Angel:  "The Dead Church"

an original fan story by Julie Fortune

This story is a work of original fiction; however, it is set in the universe of Angel, created by Mutant Enemy productions and the Warner Brothers Television Network. I make no claims to any copyrights regarding these characters. This work is written entirely for my enjoyment and the enjoyment of friends. Please e-mail the author with comments.

This is a sequel to "Slightly Darker Than Black" and "Burn".

Please do not reproduce or copy without the author's permission.

Summary: Wesley and Justine walk into a seedy Mexican bar ... yeah, it started out as a joke, a hundred pages ago. We're definitely in AU territory now. Just pretend.

Disclaimers: Not even *remotely* mine.

Warnings: Where to start? Angst. More angst. Hot sweaty sex. Death. Blood. More Wesley than the law allows.  Oh, and it's long, too.

Thanks to: Starlet2367, without whom this story would never, ever have been finished. Bless you, o fountain of A/C wisdom! Thanks also to all those nice folks who beat me up about "Slightly Darker Than Black" and "Burn" and said the story wasn't quite over. I think it might be whole lot more over now. And a late thank-you to everyone over at Stranger Things (www.stranger-things.net) who have been so kind and supportive of this darn thing.

Six days after leaving Los Angeles, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce had found his new home, such as it was: a reeking, seedy Mexican bar with substandard liquor. It had three distinct advantages. First, gringos were treated the same as the locals, no better or worse. Second, the owner of the bar fancied himself something of a scholar, and for a hundred dollars American his arcane library was open for reference.

Third, everybody in a place this disreputable had something to hide, and like it or not, Wesley knew he fit right in. A scar still burned on his throat where betrayal had cut him, and he had a rakish, unshaven look. He kept it that way, deliberately, and hoped that the tougher patrons of this cesspool didn't realize he still wished that the knife had cut deeper. For a few hours he'd risen out of despair, but he'd been holding to Cordelia then. There was nothing to hold to now.

He was attacked by a vision of Cordelia climaxing in Angel's arms, shuddering, her whole body responding to his touch. I'm in love with him, she'd said. Regardless of the fact that Angel had, after that illicit sexual thrill, ripped a hole in her throat and tried to drink her dry. Wesley knew all about the kind of love that devoured and raged and raped. He'd seen it at close range, in his own father's eyes, in the flinches and pallid surrender of his mother.

A voice whispered in his head, and it sounded startlingly like Justine's: Come on, don't lie to yourself. You stood there and watched them do it and it turned you on.

He flinched at the thought, even as he knew it was right. Yes, he had things to hide. Especially from himself.

A knife thumped point-first into the table six inches from his left hand, followed by the sloppy arrival of three glasses of tequila.

Speaking of Justine …

She dropped into a chair across from him, and he controlled his instinctive flash of dislike. Uncouth, unkempt, violent -- not his ideal woman in any way. She was dressed in the same stained blue jeans and ragged flannel shirt she'd been wearing for three days, and he doubted her hair had more than nodding acquaintance to a comb for longer than that. She reached out for the first glass of tequila, and he saw the evidence of yesterday's bar fight … scraped knuckles, yellowing bruises on her arm.

Her dark, insolent eyes glittered as she tossed the empty glass back on the table between them. It spun in an unsteady circle, spraying a hiccup of alcoholic drops.

"What do you want?" he asked, in as even a tone as he could manage. It didn't pay to give in to Justine's provocations.

"A little action would be nice. How long are we going to sit around this toilet, anyway? Until you grow a backbone?" Her sarcasm scorched, but he'd grown relatively fireproof these last few days.

"You're drunk." He made it a dismissal. She laughed and leaned forward, ragged auburn hair feathering over her face, and gulped down another drink without the softening benefit of salt or lime.

"Wow, look who's talking, the human sponge."

He controlled a flash of guilt. "I'm not drinking, I'm working."

"You finally cleaned them out of cheap-shit rotgut? How sad. And, news flash, teabag, piddling around with these books isn't working." She reached for the third drink, bobbled it, slopped it along the table perilously close to the hand-illuminated Ch'hashk manuscript laid out on the stained table in front of him.

He could have moved the manuscript. He grabbed Justine's wrist instead, staring at her with steady, angry eyes. "Enough," he said, very softly. "Amuse yourself somewhere else."

She didn't try to pull away, which was odd; he was holding her hard enough to dig into the bruises. Her hot, half-dreaming eyes locked on his, and she smiled.

"If you don't let go, I'm going to have to kick your ass," she said. "I've really been looking forward to that."

He had no doubt. He could feel her pulse racing through his fingers, jackhammered by adrenaline. And there was a certain dark charm to the idea, to let all of this responsibility slide and lose himself in battle with someone who richly deserved all he could inflict on her.

And vice versa.

He let her go. "If you're going to drink yourself unconscious, at least have the courtesy to do it quietly. And elsewhere."

He went back to the manuscript, or tried to. He'd gotten through four more laborious lines -- yes, there was mention of a portal nearby, the question was where -- and had started to forget that she was kicking the leg of the table when he heard a man's voice say, "Buy you a drink, chica?"

