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He had the answer, knew what could be done, and yet, he was afraid to speak. This was the tribunal after all. If he was deemed impertinent—he shuddered at the thought. Disobedient angels were not punished lightly.
“Have we no other recourse?” the woman lamented.
“My lady, if I may,” Rafael said, bowing again. She nodded regally.
“We may consider sending him a new seer.”
The man laughed derisively. “He would trust no one at this juncture. The vampire is overly distraught over the loss of his previous seer, and it is unlikely he will trust a new one in time to stop the evil beings from destroying him and his son.”
They seemed to contemplate this and David used the opportunity to spring into action before he lost his nerve.
From his seat in the audience, he called out strongly, “You could send his former seer back.”
The silence in the room was shocking after his voice faded away. Not a wing rustled in the stillness and David gulped, wanting to sink through the floor and disappear as the silence dragged on.
The man frowned fiercely, glaring at the crowd, then at Rafael. “Who dares to speak without permission?” His voice echoed in the sacred space, and everyone cringed slightly.
David stood slowly and faced his fate. “I did, your greatness.”
“And who are you?” the angel on the tribunal asked.
Rafael had turned and glared at him, then motioned him forward. Turning back to the tribunal, Rafael put on an apologetic mask. “He is one of the guardians in my order, masters.”
“And how did you come to determine what is in our best interests, young one?” The woman’s eyebrows were raised.
“I am Cordelia’s guardian.” They nodded in understanding.
“Why would you feel it necessary to tear her away from her heavenly reward, only to restore her to the pain and misery of human life?” The angel seemed genuinely curious.
David hesitated before answering. “She is not happy, Great Ones. She begs me daily to find a way to send her back. I fear—”
He stopped, hesitant to speak of such a forbidden thing in the Powers’ presence.
“What do you fear?” the woman asked.
“I fear she will disappear.” His eyes were sad. “She is beginning to give up hope, and she refuses to put her life behind her. She claims that our Champion needs her and will not heed any arguments.”
The Powers exchanged glances. Finally, the man spoke. “Do you feel she will survive the shock of a return to human life?”
No one said it, but everyone immediately thought of the trouble the Slayer had adjusting to life on Earth after leaving their exalted presence.
“I do,” David said with conviction. “She has never let go of her life. She has not once enjoyed her stay here. She longs for him, and I believe she needs to go back.”
“We will decide what she needs, young one,” the woman reprimanded him, but her tone was without malice. “We will consider your request. You are dismissed.”
David bowed deeply, moving back, then running out the door. He didn’t look once at his general’s face, knowing that he’d be in trouble.
“So how do you know they’re considering it?” Cordelia’s hopeful voice penetrated David’s thoughts and brought him back to the present.
“I visited a tribunal meeting. They spoke of you,” he said simply.
She nodded. “Good. Thanks, Davy! You’re the best.” She flashed him one of those smiles that made his heart melt and he gathered her into a hug.
Waiting would be the hardest part of all.
Part 6
Angel knew he could do this. He was a master vampire for Pete’s sake, not a weakling. He could get back out there. He could find someone to fill his lonely nights. He could.
He just didn’t think it would be with this particular woman.
Nina smiled at him from across the table. “I was so surprised when you called me, Angel,” she said, her eyes soft. “After the whole um, puppet thing, I didn’t think you were interested. After we had breakfast together, you never—” she trailed off.
That breakfast had shown him that he wasn’t. Interested, that is. Despite what he’d said. All he could think about was the fact that was betraying Cordelia’s memory. But then his well-meaning friends had thought that this date could help him. That he should give it another try. They had suggested that this date could help him get over Cordelia.
The mere thought of it was ludicrous and yet he was here anyway, sitting down to dinner even when he didn’t eat.
He shrugged an answer to her question. “I just thought we could get to know each other better, that’s all.”
Smiling again, she reached across the table to take his hand. “I would like that.”
He let her hold his hand, but he didn’t smile.
Nina spoke again after a few seconds of silence. “I think we’re good for each other, you know?” she said thoughtfully. “We’re alike. We’re both freaks. We understand each other.”
For a moment, Angel’s mind flashed back to another ‘freak’ he’d met when Cordelia hadn’t been herself. Gwen had thought there might be a connection between them, too. But there hadn’t been. He sighed. Just like there wasn’t now.
Gently, he pulled his hand away from hers. “We aren’t that much alike, Nina. I’m a vampire. You’re a werewolf. Big differences.”
She frowned, “But lots of common ground, Angel. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who can relate and isn’t evil?” She shook her head. “It’s almost impossible. But we’ve found each other, and I think we should make the best of it. We can be good together. Why should we let the unknown take that way from us?”
Unwittingly, her words sparked something deep inside Angel. He jerked a bit, struck by a sense of betrayal so strong he almost couldn’t function. This whole date was a sham. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t do this.
