Disclaimer: Not, mine, Joss's. but for story and Hypnos. Now would anyone like a good recipe for vegetarian chili?
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Part Eight
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Trick was back standing with the Mayor when another of the sleepwalkers walked up to them, carrying something.
"Well, Mr. Mayor," the voice of Hypnos came from some middle-aged broad, "Thanks for all your help. The symbol's almost completed. Incidentally, you might to move around a bit like you're under the spell. You have a couple of interlopers holing up in the announcer's booth."
Trick jogged down the steps and peered hard into the booth, then hustled back up the stands.
"Don't have a clear view of you, but still, better safe," the vampire said. "You may be interested: I got a clear view of both Miss Cordelia Chase AND the traitor vamp Angel. "
Finch said, "Shouldn't you go do something about them then? What do we pay you for anyway?"
Voice dripping with venom, Trick said, "Near as I can tell, to stand around a lot and try to come up with a good reason why I shouldn't separate your head from your neck and drink the blood comes pouring out."
Hypnos interrupted them. "Mr. Trick's services will not be necessary. I can handle the barricade, and there's little they can do trapped up there."
"Nice to know," Mayor Wilkins answered amiably. "By the way, Mr. Trick here -- you two DO know each other, right?"
"We've had the pleasure," the sorceror answered.
"Well, he started me wondering: What's this symbol going to do?"
"Keep everyone who's now asleep under my permanent control."
"Trick, remind me to listen to you in the future," the Mayor said, standing up. "Hypnos, what am I going to do in control of a town full of sleepwalkers? Mr. Trick --"
"Will stay right where he is. You have no cause for complaint, Mayor; I helped get you elected, you owed me a favor, you did it. What you do afterwards is none of my concern."
Trick said. "The old you scratch my back, I stab yours routine. I like your style." The Mayor and his assistant shot him a dirty look. "Didn't say I agreed with the application, just said I liked his style."
The Mayor continued to protest, Hypnos continued to deflect his every concern, and Trick slowly backed away. Hadn't made more than halfway down before hizzoner said, "Mr. Trick: Go break up that symbol!"
Almost before Trick could take a step, legions of sleepwalkers came barreling past him, WAY too many for him to fight or even slow down, and within seconds he, all of his subvamps, Mayor Wilkins and the deouty Mayor were pinned down quite thoroughly. Dispassionately, Trick saw which ones had been harder to hold down and took a few mental notes; if the sorceror wanted him and his compadres to be dust in the wind, then dust they were gonna be and no two ways about it.
"I didn't want to have to do this . . ." Trick watched as water was passed up the stesp and Hypnos said, "Hard way, easy way, your call, Mayor Wilkins: either drink the water or I can just hit you over the head. "
Finch gulped his cup and fell asleep almost immediately; hizzoner, with a disgusted look on his face, tossed his cup to the ground. Give the man points for guts!
If not brains. That would be one WICKED lump on his head when he woke up. If he woke up, that is, which was beginning to look less and less likely . . .
Then, abruptly, he was released. Hypnos said from the body right in front of him -- an elementary school student! -- "You're not going to cause any trouble, are you?"
Well, not at the moment, no, not with Hypnos holding all the cards. Trick signalled to everyone to stop struggling and they all walked out of the stadium.
One of them grumbled, "We didn't even get our children!"
Trick restrained himself from slapping him in the back of the head.
* * *
"You know what?" Xander yelled. "You know what? I'd rather let them STAY IN HELL . . . "
She choked out a "No . . ." but he went on anyway.
". . . than hear you sing."
And then there was dead silence except for the pounding on the door, which seemed fainter, more distant, than it had been. All of her attention was focused, now, on Xander, on what he said.
Could he be right?
Could she have . . . deserved it?
No. Xander Harris could NEVER be right.
She began breathing deeply. Goddammit, she hadn't deserved that, she DIDN'T deserve this, not from him, not from anyone! Who the hell was Xander Harris to tell her the spike through the stomach was her fault? To say that the breakup, the betrtayal, was her fault?
And -- "Who the HELL are you to tell me I can't sing? Just you watch me, Xander, and THEN tell me I can't sing!"
Xander's hand snaked up and flicked a switch, turning the microphone on, and Cordelia grabbed it and began singing, nothing but pure anger radiating from her mouth, barely thinking about the song she sang:
"So call me a bitch in heat and I'll call you a liar, and we'll throw stones until we're dead . . ."
* * *
As Cordelia sang song after song into the microphone, Xander crept quietly over to Angel by the door and added his nauseated weight to the cause.
"I owe you an apology," Angel said. Xander's eyes widened and Angel whsipered to him, "That maneuver you pulled on Cordelia to get her angry. Well played."
"Thanks. Not like I didn't feel SOME of it, but still --"
"See this book I have under my arm?"
Xander reached over and pulled it out. "Honsenberg's Narcotica." Puzzled, he looked up at Angel. "You think this'll do some good now?"
The vampire said, "You and Cordelia weren't fully affected. Why? What do to the two of you have in common? And I don't --" he grunted as the pounding at the door became harder, but it stayed closed. -- "mean that you dated." After a few seconds, Angel said, "Brainstorm, man!"
Xander thought frantically . . . and the chain of thought was interrupted by another retching fit. When he stopped, he apologized, saying, "I don't know why I keep doing that; not like I've had anything to eat in the last two . . ." Then he had it. "Cordelia's on some kind of freaky diet. I don't know what she's eating, but she's not drinking the water."
"Good. Now here's what good I think the book can do . . ."
* * *
On and on she went, song after angry, bitter song, now one by Patti Rothberg:
"Yet I know you're being bogus when you flirt with other women and I know I could be swimmin' in your sea . . ."
"I shut out acceptance so I won't get hurt and move on to the next one who will treat me like dirt . . ."
With every note, the pattern vibrated. Now and again the people out there would stop their tasks for a split second or two, stand there or begin falling, and then start up again. So her voice was interfering with them, no question at all.
And then, again, some Aimee Mann:
"Oh, baby, I wonder if when you are older, someday, you'll wake up and say "My God, I should have told her --" What would it take?-- "But, now, here I am and the world's gotten colder . . . and she's got the river down which I sold her . . ."
But she kept coming back to the same one, unable to finish it:
"I can chew like a cannibal, I can yell like a cat -- you even had me believing that you really, really, like it like that. But there was never a moment, not a moment, now you know, now you know, now you know, you EVER got within a hundred million miles of my soul . . ."
"I spit, I spit in the eye, I tear, I tear out the heart and I scatter the bits; I stay unseen by the light, I stay untold by the truth, I am sold by a lie . . . by this I am able in all of my travels to make these memories quit, but tonight I CLEARLY recall every little bit . . ."
The nearer she approached the third verse, the more the pattern out there rippled, the more discordant the other sound got, the more people stopped what they were doing . . .
and then when she stopped it all died down again.
Clearly, what she needed to do was finish that song.
And just as clearly -- she couldn't.
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