Chapter II
The pager vibrated against Cordelia’s hip, and a quick glance confirmed that it was the signal she had arranged with Buffy. “Okay, time for some serious fun.” She swung her legs out of the blue convertible, gave the QUEEN C a pat for luck, and hooked her “utility belt” around her waist, doing a quick inventory as the weight settled onto her hips. Crossbow across her back, stakes hidden in folds of her clothing and up her sleeves (tucked into specially-made pockets that had taken forever to learn to sew without being noticeable), two bottles of holy water, one on each side, and one dagger next to each bottle. Too bad she would be going in without knowing the layout, but they’d only found out about this place when Angel made his call today.
She decided to go with a classic approach (hey, it worked with her shoes), and went in fast through a side window. Not rolling, ’cause have you ever tried a combat roll with a crossbow slung across your your back? Please; instead, she led with her knees and elbows, letting the padded cloth take the cuts as she smashed through the window glass, and landed ready to fight. Sure enough, three vampires pounced like cats on a mouse … but surprise! this mouse had teeth. Within seconds, Crew-cut, Tattoo-guy and Hook-nose were dust on the bottom of her boots, boots that were walking away.
Another couple of minutes search, two more little piles of carpet sweepings, and she found what she was looking for. The main room, the only one big enough for what she saw as she entered: a cheesy melodramatic scene (much as Angel used to stick to the background, he always had a flair for the drama, and now he used it every chance he got — and if he didn’t get one, he created it — but he still had no sense of style), a ring of eight vampires and in the center, torches flaring ominously on either side, Angel and … and Willow.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Willow was supposed to be at the factory, with Buffy, not here. Why couldn’t Marcy have told them, instead of simply leaving 267-7328 on the pager, their code for correct? Buffy and Willow were on the same fighting level, they’d been training together for almost a year and a half, they moved together accurately and fast. Buffy and Willow could’ve held their own. Buffy and Xander didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against Spike and Drusilla, not alone.
Focus, Slayer! Giles and the others would be going in after them, so they wouldn’t be alone. Not for long, please, God.
Angel had one hand covering Willow’s wrists so that the girl couldn’t go for the torch, and he was giving Cordelia a triumphant smirk. “Surprised, princess? I always knew you had a soft spot for the boy, so I thought a little bait -and-switch was in order. And, wow, here you are!” His expression turned mock-regretful. “Oh, you must feel just awful about now … so sorry.”
Oh, sure, this was where he got to gloat while she tried to hit back with insults. Up yours, poster boy, that’s not how we’re playing it! He opened his mouth for another sadistic jab, and she hurled four stakes in instant succession; two of the minions shrieked and turned to dust, Angel let go of Willow and dodged, and Willow was suddenly alone in the circle with a stake and a torch.
Angel was a good fighter, one-on-one, but a crappy leader; Cordelia could tell by the confusion of the minions that he’d given them no contingency instructions, and now they had no clue what to do. She somersaulted into the circle before any of them could sprout a twitch of initiative. Willow had already cleared a space around herself with a swing of the torch (great stage-setting, Mousse Boy! plant a torch next to a vamp-hater); Cordelia landed beside her, trading blows with a female vampire sporting hair the color of Kool-Aid, and Willow automatically went back-to-back with her. Kool-Aid went poof!, Willow’s arm snaked to the side, and Cordelia snapped a stake and one of the bottles of holy water into her hand. Judging from the yelps and snarls, Willow found good use for them on the one Cordelia had mentally tagged as Muscles.
Cordelia had seen Buffy fight a few times before her “death”, and it was a wonder to her that the girl had survived so long on the Hellmouth. Fast, tough, strong, intuitive — sure, Buffy was all that, and a bag of chips — but she had never seemed to grasp the essential element of fighting monsters, which was to quit fooling around trading quips and punches like they had equal weight, and kill the damn things, already! Well, Cordelia didn’t need any lessons in cutting to the quick, and with Willow doing such a bang-up job of staying alive, it was time to pull out all the stops.
Vampires were predators, gravitating naturally to the human feeding ground, so they weren’t used to dealing with anything more powerful than themselves. Their nature demanded that they attack, while their experiance hadn’t prepared them for an enemy who could simply shake off an attack, and Cordelia had months ago discovered, quite by accident, a tactic that caught them by surprise nine times out of ten:
She stopped defending. Ponytail fired a punch at her face, and rather than block or dodge, she just reached under the punch to stake him, taking the hit in order to get the kill. Rambo leaped to take advantage as she staggered, and she moved into the spinning kick he launched at her, spearing him with a lunging extension even as his booted foot smacked her head to the side. She went to her knees, and two more darted in, slamming kicks into her ribs and face and dying above her —
Just like that, it was down to Angel and one other, and — gee, major shock — Angel was running. He must have been waiting for the minions to wear her down before joining the fight himself, then changed his mind when the odds shifted below two-to-one. Smart boy, but it still wouldn’t save him. If he’d been really smart, he wouldn’t have messed with her at all. ’Course, she still would have killed him, but he kept bringing the fight to her. “Watch yourself!” she snapped to Willow, then bounded off in pursuit of her former lover.
