Slipped: Two
by slayerfest
Angel opened the door to his mansion, shedding his duster and throwing it onto what had been Cordelia’s desk. He stopped and stared at it for a second.

Cordelia. Angel had just finished saving the world from being frozen in time forever by a physicist who only wanted to keep his girlfriend. He thought about how Cordy may have helped; the gentleman was fairly torn up. If Cordy had been a part of the case, she would probably have helped soften the blow of losing someone for him.

Then she probably would have asked him for money.

Angel allowed a small smile and shook his head. He didn’t feel particularly badly for shoving them away; if he continued the way he was going, they wouldn’t be safe anymore. He was probably doing them a favour more than anything. But he still missed them, Cordy especially.

Then his thoughts returned to the unavoidable subject of Darla as he started up the stairs to the second floor. Darla. He’d tried to save her, and failed. Then she got turned into a vampire again. Then he tried to save her from killing more people, but that didn’t work either. Last time he’d seen either Darla or Drusilla, they’d been engulfed in flames.

He didn’t believe by a long shot that either of them were dead. But they were out of commission for a while, and that was something. He knew Drusilla would probably go somewhere she knew when she recovered, away from L. A. and somewhere familiar like Prague or even Sunnydale.

But he knew Darla would stay. She’d go somewhere and find a place to recover, and when she did she’d take personal revenge on Angel for acting like such a human when he was far from it. That was Darla’s way. She’d find away to make it as painful as unhumanly possible for Angel.

Whether she knew it or not, it was already working.

Angel was just thankful that Cordy was using the old vampshelter he’d set up as a place to put up shop. Now he didn’t have to worry as much about keeping them safe when Darla was recovered.

***

“Aha!” proclaimed Wesley. Cordelia jumped.

“What?” she asked, annoyed.

“I’ve finally found a book that wasn’t written in the 19th century. None of those would obviously have any reference to this establishment, since it was built in the 1950s.”

Cordy rolled her eyes. “Are you still on about that? Wesley, let it go. So this used to be a no-vamp zone. Get over it. Gunn said they were all over L. A.”

Wesley looked up at her. “Why was this place completely abandoned, then? Wouldn’t it have remained a sanctuary? What caused it to deteriorate as an establishment?”

Cordelia opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it and went back to her ritual dusting.

Gunn walked in the door and frowned to the smell. “Well, vamps were out in full force tonight. Staked about half a dozen. No sign of the mysterious milk lady, though.” Gunn looked from Wesley, who hadn’t looked up from his book, to Cordelia, who didn’t seem to be hearing a word he’d said. “Well, it’s good that we still care about fighting evil.” He sat across from Wesley at the desk. “So I see Cordy’s dusting again.”

Wesley finally tore his eyes away from his book to glance at Cordy and then Gunn. “Hm? Oh, yes. She’s been racking her mind incessantly for clues about where to find the milk lady. You know how she gets. The only words she’s said for the past hour were to yell at me for my research on this establishment.”

Gunn stared at Wesley. “Why are you so invested in this?”

Wesley put the book down in exasperation. “Isn’t anyone here the least bit interested in what used to go on in here that sent those vampires away so quickly?”

“No,” Gunn and Cordy said in unison.

Wesley tutted. “Well, I am. Unless you’re suggesting that the vampires are afraid of visions, this place has some history worth uncovering.”

Cordelia stopped dusting. “What did you just say?”

“I was merely suggesting that this building has some history worth…”

“No, before that. About the vamps being afraid of visions.”

Gunn raised his eyebrows. “You think that your link to the Powers That Be makes vamps scared?”

Cordy considered this. “Well, that’s a thought too, but why would Angel have befriended Doyle if that was the case?” She shook her head. “I just meant that did either of you notice when exactly I had that vision?”

Gunn shrugged. “When you reached for a weapon?”

Wesley shook his head. “No. The second the vampires reached the threshold. They came, she had a vision, and they ran away.”

Gunn raised his eyebrows. “So either the vamps were afraid of her vision, or they triggered her vision.”

“Or both,” added Cordelia.

Wesley smiled proudly. “Now is anyone interested in the history of this place?”

Both Gunn and Cordy whipped their heads around at Wesley. “No!”

***

Lindsey stepped around pieces of fabric and things that may once have been animals as he made his way through the dry sewers. It was obviously inhabited by the homeless at times; shopping carts and empty liquor bottles littered the ground. Not tonight, though; he hadn’t encountered a single soul. The person he was looking for didn’t even have one anymore.

There was a steel door every so often, usually leading to a boiler room or something, but Lindsey was looking for something different. He knew they’d been spotted down here; two women who had once been very pretty, now severely burned. One was barely coherent, ranting about “a nasty man who had ruined her lovely party” and carrying a doll.

Lindsey had chuckled when he read the description the homeless man had given. That was definitely Drusilla he was talking about; he was only hoping that Darla was the other person he’d been referring to.

He’d had no idea what happened to Darla after she’d killed all his colleagues. He wanted… no, needed to know why Lilah, of all people, had been spared. Word was that Angel had fired all his employees and was currently going on a vendetta against Darla, wanting her dead simply because he believes that it’s what he owed her.

Lindsey wasn’t going to let that happen.

Angel certainly was a meddlesome fellow. Just a couple of weeks ago he’d completely ruined that stupid fundraiser for Anne’s establishment just because he’d wanted to humiliate Wolfram and Hart. He did that, oh certainly he did, but he also stole all the proceeds from that thing and gave it all to Anne. All of it. The firm didn’t even get its legendary 95%.

So it was his job to help Darla make Angel’s unlife as unfortunate as possible.

Plus, having Darla stay at his place again would always be a bonus in Lindsey’s eyes.

He passed a shopping cart and noticed the broken doll sitting in it, blindfolded with a leg and an arm missing. He looked around and knew he was getting close. He picked the doll up and inspected it, checking for any clues as to where Darla might be.

Under the doll lay the ashen face of someone who hadn’t had a home for a long time and never would again. Lindsey suddenly understood why he hadn’t run into anyone yet; Dru and Darla had eaten them all.

He replaced the doll and listened to the hum of the ventilation system. He was drawn to it for some reason; it didn’t sound right. Then he realized that this was the only place he’d heard the hum of a ventilation system.

He felt along the wall with his good hand and found nothing, but moved to the other side of the wide hall and found a crevasse between the floor and the wall. It wasn’t much, but it was there. He tried to lift and failed. He used his plastic hand and for some reason it worked. Lindsey realized that it was a mystical wall that wouldn’t respond to body heat.

He lifted the wall and the hum disappeared. There was a concealed steel door. Lindsey opened it and stepped inside, not sure what he was expecting.

Darla lay in the corner of the room, burned and battered. Lindsey would have dismissed her for just another unfortunate corpse before he realized that that’s exactly was Darla was. There were people littering the floor around her, all of them dead and drained of blood.

Lindsey realized upon inspecting her unconscious form that not only had Darla been lit on fire, she’d recently been beat up by someone immeasurably strong. His mind immediately leaped to Angel, but he’d never been spotted down here. Angel had become too stealthy to be tracked anymore, but Lindsey could put watches on specific areas.

He realized that there was no evidence that Drusilla had ever been there and decided that it was probably she who had beaten Darla and stolen all her things, for whatever reason. Darla was healing, but only barely. He estimated that Drusilla had left at sunset, only six or eight hours ago.

He lifted Darla’s limp form and carried her from the small concrete room.

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