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Darkness Visible

 

…yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all…

John Milton, Paradise Lost

 

 

Angel could smell the blood a block away; the warm night wafting it to him; fresh kills, different odours of delicious wetness spilled from different slashed veins. A ten car pile-up or else a more deliberate kind of slaughter. It didn’t help that he was hungry, but there was no time at which that scent wouldn’t have made him hungrier. It sickened him and called to him at the same time. Sickened him that he still wanted it, even after all the blood he’d drunk, the pain he’d caused, but he did and always would. The difference between him and the soulless demons who he staked and beheaded was that he could choose not to drink, despite the want and the need and the hunger that at times like these was a tearing pain in his guts, he could choose instead to take his pig’s blood out of the fridge, heat it in the microwave and make himself savour that taste instead. And he could – and did – remind himself that the blood he craved, fresh, hot, and sweet from the vein came with the price of another’s pain and his own damnation.

 

All the same, it was inconsiderate of whoever had caused this dizzying feast for the senses to overload his nostrils like this. As he turned the corner and saw the police line, the too-familiar yellow tape, the survivors sitting around stunned and blood-stained outside the shattered window of the bar, the body bags into which the corpses were being zipped, there were other senses alerted to counteract his sense of smell. His sense of pity for one. The scene stank of madness as well as blood; a torn streamer – garish as an evil clown – turning to crimson mush in a puddle of something that wasn’t rainwater.

 

“What happened?” he asked an onlooker.

 

The man shrugged. “Guy just went crazy. Walked into the place where the people from his office were drinking and started slicing them up with a machete. There was so much screaming. So much blood. The cops shot him in the end. They said he was smiling. Like he was enjoying it. Like he was having fun.”

 

Angel thought of Angelus and Darla gleefully massacring another family, the feel of an infant’s neck snapping in his hand, Angelus’s laughter full of the sound of satisfaction as he congratulated himself on another slaughter successfully concluded. He remembered the intoxication of power, knowing no one was faster than you were, that you could stalk them like prey and rip them apart like an animal, feast on their flesh; remembered a friend’s throat between his fingers, playing with the idea of breaking his neck, enjoying tightening his grip so the oxygen slowed and the victim grew dizzier and weaker while he was drunk on his own power and convinced of his own genius; cleverer, nastier, and stronger than anyone else, certainly than a white trash slayer or brainyboy Wes. Faith’s blood in his mouth, tainted with Orpheus; that was the blood of two slayers he’d drunk now; and he was supposed to be one of the good guys.

 

Angel winced and walked between the corpses carefully, so much ripped flesh and the dead stare of open eyes, the blood everywhere. Vicious and pointless and not even done for food as well as fun, no bite marks on the throats, not vampires this time. Not his victims this time either. But in the past, yes, there had been slaughters every bit as savage as this one, screams he’d conjured out of silence; terror he’d created out of the warm comfort of a score of taverns.

 

He felt sickened and, worse, still hungry, as he tried to find a trail to follow, but there was no blood leading away from the scene of carnage, no sour scent of something demonic either. It did appear to be the work of a madman. Someone pushed too far who had finally snapped and wreaked a horrible revenge on people who had probably never done him any harm. Except insanity didn’t tend to be contagious, and this was the sixth inexplicable massacre in as many days.

 

Angel turned away and walked back to the office; their downtrodden place of exile; cast out of if not from paradise, certainly prosperity. He doubted any of them regretted that loss. They had been fortunate to get out only partially shredded. They had lost Cordelia and Fred; Wesley had come perilously close to losing his mind and his soul; Gunn his integrity and his life.

 

As it was two a.m. he could have expected the place to be empty but, of course, the people of Angel Investigations had no lives to speak of and were conspicuously not having lives all over the office floor as he entered.

 

“Hey, Angel.” Gunn barely looked up from something complicated he was helping Wesley construct on the floor out of what looked like a knock-off Ethros box, several glass containers and some delicate crystals. There were also a lot of different kinds of herbs, some jars of unidentifiable powder, a hammer and a great quantity of iron nails.

