Part 6.
Cordelia leaned toward the flower cart, smelling the array of blooms. The farmer’s market was bustling underneath the bright blue day. She scanned the area, spotting Wesley as he added another paper bag of goods to the three already sitting on the stand. He made a motion to the old woman behind the makeshift counter, letting her know that he was almost done before weaving his way to the tomatoes.
Cordelia gave herself a small smile. She had thought her “walk” would consist of window shopping and tanning at the beach for a couple of hours, or at least something that amounted to frivolous and pointless entertainment. She looked up at the clear sky. It was almost noon and they had already been to the bank, the cleaners, and now, hopefully, they were ending their little stop for produce. It wasn’t that she was disappointed, not really. It just had caught her by surprise. The hotel seemed so dark and even a little gothic, that she had forgotten, but for its exterior appearance, that it was for all intended purposes a working household of sorts. Wesley, obviously, its keeper.
She watched him as he pushed his selection of tomatoes onto the counter, spilling half the contents. She walked over and helped him drop the bruised vegetables back into their sack.
“What do I owe you, Mag?” Wesley addressed the elderly woman by name, reaching into his wallet.
“You put that away, you know you’ve paid enough for whatever you want from my stand for a long time,” she said with a wink to Wesley and a smile to Cordelia.
Wesley seemed to feign surprise that she would not let him pay, but Cordelia could tell by the easy way he accepted that it must be a common exchange between the two.
“Pretty girl you’ve got with you today,” Cordelia noticed the woman was still smiling in her direction.
Wesley’s eyes started to dart nervously around before concentrating on closing his already closed wallet. “Well, yes, she is,” his answer was more nervous than his actions. Shoving his wallet hard into his blazer, he picked up three of the bags. Cordelia took the other two and watched him hurry away. She looked back at the woman, “Thank you,” she smiled back.
“No need to thank me, dear. That’s a fine young man you’ve got there. Fine. He’s a good catch. Don’t let him get away.”
“Oh….we’re not…we’re….Okay,” she settled and turned to catch up with Wesley.
“What was that all about?” she asked as soon as her steps fell in time with Wesley’s.
“What was what?” he stared ahead, slowing his pace a little now that they were reaching the end of the market.
“That,” she nodded her head back a little. “She didn’t charge you for any of this stuff. Seems to me it wasn’t the first load of freebies either.”
Wesley didn’t answer for several moments and Cordelia thought that he was going to ignore her question altogether until they rounded the street corner and he took a seat on an empty bus stop bench. She sat beside him and waited.
“I started coming to this market a couple of months ago. Every week I’d stop and pick out items needed at the hotel. Mag’s stand has the best quality, so naturally I frequented hers more than the others.”
“Naturally,” Cordelia added when he paused, hoping to urge him on.
“One afternoon, I noticed that Mag had a nasty cut just below her ear. Inquiring about it, I asked if she was well and had she had an accident of some sort. The poor woman broke out into tears, mumbling about her sanity and deformed young men threatening her stand. I sat her down and gave her a cup of water from the thermos on her truck and after a few moments, coaxed the story from her. It seemed that, because of the popularity of her stand, she was staying much later than the others, packing all of her things onto her truck alone. She told me that a gang of young “punks”, as she called them, had surrounded her the night before, demanding her money for the day. She had reluctantly given it to them, hoping that they would leave. Instead one of them came close to her, grabbing her by the neck and demanding that she give them even more on the next night. She said that she must have been hallucinating in her panic and old age, because his face, and his teeth…” Wesley stopped.
“His face and his teeth what?”
“That’s all I could get out of her, but it was enough.”
It took Cordelia’s mind only a second to catch his thought. “Vampires,” she said with a sigh of pity for the nice woman.
Wesley nodded his head, “Often young vampires mug and rob, sometimes taking their victims life, sometimes not.”
“She was lucky,” Cordelia thought aloud, a shiver running up her spine at what might have happened to the woman. “So that’s what she’s thankful to you for? For being nice to her that day?”
“No. After her story, I instructed her to leave the market early that day. I told her that those young men would not bother her again.”
“You took care of a gang full of vamps?” her tone was so full of suspicion that it wounded him just a little.
“Is that so hard to believe?” he answered back a little sharply.
Cordelia raised an eyebrow at him.
“I guess it is,” he mumbled his disappointment. “Anyway, that evening, just before dusk, I went to Angel. I told him the story. At first, he seemed uninterested, bothered even by my mere presence. But as I turned to leave, thinking of alternative ways to help the woman, he told me to inform Gunn that they would be “hunting” that night.”
