Deadboy and Zeppo, Part 2
Rated TEEN
Xander woke slowly, trying to figure out why he felt so different. The obvious answer--that he was a vampire now--he pushed away since he'd had nearly a month to get used to that. He noticed that the burning hunger had gone, and that was quickly followed by a memory of feeding from Angel's arm.
Xander wished he could see in a mirror because he really was curious about whether he could still blush. He'd come to say goodbye to Cordy and get a nice quick staking, but instead he had ended up crying in Deadboy's arms and really, was there anything more embarrassing in all the world? Okay, it wasn't quite as embarrassing as if he had broken down in Spike's arms, but it came close.
Xander pushed himself up on his still manacled arms and he tried to remember just how much of an idiot he'd made of himself the night before. Of course, Angel was used to him being an idiot so at least he didn't have far to fall in the older vampire's eyes. Xander physically jerked at the thought of falling in his sire's eyes at all.
"Oh no. No no no. Come on, how much Xander hateage can one universe have?" Xander asked the ceiling as he fell back against the pillows and considered his current feelings for Angel. The slight contempt was still there, and he still had a whole studio audience of insecurities about being inferior. However, the first casual thought of letting Angel down had crashed into him like a wave... a tidal wave... a fucking tsunami.
Xander recognized the feelings as the same he had earlier felt when Spike would sneak into the bathroom and point out how much Dru hated him. The punk vampire would whisper to him about how Dru had left him on the watcher's lawn to get staked, about how he wasn't even good enough to be a minion to the dark princess. Xander had been chained in the bathtub where Spike had once lived, unable to strike back at those hateful words or escape them. Xander had learned to put on a good enough face to fool the others into thinking he wasn't bothered when Spike would make comments about Xander's missing sire, but Spike's knowing, cruel grin had revealed the other vampire's glee at hurting him. Now all those fears and desperate longings were tied up in Angel.
Xander took several deep unnecessary breaths as he tried to remember how much he had revealed. He'd told Angel about his parents and the young couple whose car he'd stolen. If Xander was going to be perfectly honest with himself, he was surprised to still be the moving and un-dusty version of dead after that confession. The fact that Angel had responded with purring and touching and holding left him teetering between a burning need to find his sire and a general humiliation that left him never wanting to face anyone again.
He glanced toward the curtained window, and the light was no longer creeping in at the edges, so Xander figured it was night and Angel must already be up and working. He pulled idly at the chains, not really expecting to be able to break them, but he'd seen enough spy shows to know that when you woke up chained you were supposed to pull the chains. It was like a rule or something. He gave the chains a second pull just because he had nothing else to do.
Using that theory, Xander sat up so that he leaned against the wall and randomly pulled at the chains as he waited for his sire to come back. Sire. Xander rolled that word around in his head as he listened to the various footsteps downstairs. He had no idea how Angel had done it, but Xander could feel the need to please Angel rising up on the ashes of his need to please Dru. Okay, ashes might be a little strong since he still felt the slightest urge to cry at the fact that Dru hadn't wanted him, but he'd been feeling that same rejection from women for so long that he should be used to it by now. The need to please Angel... now that was new.
Footsteps came down the hall, and Xander tried to decide if Angel was in the group hurrying toward his room. He hadn't yet decided when the bedroom door flew open and Cordy, Wes, and some bald, black guy came though it.
Xander barely stopped himself from snarling when the black guy pointed a crossbow straight at him. Gunn. Xander remembered Willow telling him about Gunn, the pseudo gang member who killed vamps. If Cordy hadn't been in the room, Xander truly would have vamped out.
"We have a slight problem," Cordelia exclaimed breathlessly as she stood at the side of the bed closest to the door.
"Slight as in Snyder in the hallway or slight as in invi-girl?" Xander asked without taking his eyes off Gunn. Gunn returned his glare, and Xander could smell small wisps of fear that he was almost sure came from the man. Somehow the fact that Gunn was scared of him made him feel a whole lot better.
"Slight as in Willow's boyfriend who clanked." Cordelia's words distracted Xander from glaring at Gunn, and he turned his attention to Cordy. Clanking boyfriend bad was really, really bad.
"What's up?" he asked. Earlier he hadn't minded the chains. Of course at the time he thought he was about to become dust and they wouldn't really matter, but now the idea of clanking boyfriend bad made him rise to one knee and eye the wall where the manacles attached. If there was clanking boyfriend bad in the hotel, he didn't want to lie here helpless, and Xander realized that for the first time in a month, he care about living. Unliving. Whatever.
"Angel. He's missing." Cordy's words were soft, but Xander felt them like a cold knife. He tried to quiet his own need to growl and snap at the news since he didn't think these three would be impressed.
"How long?" Xander asked after just a moment.
"A van pulled up in front of the hotel and a group what we assume to be humans tazered him and pulled him in just a few minutes ago," Wesley offered.
"And what we should be doing is trying to find that van not standing here with walking corpse boy while Angel gets dragged farther away," Gunn put in, and Xander had to fight against his game face.
"Xander could be a great assistance. Since he has fed on Angel's blood, he should be able to track his scent rather effectively."
"Xander? Will you help?" Cordy stepped forward and now Xander spotted the key in her hand.
"You trust me to help?" Xander asked in amazement. He'd begged Buffy to let him help, to let him prove himself the way Spike had. The conversation hadn't ended well what with Riley offering to track down the doctor who had implanted the chip in Spike and Willow crying and Spike smiling arrogantly enough that Xander knew the vampire would be back to make fun of him late at night when no one else was around. Xander shook his head to clear the memory and force back the demon face.
"Hell, no. We just don't have any better alternatives. But don't go trying to pass yourself off as some do-gooder because I'm not buying," Gunn immediately snapped. "And if you get those teeth anywhere near any of us, I will stake your sorry ass."
"I'm not a do-gooder," Xander snarled, and this time he allowed his fangs to show and a bit of yellow to leech into his eye color. "I'm not about to kill Cordy or Wes, and I'll give you a temporary pass because those two like you. But if humans took Angel, they aren't going to survive the mistake."
"Xander!" Cordelia gasped, and she stopped dead just out of his range.
