(no subject)
Oct. 16th, 2005 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Childish Things, Part Fifteen
Wesley heard the woman screaming as he reached the car park. One piercing shriek and then the sound was smothered, either by a hand over her mouth or fangs in her throat. Hoping desperately for the former, he sprinted as silently as he could for the place from which the screaming had appeared to be coming.
He saw the two vampires ahead of him, the women being dragged between them, one with a hand over her mouth. His first instinct was to rescue her, but he had to remind himself that there could be a great many other victims being held prisoner somewhere, and that if he could follow these two vampires undetected, he could find the nest from which they were operating, perhaps saving a score of lives in the process. If they turned this woman or drained her dry before they reached their destination then her death was always going to be on his conscience, but he hoped that she was destined for their food bank. He remembered that Doug Sanders had clearly delineated Gunn and Wesley as prisoners to be turned into vampires and Cordelia as a candidate for the food bank. Presumably males were more useful to them as part of their growing vampire army or else perhaps women were just more palatable to them as food; that actually made more sense as a female vampire was as strong as a male, in Darla’s case probably stronger.
Crossing his fingers and hoping that he wasn’t condemning this woman to an unlife as a soulless killer or standing idly by while her blood was drained from her body, he followed them at a discreet distance. It hurt to hear the fear in her breathing, that rasping panicked sound to every inhalation; being back in Sunnydale was reminding him of just how afraid he had been. His father had taught him to be afraid of pain while ashamed of his own cowardice; the man calling him a disgrace if he whimpered because he was afraid of the dark. He had always folded when under the gaze of authority figures, so terrified of making a fool of himself, of making them ashamed of him, that it had seemed to guarantee that of course he would. All those years training to be a Watcher, to be ready for the first time he went into the field and then he had messed up every way that a man could; totally unprepared despite all that preparation. It had taken him a while to realize that one couldn’t prepare for pain, or fear, or panic. He’d had to retrain himself from scratch to deal with them, and had done so, ruthlessly, after leaving Sunnydale. He couldn’t have made a new man of himself there; feeling too conspicuously a failure. He’d had to travel to where nobody knew him to decide who it was that he wanted to be. Then he’d thrown himself into combat situations, knowing he would sink or swim but at least it wouldn’t be under the critical eye of someone who would tell the Watcher’s Council or his father. He might die alone, but he would also trip over his own feet alone or drop his weapon at the critical juncture alone.
He had done rather better than he had expected. His first kill had been a Zekan demon; human-sized, vicious, not especially clever, trusting to its scaly armour to keep it safe, while he knew very well about that gap in its overlapping plates at the throat into which a long thin sword could be inserted. He was good at fencing. Had taken it at school. The Zekan had hurt him and scared him, thrown him around, clawed him, left him bruised and dazed and bloodied and shaking, but amidst the mind-freezing panic of finding himself alone in the Zekan lair with only the sword he was clutching onto for dear life for company, and somewhere during the tripping over an oil can and so alerting it to his presence, getting thrown ten feet across the dirty basement into a very unyielding wall, dropping his sword, and feeling its open jaws and hot fetid breath heading for his throat, he had also managed to snatch up his sword at the critical juncture and jab the blade home.
Certainly, he had vomited up everything in his stomach a minute afterwards. Clung to the wall and heaved, Zekan blood in his hair and eyes and – disgustingly – his mouth. He had pulled every muscle in his body and felt that moment when its teeth had been grazing his throat a hundred times in the hours afterwards as he lay still fully-clothed and slime and blood-spattered on the bed in his motel room, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling and thinking about how close he had come to being dead in a basement where no one would have found him until the smell of his corpse attracted a neighbour. But he had done it. He had heard that something evil was living in that deserted basement, tracked the creature to its lair, killed it, and lived to tell the tale. There was no one to tell it to, unfortunately, as his father wasn’t actually speaking to him at that time, and he didn’t have a single friend in the benighted country in which his own incompetence and the Council’s parsimony had stranded him. But he had done it. Killed a demon. Saved some lives.
He could have called it quits then. Decided that he had made up for any failures of his in Sunnydale, found a job for a few months and saved up enough for his passage home, but lying there, aching and still half stunned with terror, he had realized that this was what he wanted to do. Even if it killed him. He wanted to use all his training to help others, and if there was no Slayer that was willing to let him use his expertise to assist her then he would go it alone. He would track down dangerous demons and he would kill them before they could kill others. That was who he was now. That was what he did.
It was still who he was and what he did, but he usually had friends at his side while he was doing it, and he was somewhat more efficient at it these days. It was still a little chilling to be back here again; Sunnydale, the place where he had practically fallen over in terror the first time he’d been threatened with physical pain. Only Giles had witnessed how cravenly useless he’d been, of course, and he seemed to have been too much of a gentleman to tell anyone else, but it was certainly branded onto Wesley’s memory in burning images of shame. He had thought he had left those feelings of inadequacy behind but he knew that one phonecall to his father and they would all come flooding back again. Probably always would, however many years passed. The man could undermine him with a word, and usually did.
Wesley gave himself a mental shake. He couldn’t afford to start feeling inadequate and unprepared now when people’s lives were dependent upon him justifying his position as the leader of Angel Investigations. He had to follow these vampires to their nest.
Taking out his cell-phone, he dialled Angel’s number and when he answered whispered: “Angel, it’s Wesley. I’ve located two of the vampires near the western edge of the park. They have a woman prisoner. They’re driving a white van, the license plate is blacked out. It’s a closed van with a ladder. I'm going to try to board it unobserved. I’ll call you as soon as we reach our destination and give you the address. Tell the others.” Just before he switched off the phone, he was aware of Angel saying ‘Wes! Wes! Wait…!’ but determinedly dropped the phone back in his jacket pocket. He didn’t need Angel to tell him it was dangerous or to advise him to wait for reinforcements. He knew there was a risk involved but he felt it was an acceptable one. There was no telling how many people these vampires had already turned or captured and if he lost their trail now he might never be able to get it back.
He waited for the vampires to drag the petrified woman into the cab of the van and then made a sprint for it. They were driving away at speed as he reached the kerb and he had to throw himself onto the ladder, clinging onto it as the van careered out into the road. He braced his body against the ladder as well as he could while the vampires sped down the road at such a pace he hoped that they would miss any curious glances from passers-by. Clinging on tightly, even with his fingers white around the metal strut of the ladder, the shock of each corner nearly threw him off, his hip slamming painfully against the back doors while he could only pray that the noise didn’t make the vampires stop and investigate.
When they stopped on the far corner of the park, Wesley thought this was probably it. The engine kept revving but there was a long silence apart from that in which he was sure that enhanced vampire hearing would be able to hear the hammering of his heart. Especially when the door opened and the driver got out, peered around intently and seemed about to take a stroll around the van. Only the sight of a group of people approaching, ten or twelve of them and so presumably too large a group to attack, made the vampire get back into the van and drive off again. Breathing again, Wesley hoped that the confused looks of the passers-by wouldn’t alert the drivers to his presence.
They repeated the exercise at another corner a half a mile further one. Lurched to an ugly halt, making Wesley brace every muscle in his body in an attempt not to slam noisily into the side of the van. The driver got out, lit a cigarette, smoked it, swore, demanded to know where the others were, stamped out his cigarette, got back into the van, drove off again at breakneck speed.
“Dust, I sincerely hope,” Wesley murmured as they lurched around another corner on two wheels and he wondered what his body would look like after an asphalt impact at this velocity.
He wasn’t surprised when they turned out of the centre of town and began to head for the less populated areas. He thought about snagging his phone out his jacket pocket but realized that it would leave him hanging on by one hand only, which was probably a fast track to concussion. Hanging on grimly, he was jolted and jarred along a road full of potholes to a place he surprised himself by recognising. This was the old factory where there had been a vampire nest in the past. That was good as it was somewhere to which he could actually direct Angel without much trouble.
He pulled himself up onto the roof of the van and lay flat on it as the vampires climbed out, dragging the still terrified woman with them. He held his breath as they walked past, snarling to one another about the loss of their companions as they did so.
“Damned Slayer. I heard there was one in this town…”
Exhaling, Wesley cautiously drew out his phone and switched it on. “Angel, it’s Wesley.”
“Wesley? Where are you?”
Angel sounded terse and seemed to be in a vehicle, which was good. Less time wasted before he supplied the reinforcements.
“I'm at the old factory. I think this must be their food bank. Hang on.” Dropping the phone in his pocket, Wesley judged the gap between the roof of the van and one of the old fire escape ladders on the side of the building and then jumped for it. He climbed up cautiously until he reached the roof, trying not to present a silhouette to anyone down below as he peered cautiously through the dirty panes of the skylight. It was as he had feared. There were a confusion of blue, green and yellow-robed figures milling around in the warehouse, and in the corner a huge cage in which there were a number of frightened-looking people, the majority of them teenagers although there were some twenty and thirty-somethings as well; mostly girls but with a few boys to make up the numbers. The good news was that the woman he had seen them drag past earlier was amongst the living food rather than the turned undead.
