Part 7
Charles Gunn crept into the darkened building, a shiver running up and down the length of his spine. He had always been drawn to this place, passing it during patrols, but he had never actually had the nerve to enter. So why did it look so familiar to him now? He made a sweep of the lobby and disheveled offices and after deciding the vamp must have made a nest somewhere else in the building, he turned toward the stairs. A noise, small and almost inaudible, froze him before he reached the first step.
He checked his grip on the crossbow before spinning around to face …. Wesley. “Dude, what the hell you doin in here?” Gunn lowered the bow and took in a shaky breath.
“I might be weakened, but I am not completely helpless. And besides, I couldn’t very well wait out in the truck as you faced an unknown demon on your own.”
“It aint unknown,” Gunn was getting frustrated with Wesley’s account of the previous night’s attack. He turned and took the lead up the stairs. “The word is ‘vampire’, English. You used to know just what that meant.”
Wesley didn’t answer his friend, but simply followed him up the staircase, a sword he hoped he didn’t have to use in his weak hand. Why should Gunn believe him? He could hardly believe it himself. A vampire, yet not. A demon, with a conscience. None of it made sense. If he didn’t know Lorne, know that there was a chance for some so called ‘demons’ to be good, he would have written the gut feeling off as delirium himself. But something deep inside told him that he was right. That the thing that had attacked him, had done so out of need, necessity. Acting more like a ravaged animal than a malevolent devil. And feeling remorse for what he had done.
He had told only a partial truth. No, he didn’t want Gunn facing the vampire alone, but he also feared for the creature as well. He knew Gunn’s strengths. He was capable of killing almost anything.
The two men walked down the hallway, peering into a room or two, unable to see much. Finally they came to a large suite. Both stood silently, looking at the closed door, mutually understanding that some way, some how, they both knew that this was it.
Gunn pushed the door open and moved stealthily in front of his friend. Four human eyes focused, took in the images of the room as shapes took form. A dresser, a chair, a bed, and….
“Oh, God,” Gunn whispered when the nude form of Cordelia, bathed in the sinking moonlight, came into his line of vision.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Wesley walked around Gunn and stared at the image. “Cordelia?” he felt a sickening pain race through him as he stared at her motionless body on the dusty bed.
“Still think this thing’s good?” Gunn nearly spit out his question. “I thought….” he tried to hold his emotions at bay. “I thought I was coming in here to get this nasty son-of-a-bitch because he’d almost got one of my crew. Thought I was stronger, smarter.” He walked closer to the bed, but couldn’t bring himself to touch her cold, dead body. Not even to cover her, to give her a little dignity. Even in death.
Wesley felt his stomach roll, he swallowed down what threatened to come up. He steadied himself with a hand on his knee, willing away the need to breakdown. This was all his fault. He’d defended the creature. Even went as far as to say he might be good. What if Cordelia had believed his ramblings, befriended the very thing that had obviously destroyed her. It was possible. Cordelia put on a good front, but her heart, her compassion were all consuming.
He looked down at her, ashamed of his earlier assumptions of the demon. Shrugging off his jacket, Wesley laid it across her naked form, trying not to imagine the things the beast must have done to her before he killed her….or turned her. That thought kicked in his watcher senses and a feeling of grim responsibility. He looked at Gunn who still stood in shock, his face a mask of sorrow and fury.
“She might not be dead, Charles,” Wesley spoke the fact softly, his voice filled with regret and agonizing grief at the loss of their friend, their heart, and at what they might have to do.
Gunn turned to him with hope shining in his eyes, until the full meaning of what Wesley was saying sunk in. “So your sayin one of us is gonna have to stake her?”
“We must be certain. Cordy would never want….”
“No,” Gunn couldn’t go through that again. He couldn’t stake another sister. “Hell, no!” he shouted, rousing a sleeping Cordelia.
Both men were startled and raised their weapons to her on pure instinct. Cordelia squeaked and looked at them both with confusion and then, realizing her state of undress, pulled in her legs and cowered behind Wesley’s coat as much as possible.
Wes and Gunn were frozen, indecision and fear marring their judgment, neither willing to use their weapon, although both unable to drop them.
