Part 9
The door to Willy’s bar clanged shut behind them and through Buffy’s hesitation she heard the sound of a siren in the distance, growing closer with each passing second.
Angel didn’t wait for her, didn’t even slow to let her catch up, but then he’d done a lot of things that hadn’t exactly met with her approval tonight. The first had been his reaction in the library to Cordelia’s disappearance, the dark anger flitting across his face.
She’d known they’d grown closer in the passing weeks, had met that with surprise and no small amount of irritation but she’d taken a step back – even admitted that if circumstances were different she too might be better friends with Cordelia…
But situations weren’t different. Every day, Buffy felt like she was facing a losing battle and with Cordelia her toughest contender… Tonight had only proven that – the way Angel had gone at Willy, the way he’d thrown him over the bar, delivered punches so strong she thought the sleazy bar owner’s head was gonna fall off his shoulders.
“Are we going to talk about this?” She asked finally, catching up with him and trying to keep her gaze from going to the blood laced into his shirt.
Angel frowned, “You have issues with me beating up Willy?” The anger in his voice was implicit. It had been her suggestion, something she’d done a number of times – and yet the minute he’d done it, she’d developed a conscience?
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it,” said Buffy, increasing her pace to keep up with him, “You really think he’s gonna give us anything after tonight? Angel, what you did…”
It could have been handled a little better, he’d admit, but Cordelia was in danger. Buffy had said herself that time was of the essence and now they’d got the information and she was riding him? “What I did was what I had to,” Angel frowned, “You’re telling me you wouldn’t have done the same?”
“You’re meant to rough him up a little, Angel,” she pressed, “Not leave him bleeding out in the middle of his bar.”
“Cordelia’s been missing for just over twenty four hours, Buffy,” Angel shook his head, “An entire day and now we know who has her. Spike won’t stop at anything to get what he wants and you want to ‘talk’?”
“For all we know we could be walking right into a trap. Did you ever think about that? We took his stupid arm in a box! Cordelia took it and from what I heard Dru and Spike were pretty much hell-bent on raising this Judge guy.”
“Which is why we should be moving,” Angel pointed out, “Cordelia’s–“
“Could you stop about Cordelia for just one second?” Buffy snapped, “We’re not talking about Cordelia here!”
“Then what the hell are we talking about?” He asked, beyond frustrated. Everything inside him was itching to find Spike and slam his fists into him a few thousand times. He knew it now, he’d known it back in Willy’s when the sleazy bartender was the closest thing he had right then to not losing it completely and acting the way he’d really wanted to, the way that would have really terrified Buffy and now…
“You crossed a line,” She yelled, her voice taking on that high-pitched strained sound and Angel’s inner diatribe paused, his hands clenching into fists by his sides as he looked at her. It was a look that Buffy had honestly not seen on his face, not once, and the fact that it was directed at her sent an icy tendril creeping up her spine.
“You could have killed him!”
“I’m a vampire, Buffy,” he retorted, his patience stretched to breaking point, “Killing people kind of comes with the territory and unless you missed it? This is about Cordelia, so tell me I crossed that line tomorrow when she’s safe.” Angel snarled, turning and striding away from her.
The argument was over – he was going to save Cordelia with or without Buffy’s backing.
***
For a while, it all seemed like a bad dream to Cordelia. A nightmare of gargantuan proportions that she’d hold the scars from for a long time (especially those ones from Spike and the cigarette burns, those had been a bitch) except it had been no nightmare.
Angel – her Angel, not the one who’d been sucked in by the Atkin’s diet and slapped with the bout of Buffy lovin’ that made her former-self want to gag – was sitting in front of her, his face creased with worry.
“Angel?” Cordelia didn’t know what to tell him first when he nodded. He reached out and touched her cheek and Cordelia could feel her composure sliding away. Everything seemed so jumbled. How she’d got back, where she’d been… Had he missed her?
Had he known she was gone, just like her birthday? “So much has happened…” She breathed out, reaching out to take his hand as if she’d lose him if she didn’t keep tight hold, “I made a deal with Skip, Angel, I saw you, Connor…”
“Connor?”
Cordelia’s eyes widened and for the second time that night, the relief almost crippled her, “It hasn’t happened yet? I can fix it?”
“Fix what, Cordelia?” He asked, confused, “You’re not making any sense.”
“You and Connor, you were fighting a-and he kept screaming that you’d done something to Holtz, that you weren’t his father…” Cordelia closed her eyes, “He kept saying that no good could ever come of what had happened with you and Darla, th-that he had to lay waste to the evil…”
She felt the weight of his palm against her cheek, cool and grounding. She could do this, she just needed a game plan, a way to forget about the last few dream-weeks of Sunnydale wherein her life had been shoved through a blender backwards.
