Principles of Evil - Act 3
Wehx growled in a very wolfish fashion through his W&H sustained disguise. The man who lay dead at his feet had not been disguised. The man who lay dead at his feet had been a hit man. A cheap hit man. Wehx growled again. So cheap he had given up his client after only five minutes of torture. This new lawyer... he was a fool.
The wolf disguised as a small oriental man stepped away from the body and hailed a cab. He couldn’t risk drinking this demon’s marrow. He had an acquittal to get. Logan had won him bail so he could be killed, but Wehx still intended to get acquitted. Once Wolfram and Hart discovered that his lawyer had been killed, they would find him a new one. Perhaps a better one.
The taxi sped off into the night.
The demon found Logan leaving the office building and jumped from the cab to chase after him. The cabby was shouting something, but Wehx had Logan in his sights and wasn’t about to let him get away.
The demon leapt high into the air to cross the distance between them faster, ignoring the fact that he had given away his identity. The lawyer would have figured it out eventually anyway, perhaps when the strange oriental man began eating his flesh and drinking his bone marrow in a dark alley somewhere.
Wehx cursed. No, couldn’t do that; need the acquittal. When his hands grasped the man’s tan jacket, they immediately pulled away, as if burnt. What the bloodied farg was this? He had signed a contract with Wolfram and Hart which protected him against magic!
Wehx snarled and snatched the puny lawyer again, ignoring the burning sensation and shoving him onto the ground. Instantly, a bolt of fiery yellow light seared towards him and sizzled across his skin. Wehx looked down and saw that his disguise was dissolving off his body. In a few moments, a hulking wolf-like thing was standing where before had been a short man.
The bolts of energy continued, but now Wehx could not feel them, the terms of his contract falling into place. Wehx the demon was immune to low-level magical interference which might adversely affect the quality of his defense or otherwise return an unfavorable verdict at trial. Designed to protect W&H clients from magical tampering during trial, the contract now left Logan quite helpless.
Wehx took a deep breath and roared a blast of foul smelling breath at the man on the ground. The taxi behind him did a U-turn in the middle of the street and sped away with the screech of tires. Wehx made a lunge for the lawyer, his fangs bared.
There was a twist of light and the man vanished. The demon shouted in rage, then looked over as the small brown car with Logan in the driver’s seat came charging out of the underground lot and screeched around the corner and down the street.
A smile spread across the demon’s face. It was a chase he wanted. A chase he would get.
Niki shoved a handful of white T-shirts into one of the suitcases Addison had emptied earlier. He was asleep now and could not protest her decision to leave. She’d write him a message on the whiteboard.
For all she knew, it was Addison who had betrayed her, though she didn’t see how. He hadn’t even been around. That didn’t leave many other options though, did it? The same seer who had told her to run because she had been betrayed had told her to stick with someone she trusted. If she had trusted anyone, then the betrayal would just be worse, wouldn’t it?
She grabbed some stakes from her bottom drawer and slid them into the suitcase. She’d be needing them where she was going. There was at least one coven in Cleveland.
Just then the phone startled her out of her packing frenzy. She jumped and ran for the kitchen, seizing the phone from the wall before it could ring again and wake the sleeping Watcher.
“What?” she hissed into it. It was an ungodly hour, meaning it was probably an ungodly phone call.
“Niki,” Logan’s voice was hurried and urgent. “I need you, I need your help— there’s a really pissed off demon after me and he—”
“Hey, that’s not my fault,” the Slayer hissed into the phone. “You’ve got powers; use ‘em.”
“I can’t– I can’t,” he sucked in a breath. “I know it’s not your fault: it’s my fault. I tried to have this demon killed but he’s after me now. He’s got some kind of anti-magic protection spell on him. I need you. Niki he’s going to kill me and then he’s going to kill my family.”
Niki let out an angry breath. She swallowed, looking around the kitchen as if it would provide some answers. “Where are you?”
“I’ve tried to lead it away from Freeport and closer to you— I’m in a phone booth near East 40th street. How soon can you get here— he’s right behind me.”
“I’m leaving right now.” She hung up the phone and donned her leather jacket. Before heading for the door she stopped in front of Addison’s room. She put her ear up to the door. Hearing nothing, she gently opened the door. In the darkness she could detect no movement. She wanted him still asleep when she got back. She had no intention of having another one of their ‘discussions’ where he would make her sit for three hours and tell her she was a failure and that’s why she couldn’t just run away. She would have to finish off this demon and be back before sunrise.
Closing the door she made her way to the front door and left with as little noise as she could.
Addison, for his part, was nowhere near his room. And despite the ungodly hour, he was fully awake. He was, in fact, sitting across from a particularly ungodly woman.
“Well, it’s what we do,” the woman argued. “And this is going to be particularly satisfying.”
“And that’s your final position?” the Watcher asked, his fingers clasped on her desk, his white eyebrow raised diplomatically. “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”
Tawnie smiled broadly. “Your charm doesn’t go that far, Richard. Your days of sweeping women off their feet are gone.”
“You understand why I have to try,” he lifted his hands from her desk and sat back, the charm melting from his face. “You know I can’t allow this to happen.”
Tawnie smiled, this time with a sinister gleam in her eyes. “Just try and stop us. We’ve got the system on our side. What have you got?”
Addison drew in a breath and shrugged. “We’ve got me.”
Tawnie scoffed. “The entire state of New York is trembling, I’m sure. You can be sure the state will get a tremendous amount of pleasure from this, but I guarantee you not nearly as much as the Senior Partners. Your incompetence has handed us this on a silver platter.” She lowered her head as a mocking bow. “Our thanks.”
“You underestimate me,” Addison remained impassive to her mockery. “I may be too old to sweep women off their feet, but I can knock them down like I’m in my twenties. What you call incompetence I call subtlety... shrewdness perhaps. At the end of the day, I promise you, all you’ll be left with is your damned silver platter.”
“We’ll see,” Tawnie didn’t let his words get to her. He was a foolish old man. Perhaps he would have been considered shrewd in his prime, but that was thirty years ago. “We’ll see very soon how shrewd you still are.”
“And if I fail,” he said with sudden amicability, “I’ve still got resources. In fact, I’d probably still be employed. You on the other hand, should you fail, would have to explain to your revered Senior Partners exactly why they shouldn’t feed you to the crabs.” He frowned as if pondering something. “I think there must be a Nietzsche quote there somewhere.” He snapped his fingers. “‘Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful,’” he quoted with a triumphant grin.
“Let’s not forget who was responsible for Nietzsche’s death.” Tawnie raised an eyebrow. “What a credit to the Senior Partners: they killed the man who killed God.”
Addison chuckled. “And how they have fallen from grace, picking on a pathetic little girl.”
Tawnie shrugged. “We do what we can.”
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