Face to Face: Day 2 - Arrogance and Underestimation
by MattK
"Hey, Lefty."
Lindsey jumped, almost dropping the briefs he was carrying, but he recovered himself quickly. "Angelus," he said, turning to the figure who was sitting in a shadowed corner of his office. This explained why the blinds were drawn. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"Not really," Angelus replied, rising from his comfortable armchair and approaching his attorney. "I just stopped by to check your progress."
Then he emerged from the shadows, and Lindsey gasped. "My god, what *happened*?" he exclaimed.
Angelus shrugged. A jagged borderline ran down the center of his face. On one side, his skin was human-colored, if pale. On the other, his skin was the color of chalk. Someone had pressed a cross into his face. No, it must have been a Crucifix—a small, but perfectly detailed image of Christ was imprinted even deeper into his flesh. Worse, that side of his face showed a vague brow-ridge, as if it was part way to its demon form. Perhaps that was so—scar tissue twisted that side of his lips into a snarl, revealing sharper teeth that weren’t quite fangs.
"I took a hit, Lefty," Angelus explained. "I had my eye on the wrong hand, and they caught me off guard. The little witches were a lot more powerful than I thought."
Lindsey set the briefs down and turned to his new primary client. "How bad is it?" He asked.
"I’m okay," Angelus replied. "Or I will be in a few hours. I ran into a cop car almost right away, and I ate both of them—"
"You what?" Cop-killing was difficult for even Wolfram & Hart to cover up. The authorities couldn’t be bought in a situation like that, and making investigators "disappear" just exacerbated the problem.
Angelus ignored the question. "Then I came here—"
"Looking like *that*?"
"Hey," Angelus snapped. "Either they know what I am, in which case they’re not the people that you have to worry about, or they thought I was just some guy with burn scars on his face. Either way, no problem. So I slept in here for a few hours, then I ate the first couple interns that came in this morning." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, to a pile in the corner that Lindsey hadn’t noticed before.
"You did this in my *office*?" Lindsey demanded as he hurried over to investigate. He cursed aloud when he saw the mess Angelus had left for him. Six of them. Five looked like normal vampire attacks—pale, with bite wounds in their necks. But the sixth…he had to fight hard to keep his breakfast down. He wouldn’t have been able to recognize her if she hadn’t still had her company ID pinned to what remained of her blouse. "Oh, god," he choked. "Carrie."
"Yeah," Angelus said. "I was actually pretty full by that time, so I decided to play with my food a little. You know I just had to take advantage of a place that’s magically soundproofed. Besides, I figure that you’ve had some experience in cleaning up messes like this."
Lindsey took a deep breath. He’d be dead within seconds of showing any kind of hostility to this…creature. If he was lucky. "Yes," He said evenly. "I have."
"Good. Now, the real problem is that almost the entire vanguard was killed. When is the main force going to arrive?"
The *entire* vanguard? The entire vanguard of the *Scourge*? These little heroes were more powerful than Lindsey had thought. Maybe they even had a chance. He kept his hope off his face as he answered. "About half of them are here now. We’re moving them into the warehouses as we speak. The rest are en route."
"Good."
"Are you planning a counterattack?" Lindsey asked.
Angelus shook his head. "Uh-uh. I was stupid once. Not again. I’m just going to sit back and let nature take its course. By tomorrow night, I’ll be invincible. *Then* I’ll deal with them."
*
Lindsey called a limousine and had Angelus taken to the warehouses where his troops awaited him. Then he called the "special" janitorial crew. Within a few hours, five unfortunate young, rich students would be discovered in various spots about the city, the victims of muggers, or accidents, or random crackheads. Lindsey didn’t really care.
That left Carrie.
They didn’t have to cover up Carrie’s death. They could just lose it. If she had any relatives, they didn’t give enough of a damn to follow up on her.
It was a trite thing to say, but Caroline Ramsey reminded Lindsey of himself at that age. She’d dragged herself out of hopeless poverty by her teeth. He had taken her as much under his wing as company policy allowed, and he’d come to admire her sheer will. She would have been a marvelous lawyer—but not at Wolfram & Hart, Lindsey suspected. She was just a little too ethical.
After he’d ordered an oak casket, a marble headstone (Inscription: Caroline Ramsey 1980-2001. You Deserved a Better Chance), and several bouquets of flowers for her, he got down to work.
Angelus wasn’t even a paying client. Even if he was, Lindsey had taken enough.
Time to put a little sand in his engine.
*
Over the next twenty-four hours, a truly fantastic string of accidents and bad luck befell the incoming half of the Scourge. Several cargo planes carrying barrels of fuel crashed into several different mountains. The pilots managed to parachute to safety. Of course, members of the Scourge were the real cargo. There were just enough barrels of fuel to make the crash—as Willow would say—extra flamey.
Several cargo ships sank. Some of the Scourge aboard might have been able to make it to shore, if someone hadn’t alerted some of the Things in the deep-ocean trenches that a shipment of food was on its way.
Finally, several trucks belonging to a Wolfram & Hart subsidiary just exploded while their drivers happened to be in truck stops. Tsk, tsk. Must be industrial sabotage by rival mages. We’ll try to track that down for you.
Twenty-four hours after Angelus left Lindsey with a pile of bodies in his office, the only members of the Scourge left alive on Earth were headquartered in those warehouses in LA. They were down to half their former strength, but there were still hundreds of them.
Time to call in some help.
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