An assortment of vampires, demons, and combative Humans was busily making a shambles of Jerry Doyle's living room.
"F**k this," said the actor. He made his way through the choreography to a locked cabinet and tapped in a combination. Pulling out a businesslike pistol, he checked the magazine, flicked the safety, took careful aim, and winged a demon. That got everybody's attention.
"Get...out...of...my...house!" he said grimly.
For a moment, it almost looked as though it might work. Then the hostile vampire grinned toothily and went for him. Jerry fired again, hitting the monster square in the chest, but the guy just staggered, shook his head, and kept coming.
"Aim for the demons!" cried Doyle, tackling the vampire before he could reach the stunned actor. The vamp shrugged the slender Irishman off like a light rain, but by then Angel had broken free of his own attackers. He slung the attacking vampire into a bookcase, then clobbered him a couple of times to ensure that he stayed down for a while.
Meanwhile, Lochley had knocked out one of the demons, and Doyle and Cordelia had ganged up on another, while the wounded one made his way painfully toward the hole in the window. Angel tossed the last one bodily through said hole, and the one Doyle and Cordy were pounding managed to struggle free and followed. The fallen one woke up, and finding himself abandoned, scurried for the window as well. Jerry sent a couple of shots after them, just to keep them moving.
Angel picked up the groggy vampire and sat him in a chair. "You don't happen to have any chains lying around, do you?" he asked Jerry, who was swearing at the mess on his white carpet.
"Sure, I'll just pop down to the dungeon and grab 'em -- of course I don't have any *chains*! Hang on, I do have some rope in the garage, though."
By the time the vampire had been securely tied up, he had settled down and gone back to his Human form.
"What the hell..." Jerry began when he noticed the change.
"Just let me handle this, okay? I'll explain later," said Angel. He turned to the captive vampire. "All right. You've got two choices. I can stake you right now, or you can tell me what I want to know and live a few more minutes."
"Hey, wait a minute..." Jerry cut in, moving toward them.
Doyle held him back. "Why don't we all go in the kitchen for a while and let Angel...talk to the guy, okay?" Reluctantly, the two newbies let themselves be led away.
* * *
"*There* you are," muttered Kate as her headlights picked out the license plate of the car she had been following, before it lost her back at that strip mall. She had been cruising this neighborhood for what seemed like an eternity, but proved to be only about fifteen minutes by her car's clock.
Plenty of time for the boys to get into trouble, she realized as a shot rang out, then two more in rapid succession. She pulled the car over and leaped out of it, her own weapon at the ready. There was no way she could have been ready for what came at her, though, as at least four...*creatures* swarmed over her in their flight from the house with the shattered picture window.
She was barely able to register their monstrous features -- were those *horns*? -- and didn't even have a chance to get off a shot before two of them had grabbed her and bundled her into the back of their car. And that was just the *beginning* of the nightmare.
* * *
When Angel joined the others in the kitchen, he had some good news and some bad news. The good news, to Lochley at least, was that she wasn't nuts: the vampire was part of a group working for a man -- or something -- that he knew only as "Smith", and one of their assignments had been to perform a spell intended to send one of their enemies back in time, as a less messy method of removal than murder. Unfortunately, one of the vampire's demonic colleagues had a little problem with dyslexia and the spell had backfired, bringing Lochley from the future instead.
The bad news was that the vampire had steadfastly refused to divulge the details of the spell, or shed any light on how it could be reversed.
"Spell?" said Lochley dubiously.
Angel, Doyle, and Cordelia looked at each other warily.
"I think you're going to have to tell them," Cordelia said, and the others reluctantly agreed. When they went back into the living room, the chair stood empty, with the ropes still draped loosely around it.
"Oh, no," said Jerry, horrified. "You *didn't*!"
"I had to," replied Angel shortly.
"Oh, Christ. Well, then...what did you do with the body?"
"There isn't one. When you...destroy a vampire, the body disintegrates." He made a sound hybridized from a laugh and a sigh. "Just one of the perks."
"Spells? Vampires? And...didn't you call those other guys 'demons'?" said Lochley, looking suspiciously at Doyle. "It's nice to know *I'm* not crazy, but I'm starting to wonder about you three!"