 

Angel resisted the urge to turn over their motley collection of mystical bric-a-brac with his toe. “You do know that has a dented panel, right?”

 

“It’s what we could afford,” Wesley explained. “I’ve found some obscure references in a demon language to a possible method of temporarily imprisoning the life force of a soul eating demon so that the stolen souls can be extracted from it and I think that I can use an Ethros box as the template. It has the right kind of wood, at least.”

 

Gunn wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Good to be demon hunting again, anyway, right?”

 

Angel didn’t have the heart to tell Wesley and Gunn that they looked more like a gay couple after a trip to Ikea than demon hunters right now. He just patted the Englishman briefly on the shoulder as he passed him.

 

Sometimes, when he was as hungry as he was now, senses flooded with the scent of blood, he made himself wait before drinking, but that was a game to play only with himself; when he could punch a wall if he wanted to without anybody noticing. When he could slip into game face and let his eyes glitter yellow in the shadows; reach inwards to touch the darkness that was always there; not a test to set himself when there were witnesses. And it wasn’t the blood beneath their thin skins, pumping audibly through their warm bodies, that made them an unsuitable audience; he could put a hand on his non-beating heart and promise that they were in no danger of being drained by him, however hungry he might be, not even Wesley, whose blood he had tasted, and, having tasted when he was mad with hunger, remembered as the sweetest blood he’d ever drunk. No, there was no risk to their veins, but there was certainly a risk to the trust that existed between him and them; particularly the fragile trust between himself and Gunn.

 

Not that Gunn was as aggressively sure of himself now as he had been in the past. But his distaste for vampires was instinctive. Wesley had been introduced to the concept of the bloodsucking undead at an equally early age as Gunn, but through lectures and book learning, not through the sight of his parents’ throats ripped out, their bodies drained. For Wesley there had always been vampires in the world. One could make an argument that Wesley only existed at all because there were vampires in the world, because without Vampires there would be no Slayers and without Slayers there would be no Watchers, and were it not that he had been destined from birth to be a Watcher, Wesley would never have been born at all. His father had certainly not sired a son out of any yearning for a child to love and watch dotingly grow into manhood. Ironic, that Wyndam-Pryce senior, who had never craved that gift at all, had been granted it, while Angel, who had, briefly, wanted it above all things, had had it snatched from him.

 

No doubt a psychiatrist could make a case for Wesley’s subconscious having rebelled at the prospect of baby Connor receiving all the love and devotion from Wesley’s new father substitute that he himself had never received as a child and that being a motivating factor in the kidnapping. But then psychiatrists, on the whole, knew Jack, and in this case Angel certainly knew better.

 

Needing blood he headed straight for the refrigerator, let his fangs show briefly so he could tear open the bag, then didn’t heat it as a penance, reminding himself that this was what he was now, someone doomed to live on pig’s blood while the delicious scent of human blood, warm from the jugular, was still in his nostrils. Payback for all the human blood he’d drunk in the past. Turning to watch the men at their efforts, he could see Gunn was now trying to fit the pieces of crystal together. It reminded him of an executive puzzle, and the days when he’d had an executive desk and an executive puzzle to not get around to puzzling over.

 

Wesley was murmuring: “It’s just a case of identifying what the six hundred kinds of virgin wood and the blindness of the monks actually represents on a mystical level and then seeing if it’s possible to replicate it…”

 

Gunn finished for him: “Using much cheaper ingredients cobbled together with some voodoo magic.”

 

Wesley looked mildly aggrieved. “This is good old fashioned Celtic Pagan Demon magic, Charles.”

 

“Which?”

 

“Yes, Witch magic too.”

 

“No, I mean, which of them is it?”

 

Wesley ran a hand through his hair. “All of them actually. I'm open to every possibility at present.”

 

“Is that a fancy way of saying we’re desperate?”

 

“I think we went past desperate last Wednesday. We’re well into panic-stricken now.” He looked up at Angel. “Did you learn anything new?”

 

“There’s been another killing. Which means there’s been another soul-stealing to cause the killing. This one got messy.”