“Skip told me that I could fix it, that I could go back, only he sent me too far…” She opened her eyes to look at him, “God, it was awful, Angel. You were all hung up on Little Ms. Likes to Slay, I was in the middle of my SAT’s all over again and– Well, I got to break up with Xander myself, this time, without the added rebar incident.”
There was good in that, she decided, going to move herself off her bed. She found herself flanked up against the wall by Angel, though, her body trapped between him and the headboard. Her eyes flew to his,
“Angel, I have to–” she lifted a hand, wincing as she realised that her fingers still hurt. Come to think of it, she all still hurt and why was Angel looking at her like that?
“Do you love me?”
Cordelia’s breath caught. She felt the world teeter again and finally spin off its axis altogether as she realised she knew how to answer. She knew exactly how to answer. “Yes.” Her voice was soft. “I do, Angel. I don’t know how it happened or when it started but I do love you. I’ve loved you for…”
She didn’t recognise the smile on Angel’s face. At first she thought he was just unnaturally happy (which, okay, was pretty novel for Angel) but then he started to laugh. At first, Cordelia felt hurt.
Betrayal flashed across her face and she stared at him, two twin spots burning bright on her cheeks. Betrayal, humiliation, hell, that was just the start of it, except… Except something didn’t feel right.
Angel was laughing at her – laughing, when she’d just admitted only the most important thing ever when you considered everything that’d gone on these past few weeks.
The light died in her eyes a little as she stared at her Angel and though Cordelia didn’t know how she was starting to realise something.
This wasn’t her Angel.
Drusilla faded back into herself after a couple of seconds, laughter dancing in her eyes, “Such wicked, wicked things, Pretty Eyes,” she murmured, following a tear down Cordelia’s cheek with her fingernail,
“Could kill you now, couldn’t I? Make it all stop… But there’s so much more to come and Grandmummy shall be very cross if I don’t let her wake up again.”
Cordelia’s heart sank. Drusilla’s taunting had lasted only moments and yet she’d packed more weight than any of Spike’s torturing, any of his cigarettes. “Then just fucking kill me,” she snapped, using every piece of resolve she had left to turn her face back to Drusilla’s,
“You wanna know what’s to come, you psychotic freak? Try losing your ass of a boyfriend to the one person who’s probably gonna kill you at some point in the near future and y’know what? I hope it really fucking hurts.”
She was almost thankful when Drusilla slammed her head against the wall and the darkness slid over her.
***
There was something in her, Buffy decided later, that had always been a glutton for punishment. Watching her parents going through their divorce and blaming herself was probably something no kid would ever rid themselves of the guilt over, but Buffy had harboured more than most when that freaky demon guy had invaded Sunnydale, harbouring issues over losing some baseball game in his ‘normal’ life as a Little League coach.
She’d asked her Mom later when the nightmares were just a thing of the past – another Sunnydale thing, incidentally – and her Mom had reassured her that no, she wasn’t the reason but Buffy and her glutton for punishment had remained steadfast in blaming herself.
Fights outside of school, hanging with the wrong crowd – everything Principal Lerner had tagged onto her transcript that’d crossed right over to Sunnydale – that was the reason.
She’d grown distant, her father had said, moody. She hadn’t wanted to be involved with stuff like she used to and Buffy had bit her lip like the dutiful daughter, said nothing in case she became another disappointment in a gaze that was already lacking interest and now…
Buffy wasn’t sure how to describe what was going on now. There’d been homework, the stressful addition of a pop-quiz that would decide her fate in a history class she actually liked and the severe grounding of a lifetime from her mother when she realised that Buffy really wasn’t doing her homework, she was out trying to save the world from unspeakable evil. Again.
Except this time, she wasn’t even sure what side the unspeakable evil was on and she wasn’t talking about Angel.
“Could you stop about Cordelia for just one second? We’re not talking about Cordelia here!”
Her earlier thoughts, though they had seemed well-grounded in the moment, were coming back to quite literally bite her in the ass. She’d followed Angel without pause, not honestly sure what else she could have done in the situation, and watched as the vampire-version of a tornado ripped its way across town to get to the one person it had been about for the last few weeks, never mind the last 24 hours.
Cordelia.
It had been a long time coming, Buffy knew. This bile rising up in her throat had been lodged since the minute she’d stood in Angel’s apartment and told about a future that Buffy wasn’t sure she’d have now, a future Buffy wasn’t sure she could deal with and now she had to go in, help Cordelia and make nice like that bile wasn’t a worldful of resentment to the one she was supposed to save, the one who’d made her life so different these past few weeks.
Sacred duty, Chosen One, yadda yadda… And yet she was having guilty-feelings about her involvement in all of this, wondering if she should have done more, helped Angel in beating up Willy, not leapt on his case the minute they got out of there.
