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Wordsmith
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Dawn burst through the door sobbing and practically dove onto Spike. The vampire scrambled to make sure all his dangly bits were covered as his mate shook off his post-coital sleep.
"She's back. She's back. She's back." Dawn's whispered words had an oddly autistic feel to it and Spike feared they were going to lose her to the near catatonia that had claimed her after Buffy's death.
"Hold on, Nibblet," he said, pulling her into his covered lap and stroking her hair as Xander looked at him wide-eyed and helpless. "We're here. I've got you."
"Talk to me, Dawnie," Xander said, reaching for his jeans and trying to dress under the sheet. "Who's 'she'? What's got you scared? We'll take her down together, honey, just talk to me."
"Glory. I saw Glory. She got out of a limousine. Oh, God! I saw Glory," Dawn's voice rose in volume and in pitch.
Xander looked up as Willow and Tara came through the still-open door followed closely by Angel and Cordy. "What the hell happened?" he snapped at Cordelia as he stood and zipped his jeans, wishing he had had time to wash up and put on underwear. While part of his mind catalogued Tara taking Dawn into her arms while Spike dressed, unconcerned for his audience once Dawn's attention was off him and Angel's nose twitching at the musky scent of sex, the bulk of his attention was on Cordelia.
"This blonde got out of a limo, with one of the lawyers from Wolfram and Hart. She walked right by us and didn't pay any attention, just went into a story, but Dawn freaked. Who is she? What's going on?" Cordelia stepped back into Angel's arms and he pulled her back against his chest.
"Glory?" Angel's vampiric hearing had obviously caught every word Dawn had said. "I thought she was dead. Didn't you say Buffy had destroyed her?"
Xander snagged Spike's discarded tee shirt from the night before. "Hey," Xander said, his voice muffled as he put it on, "I saw you dust Darla - these friends of yours have issues with letting dead demons stay that way."
"Then it's a good thing you were planning to leave tonight," Angel said, seeming already lost in thought about what he was going to do.
"No way. You can't run from Glory. We tried that. We're taking her out. It's the only way to be sure." Xander shoved past the stunned vampire followed closely by Spike.
Angel and Cordelia followed, leaving the witches to look after Dawn. Still shadowed by his lover, Xander strode down the wide staircase into the lobby. Ignoring a cringing Fred he shouted, "Hey, lawyer-boy!" As Lindsey emerged from the library with Wesley he continued, "I need a core dump on everything you know about Wolfram and Hart."
* * * * *
Lilah rounded on Gavin, fists clenched at her sides. The boutique was oddly
untouched, given the shambles the Diva had left of her quarters. An old woman,
dressed expensively and obviously a customer was dead and the shop girl sat
drooling in the corner, rocking back and forth, murmuring some nonsense rhyme.
The Diva stood like a statue her - a beautiful and deadly work of art. Glorificus
had her fingertips pressed gently against her
temples, and had a look of rapture on her face. Not that after the last twenty-four
hours Lilah wouldn't like some of whatever it was she was on, but the last thing
she wanted to explain to Linwood was a stoned hellgod.
"You said to keep her amused." Gavin backpedaled in the face of Lilah's
near-homicidal rage. Around them a cleaner crew from the firm was getting rid
of the evidence. Hopefully, by evening the strange and mysterious
disappearance of the two women wouldn't even be a blurb on the news.
"By which I meant anything up to and including your own ritual suicide, but I never gave you permission to remove her from a controlled environment," Lilah snapped.
The cleaners lifted the mindless shopgirl off the floor by her elbows, and as they dragged the limp form past her, Lilah heard her chanting, "Two Slayers, no waiting," over and over.
* * * * *
"Stop sulking," Cordelia said, and handed him a warm mug of blood.
Angel had no time to wonder when the impeccable Cordelia Chase had overcome her aversion to icky bodily fluids to see that he feed. He wasn't sulking, but thought he would sound like a four-year-old if he pointed that out.
He was irritated. Xander Harris had gotten more information out of Lindsey McDonald in the last hour than Angel had gotten in the entire time he had dealt with the lawyer. He refused to admit that it might be because Xander showed no emotional reaction to any answer, he didn't interrupt, and he had an uncanny ability to drill down on important details. Spike was taking notes on everything Lindsey said and making lists of information Xander told him they would need.