"Cordy, I don't have a soul. I may have pieces of my humanity left, pieces that love you and want to curl up and die because Willow turned on me and even pieces that make me fall down and go boom in the shower. That doesn't make me human. It just makes me a demon with serious screw loosage." For a moment Xander thought he'd lost his chance to get free, but Cordelia nodded and moved forward. Xander held out his hands, and she unlocked each cuff with a dull snick of metal.
"Where'd they grab him?"
"Out front," Wesley offered, and Xander pushed himself off the bed and headed for the door. Gunn didn't move, his crossbow still aimed unerringly at Xander's heart. Xander snarled his frustration.
"Might want to get dressed there, Zeppo. Half naked vamps attract a lot of attention." Xander shot Cordy an angry glance and she had the decency to duck her head at having told the black man the nickname.
"Don't even try and make her feel guilty," Gunn ordered.
"Oh, please, Cordy has about as much guilt as I do," Xander dryly commented. "Angel sucks up all the guilt around him like some sort of black hole of guilt." Xander looked down and realized that bare-chested and barefoot was not a good way to start a rescue mission. "Um, does anyone have any clothes I can wear?"
"I'll show you Angel's closet. And if you meant that guilt comment as an insult, you'll pay for that mister," Cordelia huffed as she walked out of the room. Gunn lowered the crossbow to point at the floor although he didn't put it down, and Xander followed Cordelia into the hall. His back itched at the thought that someone who wanted to kill him was at his back with a sharp wooden weapon, but then he'd been ignoring that little voice that told him he was doing something stupid for a long time now.
"So, I have to wonder if Angel is now your sire." Wesley commented, and Xander lost a half step in the hall. Had Angel denied being his sire? Xander's mind ran circles as he tried to figure that one out. Before anyone could notice he was being stranger than usual, Xander picked up his pace again as he followed Cordelia to Angel's room.
"I'm kinda new to this vamp deal, Wes. You probably need to ask Angel that," Xander hedged. The words tried to stick in his throat, but he gave a casual shrug as if being rejected by a second sire meant nothing. He thought being raised by the Harrises had prepared him for being ignored and rejected, but the Harrises had nothing on the Aurelius. Xander was starting to understand why Spike was such a pain in the ass considering his family. Cordy pushed open a door, and Xander followed her quickly hoping to escape more difficult questions.
Inside the room, Xander could smell Angel-sire scent everywhere. The odor clung to the bed in a cloud, and Xander breathed deeply. Cordy was pulling shirts out of the closet, and Xander grabbed a green one based strictly on smell of Angel that still lingered in the fabric. Behind him, Gunn made some comment that he didn't truly hear, but the sarcastic tone came through loud and clear. Xander turned and flashed a game-faced snarl as he slipped his arms into the sleeves of his borrowed shirt.
"Xander!" Cordy backhanded him across his arm, and Xander dropped back into his human mask before ducking his head.
"Sorry," he offered as Cordy turned to the problem of shoes.
"Don't growl at Gunn," she sniffed as she offered boots that were at least two sizes too large.
"Um, Cord? Little big for me," Xander said as he lifted the boots slightly.
"Is that what you told Angel last night?" Gunn asked from his place leaning against the door frame, and it took Xander several seconds to connect the idea of shoe size and penis size and Angel sharing his bed the previous evening. When he finally did make the connection, Xander flashed a little fang without going into game face and growled an answer.
"You only have a temporary pass with me what with the whole Cordelia friend package, so I wouldn't push it if I were you," Xander pointed out in a flat tone of voice that would have warned his friends that he was dangerously angry. Gunn wasn't one of his friends, and Gunn didn't take the warning.
"I'm not afraid of any vamp. Really not afraid of some half starved fledge." Gunn's casual answer angered Xander to the core of his being. The man in front of him was a human, an animal barely evolved past crawling in the swamp. Xander was a demon. He belonged to a race that had ruled earth before humans had crawled out of the mire, and he could feel the ancient demonic powers flowing through him. And still, this animal threatened him. Xander slipped into game face before even realizing it, and he stepped forward intent on stopping such insolence.
Gunn swung his crossbow up, and Xander lunged. With one hand he hit the crossbow so hard that the front curve snapped and the weapon flew from Gunn's grasp. With his other hand, he grabbed Gunn by the neck and pushed the man back and out of the room until he had him up against the wall.
"Xander!!" a female voice broke through his rage, and Xander glanced over at the familiar and shocked face. For a half second he saw another animal throwing herself against his strength, and then he blinked at the image became Cordelia pulling against the arm he was using to hold Gunn. "Let him go mister or I swear I'll make you the sorriest vamp on the planet. You'll have more to brood about than Angel." Despite the threat, Xander felt a surge of affection rise for the woman who had given him some of his greatest and most humiliating moments. He released Gunn and let Cordelia pull him back a few feet.
"You better watch your back there, Zeppo." Gunn did a good imitation of a vampire snarl as he rubbed his neck.
"I'm not the one who needs to worry," Xander offered quietly and the hall became silent.
"Yes, well, I think right now we need to focus on the common goal of getting Angel back. Perhaps these other conflicts can wait until..."
"Right. We'll get Angel back and then I'm out of here." Xander turned back to Angel's room and started opening drawer after drawer in search of socks to make the large boots wearable.
"Xander?" Cordy stood at the doorway, and for the first time, Xander saw faint traces of the fear and doubt he'd seen in Willow's eyes.
"I made a mistake coming here," Xander said. He'd made more mistakes than that, but coming to LA was the mistake he was willing to admit to. "I'll help you find Angel and then I'll leave." Xander silently added a lot more to that comment in his head. He'd leave before the doubt and fear pushed out all other emotions in Cordelia's eyes. He'd leave before he killed Gunn and earned a stake in the heart. He'd leave before he had another sire knock him unconscious and leave him outside to wait for sunrise. Maybe it was time to work on the whole fear of fire thing.
Xander found the socks and pulled out three heavy pairs before sitting on the bed and using vamp speed to pull on socks and the oversized boots. Good enough fit for him to start tracking.
"Where did you last see him?"