A roar erupted and echoed through the room as the door burst open. Angel stood in the doorway, the food and blood forgotten in the hall and the scent of the other men invading his mind, turning him into the demon they thought him to be. He looked at Cordelia, crouched and naked on the bed and then back to the men, his eyes full of hate and death.
In a blur of motion he reached Gunn first, clasping one hand around his neck, the crossbow splintering on the floor. His fingers dug into his enemy’s throat as he lifted him up in the air, strangling him with one strong hold. Gunn couldn’t breath, he tried to fight, but in all of his nights on the streets, he had never encountered such strength.
Wesley raised his sword, willing to die trying to defend his best friend, but before he could strike, Cordelia quickly slipped into Wes’ jacket and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t,” she gave the calm and quiet order. He looked at her, realizing for the first time that she was alive and unharmed. Tears glistened in his eyes and he dropped the sword as she left him and approached Angel from behind. “Let him go, Angel,” she said just as calmly as before.
Angel tightened his hold and Gunn could feel his windpipe, on the verge of crushing. His feet dangled, occasionally kicking out at his assailant.
Cordelia could feel the scream of fear inside of her but she fought it, trying to stay calm for herself and for Angel. “Angel, I care about this man. And so do you. Let him go.”
Angel felt the soft touch of Cordelia’s warm hand on his back, soothing him, coaxing him. Slowly, he released his hold, allowing the man to drop with a thud to the floor.
Gunn fell hard and rolled over, choking and coughing, gasping for air. Rushing to his side, Wesley lifted him up to a sitting position and began examining his throat. When he was satisfied that no permanent damage had been done, his focus turned back to the other two occupants of the room. Standing, he advanced toward Cordelia, ready and eager for answers.
Angel, still burning with the violent need to kill, to destroy anyone near her, pushed Cordelia behind him, growling at Wesley like a wild animal.
“Angel,” her voice was soft and pleading. “They don’t know.” But when she went to move around him, to go to her friends and explain to them what little she knew, Angel blocked her, never taking his flaming eyes from the other men. He shackled her wrist and shoved her further behind him.
“Don’t,” he growled. It was more a plea this time than an order and she felt his hand caressing her wrist where it had just a moment before been an unbreakable shackle.
“Angel,” her arm snaked around his shoulder and she touched his face, forced him to turn and look at her. “They won’t hurt me. And you won’t hurt them. Whatever‘s been done to us has been done to them too.” She stared into his eyes for a moment, feeling more than seeing him relax, and then walked around him, facing him now with her body between his and the other two members of her family. Reaching in his pocket, she took out the negative and handed it to Wesley. “Someone’s been messing with our memories.”
Wesley held up the negative but was unable to discern just who the images were in the darkness.
“It’s a photograph of me and Angel,” she nodded to the vampire behind her when she said his name. “Last night, I did just what you thought I’d do, Gunn. I went to the beach.”
Gunn looked up angrily at her, unable to use his voice yet to scold her.
“I got out to walk and before I knew it, two vampires were chasing me. They would have killed me if it weren’t for him. He saved me. He’d been tortured, starved and beaten and he took out two vamps with his bare hands. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just leave him out there, in that mess. Not after what he had done for me. And I didn’t just feel some kind of gratitude toward him, I felt a connection. There was a reason I was drawn to that beach. And now I know the reason was him,” she began to walk slowly around the room as she continued her story, absently searching in blindness through the dresser drawers for something she instinctively knew to be there.
“I tried taking him to a shelter,” she shut the drawer she had been digging in and opened another. “They were all full of course. So, I took him home.” Fast forwarding her story, she got to the point when she found what she was searching for in the drawer, “I knew he wasn’t evil from the beginning. I’d been having visions, dreams, whatever you want to call them about him. Turns out though,” she clicked on the flashlight and held it up to the negative in Wes’ hand, “They were memories.”
Wesley stared at the image in front of him.
“We’ve both been experiencing little flashes of memories.” She readied herself before she delivered the blow. “He was part of our family, our team. We were, are….” she trailed off and looked between herself and Angel, letting her state and where they had found her speak for itself. “I know this is all so hard to believe. I mean, if it weren’t for the visions and the negative, and the fact that he went on a mission tonight, I wouldn’t….”