When Tara came down to update them on Dawn, Xander gave her the list and told her to have Willow power up the laptop. As she headed back upstairs, Angel felt a strange prickling sensation when Xander added, "Tell her we're going all out, and have her make up a shopping list."
"Xander," Angel said. "You can't declare war on these people. Lindsey, tell him..."
"Tell him what? That they're dangerous? I think he gets that better than you," Lindsey grimaced at the cold coffee he had just sipped.
"Listen, Deadboy, I get it, but you have been doing the whole diplomacy
dance with these guys for what? Three years? Fine. You can go right back to
dancing once I disarm the hellgod. The lawyers from hell are yours, but
Glory is ours and we are not turning tail and hoping she doesn't hold a grudge."
Xander rubbed his eyes.
"Xander?" Willow's voice came down from the gallery. "I started... stuff, and I can get most of what I need delivered 'cause hey, it's L.A., but can you get me five hundred gallons of holy water?"
"I'll make some calls - give me an hour," he said. At Angel's incredulous look he added, "What?"
* * * * *
Cordelia marveled as, true to form, a U-Haul showed up within the hour. "Oh, my God, Aura! How are you!" The former Cordette was a junior at UCLA, but they rarely crossed paths; Cordy had avoided her friend, ashamed to no longer be the Queen C everyone expected. Aura introduced her friends. One was a fellow coed, but the other two were aspiring young actress, one of whom - Janet - Cordy had met at an audition.
"We're part of the L.A. branch of C.O.T.H.," Aura said.
The young women shamelessly ogled Gunn and the commandos as they unloaded the truck and stacked its contents in the lobby.
"This been tested?" Spike asked as Graham sat down a ten gallon jug of Polar water.
"We use it all the time, and it's never failed before," said one of the girls.
"Open it." Spike nodded to Finn, who was putting down the container he had just carried in. Riley broke the plastic seal and peeled it off. "Stick your fingers in, " Spike commanded. Riley complied and Graham stood close. Holding out his forearm, Spike said, "Touch me." Riley extended one damp finger to the vampire's exposed flesh. A sizzle sounded as he made contact.
"Vampire!" The young ladies each reached for one of the large bottles.
"Hold it." Xander's voice boomed from above and he ran down the stairs to his lover. "He's with me," he said putting himself between Spike and the women.
"Oh, my God! You're like, him, right? You're that Spike guy! This is so cool! You killed a dragon and you're like five thousand years old and you killed that hell-god person and... this is so cool! Really, it's an honor," the tiny brunette gushed as her sidekick giggled and nodded.
Cordy looked at Xander, who shrugged. Interrupting Spike's fan club, which had grown to include the two other women now clustering around the blonde - who to be honest looked rather dazed - she said, "Not that I'm complaining, but where did you get five hundred gallons of holy water? Do you know how expensive this is?"
"Oh," Janet dismissed the growing pile of bottles, "Father Juan, down at IC, he's like a hundred and three. He doesn't say mass any more but he'd bless anything, including a truck, for a fifty-dollar donation to the orphans and hey, if the truck is filled with bottled water... "
After the girls left, Cordy lifted an eyebrow and said, "Five thousand years old?"
"Don't look at me," Xander said.
Gunn, Finn, and Miller started to move the water to where Willow had set up her magic lab. Xander dragged Spike up to their room to go over the plan. As they crossed the lobby and walked up the stairs Cordy heard Spike say, "What the hell was that about, Pet?"
"Hey, you were a legend long before you started dating me. You know legends... well, they grow a little with each telling." Xander sounded embarrassed.
"Yeah, not what I meant. I know why all your friends are birds - 'cause you're a nancy boy - but why are they all insane?" Spike drawled.
"Whoa, glasshouse-boy, you dated Drusilla for like a million years. I may have you beat on quantity, but you win, hands down - " Xander said.
"Right, don't go there, luv." Finally they were out of earshot.
* * * * *
Lilah watched Glory. The crew had simply picked her up as if she were frozen in place. The hellgod now stood in the center of her room. She hadn't moved so much as an eyelash since Lilah had burst onto the scene at the shop. This was more than some sort of intoxication brought on from her impromptu meal. After grilling Gavin about just what had sparked this episode, Lilah had determined that the Diva had fed not from hunger, but from boredom.