"On the street just outside of the courtyard," Wesley answered, and Xander walked out of the room. In the hall he passed Gunn who now held half the broken crossbow in a fist, clearly prepared to stake him. Xander snorted his disgust for the human as he hurried down the stairs and out the door.
In the small courtyard, the smell of fear and electricity lingered in the stone, a strange contrast against the sweet night-blooming jasmine. Xander walked to the center of the unsettling scents. Ozone from an electrical discharge. Sire scent. Humans, at least two he could identify. Fear. Adrenaline. Xander started walking toward the gate, following the scents.
At the street, the trail ended in a stream of diesel and gasoline and oil and asphalt, but not before Xander got an indication of direction. Knowing he had almost no chance of finding anything and knowing that Angel might already be dead and even knowing that finding Angel meant being rejected in person, Xander still started walking. It was all he could do, and he had never learned how to give up.
"Where are you going?" Wesley asked as he followed.
"I have no idea," Xander admitted as he kept walking down the dark sidewalk. There was no scent trail at all to follow now, and Xander knew he might as well be looking for a literal needle in a haystack.
"Can you follow the trail?" Wes squinted down the darkened street.
"No."
"Then... why?" Wesley followed Xander for a couple of hundred feet before Xander answered. Glancing back, he could see Cordy and Gunn still standing back by the hotel, and Xander struggled for an answer that he didn't have. Then again, he was never answer-boy. That was Giles' job description. Or sometimes Oz's. Oz could give some good answers when he actually got around to talking.
"I don't know what else to do," Xander finally admitted.
"Come back to the hotel then," Wesley's hand landed on his arm, and Xander allowed the man to stop him. Looking into Wes' eyes, Xander could see the caution, the worry that one wrong move could mean Xander killing him. Xander had no idea why that look bothered him, but it did.
"I don't belong there, Wes. If Angel's out there, I'll find him and send him home. If not..." Xander didn't answer that question. Really, in the end his future wouldn't change whether or not he found Angel, but he didn't want to think that his sire might turn to dust before him. "Just go back and take care of Cordy for me," Xander finally finished.
"Xander," Wes said uncertainly.
"Wes. Go back." Xander insisted. They stood under the light of a yellow streetlamp staring into each other's eyes, and Xander could feel Wes's hand on his arm pulling him back toward the hotel. However, Wes didn't have the strength to budge him, and the man eventually let his hand fall down to his side. "Please," Xander added. Wesley's shoulders dropped as he took a step backwards towards the Hyperion. Xander turned away from the human and started walking.
Xander leaned against the cement brick of a wall and let his eyes fall closed. He had no idea where to go from here. The faint scent of his sire had faded within a hundred yards of the hotel and now he was just wandering the street aimlessly. Tilting his head up slightly, Xander opened his mouth so that he could better scent the air even though, as expected, he didn't find anything at all. In a city this size, he could wander the streets for months without finding Angel, and that was assuming Angel was alive and still in the city.
Xander shivered at the idea that his sire could be dead or imprisoned somewhere that Xander would never find him. He breathed deeply and categorized the various smells: rotting food, car fumes, sewer water, dog feces, human body odor, ashes, smog, a Pylean demon, drying paint, musty paper.
The only conclusion Xander reached was that he hated L.A. as a vampire even more than he had hated it as a human. He rubbed his nose to try and ease the stinging, sharp smell of garbage, but absolutely nothing in the air told him where to look for his sire. Xander was about to push off from the wall to continue the search when a body hit his, shoving him toward an alley.
Another fledge might have gone into game face, but Xander found his instincts in that matter were a little less than vampirely, which had at one point in the recent past led to a round of taunt the vampire from Spike. Now it allowed him to keep his human mask in place as three teenagers shoved him into the alley.
"Hand over your wallet and you won't get hurt," the tallest teen, a Hispanic boy with long stringy hair, hissed his order. Xander smiled slowly even though the shortest had a dull knife pushing into his stomach. The thought of these three threatening him was so ludicrous that it approached amusing. Oh hell, it was amusing. Xander breathed deeply, enjoying the smell of aggression and fear that drifted of their bodies.
"Small problem. Don't have one," Xander shrugged as he arranged his features into helpless submission. The couple in the car he had killed out of need and hunger. Right now he didn't need anything from these three, and he wasn't particularly hungry yet, but they had sealed their fate when they had challenged him. They were vermin trying to challenge his superior strength, and Xander loved the feeling of knowing that he wasn't the one in danger here. They were the Zeppos in this alley, and he was just about to make their final lesson a memorable one.
"Don't fuck with us," the tall one hissed in a thick accent, and Xander held up his hands as if in surrender.
"Not fucking with you. Not fucking you either considering how you smell, but most definitely not fucking with you." The comment caught the three so off guard that the one with the knife backed off a half step. Xander took that moment since he really didn't want to see Angel's shirt ruined by a knife thrust. He reached out and grabbed the short one's knife hand, yanking as hard as he could. With his vampire strength, that was hard enough that the boy's feet lost contact with the ground a half second before his face made contact with the concrete wall with a squishing thud.
"Ew," Xander complained sarcastically as he gave a sly smile. Turning his head to the two remaining attackers, he watched as they stood helpless with shock.
"Fucking assh..." The tall one didn't get any farther since Xander's fist drove his nose back and into his brain. Xander could feel the bone and cartilage yield under the force of his hand, and the sheer power exhilarated him.
"Oh man, just... you know, we only wanted...." The last gang member was reduced to random babbling, and Xander remembered what that had felt like. He remembered babbling when Dru had appeared in the hallway of his apartment building gliding toward him seductively. He remembered the terror of knowing that his life and death was totally out of his control. The gang member had backed himself into a blue dumpster that smelled of rotting lettuce, and Xander stalked forward.
By now his human self would have been running, screaming for help. Hell, his human self had run screaming from Dru, nearly breaking his neck on the stairs, and then a skank-faced minion and appeared below him.
He had crashed into the vamp, rolling them both down a flight of stairs with the vamp on the bottom and taking most of the heavy blows. Xander had slammed into the wall at the bottom and had been stunned enough to lay there struggling for breath for a moment. He had gotten up to run again, but he had been just a little too slow. Still, he had died doing everything he could to escape.