Cordelia was silent for a moment, staring at Wesley as he stared forward lost in the memory of his tale. “Angel?”
Wesley continued to stare ahead and simply nodded.
“The next morning there was an envelope on my desk at the hotel. It was overflowing with money. I can only assume it was the money Angel had taken from the vampires as a good portion of it was soiled with ash and blood.”
“What did you do?” Cordelia asked with quiet awe, her eyes still boring into the side of his head.
“I took it to Mag. She assumes that I am the one who took care of the matter. And I couldn’t very well explain to her what had really happened.”
Cordelia’s eyes turned forward then, her chin sinking to her hands. She tried to reason out the realization, trying to fit the good deed to the vampire who had made her tremble the night she had arrived at the hotel, had made her promise her life in return for his help. A thought clicked and her head bolted up. “He couldn’t have done it without something in return,” she said a little too haughtily. Of course. Angel wasn’t some dark and misunderstood do-gooder. He was the occult Godfather of L.A., making innocent humans promise a lifetime of favors for his help. She absolutely refused to believe anything else.
“You’re right.”
Ah ha! She knew it. “Probably had to promise her life’s blood or something.”
“Angel does not drink human blood!” Wesley’s shocked eyes widened as he turned to her. “At least not often, and never FROM a human. He only consumes it when he is gravely injured. And then it is strictly from a small supply we purchase from a local blood bank.”
“But that….” she tried to think of why it was wrong for Angel to drink human blood at all and scurried for an answer. Wesley Windham Price would not make Angel into the good guy, “How could you let Angel do that? That blood is supposed to save lives.”
“It does,” he answered her more with his eyes than his words.
She stared at him for a moment, trying to let his meaning sink in. Angel drinking human blood saves lives. But the lives of whom? The people he sometimes saves? Or the one’s he would drink from without his little emergency stash. She shivered a bit. “So what did she have to promise?” her voice was quiet again.
“Along with the money there was a note instructing me to make Mag promise, no matter how good the business, that she was to pack up and leave each day before dark.”
“That’s it?”
“What else would he expect from her?” he looked genuinely puzzled by her response. “He usually does expect something in return from those random few he decides to help. Always for their own good of course.”
Yeah right. Her mind raced to reason out why he would help. There had to be a reason besides ‘just out of the goodness of his…..did vampires even have hearts?’ She suddenly realized that, beyond the little she had found out in Sunnydale – stakes to the heart, holy water, sunlight, and biting – there really wasn’t a lot that she actually knew about vampires. The word “hunt” stuck in her mind and she remembered Xander bragging about one of his adventures with Buffy, in the process telling Cordelia how vampires like the hunt as much as the kill. “So he helps people when it suites him. When he feels like a little violence,” she tried another line of reasoning.
“Certainly not,” Wesley sounded offended, making her feel slightly ashamed. “Not all of his deeds have been violent acts against the underworld of Los Angeles. Take the Harrison Safe House. It’s a women’s shelter in the heart of the city. Gunn had been familiar with the place as he had helped some of its occupants get away from a life “on the streets”, for lack of a better term. About a month ago, Gunn heard through one of his contacts that the shelter was in financial ruin and about to close its doors. Gunn met with Angel. Now they have enough funding to continue for two more years. Thanks to an anonymous donor, who only asks that part of the grant go toward hiring the services of the most reputable accountant in the city.”
“He’s got that much money?” her tone of suspicion was back.
“He’s lived for well over two-hundred years, Cordelia. He’d have to be a fool not to have amassed a fortune over such a long life span.”
Cordelia slipped into thought again, trying to wrap her mind around the information that Wesley had just shared. It just didn’t fit. A monster couldn’t do the things that Angel had obviously done. He had helped people. People who would probably run screaming from him if they met him on the dark streets of L.A.. But he had helped them nonetheless. And the only thing he had asked in return was that they protect themselves in someway; return his favor by keeping themselves safe. Making them promise something for their own good.
Could it be that simple? Could his deal with her, the fateful promise that had felt like a death sentence, be as simple as the others? A promise made to ensure her safety, a payment that was for her own good? Her mind was still trying to sort out the logic in such a promise when Wesley spoke.
“There is a nice diner down the block,” he stood and looked down at her, purposely changing the subject, knowing he had already told her too much. “These will keep in my car while we sit down for a bit.”