“You had a vision?” Wesley stood then and faced her.
“Yes, but it’s alright,” she tried smiling, feeling that a successful mission might help dull the tension in the room. “He was amazing, Wes,” she gazed over to a silent Angel, awe in her voice and eyes. “No wonder we’ve been failing so many of the victims in my visions. We needed him. Who knows how many might have survived if this hadn’t been done to us, to him.”
Wesley turned his eyes to the tall, dark-haired figure. “Have you told her? What you are,” he challenged.
Angel could feel the other man’s concern for Cordelia and finally began to understand the closeness she felt for the two men, or for the one called Wesley at least. He glanced down at Gunn who was gradually regaining a normal rhythm in his breathing. He looked back at Wesley. “I…”
“Oh, I know he’s not human, Wes,” Cordelia interrupted, wanting to assure her two would-be protectors and save Angel from Wesley’s fatherly questioning. Suddenly it dawned on her that Wesley knew too. But how? Her face fell into a questioning expression. “How did you….?”
“He knows he aint human,” Gunn began, his voice rough and painful, “because this is the bloodsucker that tried to drain him last night,” he stood, returning Angel’s warning stare with that of his own. Cordelia and Wesley might be willing to fall for this shit, but he sure as hell wasn’t. If they couldn’t think straight and rational for themselves, then he’d do it for them.
“That was you?” she turned to him, her voice a mere tremor, a mixture of shock and hurt crossing her face. And for the first time, even after everything she had witnessed with him and about him, he sensed fear in her. Fear of him. “But you came home with me. You walked right in and…..of course. You wouldn’t need an invite if you’d been there before. Would you.”
“Cordelia,” he took a step toward her, only to have her take an equal one back.
Wesley decided to be the rescuer, “If what you say is true,” he directed to both Angel and Cordelia, “then he couldn’t have known any better than we did just now. Our actions here in this room, or the actions we were prepared to take, could have been just as horrendous.” He thought of how it had felt to see her on the bed, thinking of her as dead, almost killing her for his mistake, all of it more painful than the bite had been.
Angel shot Wes a look of apology and thanks, silently vowing that somehow he would make up what he had done, and what he had almost done, to the man that must be his friend. “We need to find out who would do something like this. Who would have the means and the resources for such a large spell.” He looked between the occupants in the room. “Anyone you can think of?”
“Well, the only one that comes to mind is Wolfram and Hart,” Wesley answered. “But why would they waste such a thing on us? We aren’t exactly a big threat to an operation of their magnitude.”
“Maybe we were,” Cordelia stated what everyone in the room was thinking and looked at Angel with a little more of the previous trust in her eyes.
“So we go to this Wolfram and Hart and get some answers. Cordelia, you….”
“Hold up. Just like that. Just like that and we trust this dude. He’s a vampire. A vampire, Cordy,” he looked with disgust at her. “How do we know that he ain’t workin with Wolfram and Hart?”
“I don’t know,” Cordelia answered honestly and looked at Angel and then Gunn, still shaken by the news of who exactly had attacked Wes. “I just know what I feel, what I’ve seen. He belongs with us, Gunn. I can feel it.”
“Yeah, well I’ll tell ya what I feel. I feel sick at the thought of…”
“That’s enough,” Angel growled. “This isn’t doing any of us any good.” He approached Gunn, so close that he could see the sheen of perspiration in the dark man’s pores. “Hate me, fight me, distrust me. But know this. Somebody’s been messing around in your head. You can’t tell me you haven’t felt it. The familiar places that you’ve never stepped foot in. The crazy amount of deja-vu that you’ve been feeling.”
Gunn stayed silent.
“I’m right. Aren’t I?”
“…”
“Help us straighten this out. Then we can settle whatever ‘issues’ are left. Do we have a deal?”
Gunn’s jaw clenched, “Only because they believe you.”
The two men stared at one another for a moment before Angel turned around, strategy already forming in his mind. “Cordelia, I want you to go back to your apartment.”
“No,” she shook her head to affirm her stand. “I told you before. I’m not shying away from the fight just because….”