"God, you really are pathetic. You're just standing here waiting to die," Xander said as he let his hands fall on the metal dumpster on either side of the teenager's head. The dull metallic thud made the would-be mugger flinch. "So weak. So pathetically and humiliatingly weak." Xander lowered his head to scent the wonderful fear that flowed off the body trapped between him and the dumpster. Xander was about to bite when another smell hit him like needles in his nose. Sneezing, Xander backed off a step and considered the shaking creature with urine flowing down its leg.
"You're too pathetic to even bother with," he said with a sneer. The boy stood trembling, and Xander turned his back to consider the first two attackers. A scrambling noise behind him told him that the boy with the weak bladder had run for it, but he didn't care. He wasn't about to eat something that smelled like that.
The first gangster lay in a pool of fresh blood that seeped from a cracked skull. Snarling at the wasted blood that now pooled on the dirty pavement, Xander grabbed the second gangster, the one he punched, and sunk his teeth into the neck. Without the heart to pump blood up to him, he had trouble pulling enough blood from the body to truly satisfy him; however, he drew a pint or two into his mouth before dropping the body on the pavement again.
Xander checked his shirt and pants to make sure he was still respectable looking before stepping out of the alley and picking a direction. A car passed on the street, even in this bad neighborhood, even at this late hour. Humans, going on their lives without ever knowing they passed a demon. Well, most humans did. Xander wondered if Willow and Cordy would have a problem with him feeding on the gang member, not that either woman would ever find out. No, Xander thought he had seen the last of his former friends. They were right. He wasn't Xander and he wouldn't become Xander even to earn their trust.
Xander set a strong walking pace down the street as he continued searching for the scent of his sire. He wasn't really anything. He wasn't Xander, he wasn't a minion, he wasn't a childe, he wasn't a normal vampire, but he didn't have a soul. Hell, he didn't even have a chip that bought him a ticket into... well, Spike wasn't exactly in Buffy's good graces, but the chip had earned him a place in the Scooby gang. And he refused to start brooding about that. Buffy could have Spike with all his sire-issues. It wasn't like it was Xander's fault that Dru had eaten him without ever looking Spike up for a quick roll in the sack.
Xander froze as a particular scent drifted by him. He tasted the air, certain that he had made a mistake, but he found the scent again. Xander turned around and scanned the street behind him. A broken street light left a large section of the street dark, and Xander closed his eyes for a moment before pulling up his demon vision. With his true eyes, he could spot movement far quicker and the dark didn't bother him at all. His search didn't discover anything more interesting than the sharp-edged outline of two cars and one van parked along the street and a cat walking a fire escape.
Tilting his head, he again found the smell of the human who had invaded the hotel courtyard teasing his nose. He could smell the prey, but he couldn't see it. Xander started wandering back the way he came, walking into the wind so that he could find the source of that smell. A low growl rumbled from his throat, and he knew he should stop before the prey went running the other direction, but he couldn't quite seem to find the off switch.
After passing one car, Xander focused on the van. Suddenly, the side-panel door slid open and four men in suits jumped out. Xander went into full game face and leapt forward before his brain could point out that men trying to jump a vampire could possibly know about vampires and might just be prepared.
Xander felt the burning pain slash into his chest as the tazer's wires hit him. He immediately tore them out and reached forward to grab his attacker, a white man old enough to have small wrinkles at the edges of his eyes. Xander's hand closed around the man's suit jacket, and instantly his hand felt as though it was dipped in fire. Xander screamed in pain and anger before slamming the human into the side of the van with a satisfying ring of bone against metal.
A burning pain traveled from his leg up to his chest, making Xander fall forward so that his forearms left two long dents in the side of the van. Reaching back, he ripped the new tazer wires from his body and tried to turn; however, his feet became tangled in the body at his feet. Oversized shoes and Zeppo instincts overcame the demon's advantages, and Xander fell to the concrete sidewalk on one knee hard enough that he could smell his own blood almost instantly.
Another man in a suit, this time a black man with sharp eyes, hit him with another tazer, and Xander struggled to his feet. Xander took the hit in the arm, and his whole body shook in pain. The hand that had touched the first attacker still burned, and his knee felt like he just might have broken it.
Xander snarled his frustration and leaped onto the roof of the van in one move… of course the landing made his knee hurt so bad that he immediately collapsed, but he escaped the tazers. After sliding down the front of the van and over the hood, Xander took several running steps away from the attackers when the black man shouted something that made Xander pause.
"Angel!" the deep rumbling voice of the human called, and Xander stopped right in the middle of the street. A passing driver laid on his horn as he swerved to avoid hitting Xander, but Xander ignored that annoyance as he watched the three remaining suits take defensive positions. A fifth man had come out of the van and knelt next to the injured man whose heartbeat Xander could hear stuttering. He smiled at the evidence that at least one of the humans would pay for the attack.
Xander stood waiting as the three approached, his instinct to attack or flee rising with every inch closer.
"Where is he?" Xander demanded.
"He's with our colleagues," the spokesman announced, and Xander started walking backwards as the men tried to get within range of the tazers.
"Let him go," Xander snarled about two seconds before his brain could point out his stupidity in even making the demand. Yeah, guys with suits in unmarked vans. Xander watched Le Femme Nikita. He knew things. He didn't expect people who kidnapped 250 year old Master Vampires to be intimidated by him.
"Can't do that," the man admitted with a shrug. "We have a little job for him, but he isn't as cooperative as we would hope. If he's not helpful…" the man's words trailed off, and he gave a small indifferent shrug.
"Job?" Xander pressed. He stopped backing up when he reached the far sidewalk, and the three stooges stopped trying to surround him. Xander idly wondered if they didn't want to get too far from the van or if they were waiting for some backup.
"We need some help with a security issue, only Angel is not very helpful."
"You want him to kill someone," Xander clarified. Sometimes he missed things, and he couldn't afford to misunderstand now.
"Yes."
"He won't kill."