Cordelia stood and followed his lead, quietly walking the half-block to his car and placing the bags inside.
Half an hour later, as they sat in an orange, vinyl booth waiting for their food, Cordelia asked, “Who’s room am I staying in?”
“Pardon?” Wesley seemed to choke on his water.
“The room? The suite just below Angel’s floor? The one we spent all of yesterday remodeling? It was in complete working order, Wesley. And the only things that work in that hotel are the rooms that are used.”
Wesley placed the glass down on the table. He blew out a breath wondering why he seemed incapable of keeping anything from her. “The room was supposed to be Angel’s,” he said it almost with sadness. “As I told you before, Angel does try to help people, in his own way. But it is always anonymous, always from the safety of shadows and the solitude of the top floor of the hotel.
“However, there was a period, when he first started understanding that there were ways he could help, I began to notice a change in him. This was several months ago of course, but I believe that the feeling of knowing he had helped humans that had no where else to turn started to soften his armor a bit.
“The incident in Sunnydale traumatized him so much, that I believe he thought himself a lost cause. But when he started to help, to care just a little, there was a small light that started to flicker inside of him.
“It was just before Christmas when Gunn and I suggested that he do for himself what he had done for us, make his space in the hotel comfortable. Not wanting the top floor, why I haven’t a clue, he picked the suite just below it as his new apartment. We hurried and began repairs on the rooms. He even discussed finally meeting Fred. He seemed almost in good spirits, or at least what could be defined as good spirits for Angel.
“Then, one night, he and Gunn were “hunting” for a group of vampires that had attacked some of Gunn’s friends. They found four of them, surrounding a family and their car. Their auto had broken down on the side of the street, one the vampires had their son in his hands. The boy couldn’t have been more than three. Gunn raced toward the family, taking on three of the vampires himself. Angel ran to the child without thinking, dusting the demon and grabbing the boy in his arms.
“It wasn’t until the boy’s mother screamed that Angel had realized he was no longer in the shadows. As Gunn bested the last vamp, he turned to see Angel, frozen under the street lamp, the boy held tight in his arms.
“Gunn said the woman’s face was full of fear, she turned to Charles, begging him to kill the last of them, not to let that horrible thing kill her son.”
The waitress halted Wesley’s story as she placed the sandwiches on the table. When the waitress was safely out of earshot, Cordelia asked, “What happened?”
“Gunn took the boy from Angel and carried him to his mother, then gave the stunned family a ride home.”
“And Angel abandoned the suite and crawled back into the shadows to lick his wounds,” Cordelia finished the story, thinking again how insightful Fred’s first description of Angel had been.
“I’m afraid so,” Wesley sighed and took a small bite of his sandwich.
“I guess I can understand now why he hides in that big old hotel,” Cordelia picked at the bun on her sandwich, her appetite suddenly failing her, then said absently, “The only thing I don’t get is why the rest of you are.”
“Why the rest of us are what?” he asked after swallowing another bite.
“Hiding. You from failure, Gunn from the memory of his sister, and Fred from the world.”
“I am certainly NOT hiding,” he sounded outraged and forced himself to lower his voice a bit. “My work at the hotel could possibly be more important than anything the Watcher’s Council has seen since their discovery of the Slayer line.”
Cordelia bristled at his selfish motives but held her tongue for the moment. It wouldn’t do to get him mad at her. After all, he was her “handler” today. But she couldn’t help but be angry for Angel’s sake. For all his expertise and research, Wesley should be helping Angel with his curse. If this vampire with a soul was as good as Wesley seemed to think, as good as she was beginning to believe herself, why not do everything to help him? She couldn’t understand how Wesley could witness Angel’s good deeds, see the pain that his life, or unlife, was causing him without at least trying to help. “So you spend all of that time in your office studying demon psychology?”
“Every waking moment,” he said it almost with reverence, as if his precious catalogue of the demon mind would bring about world peace.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer, so she tried to soften it as much as she could but the bite of her words was ever present, “And the curse that Angel suffers under, that runs a far second, right?”
Wesley seemed to get nervous at the mention of Angel’s curse. Probably guilt.
His ears turned red and he put his half eaten sandwich down on the plate, “Just because you don’t understand the importance of my work, doesn’t mean that it is unimportant.”
And with that, the door of information that had seemed open to her all morning slammed shut. Wesley was cordial and friendly as ever as they spent the rest of the day doing things of her choosing; window shopping, purchasing a few linens for her suite, walking through the park, but he kept the conversation light. She had thought that their lunch time conversation had angered him, but it seemed more to have upset him. As if the mention of Angel’s curse brought him great pain. She wished she had been able to keep the last comment, that had obviously sent him inward, to herself.