He held his lead at first, knowing the layout of the mansion and not wasting any time by looking back or trying to knock obstacles into her path; he just put his head down and charged ahead, and it was all Cordelia could do to keep up. It couldn’t last forever, though, geography was against him, he couldn’t spare the time to open any doors so he just smashed through them, and lost a fraction of a second every time he did so.
Finally, he hit the end of a hall, and they both knew he couldn’t break down that door before she caought up to him. He swung to face her, trapped but still seeming surprisingly confident. His lips curved into a mocking smile, and Cordelia felt hate and rage surge up inside her.
This was the worst of it, this was what filled her with such fury that — after the first disastrous attempt — he had never dared to face her without a full crew backing him up: his face. He was so different, his personal transformation throwing her into a 180 on the Interstate of her life … but he still looked the same. Exactly the same as he’d looked when she saw him at the Bronze that first night …
* * *
He’d stepped through the doorway, and she’d caught sight of the hunk in the leather jacket. “Hello, salty goodness. Call 9-1-1, ’cause that boy’s gonna need some serious help when I’m done with him.” Then came the dismay that Buffy had two gorgeous guys at her disposal. “Why is this happening to me?” When the hunk of her dreams left, without Buffy, she debated a moment, then followed. Hey, when opportunity knocks, sink your teeth in and tear off a chunk.
She caught up with him out in the alley. “Hi, I’m Cordelia. Are you new here? I haven’t seen you before, and I would definately remember you.”
He looked down at her. “Angel.”
She laughed. “Oh, trust me, I’m no angel.”
“No. I’m Angel.”
“Oh.” As she was looking for a way to cover that vocal faux pas, they passed a window, and she automatically checked her reflection. “How on earth can you live without a reflec–” She could feel her face tighten and her voice harden. “Why don’t you have a reflection?”
He stiffened even more, which she would’ve thought impossible, and he tried a clumsy cover-up. “You need to lay off the strawberry daiquiris, kid.” He turned as if to maake a break for the alley.
“Hold it!” When he didn’t stop, she snagged his wrist and held on. He towed her a couple steps, before she brought her heel down on his foot. “I don’t drink, and if I did, it wouldn’t be strawberry daiquiris, it would be banana. Red would totally clash with my skin tone. Why don’t you have a reflection? The only things I ever heard of without reflections are vampires, which you’re obviously not, ’cause you haven’t tried to turn my neck into a Slurpee yet. What are you? I’m not going to let you go until you tell me, and if somehow you get by me without telling me, I think I’ll go mention to Miss Psychotic Muffet that you can’t be seen in a mirror, and considering how quickly she can react, she might try to stake you before she finds out you’re not —”
“I’m a vampire.”
“Not going to cut it. Already told you you’re not.”
He rolled his eyes. “I can prove it.” His handsome face began to change, with those dark, brooding eyes turning yellow and extra ridges popping out on his nose and brow.
“Holy …” Her eyes widened in shock. “You are a vampire. And, what? You haven’t chomped down yet? What’s wrong with you? … I-I mean, if you touch me, I’ll scream.”
“You have your hand on my wrist.”
She dropped it. “Oh. I’ll still scream.”
He turned half-away from her, but didn’t try to leave again. “I’m a … good vampire.”
A disbelieving noise came from the back of her throat. “No such thing, unless you mean good at what you do. Kinda like there’s no such thing as a good lawyer. So, am I gonna die now, ’cause I really don’t want to. I mean, I don’t want to get all old and veiny ’cause, ew. But I kinda like my blood where it is. Inside me.”
“I had a gypsy curse placed on me almost a hundred years ago.”
“So?” What did that have to do with her?
“The curse was my soul. I had over a hundred years without my soul, when I did unspeakable things, things I don’t want to think about, but they haunt me all day, every day.”
“So, no dead Cordy?”
“No dead Cordy.”
“Okay. I’m going home now. Uh, I do have to invite you in for you to come in, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I so do not invite you into my house. I’m looking at three possibilities here: one, you’re crazy, two, you’re a vampire but you’re lying about the soul-thing, or three, you’re telling me the complete truth. And I don’t like any of them.”