"Then he'll die." The man spoke as if killing Angel was no more important than smashing a bug, and Xander snarled his response with his fangs showing. "Of course we might still make a deal," the spokesman suggested.
"You want me to kill," Xander said. He usually was the last to catch on, but this guy was putting the dots pretty close together.
"It would certainly suggest that Angel still had value. Of course, perhaps, like him, you value human life too much to make such a trade."
"I'd kill a hundred humans for him," Xander answered honestly, and he had to suppress the groan of frustration that attempted to escape right after. Nice. He had just given these guys reason to keep Angel hostage. He should just write 'sucker for hire' on his forehead for telling them just how much leverage they held over him as long as they had Angel. Then again, killing a hundred humans took time, especially if these guys wanted a hundred specific humans dead. Xander decided he couldn't take those words back, so he could only hope they made Angel's situation better rather than worse. Maybe Wesley and Cordy could find Angel if he just bought some time. He knew in that moment what he had to do.
"Well that might be a deal our employers would consider," the spokesman said with false sincerity and a wave of his hand. Xander didn't back up this time as the two suited men flanked him. He shifted back into his human face to avoid possible tongue damage and waited with his eyes locked on the spokesman.
"Hurt him, and you're the one I'll find," Xander promised as the electricity ripped into him from both sides, and he went down right on his injured knee. Oh yeah, the universe hated Xander Harris, he thought as darkness stole in and replaced the burning pain.
Angel closed his eyes and indulged in a long debate with Angelus. If he tried doing this at the hotel, Cordy would accuse him of brooding or Wesley would start nervously polishing crosses and wooden stakes while smelling of fear. Being kidnapped was almost worth the privacy. Well, as much privacy as a narrow prison cell with one entire short wall covered in a one-way mirror could provide. Angel would have considered the mirror a tactical error except that the chain attaching his ankle to the wall didn't reach far enough for him to break it. And the mirror had steel rods embedded in a grid pattern. And a half dozen of guards waited on the other side. He hated the military. Then again, he had to love their stupidity at thinking a one way mirror worked to fool demon eyes.
Resting his head against the cold white brick, he lay on a bunk and listened as Angelus whispered to him about the need to save himself. After all, Mugabe was a torturer, a man who promised to help the people of Zimbabwe only to grab power for himself. Some would call executing him a righteous act. Angel's life was worth more than Mugabe's. One little assassination wouldn't damage his redemption. That one made Angel snort. He wasn't sure he even had a chance at redemption any more.
Angel was grateful that his captors had left him chained in the cell so that he didn't have a chance to cave in. Angelus persuasively argued that killing one dictator in the name of democracy was a small price to pay in order to keep his own life. But thinking like that had led to the incident with Dru and Darla and a room full of lawyers, and from the others' reactions, Angel had no doubt that his moral logic had failed there.
He remembered closing the doors and hearing the first scream as one of the vampiresses had ripped into a victim. He remembered Angelus' answering growl as the urge to join his clan nearly overwhelmed him. Images of evil lawyers draped over the furniture in lifeless sprawls, blood dripping from torn necks and open eyes staring into nothingness rose from Angelus, half memory of his own kills and half imagination as he put the faces of his enemies on the bodies he imagined littering that room.
Angel shivered as his body reacted to the idea of his enemies dead at his feet, and Angelus pushed against his poorly balanced sanity. A laugh echoed in his mind as Angelus asserted himself, pointing out that Angel grew weaker by the day. Sending a quick prayer up to Doyle, Angel closed his eyes and tried to just rest. Sooner or later they would make a mistake, and he would be there to take advantage of it. If he wasn't already so close to the edge, he would have agreed to the assassination and then double-crossed the bastards. The problem was that he wasn't sure he could stop himself from killing once the words passed his lips. Part of him wanted the kill. Part of him resented missing the lawyers' massacre.
Angel had been staring at the insides of his own eyelids for a good hour when he heard the lock turn. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he waited to find out their latest offer. Hopefully it would be something slightly less pathetic than the IRS threat against his agency.
Angel wasn't prepared for the sight at the door as two uniformed men dropped a shackled and unconscious Xander Harris on the ground before stepping over his body and pointing tazers at him.
"Move to the far side of the room, please," an officer standing behind the two soldiers ordered. Angel hadn't realized he'd gone into game face until he growled. He found the officer's unctuous attitude with his empty pleases far more annoying than outright aggression. It reminded him of Angelus' constant good humor. However, he couldn't do anything without getting tazered back into unconsciousness, so he stood from the military cot and walked toward the one-way mirror until he ran out of chain.
"Turn around and put your hands behind your head, please," the short brown-haired officer asked in that same overly polite voice. Angel did as he was ordered with Angelus providing a running commentary in his head…. 'pathetic humans… no right to order us around… necks would snap like dry twigs under our feet.' Using the mirror, Angel had an uninterrupted view as one soldier dragged an invisible Xander far enough into the room to chain the fledge's ankle to the ring on the opposite side of the room from Angel's ring and bunk. It looked like he was getting a roommate. From the soldier's movements, Angel could tell he was unlocking the cuffs around Xander's wrists. Angel would have made his move and hoped that these men had the key to unlock the chains except that they moved with a precision that ensured that at least two tazers had a clear shot at his unprotected back at any time. Angel had to suppress a growl of frustration, but there really wasn't much else he could do.
The soldiers finished and left Angel alone with the badly damaged Xander. Angel could smell the fledge's blood—his sire's blood—coming from the body as he walked over and easily shifted Xander to the second cot.
"He would seem to be rather special to you," a disembodied voice commented over a hidden loudspeaker in the ceiling. Angel didn't respond to the voice although he did slip into demon vision just long enough to get a good look at the man behind the one-way mirror.
"He traded himself for you," the voice continued, and that made Angel glance up at the mirror.
"Unlikely," Angel said as he crossed his arms and stared back at the man who thought he was safe from Angel's scrutiny.
"Oh, I assure you, he did. When we told him you were uncooperative and therefore unnecessary, he offered to kill a hundred humans for us to keep you safe. Does this surprise you?"