“Damn.” Wesley fished the phone back out of his pocket. “Angel, are you still there?”
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“You need to stop off to get weapons. There are about forty vampires here, and maybe twenty-five or thirty prisoners. I think they must be taking two for food and only turning one. Maybe they don’t want the competition.”
“Doug would be miffed they were deviating from his masterplan,” Cordelia observed.
“Are the others with you?” Wesley whispered.
“Yes. We’re all in the car. All on our way to help out. Don’t do anything until we get there.”
Wesley sighed. “Yes, because I was so planning to take on forty pissed off vampires single-handed.”
“Hey, English, I know what you’re like when your blood’s up,” Gunn observed.
“How’s your head?” Wesley whispered.
“Still attached to my body. Make sure you keep yours the same way.”
“I will…” Wesley suddenly became aware that he no longer had this roof to himself. Shoving his phone into his pocket he reached for the stake in his jacket, but before he could do so he was yanked to his feet by the collar.
A yellow-eyed vampire in very angry game face, hissed: “Well, if it isn’t Arnaud-Amaury.”
“Nice of you to remember.” As Wesley grabbed at the stake in his jacket, the vampire punched him hard in the guts and he went down wheezing.
“I ought to kick you straight off this roof,” the vampire snarled ominously. “But I like my meat tender. How’s that wound of yours doing now?” He punctuated the question with a kick in Wesley’s abdomen that sent him skittering dangerously close to the skylight.
Barely able to breathe, Wesley tightened his grip on the stake and stabbed upwards; unable to stifle a cry as the vampire grabbed his wrist, twisted it viciously to make him drop the stake, and then punched him on the jaw, slamming him into the top of the fire escape.
“You’d better tell me everything there is to know about the Slayer in this town or you’re going to wish you were dead.” The vampire yanked Wesley up by the hair and spun him around. “Want to walk off this roof or fly off it?”
Wesley spat the blood out of his mouth and straightened up. “The grounds pretty soft. I’ll take my chance.”
The vampire punched him again and Wesley was knocked backwards, for a moment he lurched sickeningly over a drop and then the vampire yanked him back. “No way am I letting you escape that easily. You’re going to be conscious for a good long time. You’re just going to wish that you weren’t…”
They had all packed themselves into Angel’s car. Giles, Willow and Buffy in the back; Gunn and Cordelia squeezed in next to Angel who was driving, very fast, and not particularly safely, in the direction of the old factory.
No one was saying anything. They were just listening – and occasionally flinching – to the phone that Gunn was still holding in his hand. The sounds were slightly muffled – the phone was presumably in Wesley’s pocket and as he had made no effort to impart any new information to them it seemed likely that he thought it was off – but they could hear very well what was happening. They had heard Wesley make several attempts to get away and be brutally pounded for each one; the slam of a body into hard surfaces, the noise metal walls made when they were impacted; the sound of a fist striking flesh; the gasp that followed a solid blow to the solar plexus, the stifled groan of pain that followed a twisted arm, a punched jaw.
They heard the sound of Wesley’s hitched painful breathing as he seemed to be flung down somewhere, the noise of footsteps, the angry murmur of approaching vampires. In the background could be heard the sound of people sobbing and pleading. The captives in the cage he had described, presumably.
“Remember this guy?” the first vampire demanded. “He was one of those bastards in LA who dusted Doug.”
“Come on, the man had it coming,” Wesley said a little breathlessly. “His affirmation speeches alone merited death.” A thump and a gasp as punishment was evidently meted out.
Through gritted teeth, Gunn hissed: “Shut up, Wes.”
“ ‘You’re all special?’ Why? Because you were stupid enough to get bitten by blood sucking losers? Oh, and let’s not forget: ‘I tune out mental roadblocks’? Only in California could one possibly get away with peddling such utter crap even to dullards of the lowest mental capacity.”
Angel could imagine Wesley looking up at them from his kneeling position on the ground, blood running from his mouth, he suspected, unsquashably defiant despite being scared, and Angel knew he was scared, because anyone who wasn’t scared when the prisoner of forty murderous soulless vampires would be an idiot and Wesley was very far from being that.
“Is he saying we’re stupid?” One demanded.
“Sorry, did I use too many long words?”
They all flinched in unison at the sound of brutal impact and a gasp of pain.
“Wes…” Gunn breathed. “Shut. The Fuck. Up.”
“He’s trying to get them to see him as food, not a potential ally,” Angel said tersely. “He wants them to put him in the cage.”
“I don’t think he’s making too many friends,” Willow said faintly.
Cordelia looked at Angel accusingly. “You couldn’t give him some kind of a lecture before he ever got himself into this position about how when you’re the hostage of a lot of nasty evil creeps you don’t – I don’t know – smart mouth your way into a coma?”
“When you’re a vampire you see it as a privileged position.” Angel put his foot down even harder on the gas pedal despite the way they were already breaking all kinds of speed records. “Wes knows that. He wants them to dislike him way too much to ever gift him with immortality.”
“Immortality not looking like too much of a problem for him right now,” Buffy said shortly. “I’d be more worried about his chances of surviving the next five minutes.”
Giles said nothing. Trying to match up this young man with the one who had rolled over so quickly when threatened with torture on the first occasion of his capture. Oddly enough it was the little boy Wesley he kept thinking of now. The one who had sidestepped those questions about Angel’s guilt with such dexterity; refusing to condemn him even though Giles suspected that Angel had probably merited condemnation. Showing the same kind of courage this Wesley was showing now.
There was another gasp of pain from Wesley which Angel thought he recognized as the noise a human made when you grabbed them by the hair and yanked their head back viciously. He had a lot of experience in identifying the different noises humans made when you did different painful things to him and that was what that one sounded like. Wesley seemed to be on his knees right now with someone’s fingers in his hair; one twist away from a broken neck.
“The Slayer?” A vampire demanded angrily. “Tell us about her.”
“Well, I must admit her CD collection is not entirely to my taste and just between you and me I think she could cut back on the mascara. But in other news she will kill you all at some point. It’s just a matter of time really.”
“Are you in contact with her?” Another gasp from Wesley as they presumably hurt him again. “Does she know about us?”
“Oh, you mean the parading around a crowded fairground in your very easy to identify robes was you travelling incognito?”
“These are symbols of our ascension through the ranks!” A different voice; young and not too bright, but even the dimmest vampire bulb was going to have more punching power than Wesley right now.
“Ah yes, because it’s so deeply meaningful if you have a green robe or a yellow one when getting the most out of your unlife.”
“The Slayer! Where does she live?”
“Cleveland. I hear the commute is a bitch.”
Angel flinched as they all heard that blow connect. There was no sound from Wesley for a moment except snatched breaths, the painful kind, trying to inhale when what you really wanted to do was sob.
“I’ll ask you again...”
“Where she lives isn’t relevant, it’s when you’re going to die that matters.”
And that was a pounding. Not as scientific as Angelus would have been; vampires too brutal or too angry to bother with the subtleties of inflicting pain with sadistic precision. It sounded like they were just punching and kicking.
“Enough!” The first vampire. The one who had identified Wesley in the first place. They heard Wesley gasp as air evidently whooshed back into his lungs; it sounded as if he’d been pulled back up from a huddled position. The vampire spoke softly: “I can keep you alive for a good long time, and I will. Let’s see how cooperative you feel after you’ve fed us a couple of dozen times.”
Angel heard Wesley snatch another breath, still trying to breathe around the pain as he was evidently manhandled to his feet. He was picturing him as he’d found him when Faith had been torturing him, in a ragged blood stained shirt, face mottled with bruising. It was strange how quietly cultured Wesley still sounded even after being pounded halfway to unconsciousness:
“What a disappointment it must be to you. All those Anne Rice novels and when you become a vampire you’re still the same boring little accountant you ever were. Only with worse teeth.”
There was the sound of something fizzing, a noise Gunn recognized but couldn’t at first identify. He knew he had heard it recently, something to do with Wes, and vampires and caged people and –
A jolt of sound followed by a cry from Wesley and Gunn knew what that noise was after all.
“Cattle prod,” he breathed.
“What’s wrong, smartass? Did that hurt?” A physical exertion of some kind, yanking Wesley about no doubt, and that hitch of painful breath from Wesley that made them all flinch. “Where’s the Slayer in this town?”
“Look for the bat signal then just follow it back to the source.”
That cry ripped through all of them. A sustained jolt of electricity that time and Gunn just knew it had been jabbed into Wesley’s old gunshot wound. More fizzing, more groans of pain.
“We kill them all, right?” Cordelia looked at Angel. “No survivors?”
“None.” The vampire wrenched the car around the corner on two wheels.
“Put him in the cage.”