 

Wesley slumped in momentary defeat. “Another one so soon? This creature must be gorging itself. Or it must be big. Or both. Too big to be a Kalmakhan or an Imperidos hybrid.” He looked back at their Ethros box. “So, that probably won’t work.”

 

“This sucks.” Apparently unaware of the irony, Gunn sucked the thumb he had most recently hit with a hammer. “It’s using this city as a free lunch, dinner, and bedtime snack and so far we haven’t managed to do a damn thing to stop it.”

 

“Still no idea what it is?” Angel put in.

 

Wesley shook his head. “We already know we’re dealing with a soul-eater demon. We can make some assumptions from its modus operandi, and at this kind of a feeding rate I think it has to be from the Animadras family, but as they’re all supposed to be extinct in this dimension that doesn’t lead us much further on.” Sighing, he got to his feet. “Gunn, can you go on with the building work while I get back to the books? Follow the diagram in Holstein’s Arcana and remember to sprinkle thyme on the nails before you use them. In the meantime I'm hoping to find a better summoning spell than one used by Ancient Egyptian sorcerers to entrap the souls of the unholy.”

 

Angel examined their handiwork for a moment before saying: “If a Shorshack box wouldn’t hold something as similar as an Ethros demon, how likely is it that a dented Ethros box is going to hold an as yet unidentified but definitely not-Ethros demon?”

 

Wesley went into the office, talking over his shoulder as he did so. “My latest research suggests that the demon has to be alive at the time the souls are extracted from it. If we could contain its essence in a box during the extraction process there is a proportionately lower chance of it chewing us into little pieces while I'm casting the spell. Not knowing what kind of demon we’re dealing with, however, does mean there has to be a certain amount of guesswork involved, but Lorne thinks we’re on the right track.”

 

Angel grimaced. “Wouldn’t you say building your own soul-eating demon box out of a few household implements was the Webster’s definition of a ‘don’t try this at home, kids’ scenario?” He decided not to mention what Lorne had told him about barely getting a passing grade at mystical school but he couldn’t help thinking that was looking more and more likely as he gazed at the gimcracky get up Gunn was currently wrestling with.

 

Wesley shrugged. “If you have any other suggestions I'm happy to hear them.”

 

“What about the shaman to perform the extraction magic and the binding magic, not to mention saying the incantations to turn your home-made soul-demon-extraction-box into something more than a mantelpiece ornament? Last thing I heard those guys didn’t work to scale.”

 

Sighing, Wesley turned over another page. “We’ve got me, Lorne, and some candles, and if it turns out the spell can only be cast by a human as one of my references is suggesting, then we’ve just got me.”

 

Angel sat down on Wesley’s desk and took in the ex-watcher’s haggard and unshaven appearance. Belatedly he remembered coming in on the tail end of a lecture the day before from Lorne to Wesley about the dangers of working through too many nights fuelled solely on caffeine. “You need to get some sleep.”

 

Wesley reached for another book. “What I need is to identify this demon and find a way we can stop it and return those stolen souls to their original owners.” He looked at the spine of the book and then frowned. “I thought this was the Liramaer Codex. Oh, that’s right, I don’t have that one any more…”

 

As he cast around amongst his dusty volumes, a reference library a mere fraction of the size of the one he had become accustomed to at Wolfram & Hart, Angel said, “Tell me you don’t miss it.”

 

“Of course I miss it.” Wesley met his gaze unflinchingly. “Missing something doesn’t mean that it was good for you. I miss Lilah too.”

 

“I know it’s tough, Wes, but this is us doing what we’re doing because we want to do it. No one is pulling our strings. Not the Powers That Be or the Senior Partners. We’ve been puppets for so long; twisted around and turned inside out by higher powers with their own agendas, playing to our weaknesses and sapping our strengths. Now, finally, we have our own resources – which are admittedly limited but at least don’t come at the price of our souls.”

 

Wesley said quietly: “You don’t need to tell me, Angel. I remember very well what being at Wolfram & Hart cost us.”