Or whether she should have remained the supposedly calm and collected one, leapt on his case anyway and driven the wedge further between them all because she didn’t like how dark he may or may not have got over Cordelia Chase in some bar.
Buffy sighed and closed her eyes for just a moment, remembering something Willow had told her months ago when the old Cordelia had kind of got her into trouble with some snake-demony-worshipping fraternity boys. The way Angel had got when he realised she was in trouble.
How he’d gone ‘grrr’ and how Willow hadn’t ever seen anything like it… Except this was different. He hadn’t gone ‘grrr’ tonight – something she’d be clinging onto with both hands for as long as she could – but the way he’d reacted, the things he’d said. Buffy knew there was a fine line between teetering on a knife edge and going over it completely without the ability to come back.
“Buffy?”
Apparently now wasn’t the time to be thinking about this. Her gaze snapped open and she looked at Angel as he dropped silently back to the floor. “Is she in there?”
“We can get in through a window on the top floor,” said Angel, “Spike doesn’t have too many lackeys up there.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Buffy prodded gently.
“I don’t know,” he frowned, “I can hear a pulse and I can smell blood but I don’t know if it’s Cordelia’s or not…”
Buffy’s gaze darkened slightly. She was all for saving whoever was locked in that warehouse but if they walked in and this was a trap…
“Are you coming?”
They got to the top floor without incident, Buffy appearing at Angel’s side as though her place there had never been questioned. “I guess that’s us,” she murmured, glancing up to an open window. Kind of careless really, but then she hadn’t expected much more from Spike and his lackey’s.
She got up with a hand from Angel, dropping inside the warehouse to a balcony that ran around most of the building. He slid in a moment behind her, picture of stealth as usual.
They both melted back into the shadows when they heard Drusilla’s voice, similar expressions of distaste appearing on their face, though for very different reasons. Angel watched in silence as she appeared on the lower floor, her own look one of distaste though to what Angel wasn’t sure.
“Had such fun with the Princess, Spike,” said Drusilla, her voice soft and lilting, barely carrying to where the two intruders stood, “Did she tell you what she’d seen when you were breaking her?”
Spike scowled, “Not in so many words, pet, no.” Cordelia hadn’t told him bloody anything of use, other than that rot about him loving the Slayer. Kind of thing was that to say to an evil vampire, anyway?
“She thought I was the Angel-beast. Told me all about Grandmummy and the spark…”
His scarred brow lifted, “The spark?”
“Told me such a lot of things,” she murmured, sketching arcane symbols over the air with her fingernails, “Lots of pretty, wicked things…”
“Dru, what are you on about?” He sighed, wishing that this was one of her more lucid moments and she’d just come out and say whatever the hell it was she had to say, “Can we kill her already?” He was getting bored. And hungry.
“Can’t kill her! Grandmummy would be ever so cross.”
“She’d still be cross hearing you call her that,” he muttered under his breath, then, “Wait a minute, are you talking about Darla?”
Above, both Angel and Buffy flinched, puzzled. Drusilla hadn’t been making much sense from the beginning but the talk of Darla had unsettled them both. They nodded towards each other and crept from the shadows of the balcony to the top of the stairs, Buffy’s breath hitching as she realised that Drusilla had stopped talking about Darla and was staring right at her.
Spike shouted out some obscenity, wondering why the hell they had minions when any tall, dark and slutty could walk through the door. Buffy had dropped from the balcony and was on him in a flash, relishing giving Spike a pretty good kicking after the turn her night had taken.
Drusilla’s attentions were more focussed on Angel. She knew he could smell the girl, could see the anger trickling through him – slow burn, deadlier, reminding her not of the Angel-beast but of her Daddy. Long forgotten and sorely missed.
“Sings such lovely songs she does, Daddy,” she trilled at him, planting herself between the door that led to the unconscious girl and the shadow of the beast who’d driven her insane. He was dark this one. Not as dark as Angelus, but Drusilla knew the difference. “Would you like me to get ‘er to sing for you?”
Angel’s jaw tensed and he stalked forward, pushing Drusilla aside as a couple of minions appeared from nowhere, taking Angel by surprise. He feinted back and to the left, feeling something metal and hard coming crashing down to meet his skull. He struggled to keep his consciousness for just a moment, shooting a look at Buffy who was holding her own against Spike and two of his minions.
Drusilla flew back at Angel again as he stood, leaping onto his shoulders and digging her nails into his scalp, her other hand coming down to claw at his eyes. Angel ducked and took the brunt of her weight, finding her claws raking down his face instead.
He hissed in pain and thrust back against the wall, crushing her body against it and hearing her cry out when a couple of ribs snapped.
“Not fair to change the game,” she shrieked, using her deceivingly slight body weight to push away from Angel.