Maybe someday he could move on. Maybe. He doubted it, but it would take a long time. A very, very long time.
“I’m sorry, Nina. I just—,” he stopped, his eyes turning apologetic. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
“But, why?” she asked, confusion etched on her face. “I thought, I mean Wesley said. . .”
“Wesley means well, but he doesn’t understand me right now. I like you, Nina. I like you a lot. But I just can’t . . . you know. . . with you.” He sighed. “I’m still in love with someone else.”
“The Slayer.” It was a statement, not a question. “Wesley told me about her.”
“No, not Buffy,” Angel said, shaking his head. He was distracted for a moment. Why would Wesley tell her about Buffy and not about Cordelia? “I lost my best friend last year. I didn’t realize I was in love with her until she died. I can’t move on yet. It’s just too . . . just too soon.”
She sighed, leaning back in her chair. “I get it. I knew this was too good to be true,” she said, shaking her head and smiling wryly. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a rare steak together, now does it?”
He smiled back at her, relief coursing through him. She understood. It was more than he’d hoped for. “I suppose we could celebrate our common love of red meat,” he joked.
“Steaks it is, then.” She scrutinized him for a moment before reaching back to take his hand again. This time there was only friendship in the gesture. “You know that I’m willing to listen if you need to talk, right?”
He was shocked by her offer considering how little they knew each other. “Thanks,” he said, pulling his hand away. “I think I’ll be okay, though.”
Even as he said the words, his soul rebelled. In his waking hours he coped, but at night, his soul suffered the torment of her loss. He would never be okay.
Never again would he be the same. Without Cordelia, he was lost.
Part 7
“Aw, shit! Anybody could’ve caught that pass! My grandma plays better football than these pansies.” Connor’s voice was full of scorn for the team whose praises he’d been singing all the way to the football game.
Next to him, Jace smiled indulgently, taking a drink from the monstrous soda in his hand. “Told you my team was going to whoop your team’s ass.”
“Shut up!” Connor barked, but he grinned anyway, his eyes still glued to the field. “Besides, it isn’t like you don’t get tweaked out when your team loses.”
“That’s because my team doesn’t lose,” Jace countered.
Finally Connor looked at him, but only long enough to roll his eyes and laugh derisively. “Yeah. Sure. This from the man who practically demolished his living room last year when his favorite team got their asses handed to them at the Superbowl.”
“At least they made it to the Superbowl,” Jace said smugly, then handed Connor the nachos.
Connor took the chips without comment, groaning when his team’s quarterback got sacked. Again.
The whistle blew ending the second quarter, and everyone around them began shifting in their seats, standing and stretching or going to the snack bar as the half-time show geared up. Jace watched Connor in silence, noting the young man’s tired eyes. As if to underscore his observation, Connor stretched and yawned widely, slouching back in his seat as he propped his feet up on the now-empty row in front of him.
“You okay, son?”
Connor swung surprised eyes to him.
He forged on. “You’re looking a little tired these days.”
Connor raised an eyebrow. “You work me from dawn till dusk and you wonder why I’m tired?”
Jace shrugged. It was true he’d been working Connor to the bone, but they needed him to be ready. They would put their plan into action soon and Connor needed to be in top form. It didn’t matter that the boy had no idea he was so important; he would be ready anyway.
“I’ve been working you this hard for weeks now, and it’s only in the past few days that you’ve looked so worn down. Making time for a girlfriend on the side?”
Connor snorted, “Hardly.”
Good. They didn’t need the added complications. A smile graced Jace’s face but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”
Frowning, Connor shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Oh, you know,” he said vaguely. “Bad dreams.”
“Ah,” Jace said in understanding, relieved that his charge wasn’t having second thoughts about their training sessions. “Your parents.”
Connor’s jaw tightened just a fraction. Dreams about his parents’ accident hadn’t haunted him in months, and they still weren’t now. But should he tell Jace about his other weird dreams? About the dreams that seemed more like memories than anything else? He liked Jace, but there was just something about him that made Connor hold back, something not quite right.
“Yeah, my parents. Keep dreaming about the accident,” he lied. “I get so tired sometimes and the exhaustion makes them come easier.”
Jace seemed to think about this. “Maybe you should try meditating before you go to bed.”
“Okay,” Connor said, but he wasn’t really listening. His eyes were glued to the field and to the casual observer, even to Jace, it looked like the young man was enjoying the display of the voluptuous cheerleaders gyrating below.
The situation couldn’t have been more different. Connor’s mind had gone back to the dreams he’d had. After that first one, the one where he’d fought the beasts he almost couldn’t describe, then the terrorist scene where he’d tried to blow up everyone he cared about, Connor had had others. Every night. Some were less disturbing, but all had the undercurrent of pain and heartache and he’d really had to concentrate to pull his mind out of the dark place he entered during the dreams.