***
It was nearly dark by the time they returned to the hotel. Cordelia helped Wesley put away the produce from the market and ate a bite of dinner with Fred before climbing the stairs to her room.
She took her time in the bath, dressed in a cute but modest pair of Victoria’s Secret Pjs, item number one-hundred thirty-seven on her list of demands, and stood in front of the bathroom mirror while drying her mane of chestnut hair.
Why was her heart skipping in anticipation? And why was she primping as if she were going out on some hot date?
She knew why.
She knew that he would come tonight. And now, after Wesley’s tales of the “reluctant dark hero” she was intrigued, impressed even. She wanted to see him. Wanted to find out for herself if he was truly what she was beginning to think he was. Good. Truly and utterly good.
But how could being away from her father be good? What kind of promise of protection could that be? It was the only thing that still bothered her. She had heard Angel tell Wesley that her father was in a motel by the airport, but she hadn’t pressed the subject with Wesley during their little day trip, unsure really as to why she hadn’t. She supposed it was out of fear.
But she didn’t feel afraid.
She felt in some small way, as sick and silly as it seemed, more protected than she had in all of her life.
She rubbed a generous amount of lotion on her legs, arms and hands and took one last look in the mirror before turning out the bathroom light.
The moment she opened the balcony doors, she knew he was there, lurking in the darkest corner of the balcony. Waiting.
Ignoring him as if she hadn’t felt his presence, she walked to the ledge and looked up at the half-moon that shone bright in the sky. She stayed that way for several minutes, gathering her thoughts, choosing her words carefully before she spoke.
“It’s not really polite to spy,” she said without turning.
He moved slightly then and she turned toward the corner, only to see that most of him still remained in shadow.
“How was your …. ‘walk’?” he bit out the last word. He almost sounded jealous.
“Oh, it was great,” she stretched lazily and leaned her back against the ledge. “We ran some errands, went to the produce market,” she emphasized that particular stop. “Ate some lunch, window shopped on Rodeo and saw the cutest little……this is ridiculous,” she finally huffed. “I’m not going to stand here and talk to a shadow, it’s silly and it’s rude.”
When he didn’t move, she did, toward the door. “Wait,” he quickly took a small step forward.
She paused halfway to the door. “Are you going to come out of the shadows like a good boy?” she couldn’t believe she was teasing him.
He didn’t move.
“I’ve seen what you look like already, Angel.”
He watched her as she waited. He didn’t want her to look at him, but couldn’t bear it if she left. He stepped out of the shadows, staying as far from her as he could on the small balcony.
She searched his face and saw him fidget visibly under her gaze. He wasn’t a monster, barely a vampire. Granted, the ridges, the fangs, the blazing golden eyes were all still firmly in place, but he was not the scary dark figure who had greeted her the first night she had come to the hotel. Wesley’s stories had softened him some, turned him into something else in her eyes. She guessed that what her father had told her long ago was really true. What was on the inside of a person could outshine the shell.
She suddenly wanted to know more about him, everything. “Do you sleep in a coffin?”
“What?” his yellow eyes shot wide at her.
“A coffin? Do you have to sleep in one?”
Her frankness was shocking, and at the same time exhilarating. No one ever asked him anything about himself, not even Wesley or Gunn. “No, I don’t sleep in a coffin,” he answered.
“But you do sleep during the day, right? I mean the sun makes you all weak and everything, right?”
“I sleep during the day sometimes, but only if I’m tired. The sun can only effect me when I’m in it,” he didn’t know why but he almost felt like smiling when she began to pace, as if comparing notes in her mind from old horror movies.
“But it does burn you up?”
“Yes.”
“And the black,” she motioned to his attire with her hand. “Is that like a uniform for you guys or something?”
“I just happen to like black,” he did feel the corners of his mouth loosen then, however not quite into a smile.
“So no coffin, no sun-coma, and black is just a fashion statement,” she ticked each one off finger by finger. Her eyebrows shot up in excitement as the next question hit her, “Can you fly?” she asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh,” she sounded disappointed. Angel had never wished for that particular power until then.
“Why the questions, Cordelia?”
She shrugged her shoulders, “Know thy enemy,” she half-heartedly said then wished she could immediately take the answer back as he began to fade back into the shadows. She hadn’t been serious, not really. Good grief.