Angel kept his features neutral even though inside he was more than surprised; he was astonished. He knew that the infusion of sire's blood from an older vampire in the line could sometimes turn a fledge to a new master, but the one time he had tried it, his efforts had mixed results. William had reacted to his blood as sire's blood, and he had used his connection to demand a sire's right to respect and obedience, but he had never managed to wrest William completely away from Dru. While Angel had hoped that feeding Xander would give him enough control over the fledge to keep Xander from killing indiscriminately, it seemed that the fledge had accepted him as full sire. Only the minion or childe of a Master Vampire would offer its own life for its master. He wasn't sure he even wanted that kind of devotion from Xander Harris.
"Fledges sometimes show loyalty to older vampires in the line. I'm surprised Xander feels that way toward me since we have hated each other quite effectively for quite a long time now," Angel hedged.
"So the elder feels no loyalty in return?" the voice asked, curious now. Angel considered his answer for a brief moment, well aware that the chess game had begun now that Xander had put himself in the middle of it. Outright refusal wasn't really an option now.
"Normally, no. The loyalty in a clan is about dominance and power. As a fledge, he has none."
"'Normally' implied you do have some feelings then."
Angel paused as he phrased his answer in his head before saying it out loud. He certainly didn't want to announce that he would kill a hundred humans for Xander, and Angel didn't even know what was in the fledge's head to make such a ridiculous statement. Obviously Xander's ability to speak without thinking had survived his death.
"Guilt," Angel finally said. "As a human, Xander was someone I had reason to admire from time to time." An image of Xander breathing life into Buffy flashed in his mind.
"So his continued existence is something that you value." Angel saw that trap entirely too easily. This man was either new or exceptionally incompetent.
"I wanted to stake him. I think I owe him a clean death." Angel couched his words so that Xander would hold enough value to avoid killing outright but not so much that the military would make excessive demands.
"I have to say, you are somewhat of an enigma. You will clearly allow your human companions to die in the name of your cause, you seem to hold no value for your own family members, and you appear unimpressed with threats against your own person."
"Family?" Angel narrowed his eyes.
"Oh yes, we have been listening in on the conversations within the hotel. We are well aware that your childe Drusilla created and then abandoned him." Angel turned his back to the mirror as Angelus lunged madly out of control, threatening to strip his control at the idea that these people had invaded his territory. "We had been considering using your first seer as leverage, but your willingness to let him die was unexpected." The words caused Angelus to roar in fury even louder as Angel struggled to hold on to his balance. Angelus considered Angel's humans to be property, his to keep or break or disregard as he saw fit, but Doyle's death at the hands of another left Angelus swearing for vengeance. Now those curses returned to echo in Angel's ears until he could hardly hear the voice from the ceiling.
"Our intelligence suggests that a young vampire might not be capable of carrying out this plan, so I guess we will have to see how far your guilt goes. The death he would suffer in here if you fail would be far from clean." The voice droned on, but Angel ignored the words as he fought to regain control. If he said the words, he didn't know if he could keep himself from actually killing, but the thought of these people torturing his childe ripped at his sanity as nothing had since Doyle's death. Angel stood stoic and silent as he tried to regain his balance while the officer babbled on. The man knew nothing of intimidation tactics.
Angel glanced down as Xander moaned his way to consciousness one inch at a time.
"One… Mugabe only." Angel paused. "And only because he already deserves to die, so don't expect me to cooperate beyond the one assassination."
"In fifty years, we have only required your special services twice. I assure you that we would much rather hold you in reserve for the most serious situations than betray your trust in our agreements." Angel didn't even bother to answer that as he sat on his own bunk on the opposite wall from the bunk where he'd laid Xander. The speaker went silent, and Angelus' chuckle rolled through Angel's mind at the confusion the men behind mirror expressed when the microphone was off. Angel wasn't entirely sure what the relationship was between this government group that had now twice kidnapped him and the group that had chipped Spike; however, if the Sunnydale group was as stupid as these guys, Angel could understand how Spike escaped.
"Angel?" Xander rocked slightly on the cot. If Angel had doubts about Xander's loyalty, that word answered them. Only Penn had ever woken up searching for him like that, with desperation in his voice. Angel gritted his teeth in frustration. There was no moral high ground here; no way to do the right thing. The beast in front of him was a monster who had killed one dorky but brave and loyal human. But staking the monster meant destroying the last remnants of that same human. And Angelus growled fiercely at losing the childe that was his last link to his vampire nature.
"Angel?" Xander's voice was more desperate now as the fledge fought back the darkness, a hand twitching spastically. Angel wanted to reassure Xander, but he would not put the vampire in even more danger by admitting to the Demon Research Initiative that he cared.
"Angel?" Xander nearly shouted as he sat up on the bunk, the chain around his ankle jingling like demented Christmas bells.
"Right here," Angel pointed out dryly. Yellowish brown eyes searched for him, and when Angel looked back impassively, those eyes fell to the ground.
"I didn't…" Xander stopped.
"You didn't expect to see me. You didn't think you'd have to look at me and explain how you could offer to slaughter humans for me," Angel guessed. The frowning wince told him just how accurate a guess he had made. "A hundred humans?" Angel asked calmly, and Xander brought his knees up to his chest, the heels of his feet catching on the edge of the bunk as he pressed back into the wall.
"Do you think I want humans killed for me?" Those large eyes closed and Angel could smell the misery floating off the huddled boy in waves. For Xander's sake and for the sake of the people even now listening on the other side of the glass, Angel had to make this lesson clear.
"I won't risk my redemption for you. Would you put another hundred lives at my feet?" Angel stood and covered the narrow space between the bunks in four steps. The room might be long, but the bunks stood close to each other in the narrow space. Angel expected some answer since no vampire could understand the concept of human life having worth, but Xander just buried his face in his knees.
"Xander, you have to understand something," Angel said as he reached down and grabbed a fistful of curling brown hair, pulling up so he could make eye contact. "I will not have you kill for me. Not ever." Angel allowed his game face forward as he put on his show for both the observers and the fledge.
"I'm…" Xander stopped, and considering that the human had always been able to babble inappropriately, Angel was glad to see the demon wasn't exactly like the dead boy.
