(rest)
She sat on an antique settee that had probably come from a chateau in Europe somewhere, looking around a room that seemed to have about as much in common with Angel as she had with Britney Spears.
“What?”
The word jerked her attention back in his direction. He sounded strange, almost impatient.
“Sorry.” She moved her head, taking in the room, letting him see her do it. “Just trying to wrap my brain around this. Doesn’t much look like you, you know?” She was silent a moment, and then gave an interior shrug. Might as well ask. “Was it worth it? Wolfram and Hart, I mean?”
“I know what you mean. Short form answer? Don’t know yet.” He was prowling the room, but without focus or enthusiasm. She thought she’d never seen so much energy and so much exhaustion in the same package. “Considering all the shit that’s gone down in the past year, I’m inclined to think, no. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if all of it – Jasmine, saving my son, Cordy, everything – wasn’t just a big snare set by the Senior Partners, to get us in here.”
Son? She blinked at him, wondering what he was talking about, but he kept talking, sweeping over her unspoken words.
“Get us in here. Control me. Separate us – it’s a great tactic, a classic, you know? Divide and conquor. Yoko factoring.” He smiled, dark and bitter. “If that’s what it came down to, then they won and I lost. Gunn – weak. Can you imagine that? So weak he let them take Fred, empty her out, scour her soul into nothing, so that he could keep being what he thought he was.”
“I knew about Fred.” She was aware of a twinge of something she couldn’t define, pity maybe, or her own sense of personal loss. Fred had helped her. The girl had been right, and real, and sharp as a razor. Hot, too. “Sucks. I’m sorry.”
He talked on, letting it out, and she suddenly understood that he needed to do this, just spit out the stuff he couldn’t talk about with those who were left.
“Wes stabbed him. Did you hear about that, back at the High and Mighty Council of Watchers of the Slayer of the Vampyres?” His words and inflection, a perfect twisting of Andrew, were chilling, completely without humour. “Put a knife in Gunn’s belly. He lived, but we booted him out. No idea where he went. Cordy never woke up from her coma. Gunn, Fred, Cordy. Wes has gone dark, really dark. I can’t –“
He broke off suddenly, as if aware that he’d been talking, wondering what in hell he’d said, remembering that in a very real sense, she represented a potential enemy. She uncoiled herself from the settee.
“It’s okay, Angel. I’d heard there was some bad juju falling down here, but not the details. And you can talk to me, or not – whatever you want. Just want you to know, I’m not here on behalf of anybody. This trip is personal for me. I’m not reporting back to any of those fuckwads at the Council. And to be fair? No one asked me to.”
He smiled at her, a small grin, but genuine. “Nice to know they aren’t stupid enough to ask.”
“I’d gut them, wouldn’t I? After all, I’m the Dark Twin.”
The words were out before she could stop them. His reaction, the shift of the fine planes of his face, told her he knew.
Shit.
“OK.” She blew her breath out. “Down here too, huh? B and me, yang and yin, The Two?”
“Well – yes.” He held a hand out and patted her shoulder. His touch was light, unintrusive. Angel knew about boundaries. “We get everything at Evil and Company, but not all the details. I’ve been hearing stories about the Slayerettes – we had a run-in ourselves, a really sad case, she cut Spike’s hands off. Apparently, a lot of people out there are genuinely afraid of the girls and the power they have.” Two pairs of dark eyes locked and held. His voice was even. “And I gather, not without reason. I’m a little curious about you and Buffy, though. You two seem to have become celebrities, since Sunnydale blew out.”
“Celebrities?” She began to laugh, sour, on the wrong edge of hysteria. “Honey, it’s a fucking cult, or something. I don’t know why it started, or how, or when. One day we’re in the bus, some kind of Jack Kerouac Magic Bus deal, me and B and Giles and Xander, plus Robin Wood – Principal McHottie, used to run Sunnydale High, mother was a Slayer Spike offed back when CBGB’s was happening – plus a few girls, the surviving Potentials. Willow, too, and her little chewtoy, girl named Kennedy. We’re on the bus, heading for Cleveland.”
“Cleveland? Why in hell?”
She smiled, suddenly tired. It occurred to her that she’d driven about six hundred miles that day; body and mind were both aching. “Hell is why. Cleveland’s got a hellmouth. So we check into a motor lodge near Bakersfield, heading east, and the news about Sunnydale’s all over the television. And next day, the guy behind the desk looks at me, looks at B, and begins stammering. Are we going to kill him? Please don’t kill him, even though we’re the Two, he knows we can kill him.”
Angel was staring at her. She nodded.
“Not shitting you, yo. It was, like, I don’t know – we go to bed and wake up, and sometime between moonlight and morning, we’re cult objects and killers. They wouldn’t take our money. They couldn’t get our asses out fast enough.” She yawned cavernously. “It got stronger every day. We’d stop in a town, check for potentials, take them with. Within a day or two, a few would disappear, and so would a whole lot of people. I don’t know what’s happening, or why. But there are fewer people out there than there were a week ago. Trust me on this one. Maybe you didn’t notice – up here in this big glass tower, and anyway, you don’t get out during the day and you’ve had other stuff to deal with. But outside LA? The herd’s being culled, Angel. We don’t know any more than that.”
(all I have so far. Feedback? would be a good thing to have.)