 

There was a moment of painful silence as they both thought about Fred; hollowed out to become the shell in which an ancient demon could take physical shape once again. Angel had glimpsed the door to the abyss opening, not just the hole in the world in which were held all the sarcophagi of those ancient beings, but the yawning maw into which all their souls had almost been sucked. One loss too far and Wesley’s mind had been swinging on the single screw of a cracking hinge. Angel knew how it felt to love someone not only for what they truly were but for everything you needed them to be; to have an image in your mind of something that was good and pure and true enough to be worth fighting and dying for. There was a reason why sailors had figureheads of beautiful women on the prow of their ships; why medieval knights had offered themselves as champions to married ladies whose love they would never know. One couldn’t fight for all of humanity in the abstract; there had to be something specific that made it seem worthwhile.

 

Angel suspected Spike was still fighting to be worthy of Buffy, and Wesley, perhaps for far longer than even he had realized, had been fighting to be worthy of Winifred Burkle; the woman and the ideal. Angel had never done well without a woman in his life. Even after regaining his soul he’d missed Darla as acutely as an amputated limb; needing to be with her, even though she was evil, even though she was what could drag him back into darkness. Buffy had been his salvation, and his destruction also. The woman who had dragged him out of one hell and cast him back into another one. She had sacrificed his blood to save the world then given her own, almost to the point of death, to save his life. Spike had been right when he’d said they could never be friends. They were soulmates doomed to never have the love that should have been theirs; something denied to them long before they had met by his past crimes. The gipsy curse was the cause not the reason; the reason had always been all the blood on his hands. He hadn’t deserved her, and even though he’d known that to be true, getting her had felt like a kind of absolution. That had been another reason for his moment of perfect happiness, because surely he couldn’t be here, like this, with her, loving her as he did, and knowing that she loved him every bit as much, if he hadn’t been deemed by some higher power to have redeemed himself just a little?

 

It had actually done him good to watch Cordelia and Wesley’s little play. He wasn’t so far gone he couldn’t laugh at himself, and there was a point one got to in the end where you had to admit your tragedy was teetering on the edge of comedy. So, yes, it was a little ridiculous, the whole Slayer-in-love-with-the-Vampire-With-The-Soul thing. But it hadn’t felt ridiculous to them; it had felt like destiny for them to be together forever and impossible for them to be apart. But they were certainly apart now. Angel knew that she and Spike could never be soulmates as he and Buffy had been, perhaps always would be, but people changed, moved on, and she had done so, to Riley, to Spike, and now to someone else. It was something he had to live with. Like the death of Cordelia, whom he had also loved. Had known he loved at the time as much as he had loved any woman. Unfortunately he also remembered very clearly a time when she had felt like a daughter or sister to him, and his love for her had been equally strong but of a different kind; not a glimmer of romance on either side. And then it had changed after Buffy’s death and he had found himself looking for someone to love and there she had been, and he had loved her. The love had been real, he was sure of that, although perhaps his motivation had been spotty, and perhaps The Powers That Screwed Everyone had needed him to be in love with Cordelia, just as they’d needed Connor to be in love with Cordelia, so Jasmine could happen. And what kind of a life was it when you could look back on your own past and so much of it seemed to have happened because someone else wanted it to? And where the hell was free will when you needed definite proof of its existence anyway?

 

“Angel…?”

 

Wesley always sounded the same. That gentle questioning use of his name, probably because he’d ignored the last three things said to him, and for an instant he expected to look up and see a young man in glasses wearing a suit two sizes too big, a doughnut left on his desk by a Cordelia still unused to thinking about anyone but herself but instinctively groping her way towards a spiritual evolution. Two only children, one spoiled, one ignored, learning belatedly how to act like siblings. Except Wesley was all grown up now; an adult who hadn’t slept in far too long and had the stubble to prove it.