He stumbled forward, clutching one of the legs that had wrapped around his waist, taking her with him. He could smell Cordelia just on the other side of that curtain, hear her heartbeat, faint though it was. They had to get to her and if he had to go through Drusilla, he’d do it.
Spike, who already had a certain amount of distaste for Angel staking his own sire, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that presented with the opportunity, Angel wouldn’t hesitate to drive a stake through either of their hearts.
Trouble was, that Spike couldn’t figure out why he was so pissed – not so much, anyway. If they’d took the Slayer, he’d be able to understand it, could rationalise it, as disgusting as it was, the big poof in love with a slayer, but Cordelia…
He looked up at Buffy, trying to wonder what the hell had Angel so bent out of shape, and in that moment remembered what the chit had told him. Loving the slayer, losing Dru. He shuddered, tried to pick up the fight where he’d left off and snarled as Buffy somehow gained an advantage and shoved one of his minions back, slamming her stake through his heart.
Four down– Four, and from the looks of things the others had fled, not wanting to die at the hands of a Slayer.
“Now, now, pet,” he held his hands up, intending on toying with her, proving that there was no part of him that loved her, “Can’t have that. Who’s gonna look after Spike if you keep killin’ the help?”
“Ask me again why I care?” She retorted, “My life would be so much easier if you hadn’t come to this town.”
“True,” he grinned, throwing himself at her, “But it wouldn’t be half as interesting either.”
Things seemed to go in a bit of a blur after that. Angel’s hand had wrapped around Dru’s throat, his stake pressed hard against her chest as he barked out an order with Spike to stop fighting.
He glanced up from where he’d been indulging in the rough kind of tumble with Buffy, his eyes widening as he realised they’d gained the upper hand again – going after Dru who still wasn’t right no matter how much she protested. He held his hands up, keeping one eye on the stake at Dru’s chest and the other on the Slayer, clutching her side.
He would’ve smirked if they hadn’t been in this situation. Spike glanced from Angel and back to the stake again, his gaze growing concerned. “You don’t wanna do that, mate.”
Angel’s grip tightened, “I’m not your mate, Spike,” he growled, preparing to do what he should have done years ago.
One of Spike’s minions – one who liked working for the pair and hadn’t fallen foul of their mood swings already – had stuck behind when the others had fled. Already liking being the right hand man of a vampire who’d outsmarted two slayers, this minion had been waiting for his opening. He wasn’t the brightest minion on the planet, not by a long shot.
Didn’t have the ability to translate an ancient codex or anything else Spike might have wanted but he was resourceful, he’d give himself that. For when Angel had been fighting Dru and the Slayer had been occupied with fighting Spike, this minion had slipped past them all and set fire to the drapes that covered the windows in the room that held Cordelia captive.
A diversion, of sorts.
It took a moment for it to hit Angel. A moment in which there was a whoosh-like sound and he knew what it was immediately, motioned for Buffy to move to the left and tossed Drusilla at an already mentally-fleeing Spike, seeing them crash into each other as he burst through the curtains.
He heard Buffy cough behind him, the smoke already filling the factory, and Angel ploughed forward, rounding a stack of boxes and finding Cordelia slumped on the floor, heat and flames licking just a few scant inches from her clothes. Everything twisted inside, a maelstrom of emotions as he yanked her from the cold, unforgiving floor and into his arms.
She made a noise in the back of her throat, a mere whimper, and Angel looked down on her, checking for wounds. Fingers twisted at an odd angle, bruises and burnt flesh – not from the fire but from a cigarette. Spike’s. He almost lost it then and there until the fire hit a gas canister further back in the factory and an explosion rocked them forwards.
His grip tightened on Cordelia as he dodged parts of falling debris. The factory – already falling apart before the fire – was crumbling at the seams and Angel was narrowly avoiding being hit, losing his grip, trying to get them out of there in one piece. The light at the end of the tunnel came with Buffy, holding open the door as she hunched over, looking more than worse for wear.
Definitely alive, but taking in large gulps of air, it didn’t take a genius to figure she’d been somewhere near the explosion when it’d hit.
“This whole place is gonna blow,” she coughed, “We need to get out of here.” She shot one look at the unconscious form of Cordelia, more than grateful that they’d actually found her despite her earlier misgivings over Willy and shoved the door to the factory shut, listening to the sounds of sirens filling the air for the second time that night.
The last of her worries right now was the police, the questions they’d ask when they realised that yes, Buffy had been present when that building in LA had just happened to blow up. “Is she–? I mean, she’s not–“
“We need to get her to a hospital,” said Angel, his gaze dark despite the fact that Cordelia was safe in his arms, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.” Buffy nodded, though she was limping and sore and her lungs burned whenever she tried to breathe.
Smoke inhalation was a bitch, something she knew only too well. “Let’s go.”