“You SHOULD know your enemy, Cordelia. It’s a smart move.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she decided to play along. “It really helped going out today with Wesley too. I found out a lot about the monster that’s keeping me here.”
He stepped further back into the shadows. Of course that’s why she would ask questions. He was a fool to let himself think for a moment that she was interested in the kind of existence he was forced to endure. That she would even care.
“He told me stories, terrible stories,” she gulped in fear and gave a dramatic shiver for good measure. “Stories of charity, heroism, selflessness. Why, I could barely eat my lunch,” she cracked a small smile then.
She wasn’t afraid of him, or plotting against some enemy. It was worse. Much worse. She was making fun of him. “Wesley’s being kind to you, Cordelia. For every good story he knows about me, he also knows a hundred bad. Don’t mistake giving into the whims of humans as a sign that I care,” his voice was that distant rumble again, the kind she was beginning to identify as his “scary” voice.
Instead of running terrified into the safety of her room as he had hoped for her to do, Cordelia took a purposeful step toward the shadows, blanketed in the bravery that he had admired the first night he watched her march down the street to his door. “It’s too late, Angel. I’ve seen behind the mask. You may be a vampire, but you’re a vampire with a soul. A good soul. The problem is, you just don’t quite know what to do with that, do you?”
He advanced then, faster than her eyes would register. Looming over her, he tilted her chin up to face him, his eyes blazing down at her. “Look real hard, Cordelia. This isn’t a mask. It’s what I am. Inside. And out.”
Cordelia reached up slowly, taking his hand gently from her face, her eyes never falling from his. He felt it then, the change. That small gesture. The feathering touch of her hand. Fear rocked him. He would never be able to scare Cordelia Chase. Not when with a single touch she could hold all the power in the world over him.
Cordelia’s heart began to race at the intimate contact she had made. She searched frantically for a diversion. “How’s your wound?” she said a little breathlessly, clearing her throat immediately after.
“Wound?” he was still caught in the trance as he stared down at her face.
“The one you got saving my father?” she touched his side and he flinched away, awake.
“Don’t be a baby, let me see it,” she demanded.
He stilled and let her lift his black shirt slightly as she searched in the area she had remembered seeing blood. The skin was smooth and pale, covering a ripple of muscles that would have had any of the jocks at Sunnydale High drooling with envy. But the wound was long gone.
“I guess I can add miraculous healing power to my list,” she mumbled, her eyes still on the muscles of his abdomen as her fingertips continued to search his side where the cut should have been.
Sparks of electricity shot through him, but he remained still, afraid of betraying the feeling that her touch was causing, afraid the slightest move might make her realize just what she was doing to him. He closed his eyes.
Cordelia had meant the gesture as a distraction, and that’s exactly what it was. But not for Angel. God, he was beautiful. She felt her hands tingle as they searched his side, wanting an excuse to search the rest of his body. She absently wondered what his human face had looked like on such a gorgeous body then scolded herself for such a stupid thought. She closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek, forcing herself to stop. Slowly, she pulled down his shirt and ventured a look up at his face, hoping he hadn’t recognized her wound inspection as the grope fest it was.
Her eyes froze in shock. A gasp escaped her mouth as she took a small step back.
The wonderful shocks of lust and warmth that her touch had caused turned to searing pain at the look in her eyes. “Forget what I was?” he growled.
“No, Angel…I…” her eyes wide with confusion.
Angel ran a hand through his dark hair. How could he blame her? She’d given him more than anyone had ever given him with just a touch. It wasn’t her fault that he was a monster. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” Then with one silent leap, he was gone.
“Angel! No! Wait!” she called out, but it was no good.
She raced inside and slammed the doors, her chest laboring to control her erratic breath. She leaned her head against the cool glass of the French door. It had to have been Wesley’s stories, or the attraction she was beginning to feel for Angel. That was the only explanation, the only thing that could possibly make sense. Why else would she see him like that?
She had only seen it for a brief moment, but in that instant when her eyes had blinked up at him, it was not the face of a demon that stared back at her, but that of a man. A cruelly handsome man with eyes like dark chocolate and a mouth made to make women melt. But it had to be in her mind, her attraction for him tricking her brain into making him what she wished he could be. Because as soon as she had seen it, it was gone, and it had been the face of a vampire marred with hurt, mumbling an apology that should have been hers. How could she have done such a thing to him. She closed her eyes against the glass, vowing to make up for the pain she had caused him.