There was the sound of more brutal manhandling, more fizzing of the cattle prod, those snatched breaths from Wesley who now sounded in pretty bad shape; a stumble of feet, then the sound of metal grating against metal, the clang of bars, a thud of impact. A stranger saying quietly:
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” That was Wesley. “Is everyone in here all right?”
“We’re all going to die.” A different voice again. “We’re vampire food and you just got them really pissed.”
“Has anyone fed them recently?” Wesley snatched another breath. He sounded out on his feet but he was obviously still on his feet. They heard the clank of the bars and Angel realized he must be holding himself up with them as he stumbled around the perimeter. “Does anyone need medical help?”
“Sheila. They fed from Sheila.” A girl’s voice this time. She sounded small and scared.
“It’s going to be okay. Keep her warm. That’s good that you’ve given her your jacket. Can you keep her arm up? That’s great. You’re doing well. We’re all going to get out of here, I promise you.”
“If you were the rescue committee, I'm not feeling too saved right now.”
“Don’t worry, I'm not.” They heard the sound of impact on the phone and realized Wesley must be reaching for it. Then there was a beep as he stabbed at the button and another beep. “Angel?”
“We’re almost with you,” Angel told him. “Hang in there.”
“Stop mouthing off to the vampires, you dumbass, Wesley!” Cordelia shouted at him.
There was a breathless silence before Wesley said faintly, “You heard…?” Then he collected himself and whispered rapidly: “They’re guarding the main door and the back exit. You need to attack on both fronts at once. They have axes, crossbows and swords. There are six people in here with wounds, some of them with three of four. I suggest you call an ambulance for them now.” Then the phone clicked off and there was finally silence.
Angel and Gunn exchanged a glance. “How’s your head?” Angel asked.
“Never better,” said Gunn grimly.
Angel switched off the engine so they did a silent running down the last hundred yards of track to the factory before applying the handbrake hard. “Want to kill a lot of vampires very dead?”
Gunn picked up his axe. “Just show me where they’re at.”
“You have a plan of some kind?” Giles enquired.
Angel snatched a breath, the anger coming off him in waves. “I was thinking Buffy takes the back door, Gunn and I take the front door. Giles, Willow and Cordy wait for us to clear a path and then go and get the people out of the cage.”
“So, you’re just going to confront all forty of them head on?”
“Yes.” Angel didn’t even blink. “And then there will be the killing them very dead part.”
Gunn opened the car door. “That’s my favorite part.”
“Mine too.” Cordelia snatched up a stake.
Gunn and Angel both looked at her. “You’re the rescue committee, remember?” Angel told her.
“I need to stake a vampire right now and if you don’t get out of my way you’re going to be the only one within stabbing distance.”
As Giles waited for Angel to remonstrate with her, he became aware that six foot four of demon killer and six foot plus of two hundred and forty seven year old vampire with a soul were quickly stepping back out of her reach.
“Wesley is in that cage too, Cordy,” Willow said breathlessly. “Let’s rescue him and the others first and then kill vampires afterwards.”
“Supposing there are any left.” Buffy held up a stake as she pushed open the back door. “I'm feeling a party mood coming on. I don’t like people beating up my friends.”
“Speaking as one of your friends,” Willow assured her. “We don’t like it much either.”
Buffy nodded to Angel. “Give me a count of twenty to get around to the back of the factory.”
Angel picked up a sword. “Your cue will be me kicking the door off its hinges before doing lots of very violent things.”
“You need to wait for me,” she told him firmly. “This is my town. That means I get the big entrance. Besides, if they’re all looking at my shiny new pumps you can stake them in the back that much more easily.”
Cordelia noticed Buffy’s shoes for the first time. “Buffy, I hate to break it to you but they scream ‘knock off’.”
Buffy shrugged. “But what I lack in Manolo Blahniks I make up for in quippage.” She held up her stake. “And slayage.”
As Buffy went off, Cordelia shook her head. “Clutching her mythic destiny to her like an old shawl as compensation for inferior footwear. That’s so sad.”
Gunn glanced at Angel. “Are we at twenty yet?”
Willow caught Gunn’s sleeve and said gently, “I know you’re upset about Wesley but you haven’t really seen the real Buffy yet. When she’s cranky – she’s scary. And right now, trust me, she’s really cranky.”
Gunn grimaced. “I know about this whole Slayer thing as a concept and I'm buying it, I am, but what I'm seeing is – skinny little white chick.”
Giles snatched a breath. “Oh you’re so lucky you didn’t say that in her hearing.”
Willow nodded. “We’d have to turn you back into a little kid again, just to keep you safe.”
Angel looked at Gunn. “The real reason I wanted us to get to go in first? I'm worried Buffy’s not going to leave us anything to kill.”
They moved to the doors and peered through, Angel gently but firmly pushing Willow and Cordelia away after they’d looked through the gap. As he did so, they all heard a clear voice say cheerfully:
“Hi, were you looking for me? I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm here to help you maximise your actualisation as really really dead people.”
As Angel kicked open the doors hard enough to make them slam back dramatically and tear off half their hinges, they saw Buffy standing on the far side of the factory waving away the cloud of dust that was swirling gently to the ground in front of her.
As two vampires came out of their stunned confusion and ran at her, she kicked one agilely in the stomach, spun around, elbowed another in the head, did a hand spring over another that was attempting to rush her and landed agilely on the balls of her feet in the perfect place to stake a yellow-robed acolyte attempting to give orders.
Willow nodded. “Yep. She’s cranky all right.”
Giles grabbed Willow and ushered her out of the way of the fighting as Angel and Gunn rushed the vampires attempting to attack them. Cordelia was already marching purposefully towards the cage and as a vampire rushed at her, she stabbed it hard with a stake. Giles wasn’t sure if he or the vampire was the more surprised as it dissolved into a pile of dust.
Willow whispered to him: “I think Cordelia’s a little cranky too.”
Behind them, Angel was cutting off vampire heads with his sword; spinning and turning with savage grace and power; Buffy was athletically staking, while Gunn was swinging a borrowed axe over his head, moving with speed and precision. When vampires rushed him, he elbowed them off, took a punch to the jaw as if it had been thrown by a toddler rather than an empowered member of the undead, and retaliated with a vicious slice that sent the vampire’s head spinning ten feet away before it dissolved.
“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in right now?”
That yell from Cordelia even made a few of the nearby vampires flinch while Wesley started like someone had fired a gun next to his head.
Cordelia slammed her hand on the cage door. “When I get you out of here you’re going to wish those vampires had killed you.”
Wesley came forward a little tentatively from amongst the shadow-eyed ‘food bank’ victims who were all watching the battle open mouthed. Willow and Giles both flinched from his battered condition. His bruised cheekbone had now been joined by a black eye, bleeding lip, and bruised jaw. There was blood on his shirt and Giles guessed that the rest of his body probably had more than its fair share of bruises too.
“I was just trying to…” Wesley reached through the bars quickly to yank her out of the way of an approaching vampire.
Giles darted forward and hit it hard across the back of the head. As it staggered away from the cage, Gunn swung around and chopped off its head with casual savagery.
Undeterred, Cordelia had barely paused for breath: “Don’t give me that ‘I was just trying to...’They could have beaten you to death while I had to listen to it. Did you leave something in your will to pay for my therapy? I don’t think so! If I ever find out that you’ve been mouthing off like that again to someone who’s holding you prisoner then you’re going to need a live-in chiropractor just so you can brush your teeth in the morning. Supposing I even leave you any teeth! Is that clear?” She held up her stake. “Do you have any idea where I’m going to make you wear this if you ever try a stupid stunt like...”
“Cordelia, I really don’t think is the time or the place for…” As he attempted to remonstrate with her, Giles was knocked aside by a blue-robed vampire who rushed at Cordelia.
“Cordy!” Willow shouted.
She spun around and the vampire slammed on the brakes a millimetre from the point of her stake.
“Do you mind?” Cordelia demanded. “I'm talking here.” She jammed the stake into his heart and then spun around, coughing irritably as the dust clogged her throat. “Ugh! That is so unhygienic. Now, where was I...?”
“Breaking us out of the cage?” Wesley pleaded. “Please, Cordelia. You can lecture me later but some of these people need medical treatment now.”
“If you knew how pissed I am with you right now, you’d want to stay in there. You’d want to stay in there for a good long time. In fact you wouldn’t even want to think about coming out of there without an armed police escort.” As another vampire ran at them, Cordelia spun around furiously. “Okay, enough with the interruptions!” She fingered his robe contemptuously. “Man made fibres? Could you be any lamer? And what’s with all the creases? You’re too Evil Dead to plug in an iron?”
The vampire fingered its blue robe defensively. “They’re drip dry.”
Giles staked it impatiently and waved aside the inevitable dust. “Cordelia! If you’ve quite finished critiquing everyone’s fashion choices, we need to help these people.”
Cordelia shrugged but conceded the ground to Willow, although not without muttering: “If I was critiquing your fashion choices, Giles, we’d be here until next month.”