"Yeah," agreed the actor. "This is getting a little nuts, Frankie -- first you're asking me to believe in time travel, and now you spring this...ghoulies and goblins bullshit on me..."
"Honestly, it's all true!" protested Cordelia. "Most people never find out about this stuff because...well, mostly because they don't *want* to, and because people like Angel and Buffy -- that's Angel's ex-girlfriend, I sort of hung out with her and her group senior year in High School -- anyway, they try to protect people, so they don't *have* to find out about it, but...back in Sunnydale there's this Hellmouth and..."
"Look," said Angel. "Let's keep it simple, okay?"
* * *
As Angel gave a condensed, straight-from-the-hip version of the speech about vampires, demons, witches, Hellmouths, et infernal cetera, he watched the reactions of the Captain and the actor carefully. Frankly, he was relieved to be dealing with adults for a change, rather than hysterical teenagers. Just another benefit of living and working in the big city, he decided.
The actor had worried him at first -- he'd seen just enough of the modern Hollywood scene to be wary of media people and their intense, yet somehow dissociated lifestyle. But this guy was smart, knew how to prioritize, and had an open mind without being in the least gullible. As for the woman, Angel's respect for her had been high and rising even before her story had been confirmed.
The guy kept shooting looks between him and Lochley -- undoubtedly integrating his knowledge of the character -- the *woman* -- beside him into his evaluation of the overall situation, and perhaps, to some extent, taking his cues from her reaction. Angel came to a close, looking anxiously at his audience for a response.
"It's a good story, very...entertaining," said Jerry. "But I still need some proof."
"Proof!" exclaimed Cordelia. "Did you, like, somehow miss those guys? Well, no, you *didn't*, did you?" she snipped. "That demon blood is a *bitch* to get out of white carpet, you know."
The big man just stared at Angel. "There's something more to this," he said. "Something you're not telling me. And I want to know what it is."
Lochley looked at Jerry with a small frown.
Angel looked a question at Doyle -- he *really* didn't want to have to do this.
Doyle looked pointedly at Cordelia.
Angel sighed, and turned back to Jerry. "All right. I'll give you proof. This is going to be difficult, though, and perhaps dangerous. I want everybody to stand back."
"*Way back," he added, as everybody fell back a step or two.
Picking up her own cue, Lochley got the sofa between herself and Angel, and the actor, putting his hands in his pockets in feigned nonchalance, joined her there. Cordy sidled nearer the door, but Doyle kept his place near the bar.
Angel bowed his head, sinking deep within himself to find the Other. It was always a risk, lowering these barriers voluntarily -- he didn't do it often, and each time he did, he felt like he was sliding toward the oblivion that had claimed the minds and personalities of other vampires that survived to any great age. As with Humans, having a soul was one thing, but maintaining the willpower and determination to keep listening to it was quite another. Treating with the *thing* that infested him was dangerous -- Angel never knew whether the dark dreams that came to him for days afterward were his own fears or the Other's repressed stirrings. But now, it was necessary, if he was to keep this man's confidence after being indirectly responsible for trashing his house.
There. There it was, seething in his sluggish veins...the red of anger, the fires of insatiable hunger...he looked up, and saw them standing there. Three of them, juicy and defenceless. The demonspawn he'd save for later, but the others...
"Angel!"
The halfbreed was calling to him, pinning him with eyes in which fierce determination warred with fear. Fear kindled in the young female's eyes, too, but also something else...*pity*?
"Angel -- snap out of it, man. You've made your point!"
He looked again...Doyle. It was Doyle. And over there was Cordelia, and...suddenly the room snapped back into focus. The vampire sank down in an overstuffed chair and put his face in his hands.
"I *hate* doing that in public," he admitted.
The others slowly relaxed. "Some kind of...symbiosis," murmured Lochley.
"Yeah, but that wasn't any Vendrizi," said Jerry.
"That's for *damn* sure," Lochley agreed. Jerry cast her a sidelong look, as though his suspicions had been reawakened. If so, he said nothing of it, for the moment.
"Well, it certainly wasn't any kind of makeup," he said instead. "I *know* how long it takes to get that stuff on and off." He sighed heavily. "Man, I could use a drink...um..." he glanced at Lochley, then at Cordelia, then briefly at Angel before settling on Doyle. "Frankie?"
"Don't mind if I do," his young cousin replied quickly. "Oh, by the way, I go by 'Doyle' these days."