“I need you there, Cordy. In case we don’t come back. Someone has to stay behind. To remember. Just in case.”
She was still silently shaking her head, even though she knew what he said made some sense and that this time she was going to end up doing exactly what he wanted her to.
“You’ll go back to your apartment. Wait a little while. If you don’t hear from us, call Lorne and….”
“Fred,” she offered.
“Right. Fred. Tell them what’s going on. I know we’re right about what has happened, but we could be off on the who. Get them to call anyone they know that might have information about this kind of spell or whatever it is,” he stepped closer to her and gently held her by the shoulders, relieved when she didn’t flinch away due to the knowledge of exactly what he was. “Promise me you’ll do this. Believe me. This time I want you with me, so I can know you’re safe. But this is right. We need part of the team on the outside. Besides,” he tried for humor in their awful situation. “If I can’t guard you, who better to leave you with than that overprotective ghost of yours.”
She didn’t smile or laugh at his remark, just simply nodded her head in answer.
He leaned down and kissed her on the top of the head like an obedient child, meaning it as a thank you for understanding. And that is how she took it. “Get dressed,” he said. “We’ll take the jeep and drop you off on the way.”
Angel left the room with Wes and Gunn. He paused beside the ex-watcher just as the door closed. “Wesley. About….what I did. I….I didn‘t mean….”
“We do this first,” he interrupted the apology. “Then we can settle any ‘issues’ that are left. Right?” he echoed Angel’s words.
“Right.”
***
Cordelia tossed the lone key she had taken off of her ring to the small table beside the door and sat down the laundry basket of clothes she had picked up from downstairs before walking up. She had convinced Angel not to come in with her. Whatever they were going to do she wanted it over with as quick and possible. Besides, she wasn’t sure she’d be so agreeable about his plan if she had him safely in her apartment.
“A little light would be nice, Dennis,” she called to the ghost in the dark.
But there was no answer.
“Dennis!” she gave a small shout to the temperamental phantom.
Still there was no answer.
“Dennis?” concern started to swirl through her as she reached for the lamp. She clicked once. Twice. No light. Feeling her way to the sofa table across the room, she reached for another lamp and tried again. Still nothing.
“Dennis?”
The sound of a match lighting broke the eerie silence and she turned toward the glow coming from the kitchen as a candle was being lit on the counter. “Dennis!,” she scolded as she walked to the kitchen. “Don’t do that to me. I thought….” a figure illuminated in the golden glow of the candle. “Richard?”
***
It wasn’t hard to get in. In fact it was so familiar that Angel assumed he had done it a number of times in the past. And Wesley seemed to know exactly where to look for the records. Of course they had to take care of the receptionist with the strange eyes to get to them. But when they did find the filing cabinets with the information, he knew they had been right.
He stared at the page in front of him for a moment and then discarded it, unable to read another line about the monster he had once been.
“You’re cursed!” Wesley exclaimed from across the room as he turned another page.
“What?”
“A curse,” he walked closer to Angel. “That’s why you have a soul. It says here that a group of gypsies cursed you as punishment for murdering one of their daughters.”
“How is givin a demon a soul a curse?” Gunn raised his head from the folder in his lap.
“Well, there’s the guilt factor. Think of all the things a vampire can accomplish in over a hundred years and then add all of those experiences to a mind with a conscience and a soul. But they didn’t stop at that. It says here that not only would you have to live with the guilt of what you had done. But, since the girl you killed had been…..savagely raped,” he chose better words to describe what the file stated. “They added a clause of sorts to the spell. If you were ever to reach ….sexual satisfaction during an intimate encounter, you would revert back to your demonic alter-ego Angelus.”
“That can’t be right. Cordy and I….and I….,” he stopped at the heated and angry stare the other two gave him, before returning to their research.
“Well, dude must have gotten a little satisfaction back in Sunnydale too. Says hear he was in love with the Slayer and after a particularly active night, turned evil. Did a truck load of damage before they were able to re-curse him too.”
“They were able to reinstate the curse? That knowledge and the original spell must have been lost for years. Gypsy lore and legend was never recorded. It only seems logical that such a thing would have had little chance to survive through the descendants of the original family.”
“See for yourself,” Gunn slid the open folder across the floor from where he was sitting.