She left, and he let her go, and over the next few days the bizarre encounter began to feel like a dream; she knew she hadn’t imagined it, but it just didn’t quite carry the flavor of reality. Then one night, he came by and wanted to talk. Or listen, really, she tended to dominate their conversations. But he’d sit in the tree, and she’d sit in her window seat, and talk for hours. He was the first guy that she trusted with her brain, the same brain that had enabled her to skip first grade before deciding she’d rather be popular than be known as a geek. She didn’t have to hide the fact that she was smart, for fear it might intimidate him. Instead, they were able to bounce ideas off eachother. He understood why she strove for perfection, why if she made any mistake, she put more blame on herself than anyone else. He encouraged her to follow her feelings for “some guy at school” even if he was the class dork, and he was there for her when the “some guy” dumped her for Buffy. (Of course, Xander and Cordy told everyone she dumped him: her for appearances sake, and him because he knew what she would do to him if he didn’t.) She and Angel became good friends, knowing each other’s personality quirks as well as they knew their own. They started hanging out at the Bronze, and she made it her project to reaquaint him with recent culture; he’d been seeing “recent culture” for the past two-hundred-plus years.
He stayed in the shadows, while she was always looking for the spotlight. Something in their personalities balanced each other out. She invited him to the Spring Fling, saying nobody else wanted to go with her. By then they both knew it was a lie, that the truth was she didn’t want to go with anyone else. So he humored her, and told her she was in charge of clothes, but, no, he wasn’t going clothes shopping for more than two hours. Then, as if to ruin the evening she had worked so hard to make perfect, they discovered that Buffy had managed to get herself involved in a prophecy that would kill her. Angel, being who he was at that point, said that he’d go to help her. And she, being who she was, wasn’t about to let him go down by himself to be the hero.
So she went down, through the SEWERS in her dress, to save Buffy. Something happened down there that she still couldn’t explain, but when she was performing mouth-to-mouth on Buffy, she felt something leave the other girl and enter her. Of course, now they knew that it was the Slayerness, but at the time, Cordelia only felt tingle-y … and strong. They took Buffy to the hospital to make sure she was okay, and Cordy and Angel left the hospital to stop the Master. They found him on the roof of the library.
He turned around. “Hmm, another Slayer. So soon. How did that happen, I wonder?” He gave an eek-some grin. “Oh, that’s right. I killed the other one.” As he spoke, he rolled his spider-like fingers, tapping the tips of one hand on the same finger on the other hand.
“Are you sure about that? What if …” She let her eyes slide to the side, then back to his: “… she’s behind you?”
He gave a creepy smile. “Do I look like I died yest–” He pitched forward, through the skylight, and landed on top of a spur of upthrust wood on the table. All the skin and features crumbled away, leaving the bones.
She nodded approvingly. “Nice job with the crowbar.”
“You almost gave me away.” He pretended to sulk.
She shook her head. “No dice. I knew he wouldn’t turn around even if he had, you still woulda whacked him in the head. No way you could have missed while you were that close. Besides, I wanted it. And we both know that what Queen C wants, Queen C gets.”
* * *
And no way would she miss from this close. This was it, the end of the torture, finally she would end this —
He lifted his eyebrows at her. He was still wearing his human face. Her Angel hadn’t liked his vampire face, and the only time she’d seen it other than the first time was when he’d lost control while fighting. This Angel wasn’t hers, but he still avoided the vampire face to try and throw her off. “Nice going, kid, you’ve done pretty well for yourself here.” He gave his head a sardonic sideways tilt. “But, gosh, did you ever stop to wonder how things are going elsewhere?”
“Newsflash, asswipe.” She sneered at him. “We’ve got the factory covered.”
He smirked in the way she’d only started seeing after her birthday. “Really, now? Think harder. Surely there’s another elsewhere.”
Cordelia didn’t get it for a moment, then suddenly she was streaking back down the hall. She almost steamrolled over Willow: the girl still carried the torch and stake, clawmarks on one arm and blood trickling from her hairline. Willow looked past Cordelia to shere Angel stood watching with lofty amusement. “Why are you —?”
Cordelia grabbed her by the uninjured arm and towed her along, slowing only enough to keep from dislocating the other girl’s shoulder. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Willow tried to twist to look back. “But, Angel —”
“Now!” Cordelia yanked her back on course, and without breaking stride she unslung the crossbow and slapped it into Willows’s hands. “Here, I brought this for you anyway.” (For Xander, actually. This was a complete disaster!) “Anything gets in our way, shoot it. If it’s not slowing us down, don’t bother, we don’t have time.”
“Wh-what …” Willow gasped and stumbled; Cordelia forced herself to slacken her pace, and the other girl caught up with her again. “What about Angel?”
“No time.” A vampire stepped out in front of them, snarling: Muscles, the only one left, face and hands smoking with holy water burns; Cordelia powered straight through the dust that her stake created, not even breaking stride. “As soon as we get through the door, straight to the car.” Seconds later, they broke into daylight. Cordy took three steps, and vaulted over the passenger side door, twisting to land in the driver’s seat. She was already turning the key when Willow oof!ed down beside her, and heard the tires scream as the peeled out of there … She picked up her cell phone and tried reaching Giles. No answer. Decide fast: factory or library? The library had weapons. And people. the factory had Xander and Buffy. Alone, and no back-up. Oh Lord.