Gavin had sounded surprised that Glorificus hadn't even looked at the merchandise. The stupid boy had actually thought to amuse a god with shopping. The Diva's minions had most likely procured everything for her in the past, and if the hellgod had thought at all about why they were at the boutique, shopping would not have crossed her mind. Gavin had described the amused look in Glorificus' eyes as she slipped behind the women as they examined a handbag and how she had plunged her fingers into both skulls.
The idiot boy wouldn't live long enough to develop the ability to shrug off the habit of thinking of their clients as human. Lilah had long ago given up any surprise at the actions of the special clients. Gavin had made a fatal mistake in assuming that because the hellgod looked like a beautiful woman that she could be treated as such. Lilah was sure she could use this to get Linwood to terminate the obsequious young lawyer. Now, she just had to find away to cover up a dysfunctional hellgod, should Glorificus not emerge from contemplating her inner beauty.
Her earlier calls had not led to a connection who could generate portals at will, but a rumor that there was a player in town who might be able to deliver Angelus to the firm before the precogs indicated Darla would return, thus negating the need to open the portal. Her contact was going to set up a meeting with the one being who had survived several previous encounters with the souled vampire, and had almost as deep a connection to him as Darla.
* * * * *
Faith rolled over, pushing her sweat-soaked hair off her face. Dim light streamed
though the bars of her tiny cell and she opened all her senses to the stillness
of the prison's night. There was none of the muffled sobs or
nighttime ravings she had become so accustomed to and she cautiously lowered
herself down from the upper bunk. Her cell, for the moment, was private.
The unnatural stillness was broken by the sound of the cell door, all the cell doors, rolling open. That in itself should have set off a multitude of alarms and brought guards running from all directions, but there wasn't a sound. There was a muffled feeling to the air that she had always associated with major magic. Remembering Wolfram and Hart owed her major payback, Faith crouched in the far corner of her cell and prepared for the worst.
The worst came in the form of a tiny bouncing blue spark. The spark zoomed straight for her and stopped instantly an inch above the tip of her nose.
"What the fuck?" She tried to pull back and see the spark without crossing her eyes but it followed.
"Come. Come." It hummed in a genderless buzz.
"What? Why? Would you back off?" She swatted at it, furiously waving her hand in front of her face.
It bounced back and continued bouncing about the cell and sort of giggled, all the while saying "Come. Come."
"I am not going anywhere - especially with you." Faith frowned and began to get dressed. If this thing was setting her up, well, she had fought naked before but no matter what she had told Buffy's little entourage, it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The thought of the late Slayer gave her pause. Maybe this wasn't payback from the lawyers. Maybe the Watchers needed a new Slayer. As in brand new. As in whack Faith.
That gave her an uncomfortable feeling, to say the least. On one hand, she really didn't want to die. On the other, there were things out there, and while she was in here, dallying with redemption, people were dying. Maybe she owed it to her destiny to let the bastards kill her, to let another, better suited to the role, be called. The world was a fucked up place and without B. to watch over it, there was no telling how bad things could get.
"Who wants me to come?" she asked the still-humming spark.
"The seer says come. Come. Come." Its hum increased in volume and Faith got the impression that the spark was fond of this seer.
"What seer? Who does this seer work for?" She wondered if it could answer. Anyone trying to set her up would be hiding who they were - wouldn't they?
"The seer of the unbreathing warrior of light. Come. Come. Hurry. Come." It bounced out the door to the cell and back in like a tiny dog trying to coax a walk out of its owner.
Faith knew only one unbreathing warrior of light, but the spark hadn't said Angel sent it. Why would Cordelia want her to come? Glancing around the cell, she grabbed a few personal items - there weren't many - and followed the spark.
The reason for the eerie silence was evident in her trek out though the open
doors. Every being in the prison - guards, prisoners, other staff - was stock
still in place, like a giant game of freeze tag. Each one was paused
between one instant and the next. All the doors were wide open and as Faith
finally stepped off the prison grounds, she heard each and every one swing shut
in unison.
"Hurry. Hurry. Come. Come." The spark urged her by zipping around her head and dashing off repeatedly into the darkness. Faith followed the spark at a jog for almost a mile before looking back to see all of the outer lights, which had been noticeably absent, blink on. "Hurry. Not stand - come." The spark began its zipping again.
"All right already, I'm coming." she said with irritation. After another mile she saw it. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, without a light or a building in sight was Angel's great big old boat of a car.
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