Wesley took a few moments, studying the writings and translations intently.
Angel looked over his shoulder like an impatient child, “What does it say?”
“Well, it does indeed say that you were recursed, before you were sent to hell by the Slayer that is.”
“I don’t know if I can hear anymore of this,” Angel backed away from Wesley and began to pace up and down the aisle.
“Hmm?”
“What?” he stopped pacing and looked back to a puzzled Wesley.
Wes looked between his file and the one that Gunn had given him, his brow crinkled in concentration. “Willow Rosenberg performed the spell. The information was indeed obtained from a descendant of the family who cursed you. But these spells,” he looked again between one file and the next. “They are not exactly the same.”
Gunn stood and Angel walked back to Wesley’s side.
“Here,” he pointed to the first file. “The original gypsy curse ends after the phrase, ‘and if he shall dare to satisfy his great need, lust will send back to him the evil which waits to devour us all.’ But here,” he lifted the second and placed it atop the first, “the curse is identical but for an added phrase here,“ he pointed to the writing. “’lust will send back to him the evil which waits to devour us all, but love shall bind it and banish it forever.‘”
“Cordy,” he whispered her name. In no need of a curse or a file to tell him how much he loved her. “We’ve got to find a way to get our memories back. It must be in here somewhere.”
“No,” a feminine voice interrupted them. “It’s not,” Lilah Morgan gave an sly grin to the room.
He remembered that face. How it taunted him as he was tortured and sealed into his coffin.
“I believe this is what you’re looking for,” she tossed him an amulet. “Put it on. It’ll all come back.”
The three men looked at her skeptically. “Don’t believe me?” she let a look of feigned hurt cross her deceptively pretty features. “Oh well. No skin off my nose. Believe me. Or don’t.”
“If you work for the people that did this to us,” Angel asked. “Why would you just give it up like that?”
“Because,” she entered the room and casually stepped over the unconscious record keeper to lean lazily on the desk. “The whole purpose of all the trouble we went through was to separate you from your little group of wanna-be heroes. Together you somehow manage to stir up quite a bit of trouble for the people who pay my salary. Apart you’re just a small blip on the radar screen.”
“And I ask again. Why give this to us now? If your intent was to keep us in the dark, keep us apart, why help us put it together?”
“Because it didn’t work. The storm, your memories. The negative that one of our operatives, well, former operatives failed to clean from the hotel. You were piecing back together yourselves. Besides, when we found out about your little resurrection from the sea, we started enacting plan ‘B’.”
He was almost afraid to ask, “And what plan is that?”
“To make sure your team is permanently fractured. He’s not quick, but he’s thorough. Don’t worry, Richard won’t let her linger too long.”
The name registered immediately with all three men. Angel felt a white hot bolt of rage and panic jolt his body as the three simultaneously rushed from the room, amulet in hand. He could only hope that Dennis was as effective as he thought.
“I’m going to kill you after this is all said and done,” he warned through gritted teeth at Lilah as he passed her and exited the room.
“If you use the amulet, you’ll know that’s not the first time you’ve given that empty threat,” she called out after him.
***
“Richard, what are you doing in my apartment?” Cordelia tried to steady her hands by balling them into fists and propping them on her hips.
“What I’ve been doing ever since I was assigned to you. Watching you. Taking care of you. Trying to rid you of the trash in your life.”
“Assigned to me?” She thought of all she had learned in the past few hours, of Angel and Wes and Gunn and where they thought the answers lay. Realization took hold of her and her fate flashed in the forefront of her gifted mind. “You work for Wolfram and Hart.”
“No,” he seemed insulted. “I work for myself. Freelancer of sorts.”
She noticed then that the glasses were gone. The oversized, grotesquely out-of-style shirt was replaced with a tight black tee, enhancing his wiry but cut frame. This was no geeky neighbor or misunderstood nerd. Richard was an assassin. He moved slightly toward her and she flinched, making him smile. “Are you afraid of me, Cordelia?”
“Where’s Dennis,” she struggled to keep tears at bay.
“Ah, the ever faithful pet ghost. Got rid of him finally. You don’t know how many spells and concoctions I tried before I finally sent him to hell where he belongs. Stupid thing never even knew I was planning his destruction just one door down.”