 

“I miss them both,” Angel said abruptly. “All of the different versions of them, you know? Shallow Cordy trying to find a rich husband lousy with old money, playing Nora so damned badly; and the girl who hung onto those visions even when they were killing her; and the woman I think I was in love with. And I miss the Fred hiding in her room writing equations on the walls, too scared to come downstairs, and the Fred holding everything together when we all fell apart, and the Fred in her laboratory, like a kid with the biggest trainset in the world…”

 

He saw the tears in Wesley’s eyes and broke off, but, despite the tears, Wesley looked more wistful than sad, holding onto those memories with the same ferocity as Angel. “I miss them too. All of them, like you say. Every moment and memory of them. And I would go back in a heartbeat to a time when I could squabble with Cordelia about whether or not a love of learning is inherently unmasculine and where I tripped over my own feet every damned day, just to have an hour of her company. And I would go back to a time when I could only look at Fred and think how beautiful she was and how she would never ever love me just to see her again. And I would go through it all – Connor and Lilah and Angelus and the agony of losing the people we love just to see them. And perhaps that’s why human beings should only have so much control over their own destiny.”

 

Sighing, Wesley opened one of the books on his desk and picked up a pen. “I guess that’s also part of what having a soul gives you. And painful though it is, it’s our right and it’s being stolen from too many people in this city right now.”

 

Angel was thinking with a shudder that there might come a time when he was having this conversation with someone else, recounting all the different Wesley Wyndam-Pryces he’d been privileged to know: the uptight Watcher and the leather-clad rogue demon hunter, and the hero worshipping boy in those suits that were all too big for him, and the grown up leader of Angel Investigations who had finally learned to stand up to him both figuratively and literally, even from a wheelchair, and the exiled outcast who had saved him from the ocean. The guy who had said he could manage very well without them but whom it had turned out had been needed too much to stay away; and the right hand man, the best friend he could always rely on to be just where he needed him. And the guy hanging onto sanity by a thread, whom Angel couldn’t stay mad at, even though he’d just stabbed a mutual friend and was unravelling right in front of him, because he’d lost so much and couldn’t lose Wes too; any Wesley, even this crazy one who was as dangerous as a nail bomb with a burning fuse.

 

“You really should get some sleep.”

 

“Not yet.” Wesley didn’t even look up from the book he was reading.

 

Angel knew that as it was two a.m. he really ought to just take the book from him and tell him and Gunn to go home and get some shut-eye but the truth was no one had any time to sleep, not even the humans who really, really needed it.

 

Angel looked around the office. “Where’s Spike?” He’d been living in the past in his mind so much in the past few hours that he’d almost forgotten there was another member to their not so happy band these days.

 

“Out with Lorne.”

 

“Those two are dating now?”

 

He was pleased to see that genuine smile from Wesley. It was way too long since he’d seen him smile. “Yes. As Los Angeles is in the grip of a soul-eating demon attack they thought it was just the right time to take in dinner and a show.”

 

Angel grinned back. “They’re following up leads?”

 

“I think they’re playing good demon-bad demon with the local informants. We could really do with Merl.”

 

“If Gunn’s old friends hadn’t chopped him up into little tiny bits.”

 

Wesley inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Yes. If it wasn’t for the small matter of his being extremely dead, Merl would definitely be our best lead right now.”

 

“Wes, you’re our best lead.” Angel sighed as he got off the desk. “You’re always our best lead and most of the time you’re our only lead. But, hey, no pressure.”

 

Wesley briefly rested his head on the pages of the book he was reading, a gesture of defeat that didn’t feel at all like mockery. They both knew this path; it had been travelled so many times before; days and nights of research with the clock tick-tock-ticking and dusty volumes needing to be read and re-read by the only guy who could understand the many languages in which they were written. And meanwhile, as Wesley grappled with translations and cryptic references, the bodies were piling up.

 

“What happened to the victim?” Wesley looked up again.

 

“There were a lot of victims. Most of them were dead but some were only missing fingers or other limbs. They were taken to the hospital.”

 

“I mean the original victim.”

 

Angel didn’t say ‘I know’ even though he did and had immediately when Wesley asked the question. “You mean the murderer.”