"Not around *me* you don't."
Going through the motions of setting up two drinks seemed to calm the Human as much as the alcohol. "So you're a vampire," he mused. "How old *are* you, anyway -- if you don't mind my asking?"
"Two hundred and forty-six last September," Angel replied matter-of- factly.
"Damn," Jerry muttered, "and he's *still* got all his hair."
"It's genetic," said the vampire apologetically.
"Yeah, yeah...so they say. And you're a good guy *why*?"
Angel heaved a sigh. "I ate a witch, her family cursed me and I got my soul back," he answered with the short version. "So...now I do my grocery shopping at the butcher shop and the blood bank."
"And you go around helping people, to try and make up for when you didn't?" suggested Lochley.
"Pretty much."
"Make a helluva TV show," Jerry observed.
Angel winced, but Cordelia's eyes lit up. "Wow, you know, I never thought of that!" she cried. "Do you think..."
"NO!" said Angel, horrified, then more gently, "*please*, Cordelia, don't even think about it!"
"Fine, *be* that way, I just...oh, never mind."
"And these goons -- pardon me, *demons* -- want Captain Lochley for something, and of course *being* demons they couldn't just walk up to the door like the other soulless predators in this town, they had to come crashing through *my* picture window..."
"We'll pay for the window," Angel said hastily.
"We WILL?" squeaked Cordelia.
Jerry waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it. I know a guy who can be out here tonight to board it up, and it'll be fixed by the weekend. Truth is, I'm more worried about that stain...but what I'm *most* worried about is..."
"Nail polish remover," cut in Lochley, peering at the green splotch on the floor.
"What?"
The four-part harmony was a nice touch. Lochley shrugged.
"Rule of thumb -- acetone for green blood, vinegar for yellow, ammonia for blue. Doesn't always work, but it's worth a try. You were saying?"
"Uh...yeah..." the actor recaptured his train of thought. "There's just *one* more thing I want to try before I jump on the Transylvania Express bandwagon, here..." he strode over to the telephone table, looked up a number, and punched it in.
As the phone rang, and rang, Lochley marveled yet again at the bizarre coincidence. This guy was an *actor*? He looked just like Garibaldi. He sounded like Garibaldi, he even moved like Garibaldi -- and the suspicious look he was giving her right now, as the phone continued to ring, was *exactly* like Garibaldi. Then someone picked up on the other end.
"Tracy? Yeah, this is Jerry -- Jerry Doyle. Yeah, great, just great. Just called to see how you were doing -- thought maybe we could get together some time...oh, yeah, I know, same here. Right. Hey, listen, do you happen to remember that joke Jeff told about the Pak'ma'ra and the two hookers, when we were workin' on 'Objects at Rest'? Yeah, right, that one. I got some people here and I started to tell it, but I forgot the punchline....yeah, yeah, yeah, gimme a break, Trace! Oh, yeah, that's right, I remember now. Thanks.
"Hey, one more thing -- you don't happen to have a twin sister you never told us about, do you?"
The response to *that* made him rear back from the handset -- "Okay! okay! just jokin' around, no offense! Geez, I was just *askin'*, you don't have to...okay, sure, nice talking to you. Take care now, bye!"
He hung up the phone, exhaled heavily, and gave Lochley a long, searching look.
"Well?" asked Doyle anxiously.
"It was her," said Jerry, sighing. "And there's no twin sister, so unless somebody can come up with a better explanation, I guess that means..." he sighed again, then a wondering smile crept onto his face -- "welcome to the end of the Twentieth Century, Captain!"
"Thank you, Mr. Doyle," said Lochley, with no little relief. She smiled at him, almost sympathetic -- apparently, her alter ego had the same instinctive response to clumsy pickup lines as *she* did. "So, aren't you going to tell us the joke about the Pak'ma'ra and the two hookers?"
"What? Oh, uh, no -- it's not really suitable for a lady..." he temporized.
"ExCUSE me?" she snapped, not sure whether she was more offended on her own account (she was a Captain, not a lady!) or Tracy's (an actress wasn't?).
"I meant *Cordelia*," Jerry shot back, reclaiming his equilibrium. "Besides, these guys wouldn't get it."
"I guess you had to be there," commented Angel.
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