Last night had been the worst of all. He’d dreamed that his father, his dream father, not the one who’d raised him in San Francisco, had turned evil. It was a Dr. Jekyl-Mr. Hyde transformation, and from his other dreams, Connor had known that this version of his father felt no love or responsibility toward his son. This was the one the old man in the beast-world had called Angelus.
Connor’s dream-self had been both fascinated and repulsed by his father’s transformation. He’d watched himself speaking to his father, watched himself be angry at him, taunt him, even as his heart cried out for love and acceptance.
And then the dream had gone from bad to worse. The next flash had sent him to an abandoned warehouse where he’d obviously been living, a mattress sprawled in the background. A woman was there with him, a woman that he cared about, a woman that he had conflicting emotions about. It startled him later to realize that she was the same woman who’d been hooked up to explosives in his first dream.
Whoever she was, she was important to his father, he sensed that. And for that his dream-self had wanted to hurt her. His dream-self had wanted her for his own, but his father loved her. And yet, there was something not quite right about her, either. Like she wasn’t the way she should be.
She had come to him, offered herself to him as a prize, as comfort when the world was falling down around them. His real self had retched as his dream-self gloried in her body. His dream-self experienced what he thought was acceptance and love when his real self, with an outsider’s perspective, saw his father standing on a nearby building’s ledge, watching them with pain pouring from his eyes.
Connor had woken up breathless, clutching his pillow and crying, whimpering his apologies to an empty bedroom in that fuzzy place halfway between dreamland and the real world. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from begging for forgiveness from a father that, as far as he knew, didn’t exist.
As he watched the halftime show progress, Connor mulled over these perplexing dreams. Every one of them seemed connected. Every dream seemed to build off the last. He’d discovered that they didn’t move in a linear progression, but rather gave him snapshots of different points in time. Of a life he was certain he’d never lived.
And yet . . . they seemed so much like memories.
But he knew where he’d grown up. He knew who his parents were, and they were not a pair of vampires, as his dreams told him. He’d been loved by his parents, loved by his sister, and he wouldn’t trade those memories for anything. But something in these dreams called to him. Something told him that they were the truth, and his life had been . . .
No. He couldn’t think that. To think his entire life had been a sham would call into question who he was. Who he’d become. He was proud of himself. Proud of his life. Proud to be his father’s, his real father’s, son.
They were just dreams. They had to be.
“Here we go,” Jace said from his side, motioning to the resumption of play on the field. He took the half-eaten nachos back from Connor. “Time for my team to show your team how to play the game.”
Connor snorted his derision, letting his anxiousness over the troubling dreams fade away for now. “You wish, old man. They’ll come back. They always do.”
“We’ll see about that,” Jace said, smiling, and they both turned back to the game in silence.
Part 8
“David!”
Rafael’s imperious voice made David jump in fright. He straightened up, trying to gather his dignity back to him.
“General.” He inclined his head, bowing to his leader. “How may I be of service?”
“Oh, drop the diplomatic crap, Davy,” Rafael said in annoyance. “I’m your older brother, so knock it off.”
David smiled slightly. Sometimes he forgot the familial connection; they rarely acknowledged it. Rafael’s position didn’t allow him to indulge himself in brotherly affection very often.
“You’re wanted at the tribunal,” Rafael continued. “Let’s go.”
“N-now?” His voice squeaked slightly.
“Yes, now, ‘fraidy cat.” Rafael rolled his eyes. “You were always such a ninny, even if you never looked like it.”
David frowned at this, raising himself completely to his impressive height. At his full strength, he towered even over his brother. “Very well. I am ready.”
“You’d better be,” Rafael said, “Because I’m not taking the heat for you. You got yourself into this, and I’ve let them know that it was entirely your idea.”
“Fine,” David said, following him quickly down the corridor to the chamber. “I accept full responsibility.”
Minutes later, he stood next to his brother in front of the council.
“We have discussed your suggestion,” the woman said, “and have decided that you may hold the answer to our dilemma.”
“However,” the tribunal angel added, “we believe that some adjustments are in order before we send her back.”
“Quite right,” the man acknowledged, nodding his head. “Our Champion’s soul would be at risk due to their strong bond. It must be made permanent, or our problems will increase.”
“We will link his soul to hers,” the woman decreed. “They must bond and mate. She will retain immortality, he will gain the permanence of his soul.”
“That is acceptable,” the angel said. “We will send her back.”
“You may inform her of her good fortune,” the man declared, pointing imperiously at David. “She will return tomorrow.”
David could barely hold back his smile. “Thank you, great ones,” he said, then bowed deeply, backing away from them and returning to his seat. He ignored the glare that his commander sent his way, knowing that when Cordelia left, he’d probably be relegated to guarding the unruly spirit of a two-year-old. But it was worth it if Cordelia would be happy. She deserved to be happy.
The tribunal stood, their robes fluttering around their bodies in diaphanous clouds. “As we have decreed, so it shall be,” the intoned together, their hands raised.
“Let it be done.”