"You're what? Sorry? Angry? Pathetic?" Angel almost stopped when he saw the physical flinch at the last word. He let go of the hair, and Xander pressed his face to his knees again. Angel considered stopping, and then whispers from behind the mirror suggested that taking the fledge was a bad idea. A muttered conference now suggested that Xander was worthless as collateral, and Angel couldn't allow that either.
"Xander," he said again, far softer this time as he turned the hard grip on the hair to a soothing circle motion. "I'm going to kill a man, a dictator. When that's over, I'm going to come back for you, and we're going to settle some things." Angel left his words ambiguous. He knew the military officers would assume the settling included dust, and he could only hope that Xander's demon heard the sire tones and understood that Angel planned to lay down the law for the fledge. Xander flinched, but then Angel remembered Angelus flinching when Darla would threaten to settle some issue between them. She had given Angelus more freedom than most childer, but when she had been unhappy, Angelus had paid the price.
Xander looked up at him with eyes that now showed only dark brown, and Xander continued to hug his legs. Angelus was caught between wanting to take the childe and fuck him into a better mood or beat him senseless for his bad attitude. Angel just sighed with a desire to escape, but the military would let him out when they wanted and not before.
"The deaths would have been at my feet, not yours," Xander whispered even as his body leaned into Angel's touch.
"And I don't want that either. I know you care about humans or you would have eaten Cordelia after the number of times she publicly humiliated you," Angel pointed out, and Xander shrugged. Angel rubbed a soft curl between his thumb and forefinger remembering how it felt to have William at his feet looking up at him adoringly.
"I care about Cordelia, not people," Xander said in a small voice as if even he didn't understand the logic of that. It made more sense to Angel than it would to any other vampire with the possible exceptions of Spike who would deny understanding it and Dalton who had died for his humanity.
"Your demon sees people as animals, food," Angel explained. "But you still have enough humanity in you to fight against that belief." For a long moment Xander looked up at him, the gentle rocking back and forth on the cot ended so that Xander's body was inhumanly still. Angel waited for some sort of reaction, but he hadn't been prepared for the smile that Xander tried to hide by burying his face in his knees.
He might have even thought he had misinterpreted the expression except Xander started laughing, a high hysterical sound that made his shoulders shake. Angel backed away a step and crossed his arms as Angelus growled in frustration. Before Xander could get enough control to look up, Angel was almost ready to give in to Angelus' suggestion of beating the impertinence out of the boy.
"I don't have demon and human parts," Xander said in a more serious tone, his laughter dying the minute he had seen Angel's glower.
"I know you don't have a soul, but Dru left pieces of your humanity in place, many too many pieces for you to function normally."
"Oh, I function fine. The gang member I ate died without ever knowing my whole vamp disability, and I know I was classified learning disabled in school and all, but I really thought I would be able to give up the extra special label when I died. It's a little unfair." Xander paused. "At least they don't have short busses for vamps." Angel opened his mouth to respond, but he didn't even have an answer for any part of that.
"I like Cordelia, so I won't hurt her, but it doesn't mean I won't hurt other people because in general, other people are big on the annoying me scale. And since I seem to be big on the annoyage myself, that actually seems fair, but you go right ahead and lie to yourself about how you have the soul on one shoulder and the demon on the other. It's still all just you," Xander finished with a shrug.
"Xander, it's not that way for me," Angel started, wanting to make his childe understand his soul, but not really knowing the words to explain his dilemma.
"Oh, please. You keep saying that you want to be human, but from what I saw, Deadboy, you weren't working for human-status, you were trying for angelic what with the whole being perfect thing you had going on. You never let yourself get angry or frustrated or just have a pissy day. You took every evil thought you ever had and you stuck it in a corner and slapped an Angelus label on it."
"Don't talk about what you don't understand," Angel snarled, and he curled his hand around Xander's throat and slammed the back of Xander's head into the white-washed brick hard enough that Xander gasped for breath.
"You gave your fears a name. It's like a five year old with closet monster issues," Xander hissed out, his fangs dropping even though he didn't go into game face.
"That's not it." Angel gave a tighter squeeze before dropping Xander back on his bed and retreating to his side of the room before he ripped the fledge's head off.
"Spike and Dru, they called you Angel. They didn't have a different name for the demon, did they? Angelus… it's just another word for Angel."
Angel stood with his back to Xander as he stared at the wall in front of him.
"And when you found out about the whole 'kick his ass' comment, you didn't even yell. You got this whole patient, 'I deserved it' expression. A human would have been screaming and yelling and possibly doing some arm breakage, not that I'm encouraging any more breaking of bones, but you aren't anywhere near human."
"Stop," Angel snarled, spinning around in game face, and this time Xander had the common sense to stop talking. "I have lived with my soul and my demon for a hundred years. You know nothing. You have judged me since the day I took Buffy away from you. You just can't stand that I got there first, and you're determined to make my life as miserable as yours because of it." Angel stood burning with a need to beat the fledge until its flesh turned white and blood ran in rivers to the floor. Suddenly another image came to mind: a human Xander standing guard in the hospital stinking of fear and facing down Angelus who had just said pretty much the same thing. Xander's voice broke into his shocked moment of reflection.
"See, that's human: jealous, angry, petty, threatening, and totally wrong. Of course that also sounded a lot like Angelus, so what do I know?" Xander dropped his head back to his knees, and Angel was left trembling in rage and unwilling to indulge in the dark fantasies that rippled through his thoughts.
"I know how to do totally wrong, Xander," Angel said quietly. "I'm about to do something totally wrong because you put me in this position." Xander looked up with eyes that seemed suddenly devoid of any expression at all. Angel waited for the response, but instead Xander just sat on his bunk and stared at Angel with large eyes that followed every move as Angel paced off his energy.
A key turned in the lock, and Angel pushed Angelus' rage down to the back of his mind as he concentrated on finding a way out of this situation without getting anyone else killed. Angel just hoped that he could keep Mugabe on the alive and breathing list as well because if it came down to a choice, he would rather protect his annoying childe, at least long enough to beat some sense into him.