Cordelia couldn’t fight her grief and tears began to spill down her cheeks
“Don’t cry,” he actually seemed sincere, in a psychotic, serial-killer kind of way. “You’re free from him now. He can’t haunt you any longer.”
“Haunt me? He was my friend,” she sobbed.
“You only think this way now, Cordelia, because this has been your life for so long. Wolfram and Hart told me how you were tricked into the visions, how you had tried to run from the evilness of Sunnydale only to run smack in the middle of it here in L.A.. Unlike them, Mrs. Morgan especially, I feel you can be saved. They sent me here to kill you, you know,” he gave her the information that she already assumed. “But I know that as soon as I get you away from the other evil freaks you’ve gotten mixed up with, you’ll be fine. I might not have been able to save my mother from her fate, but I know I can save you from yours.”
“I don’t want to be saved, Richard,” she shot a quick glance to the door and then back to him.
He stared at her, his muscles tensed and ready to act if she ran.
The telephone startled them both when it rang. She waited, deciding which to try for, the door or the phone. It rang a second time and she bolted, lunging for the receiver.
He was too quick, and caught her easily in his strong arms, locking them around her legs below the knees and toppling her over the end table and face down to the floor. The fall knocked the wind out of her, making her head spin and the room turn.
Richard wasted no time, he flipped her over and straddled her. “Don’t fight it, Cordelia. It will only make it more difficult. I’m not your enemy,” he said as his hands bit bruisingly into her upper arms. “In time you’ll learn to love me like I love you.”
“Love you?“ she gave a hysterical laugh.
“Cordy, pick up,” Angel’s voice ordered over the answering machine, giving her a burst of energy. She began to writhe and push at Richard’s body.
He bent down and pressed his lips hard against hers as the answering machine beeped and the line disconnected.
“Ow! Damn it!” he yelled and pulled his head up when she bit him.
“It doesn’t matter where you take me,” she breathed heavily from the effort of trying to free herself. “I found him after all that Wolfram and Hart tried to do to separate us. He’ll find me. And then he’ll kill you.”
“You’re in love with him,” he realized and looked down at her in disgust.
“Why wouldn’t I be? He’s good. He’s everything that someone like you could never understand. You can’t imagine what he’s gone through to try and do the right thing. You might label him a demon, but deep down he has the heart of a true angel. And with the ‘Powers That Be’ behind him….”
The rest of Cordelia’s speech sounded like an annoying buzz in his head after he heard the words ‘good’, ‘demon’, and ‘Powers That Be’ allowing them to swim around in his chaotic mind. He closed his eyes, fighting off dizziness as flashes of his mother appeared before him. Kneeling in front of him. Begging him to understand. “He’s a good demon,” her voice echoed in his mind and mixed with that of Cordelia’s.
“You think you’re so smart,” he opened his eyes and spit at her. “Playing on both sides of the fence,” he pulled her wrists together above her head and held them there with one hand. “Acting like your just a normal girl who got caught up in something she doesn’t really understand.” He gritted his teeth and grabbed hold of the top of her blouse with his free hand, ripping it down to her naval in one, violent jerk. “I almost bought into your little act. But you’re just like she was. A filthy demon whore,” he looked down at her exposed skin and the hint of her breasts, he wanted her, but images of his mother, of what he had had to do to her overpowered his want, his need to force her to satisfy him.
He raised his hand and slapped her hard for fooling him into thinking she was different, making her head spin again until it was difficult to focus on him, or what was happening to her.
He lifted the hand that shackled her wrists above her head and closed it over her throat, becoming aroused again now, not by her body, but the thought of the kill.
She saw him move his other hand to his shirt and then raise it above her, and for an instant she thought he was going to strike her again. Until she saw the glint of metal flash in the glowing light of the candle.
He stabbed down, his face morphing into something scarier than any monster she had ever faced. He was a mad man, lost in a hell of his own making. Pain shot through her abdomen, hot and fierce, and a warm gush of blood spread quickly across her skin.
He pulled the knife up from her body, raising it again into the air.
“Angel,” she whispered, before the knife came down a second time.