 

“Angel, it’s not a crime to have your soul ripped out of your body.” Intense blue eyes met his and Angel thought how vampires weren’t the only people who didn’t change. All those fights for his life, all those beatings and bruises and fractures and trips to the hospital, and it was the same expression on Wesley’s face, the same need to reach him in those still-innocent blue eyes. This man had taken life, demon and human, with barely a flicker of emotion over the past few years. Had made decisions so tough they must have felt as if they came with a free disembowelling. This was the guy who looked unflinchingly into the face of what was right and did it, and on occasion had looked into the face of what was wrong and done that too. But in some ways he was still who he had always been when it came to Angel; as if Angel was some pendulum swinging that only Wesley could hear; a silent heartbeat, despite having a heart that didn’t beat and probably never would again. Wesley knew that Angel was noble and good in a way that Angel had never known. Only sometimes, such as now, when he looked into Wesley’s eyes and saw himself reflected in them, not just a person but an entire belief system, could he believe there might be some hope for his redemption.

 

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Angel looked around for his blood, the scent of the dead and dying still in his nostrils, sickening to any human, no doubt, but appetizing to him. Only he knew just how much he and Angelus had in common, even if they were divided by a conscience and a soul. “What the true human condition must be? Take away the soul and they turn into murderers at once.”

 

“The true human condition is to have a soul, Angel,” said Wesley quietly. “That’s as much part of our humanity as having…”

 

“A pulse?” Angel countered. “Heartbeat? Body heat?”

 

“The capacity for love.” Wesley’s gaze was level and unflinching. “All this soul eater’s rampage is proving to me is that the soul is the core of our humanity; without it anyone is a demon because without it no one is human. Those people who have had their souls stolen are no longer who they were; they don’t feel pity, they don’t have a conscience, they don’t remember how it feels to love. You’re not like them.” The last was said very gently.

 

Angel closed his eyes. “But I was.”

 

“A century ago, yes. But you’re not that person. His crimes aren’t yours even if the memory if them is. You know that’s true.”

 

“I know you believe it’s true, Wes.”

 

“You need to believe it too.”

 

Angel looked his friend in the eye. “Some days I do. Some days – such as when I come across a crime scene that would make any normal person toss their cookies and I start salivating – it’s not so easy to convince myself.”

 

Wesley shrugged. “I eat meat. If I was hungry and I smelt meat cooking, I’d want to eat it. I’d hunger for it. Anticipate the moment when I was going to be eating it. Someone telling me it was human flesh I could smell roasting might not be enough to stop my mouth watering in an automatic response to the smell of cooking meat. Especially as apparently we smell pretty much like roasted pork.”

 

“You do. Taste like it as well.” Angel sighed as he got to his feet. “Nice try, Wes, but there’s the difference right there because I can tell you exactly what humans smell like when you set then on fire, and I can tell you how their burnt flesh tastes too.”

 

Wesley closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It took Angel a moment to realize the man was counting to five, slowly, reaching for his patience. He’d always thought Wesley’s patience was close to inexhaustible but he was apparently trying it sorely. “You’re. Not. Angelus.”

 

He patted Wesley on the shoulder briefly. “And you’re a good friend. Now go home and get some sleep or be prepared to explain to Lorne why you didn’t when he gets back. I heard the lecture he gave you yesterday.”

 

Wesley rubbed his eyes wearily. “I’ll do what I always do – shave and shower in your basement and tell him I arrived five minutes before he did.”

 

“No wonder I'm almost out of shower gel. And no wonder Spike keeps making those cheap cracks about the investigators who shower together stay together. You can’t bring your own soap in from home? And Lorne’s empathic, remember? You think he doesn’t know you’re lying?”

 

“I figured that as long as I didn’t hum while I was lying I was probably safe.”

 

“You go right on thinking that, sweetpea, and I’ll be sure to collect the next time I have to arrange another party and you’re thinking of playing wallflower again. You are so going to be singing a cappella before being first under the limbo pole.”

 

Wesley started guiltily as the green-skinned empath demon appeared in the doorway. Angel said quickly, “Wes was just on his way home.”

 

“That’s good,” Lorne said easily, “because I just know he was listening when I gave him my impassioned speech earlier about the dangers of researching while technically a zombie from lack of sleep. You’d remember it, Angelcakes, because it was right after the lecture I gave you about making sure your staff got some downtime even in the midst of a crisis. Based on the very sound reason that we’re always in the midst of a crisis around here and if we stayed on full alert 24/7 everyone with a pulse would end up as dead as you and Mr Subtle here.”