“She’s really cranky,” Willow murmured to Giles. But she was already pulling out the blessed sage, feverfew, mandrake root and dried snakescales necessary for the spell to dissolve iron. “I think I just need to...”
Cordelia swooped and picked up something from the floor. “Use the key?”
Giles snatched it from her quickly and jammed it into the lock. The fight was still going on in the background; Buffy, Gunn and Angel relentlessly hacking, slashing, staking and punching their way to what was looking very like not so much victory as utter slaughter. The vampires might have preternatural strength on their side, but they definitely didn’t have the focused rage of their opponents. Giles pulled open the cage door and he and Willow immediately had to hold up the stumbling dazed victims of the vampires. Many of them had bite wounds on their arms and looked in need of glucose, rest, and possibly some serious therapy.
“They’re…vampires…” One of them muttered dazedly.
“You were expecting the Easter Bunny?” For all her words, Cordelia had already wrapped her coat around the shoulders of one girl and was holding the arm of another, saying gently: “There’s an ambulance coming and you’re all going to be okay now, I promise.” She jabbed a finger at Wesley who had picked up the girl who had been drunk from last and was carrying her towards the approaching siren. “Except for you. You’re not going to be okay. Because you’re still in more trouble than you have ever even dreamed of in your very worst nightmares.”
“Sheila’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” A girl of little more than twelve with a pale dirty face looked up at the girl Wesley was carrying anxiously.
Cordelia put her arm around her. “She’s going to be fine, sweetheart.”
Giles kept an eye on the situation as he helped usher the wounded and dazed out to the waiting ambulance, murmuring soothing platitudes to people as he assisted them into the ambulance, while glancing back from time to time to see how Buffy was doing. He couldn’t help a paternal twinge of pride as he saw her scissorkick one vampire onto a jagged crate, a shard of wood finding its heart in the process, before gracefully elbowing one hard enough in the head to send it reeling. There really was something balletic in her fighting style at its best that certainly justified all those endless hours of sometimes painful training.
He was used to how unstoppable Angel became when he morphed into vampire face; spinning and slashing with his sword in a way that also had its own grace. Gunn was utterly fearless, throwing himself into the thick of the fight with his axe swinging and a look of focused concentration on his face. It was obvious that he wasn’t just good in a fight, he was invaluable in a fight, and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
“Get the Slayer!”
At the sound of that voice – and Giles recognized it himself – Gunn, Angel and Buffy all turned and looked at the yellow-robed vampire. Their expressions reminded him somewhat of the ones Xander and those other children had worn when infected by the spirit of evil hyaenas. For a moment he believed that Buffy’s power could be demonic in origin, was reminded that Angel’s undoubtedly was, and, as he looked at Gunn, that sometimes the gap between human and demon was so narrow as to be invisible. For all their preternatural abilities, it was Gunn who got to him first. Two vampires were closing in on Buffy in response to their leader’s orders and Angel spun around to help her.
“You the one who hit my friend?” Gunn hefted his axe from hand to hand.
The vampire sneered at him. “Back off now, human, and I may let you live.”
Gunn smiled in a chilling way, and although he undoubtedly still looked both tall and handsome, he had only a surface resemblance to the boyish young man who had escorted Dawn to the fair. “I hate having to repeat myself but I get that you vamps are usually too stupid to understand a question the first time so I’ll ask you once again. Are you the one who hit my friend?”
The vampire drew itself up to its full height; broad-chested and long-haired it looked perfectly capable of pulling Gunn’s head off and using it for a football. “So, what if I did?”
Gunn shrugged. “So, this.” He swung the axe so hard and so fast that the vampire still seemed to be trying to come up with a retort as its head and body exploded into a pillar of dust.
Angel arrived at the run. “He was mine!” he protested petulantly.
“Tough,” Gunn told him with no visible signs of remorse.
“But this one was a vampire! I'm allowed to kill vampires!”
“So am I,” Gunn retorted.
“Last time I wasn’t allowed because they were stupid humans.”
“Well, last time I couldn’t because I was a stupid little kid.”
Giles hastened to intervene. “You did get to kill a lot of other vampires, Angel.”
“But he was the one who hit Wesley.”
“I wanted to kill him!” Buffy came up, stake still in hand. “How come I didn’t get to kill him?”
“Because Wes is my friend,” Gunn insisted.
“He’s my friend too.” Angel wiped his sword on his coat and then realized there was no blood on it.
“Well, you can avenge him next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.” They turned around to see Cordelia standing in the doorway with her arms folded. She glared at the man next to her who had evidently delivered the wounded girl to the paramedics before being marched back by Cordelia. “Right, Wesley?”
“Yes, Cordelia,” he murmured. “I mean, No, Cordelia.”
“Wes!” Angel rushed over to him. “Are you okay?”
“English, my man. How are you doin’?” Gunn patted him gently on the shoulder. “You did good, finding out where they were keeping the prisoners, but just for future reference – ever do that again – take off by yourself to a vampire nest – and I’ll belt you myself.”
“Yes, fine.” He darted a nervous glance at Cordelia. “Thank you for…massacring everyone.”
“It was nothing.” Buffy put away her stake. “Where are the food bank people?”
“The ambulance took them away,” Willow said. “They wanted to take Wesley away too but he said he was okay.” She also darted a nervous look at Cordelia. “You heard that, right, Cordy? That Wesley is okay?”
“No thanks to him,” she retorted.
“What you did was really dumb,” Buffy told Wesley. “Brave but dumb, and if you were still my Watcher I would so be kicking your ass right now. No way would I let Giles pull a crazy stunt like that.”
“You think we let him do things like that?” Cordelia demanded. “He is so not allowed to do things like that. Ever.”
“Just as a matter of interest, how precisely would you prevent me from ‘pulling a crazy stunt like that’?” Giles enquired.
Buffy was unflinching. “There would be pain and possibly bondage of some kind.”
Willow put her hands up to ears. “Not listening! Not listening!”
“Pain and bondage.” Cordelia nodded. “I don’t think there’s been enough of that back at Angel Investigations recently. I really need to fix that.”
Angel looked between Wesley and a still dangerous-looking Cordelia. “Let’s go home, shall we? Get Wes patched up?” He took the man’s arm and gently steered him towards the car.
Giles heard Wesley whisper breathlessly, “Angel, you have to save me from Cordelia.”
“Why don’t you sit in the front with me, Cordy?” Gunn said quickly. “Let Wes go in the back with...” He looked at the scowling Buffy, scowling Cordelia, and anxious looking Willow. “Willow. And Giles.” Under his breath he added: “The nice, non scary people in the car.”
“Yes, okay.” Wesley almost dived into the back seat after Willow while Giles smoothly intercepted Buffy and sat on the other side of Wesley.
“No room,” Giles told her blandly. “You’ll have to sit on Gunn’s lap.”
Willow giggled and then quickly clasped a hand to her mouth. “Yes, you better had, Buffy,” she managed through an obvious wish to laugh.
Seeing that Cordelia was wedged into the front seat between Angel and Gunn and there was nowhere else to sit, Buffy gave Giles and Willow laser eyes of death before tentatively approaching Gunn. “Can I…?”
“Of course.” He seemed completely unfazed by her request. “You got enough room?”
“He has a truck,” Cordelia explained. “We have to scootch up in it a lot. I can truthfully say there isn’t a guy in our little group whose lap I haven’t sat on at some point.”
“We haven’t got around to putting that on our business cards yet.” Angel put the keys in the ignition. “We’re saving it for the flyers.”
Blushing bright red, Buffy lowered herself onto Gunn’s lap while Angel started the car. Behind her Willow barely smothered another giggle.
“He’s very tall, you know…” Giles murmured conversationally.
“I still have a stake,” Buffy warned them.
Surprised, Gunn said, “Hey, Buffy’s a lot lighter than...” Then at a warning look from Angel and the realization of what a yawning precipice of danger awaited him if he finished that sentence he pulled back from the brink with such rapidity that Giles could almost hear the tires squealing. “...you’d think. Her being a Slayer and all. I thought she’d have...heavier bones.”
“You’re so dead,” Cordelia told him. “And not a quick tidy death. We’re talking messy and protracted.”
“You’re very tough on them, Cordy,” Willow protested mildly. “Have you ever thought that maybe…?”
“Excuse me? Am I hearing from the woman who totally failed to train up Xander Harris during his formative years? These are men, Willow. They don’t understand kindness. They understand terror and donuts. You give them an inch and they’re getting themselves tortured or beaten or spilling things on your clothes. You have to be tough.”
“But fair?” Buffy offered, hoping that it didn’t show in her voice how painfully aware she was of the fact she was sitting on the lap of a very good looking man she barely knew, of whose charms she was not exactly unaware. She supposed it was just as well that women didn’t give the same outward signs of arousal that men did. Then wondered if there was some kind of scent she might be giving off that Angel could smell. She was afraid to move even a fraction in case she ground against something painful for Gunn and too intimate for her to contemplate without turning the colour of a tinned tomato.
Cordelia looked at her in confusion. “Where does fair come into it?”