She would get there in time. She would get there in time. The queen has spoken.
* * *
Cordelia was launching herself out of the convertible in the same moment she slammed the gear shift into Park. Even without supernatural augmentation, Willow was right behind her, carrying the big weapons, and she tossed the sword to Cordelia as they approached the factory door. While they’d been driving, Willow had restocked all the weapons that would fit on Cordy’s belt. Her last act before their arrival had been to pull a .40 -caliber Glock from the secured box underneath the seat, slap in a magazine, and chamber a round.
Now they were here, and Cordy could feel dread hacking at her stomach with an ice-pick. Cordy slammed the door open — who cares about surprise now! — and started scanning the room for Buffy and Xander. Movement, going behind a corner. Follow. The corner opened into a big room with boxes stacked around the walls … and in the middle of the room, Xander was standing, holding a limp, blood-spattered Buffy and trying unsuccessfully to fend off Drusilla. The crazy vampiress would dart in and take a swipe or punch at him, and Xander would try desperately to block the blow, or shield Buffy from it. Drusilla was forcing the two of them farther and farther from the door, and inflicting as much pain on him as she could without knocking him out, or killing him too quickly for her amusement.
Three other vampires stood to the side, watching the spectacle; if there had been a dozen or so here, as at the mansion, then Buffy and Xander must have done some damage. Cordelia ignored the spectators; she brought the crossbow to her shoulder,took careful aim … and missed, hitting Drusilla in the arm she had drawn back to strike with. Drusilla immediately started screeching her displeasure: “Naughty, naught, naughty! Miss Edith shan’t be happy with you!” She yanked the crossbow bolt from her arm and swung to face the newcomers.
The three watching minions had jumped to the attack as soon as Cordelia triggered the crossbow, but Willow dropped into a Weaver stance and opened fire on them with the Glock, so Cordelia could afford to ignore them for a moment, as long as she didn’t forget about them. She took a running leap, bounced off one of the box stacks, and landed in front of Drusilla. “Miss Edith is just gonna have to get over it.” She cocked her fist for a punvh; when the vampiress didn’t switch to defenseive, Cordy let the punch fly. Drusilla didn’t move until Cordy’s knuckles were less than an inch from her nose; then, in disjointed fluidity, she reared her head back, glided to the left, and fired a kick toward the left side of Cordelia’s back. Cordelia dodged with an arching pirouette that almost bent her double, cursing herself for not seeing it coming (nothing like the joy of peeing blood for a solid week!). She hefted her sword … and Drusilla’s eyes caught hers.
You know, she really is pretty, and those eyes are just enormous, poor Drusilla, it really isn’t her fault, she only wants to keep the nasty Slayer from hurting her Daddy like that horrid little gypsy woman… Cordy shook herself. Stupid! “Hey! Do I look like I go into that hypno-crap?”
When Willow turned the gun in their direction, Drusilla was already in the air, so the bullet that would have cleanly entered the base of her skull instead clipped one of the carotid arteries: not enough to kill a vampire, even with the stylized cross etched into the tip, but it incapacitaed Drusilla for the fifth of a second it took for the sword to swish! straight through her neck.
She couldn’t spare a moment on self-confgratulations; Cordelia immediately launched herself at the minions, wounded by Willow’s fire but still a threat. Seconds later, their dust clouding the air around her, she looked around for her friends. There, Xander and Willow had Buffy on the concrete floor, trying CPR —
Cordelia crossed the room at Slayer speed, her eyes taking in the wound that went almost the length of Buffy’s arm, blood still surging out in arterial spurts. She pulled Xander away from Buffy and hoisted the senseless girl upp into her arms. “No time!” she said.
Xander glared at her. “What do you mean, no time? She’s supposed to be your friend, and she’s not breathing!”
“No time!” She repeated, feeling like an idiot, but she couldn’t think of any better way to say it, not now. Unable to articulate an explanation, she fell back to orders: “Get to the car, I’ll carry her!”
Xander and Willow would have argued, she could see it, but she was already moving and they had no choice but to follow. At the car, Willow and Xander climbed into the back seat and Cordelia laid Buffy on top of them, her head in Xander’s lap.
Tearing for the hospital as fast as possible, Cordelia used her cell phone to call ahead and tell them to get everything ready for a major blood loss case: transfusions, oxygen, and stitches for the longest cut, the one that stretched from wrist to shoulder on Buffy’s left arm. All the while, Xander kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversatino directed at Buffy, Willow muttered an incantation over and over, and Cordelia did the only thing she could do.
Drive.
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