 

Spike slid into the room a little sulkily. “Lorne doesn’t like my methods of questioning.”

 

“Well, just call me an old softy but I think you could at least count to oh, I don’t know…two in between asking a question and punching someone for not answering it.”

 

“Hey, I get results. I don’t need to be Mister How To Win Friends and Influence People while I'm getting them.”

 

“Just as well really with your track record.” Gunn came into the office. “Did you say something about results?”

 

“Got an eye witness to sing for Lorne. Literally. So Lorne could see what he saw. Now, Lorne describes it to Angel who sketches it. Wes here identifies the best way to kill it. Angel and me go out and chop its head off or pull out its entrails or whatever it takes.” Spike lit a cigarette. “I like to keep things simple.”

 

“Well, with an IQ like yours that’s pretty much a…” Angel badly wanted to finish that sentence but with the ‘petty squabbling in the work place’ lecture from Lorne still fresh in his memory decided to turn the end of it into a cough. Ever since their departure from Wolfram & Hart Lorne had been taking the – if not iron fist in the velvet glove approach, certainly the slightly tougher than latex fist in the velvet glove approach. Messing with the mind of an empath demon was clearly not something an empath demon found easy to forgive. Lorne was as supportive and soothing as always but he was also keeping a wary eye on Angel to ensure he didn’t do anything else of which Lorne didn’t approve. He also seemed to have taken on Cordelia’s role when it came to lecturing him about his person to person skills. Having done something which, if he didn’t regret it, he also didn’t deny had been an incredible invasion of their personal space, Angel was so far sucking up the lectures and even trying to take some of them on board. So, no cheap cracks about Spike’s brain, or hair dye, or general…Spikeness.

 

Wesley said a little diffidently, “Lorne, I would actually get more sleep if you described the soul-eating demon now and I could narrow my search a little.”

 

“And now that we’ve been given back our own memories shall we have a little recap about how the last time you decided that your judgement was at its most honed when fuelled by caffeine and insomnia you did something that ripped our whole family apart and incidentally lost Angel his son and got your throat slit. Oh yes, and there was the small matter of bludgeoning me unconscious as I recall.”

 

Angel and Wesley exchanged a grimace. “I think his time at Wolfram & Hart has definitely hardened Lorne,” Wesley sighed and reached for his coat.

 

“Am I going to have to use my cross and disappointed face on you, Wesley?” As Lorne demonstrated aforementioned face, Wesley warded it off with a raised hand.

 

“All right, I'm going home. I promise to sleep for six hours without interruption before coming back here.” He shared another wince with Angel. “The undead are so much easier to work for.”

 

Angel picked up a pad and started to sketch what Lorne described. He knew though that the only person who could really progress them on this case was Wesley, whom Lorne had just shooed out of the office like a naughty chick. He had vivid memories of trying to do his own research in the time when he had been estranged from Angel Investigations or Wesley had been cast out for his part in losing Connor. It had utterly sucked. He still wasn’t clear how a human with a paltry thirty-something years under his belt could know so much more about demons than his and Spike’s combined centuries, but, nevertheless, Wesley did.

 

As he watched the man leave, it occurred to him that it was all wrong that the ex-watcher should be more frightened of a Las Vegas headlining empath demon than he was of him, Angel, undead brooding scourge of the underworld, but apparently Lorne had the jump on him when it came to the scolding skills.

 

“Angelcakes, are you listening to me…?”

 

“I'm sketching.” Angel held up his half-finished picture. “Was that three horns or four?”

 

“Four horns, five claws, spiked dorsal ridge, double layer of teeth…”

 

Gunn grimaced. “I miss the demon puppets. At least they didn’t have any teeth.”

 

“Nasty little buggers they were,” Spike scowled.

 

Gunn looked at him in confusion. “You weren’t even with us when we fought them.”

 

Spike jerked his head at Angel. “Met the puppet version of him, though. Like I said, nasty little buggers.”

 

“Fred thought I was cute,” Angel sighed, remembering their fallen comrade.

 

“Fred thought Wesley was sex on a stick,” Spike retorted. “I rest my case.”

 

***