Wesley heard the woman screaming as he reached the car park. One piercing shriek and then the sound was smothered, either by a hand over her mouth or fangs in her throat. Hoping desperately for the former, he sprinted as silently as he could for the place from which the screaming had appeared to be coming.
He saw the two vampires ahead of him, the women being dragged between them, one with a hand over her mouth. His first instinct was to rescue her, but he had to remind himself that there could be a great many other victims being held prisoner somewhere, and that if he could follow these two vampires undetected, he could find the nest from which they were operating, perhaps saving a score of lives in the process. If they turned this woman or drained her dry before they reached their destination then her death was always going to be on his conscience, but he hoped that she was destined for their food bank. He remembered that Doug Sanders had clearly delineated Gunn and Wesley as prisoners to be turned into vampires and Cordelia as a candidate for the food bank. Presumably males were more useful to them as part of their growing vampire army or else perhaps women were just more palatable to them as food; that actually made more sense as a female vampire was as strong as a male, in Darla’s case probably stronger.
Crossing his fingers and hoping that he wasn’t condemning this woman to an unlife as a soulless killer or standing idly by while her blood was drained from her body, he followed them at a discreet distance. It hurt to hear the fear in her breathing, that rasping panicked sound to every inhalation; being back in Sunnydale was reminding him of just how afraid he had been. His father had taught him to be afraid of pain while ashamed of his own cowardice; the man calling him a disgrace if he whimpered because he was afraid of the dark. He had always folded when under the gaze of authority figures, so terrified of making a fool of himself, of making them ashamed of him, that it had seemed to guarantee that of course he would. All those years training to be a Watcher, to be ready for the first time he went into the field and then he had messed up every way that a man could; totally unprepared despite all that preparation. It had taken him a while to realize that one couldn’t prepare for pain, or fear, or panic. He’d had to retrain himself from scratch to deal with them, and had done so, ruthlessly, after leaving Sunnydale. He couldn’t have made a new man of himself there; feeling too conspicuously a failure. He’d had to travel to where nobody knew him to decide who it was that he wanted to be. Then he’d thrown himself into combat situations, knowing he would sink or swim but at least it wouldn’t be under the critical eye of someone who would tell the Watcher’s Council or his father. He might die alone, but he would also trip over his own feet alone or drop his weapon at the critical juncture alone.
He had done rather better than he had expected. His first kill had been a Zekan demon; human-sized, vicious, not especially clever, trusting to its scaly armour to keep it safe, while he knew very well about that gap in its overlapping plates at the throat into which a long thin sword could be inserted. He was good at fencing. Had taken it at school. The Zekan had hurt him and scared him, thrown him around, clawed him, left him bruised and dazed and bloodied and shaking, but amidst the mind-freezing panic of finding himself alone in the Zekan lair with only the sword he was clutching onto for dear life for company, and somewhere during the tripping over an oil can and so alerting it to his presence, getting thrown ten feet across the dirty basement into a very unyielding wall, dropping his sword, and feeling its open jaws and hot fetid breath heading for his throat, he had also managed to snatch up his sword at the critical juncture and jab the blade home.
Certainly, he had vomited up everything in his stomach a minute afterwards. Clung to the wall and heaved, Zekan blood in his hair and eyes and – disgustingly – his mouth. He had pulled every muscle in his body and felt that moment when its teeth had been grazing his throat a hundred times in the hours afterwards as he lay still fully-clothed and slime and blood-spattered on the bed in his motel room, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling and thinking about how close he had come to being dead in a basement where no one would have found him until the smell of his corpse attracted a neighbour. But he had done it. He had heard that something evil was living in that deserted basement, tracked the creature to its lair, killed it, and lived to tell the tale. There was no one to tell it to, unfortunately, as his father wasn’t actually speaking to him at that time, and he didn’t have a single friend in the benighted country in which his own incompetence and the Council’s parsimony had stranded him. But he had done it. Killed a demon. Saved some lives.
He could have called it quits then. Decided that he had made up for any failures of his in Sunnydale, found a job for a few months and saved up enough for his passage home, but lying there, aching and still half stunned with terror, he had realized that this was what he wanted to do. Even if it killed him. He wanted to use all his training to help others, and if there was no Slayer that was willing to let him use his expertise to assist her then he would go it alone. He would track down dangerous demons and he would kill them before they could kill others. That was who he was now. That was what he did.
It was still who he was and what he did, but he usually had friends at his side while he was doing it, and he was somewhat more efficient at it these days. It was still a little chilling to be back here again; Sunnydale, the place where he had practically fallen over in terror the first time he’d been threatened with physical pain. Only Giles had witnessed how cravenly useless he’d been, of course, and he seemed to have been too much of a gentleman to tell anyone else, but it was certainly branded onto Wesley’s memory in burning images of shame. He had thought he had left those feelings of inadequacy behind but he knew that one phonecall to his father and they would all come flooding back again. Probably always would, however many years passed. The man could undermine him with a word, and usually did.
Wesley gave himself a mental shake. He couldn’t afford to start feeling inadequate and unprepared now when people’s lives were dependent upon him justifying his position as the leader of Angel Investigations. He had to follow these vampires to their nest.
Taking out his cell-phone, he dialled Angel’s number and when he answered whispered: “Angel, it’s Wesley. I’ve located two of the vampires near the western edge of the park. They have a woman prisoner. They’re driving a white van, the license plate is blacked out. It’s a closed van with a ladder. I'm going to try to board it unobserved. I’ll call you as soon as we reach our destination and give you the address. Tell the others.” Just before he switched off the phone, he was aware of Angel saying ‘Wes! Wes! Wait…!’ but determinedly dropped the phone back in his jacket pocket. He didn’t need Angel to tell him it was dangerous or to advise him to wait for reinforcements. He knew there was a risk involved but he felt it was an acceptable one. There was no telling how many people these vampires had already turned or captured and if he lost their trail now he might never be able to get it back.
He waited for the vampires to drag the petrified woman into the cab of the van and then made a sprint for it. They were driving away at speed as he reached the kerb and he had to throw himself onto the ladder, clinging onto it as the van careered out into the road. He braced his body against the ladder as well as he could while the vampires sped down the road at such a pace he hoped that they would miss any curious glances from passers-by. Clinging on tightly, even with his fingers white around the metal strut of the ladder, the shock of each corner nearly threw him off, his hip slamming painfully against the back doors while he could only pray that the noise didn’t make the vampires stop and investigate.
When they stopped on the far corner of the park, Wesley thought this was probably it. The engine kept revving but there was a long silence apart from that in which he was sure that enhanced vampire hearing would be able to hear the hammering of his heart. Especially when the door opened and the driver got out, peered around intently and seemed about to take a stroll around the van. Only the sight of a group of people approaching, ten or twelve of them and so presumably too large a group to attack, made the vampire get back into the van and drive off again. Breathing again, Wesley hoped that the confused looks of the passers-by wouldn’t alert the drivers to his presence.
They repeated the exercise at another corner a half a mile further one. Lurched to an ugly halt, making Wesley brace every muscle in his body in an attempt not to slam noisily into the side of the van. The driver got out, lit a cigarette, smoked it, swore, demanded to know where the others were, stamped out his cigarette, got back into the van, drove off again at breakneck speed.
“Dust, I sincerely hope,” Wesley murmured as they lurched around another corner on two wheels and he wondered what his body would look like after an asphalt impact at this velocity.
He wasn’t surprised when they turned out of the centre of town and began to head for the less populated areas. He thought about snagging his phone out his jacket pocket but realized that it would leave him hanging on by one hand only, which was probably a fast track to concussion. Hanging on grimly, he was jolted and jarred along a road full of potholes to a place he surprised himself by recognising. This was the old factory where there had been a vampire nest in the past. That was good as it was somewhere to which he could actually direct Angel without much trouble.
He pulled himself up onto the roof of the van and lay flat on it as the vampires climbed out, dragging the still terrified woman with them. He held his breath as they walked past, snarling to one another about the loss of their companions as they did so.
“Damned Slayer. I heard there was one in this town…”
Exhaling, Wesley cautiously drew out his phone and switched it on. “Angel, it’s Wesley.”
“Wesley? Where are you?”
Angel sounded terse and seemed to be in a vehicle, which was good. Less time wasted before he supplied the reinforcements.
“I'm at the old factory. I think this must be their food bank. Hang on.” Dropping the phone in his pocket, Wesley judged the gap between the roof of the van and one of the old fire escape ladders on the side of the building and then jumped for it. He climbed up cautiously until he reached the roof, trying not to present a silhouette to anyone down below as he peered cautiously through the dirty panes of the skylight. It was as he had feared. There were a confusion of blue, green and yellow-robed figures milling around in the warehouse, and in the corner a huge cage in which there were a number of frightened-looking people, the majority of them teenagers although there were some twenty and thirty-somethings as well; mostly girls but with a few boys to make up the numbers. The good news was that the woman he had seen them drag past earlier was amongst the living food rather than the turned undead.