Angel sat in an uncomfortable motel chair doing his best impression of a statue with his arms crossed and his eyes staring blankly ahead at the atrocious green wallpaper. He concentrated on using all of Angelus' planning and tactical knowledge to find a way out of this mess. Of course, he also enjoyed the fact that the longer he sat, the more uncomfortable the four soldiers became. Where they squirmed and blinked and shifted and breathed, Angel remained perfectly still, a reminder of the fact that he wasn't human.
Wasn't human.
Angel felt Angelus' gleeful laugh at that irony. Instead of trying to imitate humanity, Angel was intentionally flaunting his demon status in front of the soldiers who supposedly provided backup for his mission.
As much as Angel tried to forget Xander's words, they kept seeping into the edges of his consciousness. He wasn't trying to be perfect, he was just trying to be a decent human being, and Xander didn't understand how the soul and the demon trapped him. He listened to Angelus' laugh echo through his mind.
Dios, que salva el metal, salva la escoria… ya todo esta.
The lines of poetry flowed into his memory from some book he had long ago forgotten the title of.
God, who saves the metal, saves the dross… everything is there.
He was the metal. He had survived a century of Angelus' hunger and anger and hatred, and he still held a steely control. The idea that god would save Angelus, the dross, the waste, the ugly byproduct of some mistake, Angel concentrated on the patterned wall paper as he tried to push that thought away.
Xander and that long-forgotten poet were wrong. Angelus was the monster who needed to be destroyed if Angel was going to save himself. Angel never would have committed the atrocities that Angelus had committed.
One of the soldiers clicked the television on and the early news anchor announced a fatal car accident with no more emotion than the weatherman offered when predicting rain. As the demon, before the soul, he wouldn’t have even noticed that, but now Angel could feel bad for some random soul killed by a drunk driver. He had a conscience. He wasn't Angelus.
"Man, they need to execute a few of those drunk drivers, that'd make people sit up and take notice," one of the soldiers announced a little too loudly with a nervous laugh on the end. Angelus chuckled at making combat-trained men so nervous.
"Except you might be the one swinging. I seem to remember seeing you weave to the car a time or two after poker night."
"Man, I am never too messed up to drive after poker, but someone who hits a mom in a mini-van deserves to get fried." Angel didn't move, but these men's willingness to discuss death so callously made Angelus stir under the restraints of the soul.
"Hope the little girl makes it," the third offered. Angel forced himself to concentrate on the wallpaper and not the conversation or Angelus or the damn poem or even the memory of Xander's laughter. For once he wished Cordy would show up to complain about not making enough money or Wes would come in babbling excitedly about some 2,000 year old scroll. Neither happened, so Angel found himself trapped with his own thoughts.
Angelus considered people animals. He ate and raped and killed with no more thought than a butcher gave his pigs. Of course, the butcher never sought out certain pigs, playing with them until they begged for mercy just to feel more powerful. The image of Kathy, his little sister, opening the door and smiling at him floated to the surface, and Angel had to suppress a sob.
Angelus had snapped her neck cleanly, letting her body fall to the floor near the door she had just invited him to enter. Kathy never knew her mistake or watched their parents die, but Angel remembered the joy that had risen at feeling his sister's neck snap, that joy had belonged to Angelus. Angel hadn't been there to cry out or protect his sister, and Xander couldn't know what it felt like to remember how your sister's neck felt as it broke.
Xander was wrong. Angelus existed separate from him because he loved the sister Angelus had killed. He had never wanted to hurt her, not really. Angel's fingers closed on his upper arms until he could feel bruising start to set in. A memory: he'd been 16 and Kathy nine. Their mother had copied bible verses onto strips of paper for Kathy to memorize and Angel had slipped them out of Kathy's keepsake box, carefully imitating their mother's handwriting as he copied blasphemous versions of the verses onto new strips. He wanted her to get in trouble, their perfect child, the one who never made mistakes, the one who wasn't him.
Angelus laughed wildly, and Angel could feel his world tilting off balance so badly that he grabbed the arms of the chair. His sudden movement made the four men jump for weapons, but Angel ignored them as he felt his balance sliding out from under him. No. Not again. He didn't know where the perfect happiness had come from, but he wouldn't yield, not again. He gasped for air as he pushed out of the chair, stumbling to the wall that he had stared at for so many hours.
No. Kathy hadn't died because of his jealousy. It wasn't his fault. But if it wasn't his fault, why did the guilt of it eat his soul? Why wouldn't the universe forgive him when it was the demon's fault? Angel's shoulder hit the wall as it suddenly occurred to him that his demon wanted blood and violence and Darla and childer, but not revenge.
The revenge… that had come from him. His jealousy of Kathy, his hatred toward his father, his anger toward his mother. In Sunnydale, the demon just wanted to feed; he wanted to prove that he wasn't worthless. His insecurities had led Angelus to open the portal. His fault. Angel sank to the ground as he realized that Xander had been right. His demon wanted many things, but the torture and the mind games had been the demon's way of trying to please Liam. He wanted to get back at Buffy for being the champion that he wasn't. He wanted to strike out at Giles because Buffy turned to him for advice even though Angel was far older.
"Oh god," Angel whispered as he finally lost the balance that he had held for so long. He fell straight into the truth as he remembered Darla's words, something about the person informing the demon, leading the demon on a certain path. He had led his demon to this path. Angel blinked as he suddenly recognized the laughter in his head as his own, the same small voice that had suggested he follow Darla and rut like an animal on the street. The same voice that had told him the he couldn’t please his father so he might as well please himself with every tavern wench in town.
"God," Angel whispered again, this time he wasn't sure whether it was profanity or a prayer.
He looked up to see four combat trained soldiers with tazers pointed at him as he sat on the floor. Angel thought quickly since he wasn't going to discuss the truth with them. He needed a lie that would make his position stronger rather than the truth which would make them doubt his sanity. He already doubted it enough for everyone involved.
"One of my childer," he lied as he pushed himself up off the floor. "One is dead, dusted." Let the morons worry about imaginary vampire telepathy for a while. "Leave me alone until sunset," Angel ordered as he went into the bathroom and closed the door. With the water running, he allowed himself to finally cry.