“Damn.” Wesley fished the phone back out of his pocket. “Angel, are you still there?”
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“You need to stop off to get weapons. There are about forty vampires here, and maybe twenty-five or thirty prisoners. I think they must be taking two for food and only turning one. Maybe they don’t want the competition.”
“Doug would be miffed they were deviating from his masterplan,” Cordelia observed.
“Are the others with you?” Wesley whispered.
“Yes. We’re all in the car. All on our way to help out. Don’t do anything until we get there.”
Wesley sighed. “Yes, because I was so planning to take on forty pissed off vampires single-handed.”
“Hey, English, I know what you’re like when your blood’s up,” Gunn observed.
“How’s your head?” Wesley whispered.
“Still attached to my body. Make sure you keep yours the same way.”
“I will…” Wesley suddenly became aware that he no longer had this roof to himself. Shoving his phone into his pocket he reached for the stake in his jacket, but before he could do so he was yanked to his feet by the collar.
A yellow-eyed vampire in very angry game face, hissed: “Well, if it isn’t Arnaud-Amaury.”
“Nice of you to remember.” As Wesley grabbed at the stake in his jacket, the vampire punched him hard in the guts and he went down wheezing.
“I ought to kick you straight off this roof,” the vampire snarled ominously. “But I like my meat tender. How’s that wound of yours doing now?” He punctuated the question with a kick in Wesley’s abdomen that sent him skittering dangerously close to the skylight.
Barely able to breathe, Wesley tightened his grip on the stake and stabbed upwards; unable to stifle a cry as the vampire grabbed his wrist, twisted it viciously to make him drop the stake, and then punched him on the jaw, slamming him into the top of the fire escape.
“You’d better tell me everything there is to know about the Slayer in this town or you’re going to wish you were dead.” The vampire yanked Wesley up by the hair and spun him around. “Want to walk off this roof or fly off it?”
Wesley spat the blood out of his mouth and straightened up. “The grounds pretty soft. I’ll take my chance.”
The vampire punched him again and Wesley was knocked backwards, for a moment he lurched sickeningly over a drop and then the vampire yanked him back. “No way am I letting you escape that easily. You’re going to be conscious for a good long time. You’re just going to wish that you weren’t…”
They had all packed themselves into Angel’s car. Giles, Willow and Buffy in the back; Gunn and Cordelia squeezed in next to Angel who was driving, very fast, and not particularly safely, in the direction of the old factory.
No one was saying anything. They were just listening – and occasionally flinching – to the phone that Gunn was still holding in his hand. The sounds were slightly muffled – the phone was presumably in Wesley’s pocket and as he had made no effort to impart any new information to them it seemed likely that he thought it was off – but they could hear very well what was happening. They had heard Wesley make several attempts to get away and be brutally pounded for each one; the slam of a body into hard surfaces, the noise metal walls made when they were impacted; the sound of a fist striking flesh; the gasp that followed a solid blow to the solar plexus, the stifled groan of pain that followed a twisted arm, a punched jaw.
They heard the sound of Wesley’s hitched painful breathing as he seemed to be flung down somewhere, the noise of footsteps, the angry murmur of approaching vampires. In the background could be heard the sound of people sobbing and pleading. The captives in the cage he had described, presumably.
“Remember this guy?” the first vampire demanded. “He was one of those bastards in LA who dusted Doug.”
“Come on, the man had it coming,” Wesley said a little breathlessly. “His affirmation speeches alone merited death.” A thump and a gasp as punishment was evidently meted out.
Through gritted teeth, Gunn hissed: “Shut up, Wes.”
“ ‘You’re all special?’ Why? Because you were stupid enough to get bitten by blood sucking losers? Oh, and let’s not forget: ‘I tune out mental roadblocks’? Only in California could one possibly get away with peddling such utter crap even to dullards of the lowest mental capacity.”
Angel could imagine Wesley looking up at them from his kneeling position on the ground, blood running from his mouth, he suspected, unsquashably defiant despite being scared, and Angel knew he was scared, because anyone who wasn’t scared when the prisoner of forty murderous soulless vampires would be an idiot and Wesley was very far from being that.
“Is he saying we’re stupid?” One demanded.
“Sorry, did I use too many long words?”
They all flinched in unison at the sound of brutal impact and a gasp of pain.
“Wes…” Gunn breathed. “Shut. The Fuck. Up.”
“He’s trying to get them to see him as food, not a potential ally,” Angel said tersely. “He wants them to put him in the cage.”
“I don’t think he’s making too many friends,” Willow said faintly.
Cordelia looked at Angel accusingly. “You couldn’t give him some kind of a lecture before he ever got himself into this position about how when you’re the hostage of a lot of nasty evil creeps you don’t – I don’t know – smart mouth your way into a coma?”
“When you’re a vampire you see it as a privileged position.” Angel put his foot down even harder on the gas pedal despite the way they were already breaking all kinds of speed records. “Wes knows that. He wants them to dislike him way too much to ever gift him with immortality.”
“Immortality not looking like too much of a problem for him right now,” Buffy said shortly. “I’d be more worried about his chances of surviving the next five minutes.”
Giles said nothing. Trying to match up this young man with the one who had rolled over so quickly when threatened with torture on the first occasion of his capture. Oddly enough it was the little boy Wesley he kept thinking of now. The one who had sidestepped those questions about Angel’s guilt with such dexterity; refusing to condemn him even though Giles suspected that Angel had probably merited condemnation. Showing the same kind of courage this Wesley was showing now.
There was another gasp of pain from Wesley which Angel thought he recognized as the noise a human made when you grabbed them by the hair and yanked their head back viciously. He had a lot of experience in identifying the different noises humans made when you did different painful things to him and that was what that one sounded like. Wesley seemed to be on his knees right now with someone’s fingers in his hair; one twist away from a broken neck.
“The Slayer?” A vampire demanded angrily. “Tell us about her.”
“Well, I must admit her CD collection is not entirely to my taste and just between you and me I think she could cut back on the mascara. But in other news she will kill you all at some point. It’s just a matter of time really.”
“Are you in contact with her?” Another gasp from Wesley as they presumably hurt him again. “Does she know about us?”
“Oh, you mean the parading around a crowded fairground in your very easy to identify robes was you travelling incognito?”
“These are symbols of our ascension through the ranks!” A different voice; young and not too bright, but even the dimmest vampire bulb was going to have more punching power than Wesley right now.
“Ah yes, because it’s so deeply meaningful if you have a green robe or a yellow one when getting the most out of your unlife.”
“The Slayer! Where does she live?”
“Cleveland. I hear the commute is a bitch.”
Angel flinched as they all heard that blow connect. There was no sound from Wesley for a moment except snatched breaths, the painful kind, trying to inhale when what you really wanted to do was sob.
“I’ll ask you again...”
“Where she lives isn’t relevant, it’s when you’re going to die that matters.”
And that was a pounding. Not as scientific as Angelus would have been; vampires too brutal or too angry to bother with the subtleties of inflicting pain with sadistic precision. It sounded like they were just punching and kicking.
“Enough!” The first vampire. The one who had identified Wesley in the first place. They heard Wesley gasp as air evidently whooshed back into his lungs; it sounded as if he’d been pulled back up from a huddled position. The vampire spoke softly: “I can keep you alive for a good long time, and I will. Let’s see how cooperative you feel after you’ve fed us a couple of dozen times.”
Angel heard Wesley snatch another breath, still trying to breathe around the pain as he was evidently manhandled to his feet. He was picturing him as he’d found him when Faith had been torturing him, in a ragged blood stained shirt, face mottled with bruising. It was strange how quietly cultured Wesley still sounded even after being pounded halfway to unconsciousness:
“What a disappointment it must be to you. All those Anne Rice novels and when you become a vampire you’re still the same boring little accountant you ever were. Only with worse teeth.”
There was the sound of something fizzing, a noise Gunn recognized but couldn’t at first identify. He knew he had heard it recently, something to do with Wes, and vampires and caged people and –
A jolt of sound followed by a cry from Wesley and Gunn knew what that noise was after all.
“Cattle prod,” he breathed.
“What’s wrong, smartass? Did that hurt?” A physical exertion of some kind, yanking Wesley about no doubt, and that hitch of painful breath from Wesley that made them all flinch. “Where’s the Slayer in this town?”
“Look for the bat signal then just follow it back to the source.”
That cry ripped through all of them. A sustained jolt of electricity that time and Gunn just knew it had been jabbed into Wesley’s old gunshot wound. More fizzing, more groans of pain.
“We kill them all, right?” Cordelia looked at Angel. “No survivors?”
“None.” The vampire wrenched the car around the corner on two wheels.
“Put him in the cage.”
There was the sound of more brutal manhandling, more fizzing of the cattle prod, those snatched breaths from Wesley who now sounded in pretty bad shape; a stumble of feet, then the sound of metal grating against metal, the clang of bars, a thud of impact. A stranger saying quietly:
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” That was Wesley. “Is everyone in here all right?”
“We’re all going to die.” A different voice again. “We’re vampire food and you just got them really pissed.”
“Has anyone fed them recently?” Wesley snatched another breath. He sounded out on his feet but he was obviously still on his feet. They heard the clank of the bars and Angel realized he must be holding himself up with them as he stumbled around the perimeter. “Does anyone need medical help?”
“Sheila. They fed from Sheila.” A girl’s voice this time. She sounded small and scared.
“It’s going to be okay. Keep her warm. That’s good that you’ve given her your jacket. Can you keep her arm up? That’s great. You’re doing well. We’re all going to get out of here, I promise you.”
“If you were the rescue committee, I'm not feeling too saved right now.”
“Don’t worry, I'm not.” They heard the sound of impact on the phone and realized Wesley must be reaching for it. Then there was a beep as he stabbed at the button and another beep. “Angel?”
“We’re almost with you,” Angel told him. “Hang in there.”
“Stop mouthing off to the vampires, you dumbass, Wesley!” Cordelia shouted at him.
There was a breathless silence before Wesley said faintly, “You heard…?” Then he collected himself and whispered rapidly: “They’re guarding the main door and the back exit. You need to attack on both fronts at once. They have axes, crossbows and swords. There are six people in here with wounds, some of them with three of four. I suggest you call an ambulance for them now.” Then the phone clicked off and there was finally silence.
Angel and Gunn exchanged a glance. “How’s your head?” Angel asked.
“Never better,” said Gunn grimly.
Angel switched off the engine so they did a silent running down the last hundred yards of track to the factory before applying the handbrake hard. “Want to kill a lot of vampires very dead?”
Gunn picked up his axe. “Just show me where they’re at.”
“You have a plan of some kind?” Giles enquired.
Angel snatched a breath, the anger coming off him in waves. “I was thinking Buffy takes the back door, Gunn and I take the front door. Giles, Willow and Cordy wait for us to clear a path and then go and get the people out of the cage.”
“So, you’re just going to confront all forty of them head on?”
“Yes.” Angel didn’t even blink. “And then there will be the killing them very dead part.”
Gunn opened the car door. “That’s my favorite part.”
“Mine too.” Cordelia snatched up a stake.
Gunn and Angel both looked at her. “You’re the rescue committee, remember?” Angel told her.
“I need to stake a vampire right now and if you don’t get out of my way you’re going to be the only one within stabbing distance.”
As Giles waited for Angel to remonstrate with her, he became aware that six foot four of demon killer and six foot plus of two hundred and forty seven year old vampire with a soul were quickly stepping back out of her reach.
“Wesley is in that cage too, Cordy,” Willow said breathlessly. “Let’s rescue him and the others first and then kill vampires afterwards.”
“Supposing there are any left.” Buffy held up a stake as she pushed open the back door. “I'm feeling a party mood coming on. I don’t like people beating up my friends.”
“Speaking as one of your friends,” Willow assured her. “We don’t like it much either.”
Buffy nodded to Angel. “Give me a count of twenty to get around to the back of the factory.”
Angel picked up a sword. “Your cue will be me kicking the door off its hinges before doing lots of very violent things.”
“You need to wait for me,” she told him firmly. “This is my town. That means I get the big entrance. Besides, if they’re all looking at my shiny new pumps you can stake them in the back that much more easily.”
Cordelia noticed Buffy’s shoes for the first time. “Buffy, I hate to break it to you but they scream ‘knock off’.”
Buffy shrugged. “But what I lack in Manolo Blahniks I make up for in quippage.” She held up her stake. “And slayage.”
As Buffy went off, Cordelia shook her head. “Clutching her mythic destiny to her like an old shawl as compensation for inferior footwear. That’s so sad.”
Gunn glanced at Angel. “Are we at twenty yet?”
Willow caught Gunn’s sleeve and said gently, “I know you’re upset about Wesley but you haven’t really seen the real Buffy yet. When she’s cranky – she’s scary. And right now, trust me, she’s really cranky.”
Gunn grimaced. “I know about this whole Slayer thing as a concept and I'm buying it, I am, but what I'm seeing is – skinny little white chick.”
Giles snatched a breath. “Oh you’re so lucky you didn’t say that in her hearing.”
Willow nodded. “We’d have to turn you back into a little kid again, just to keep you safe.”
Angel looked at Gunn. “The real reason I wanted us to get to go in first? I'm worried Buffy’s not going to leave us anything to kill.”
They moved to the doors and peered through, Angel gently but firmly pushing Willow and Cordelia away after they’d looked through the gap. As he did so, they all heard a clear voice say cheerfully:
“Hi, were you looking for me? I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm here to help you maximise your actualisation as really really dead people.”
As Angel kicked open the doors hard enough to make them slam back dramatically and tear off half their hinges, they saw Buffy standing on the far side of the factory waving away the cloud of dust that was swirling gently to the ground in front of her.
As two vampires came out of their stunned confusion and ran at her, she kicked one agilely in the stomach, spun around, elbowed another in the head, did a hand spring over another that was attempting to rush her and landed agilely on the balls of her feet in the perfect place to stake a yellow-robed acolyte attempting to give orders.
Willow nodded. “Yep. She’s cranky all right.”
Giles grabbed Willow and ushered her out of the way of the fighting as Angel and Gunn rushed the vampires attempting to attack them. Cordelia was already marching purposefully towards the cage and as a vampire rushed at her, she stabbed it hard with a stake. Giles wasn’t sure if he or the vampire was the more surprised as it dissolved into a pile of dust.
Willow whispered to him: “I think Cordelia’s a little cranky too.”
Behind them, Angel was cutting off vampire heads with his sword; spinning and turning with savage grace and power; Buffy was athletically staking, while Gunn was swinging a borrowed axe over his head, moving with speed and precision. When vampires rushed him, he elbowed them off, took a punch to the jaw as if it had been thrown by a toddler rather than an empowered member of the undead, and retaliated with a vicious slice that sent the vampire’s head spinning ten feet away before it dissolved.
“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in right now?”
That yell from Cordelia even made a few of the nearby vampires flinch while Wesley started like someone had fired a gun next to his head.
Cordelia slammed her hand on the cage door. “When I get you out of here you’re going to wish those vampires had killed you.”
Wesley came forward a little tentatively from amongst the shadow-eyed ‘food bank’ victims who were all watching the battle open mouthed. Willow and Giles both flinched from his battered condition. His bruised cheekbone had now been joined by a black eye, bleeding lip, and bruised jaw. There was blood on his shirt and Giles guessed that the rest of his body probably had more than its fair share of bruises too.
“I was just trying to…” Wesley reached through the bars quickly to yank her out of the way of an approaching vampire.
Giles darted forward and hit it hard across the back of the head. As it staggered away from the cage, Gunn swung around and chopped off its head with casual savagery.
Undeterred, Cordelia had barely paused for breath: “Don’t give me that ‘I was just trying to...’They could have beaten you to death while I had to listen to it. Did you leave something in your will to pay for my therapy? I don’t think so! If I ever find out that you’ve been mouthing off like that again to someone who’s holding you prisoner then you’re going to need a live-in chiropractor just so you can brush your teeth in the morning. Supposing I even leave you any teeth! Is that clear?” She held up her stake. “Do you have any idea where I’m going to make you wear this if you ever try a stupid stunt like...”
“Cordelia, I really don’t think is the time or the place for…” As he attempted to remonstrate with her, Giles was knocked aside by a blue-robed vampire who rushed at Cordelia.
“Cordy!” Willow shouted.
She spun around and the vampire slammed on the brakes a millimetre from the point of her stake.
“Do you mind?” Cordelia demanded. “I'm talking here.” She jammed the stake into his heart and then spun around, coughing irritably as the dust clogged her throat. “Ugh! That is so unhygienic. Now, where was I...?”
“Breaking us out of the cage?” Wesley pleaded. “Please, Cordelia. You can lecture me later but some of these people need medical treatment now.”
“If you knew how pissed I am with you right now, you’d want to stay in there. You’d want to stay in there for a good long time. In fact you wouldn’t even want to think about coming out of there without an armed police escort.” As another vampire ran at them, Cordelia spun around furiously. “Okay, enough with the interruptions!” She fingered his robe contemptuously. “Man made fibres? Could you be any lamer? And what’s with all the creases? You’re too Evil Dead to plug in an iron?”
The vampire fingered its blue robe defensively. “They’re drip dry.”
Giles staked it impatiently and waved aside the inevitable dust. “Cordelia! If you’ve quite finished critiquing everyone’s fashion choices, we need to help these people.”
Cordelia shrugged but conceded the ground to Willow, although not without muttering: “If I was critiquing your fashion choices, Giles, we’d be here until next month.”
“She’s really cranky,” Willow murmured to Giles. But she was already pulling out the blessed sage, feverfew, mandrake root and dried snakescales necessary for the spell to dissolve iron. “I think I just need to...”
Cordelia swooped and picked up something from the floor. “Use the key?”
Giles snatched it from her quickly and jammed it into the lock. The fight was still going on in the background; Buffy, Gunn and Angel relentlessly hacking, slashing, staking and punching their way to what was looking very like not so much victory as utter slaughter. The vampires might have preternatural strength on their side, but they definitely didn’t have the focused rage of their opponents. Giles pulled open the cage door and he and Willow immediately had to hold up the stumbling dazed victims of the vampires. Many of them had bite wounds on their arms and looked in need of glucose, rest, and possibly some serious therapy.
“They’re…vampires…” One of them muttered dazedly.
“You were expecting the Easter Bunny?” For all her words, Cordelia had already wrapped her coat around the shoulders of one girl and was holding the arm of another, saying gently: “There’s an ambulance coming and you’re all going to be okay now, I promise.” She jabbed a finger at Wesley who had picked up the girl who had been drunk from last and was carrying her towards the approaching siren. “Except for you. You’re not going to be okay. Because you’re still in more trouble than you have ever even dreamed of in your very worst nightmares.”
“Sheila’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” A girl of little more than twelve with a pale dirty face looked up at the girl Wesley was carrying anxiously.
Cordelia put her arm around her. “She’s going to be fine, sweetheart.”
Giles kept an eye on the situation as he helped usher the wounded and dazed out to the waiting ambulance, murmuring soothing platitudes to people as he assisted them into the ambulance, while glancing back from time to time to see how Buffy was doing. He couldn’t help a paternal twinge of pride as he saw her scissorkick one vampire onto a jagged crate, a shard of wood finding its heart in the process, before gracefully elbowing one hard enough in the head to send it reeling. There really was something balletic in her fighting style at its best that certainly justified all those endless hours of sometimes painful training.
He was used to how unstoppable Angel became when he morphed into vampire face; spinning and slashing with his sword in a way that also had its own grace. Gunn was utterly fearless, throwing himself into the thick of the fight with his axe swinging and a look of focused concentration on his face. It was obvious that he wasn’t just good in a fight, he was invaluable in a fight, and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
“Get the Slayer!”
At the sound of that voice – and Giles recognized it himself – Gunn, Angel and Buffy all turned and looked at the yellow-robed vampire. Their expressions reminded him somewhat of the ones Xander and those other children had worn when infected by the spirit of evil hyaenas. For a moment he believed that Buffy’s power could be demonic in origin, was reminded that Angel’s undoubtedly was, and, as he looked at Gunn, that sometimes the gap between human and demon was so narrow as to be invisible. For all their preternatural abilities, it was Gunn who got to him first. Two vampires were closing in on Buffy in response to their leader’s orders and Angel spun around to help her.
“You the one who hit my friend?” Gunn hefted his axe from hand to hand.
The vampire sneered at him. “Back off now, human, and I may let you live.”
Gunn smiled in a chilling way, and although he undoubtedly still looked both tall and handsome, he had only a surface resemblance to the boyish young man who had escorted Dawn to the fair. “I hate having to repeat myself but I get that you vamps are usually too stupid to understand a question the first time so I’ll ask you once again. Are you the one who hit my friend?”
The vampire drew itself up to its full height; broad-chested and long-haired it looked perfectly capable of pulling Gunn’s head off and using it for a football. “So, what if I did?”
Gunn shrugged. “So, this.” He swung the axe so hard and so fast that the vampire still seemed to be trying to come up with a retort as its head and body exploded into a pillar of dust.
Angel arrived at the run. “He was mine!” he protested petulantly.
“Tough,” Gunn told him with no visible signs of remorse.
“But this one was a vampire! I'm allowed to kill vampires!”
“So am I,” Gunn retorted.
“Last time I wasn’t allowed because they were stupid humans.”
“Well, last time I couldn’t because I was a stupid little kid.”
Giles hastened to intervene. “You did get to kill a lot of other vampires, Angel.”
“But he was the one who hit Wesley.”
“I wanted to kill him!” Buffy came up, stake still in hand. “How come I didn’t get to kill him?”
“Because Wes is my friend,” Gunn insisted.
“He’s my friend too.” Angel wiped his sword on his coat and then realized there was no blood on it.
“Well, you can avenge him next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.” They turned around to see Cordelia standing in the doorway with her arms folded. She glared at the man next to her who had evidently delivered the wounded girl to the paramedics before being marched back by Cordelia. “Right, Wesley?”
“Yes, Cordelia,” he murmured. “I mean, No, Cordelia.”
“Wes!” Angel rushed over to him. “Are you okay?”
“English, my man. How are you doin’?” Gunn patted him gently on the shoulder. “You did good, finding out where they were keeping the prisoners, but just for future reference – ever do that again – take off by yourself to a vampire nest – and I’ll belt you myself.”
“Yes, fine.” He darted a nervous glance at Cordelia. “Thank you for…massacring everyone.”
“It was nothing.” Buffy put away her stake. “Where are the food bank people?”
“The ambulance took them away,” Willow said. “They wanted to take Wesley away too but he said he was okay.” She also darted a nervous look at Cordelia. “You heard that, right, Cordy? That Wesley is okay?”
“No thanks to him,” she retorted.
“What you did was really dumb,” Buffy told Wesley. “Brave but dumb, and if you were still my Watcher I would so be kicking your ass right now. No way would I let Giles pull a crazy stunt like that.”
“You think we let him do things like that?” Cordelia demanded. “He is so not allowed to do things like that. Ever.”
“Just as a matter of interest, how precisely would you prevent me from ‘pulling a crazy stunt like that’?” Giles enquired.
Buffy was unflinching. “There would be pain and possibly bondage of some kind.”
Willow put her hands up to ears. “Not listening! Not listening!”
“Pain and bondage.” Cordelia nodded. “I don’t think there’s been enough of that back at Angel Investigations recently. I really need to fix that.”
Angel looked between Wesley and a still dangerous-looking Cordelia. “Let’s go home, shall we? Get Wes patched up?” He took the man’s arm and gently steered him towards the car.
Giles heard Wesley whisper breathlessly, “Angel, you have to save me from Cordelia.”
“Why don’t you sit in the front with me, Cordy?” Gunn said quickly. “Let Wes go in the back with...” He looked at the scowling Buffy, scowling Cordelia, and anxious looking Willow. “Willow. And Giles.” Under his breath he added: “The nice, non scary people in the car.”
“Yes, okay.” Wesley almost dived into the back seat after Willow while Giles smoothly intercepted Buffy and sat on the other side of Wesley.
“No room,” Giles told her blandly. “You’ll have to sit on Gunn’s lap.”
Willow giggled and then quickly clasped a hand to her mouth. “Yes, you better had, Buffy,” she managed through an obvious wish to laugh.
Seeing that Cordelia was wedged into the front seat between Angel and Gunn and there was nowhere else to sit, Buffy gave Giles and Willow laser eyes of death before tentatively approaching Gunn. “Can I…?”
“Of course.” He seemed completely unfazed by her request. “You got enough room?”
“He has a truck,” Cordelia explained. “We have to scootch up in it a lot. I can truthfully say there isn’t a guy in our little group whose lap I haven’t sat on at some point.”
“We haven’t got around to putting that on our business cards yet.” Angel put the keys in the ignition. “We’re saving it for the flyers.”
Blushing bright red, Buffy lowered herself onto Gunn’s lap while Angel started the car. Behind her Willow barely smothered another giggle.
“He’s very tall, you know…” Giles murmured conversationally.
“I still have a stake,” Buffy warned them.
Surprised, Gunn said, “Hey, Buffy’s a lot lighter than...” Then at a warning look from Angel and the realization of what a yawning precipice of danger awaited him if he finished that sentence he pulled back from the brink with such rapidity that Giles could almost hear the tires squealing. “...you’d think. Her being a Slayer and all. I thought she’d have...heavier bones.”
“You’re so dead,” Cordelia told him. “And not a quick tidy death. We’re talking messy and protracted.”
“You’re very tough on them, Cordy,” Willow protested mildly. “Have you ever thought that maybe…?”
“Excuse me? Am I hearing from the woman who totally failed to train up Xander Harris during his formative years? These are men, Willow. They don’t understand kindness. They understand terror and donuts. You give them an inch and they’re getting themselves tortured or beaten or spilling things on your clothes. You have to be tough.”
“But fair?” Buffy offered, hoping that it didn’t show in her voice how painfully aware she was of the fact she was sitting on the lap of a very good looking man she barely knew, of whose charms she was not exactly unaware. She supposed it was just as well that women didn’t give the same outward signs of arousal that men did. Then wondered if there was some kind of scent she might be giving off that Angel could smell. She was afraid to move even a fraction in case she ground against something painful for Gunn and too intimate for her to contemplate without turning the colour of a tinned tomato.
Cordelia looked at her in confusion. “Where does fair come into it?”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 02:54 pm (UTC)