None of his business, but he looked up anyway. There was a man bent over Justine's chair, no better or worse than the rest of them in this place but with unpleasantly aggressive body language. Justine ignored him. The man shoved her chair back from the table and stepped closer. "You deaf, bitch?"

She'd have to have been blind as well. His crotch was outthrust inches from her face. She stared at it, expressionless, then slowly let her gaze drift up. She tilted her head and gave the man a razor-edged, glittering, adrenaline-fueled smile.

"That depends on who's talking." Wesley knew that sex-kitten purr, knew it meant trouble. She reached for the last glass of tequila, raised it to her lips and tossed it back without looking away from her would-be seducer. Licked her lips. "You got anything to say that won't bore me to death?"

"Maybe." He grinned back, snapped his fingers at the bartender and pointed down at Justine, held up two fingers. Ah, the universal sign language of the drunk.

At least she was being entertained, and he could get back to work, Wesley thought. But when he looked down at the manuscript it was so much nonsense, dots swimming illegibly in a sea of gold leaf and vellum. He pinched the bridge of his nose and wished, with a bone-deep desperation, that he was alone. Justine was … unbearable sometimes, like a thumb pressing on a bruise.

When he put his glasses back on, the man was still -- literally -- in Justine's face, and her grin had turned feral.

"Tell you what," she said, and seductively slithered upright, staying so close that her parted lips almost brushed the bulge in the man's pants as she rose. Promises implicit in every blatantly sexual line of her body. Wesley felt his skin tighten in response. "You tell me a few things, I'll tell you a few things, maybe something interesting will come up, how about that?"

From the man's leer, the implications weren't lost on him. "Something already came up."

"Well, isn't that flattering."

He rubbed his crotch. "All for you, querida."

Wesley opened his mouth to say something that probably wasn't wise, but Justine -- of course -- beat him to it. She looked down, blatantly measuring, then up into the man's face, and laughed. "That's it? I hope you brought friends." She put a hand flat against his chest and shoved, hard, knocked him staggering. "Don't waste my time, Tiny."

He slapped her. Wesley tensed all over at the gunshot-sharp sound, almost came to his feet and froze, heart lurching, when he saw Justine's brilliant, excited grin.

She punched the man squarely in the crotch. He choked, flushed dark red, stumbled back to collapse against a table.

Wesley winced. "Happy now?" he asked her. He made a deliberate attempt to relax his aching shoulders and look casual.

"Fucking ecstatic." She turned back to him, grabbed the hilt of the knife embedded in the table and started to yank it free. He knocked her hand away. "Hey! A girl's got the right to self-defense."

"Handle it without killing him," Wesley snapped. He took the knife and slipped it into an empty sheath at his back. His knife, anyway; he'd lent it to her for some damn-fool reason he couldn't remember. Might as well give a child a nuclear bomb.

"What about his friends?" Justine asked. She wiped her mouth, and he saw a trace of blood on her lips. Behind her, the man was getting to his feet with the help of a couple of others, equally hygienically-challenged; they were all glaring at Justine with unmistakably threatening expressions. "I’m supposed to handle them, too?"

"Your mess," he shrugged. "And you'd be angry if I didn't let you have your fun."

For just an instant he saw something in her eyes -- a flicker of -- what? Weakness? Fear? Disappointment?

"Good answer," she said, and if there'd been a hint of humanity in her, it was gone. "By the way, the night bouncer told me the one with the scar knows something about mystical portals. Want me to get the skinny?"

"If you can manage it without putting him in a coma." He went back to his manuscript, focusing hard to shove away the memory of the avid, mocking look on Justine's face as she pressed herself against a stranger.

He succeeded brilliantly.

He never even noticed when Justine and the three men left the bar.

###

"Excuse me, señor?"

It took a few long seconds for the words to penetrate, but Wesley finally pulled his attention away from an exceptionally obscure passage referring to the early Christian churches of Mexico, and looked up. The night barkeep, whose name Wesley had never bothered to ask, was hugely muscled, as well he might be to keep order in a place like El Puerco Blanco. He had the stance of a big man accustomed to having smaller men listen carefully to his words.

Wesley resisted a provocative impulse to ignore him and go back to his studies.

"La mujer," the big man said, and pointed across the room to the door. "She got herself in trouble again."

Bugger, he thought in exasperation. No doubt she'd broken her playtoys worse than usual, and he'd be forced to spread around fat wads of cash to cover up the bruises. Wouldn't be the first time. I ought to just walk away and leave her. Except in a strange way, Justine mattered to him.

What did it say about him, that a woman who'd cut his throat was all he had left?

"She's fighting again." The barkeep shrugged. "Outside. Thought you should know."

"Same three who were in here?" Another indifferent shrug from the barkeep. A nasty thought floated to the surface of Wesley's mind … they might have been vampires. This place was dim and full of shadowy, furtive patrons; most of them were human, but in a place like this, it did not pay to be able to testify against your neighbors, human or demonic. They all avoided the light.

"She can handle herself," Wesley said, but his voice lacked conviction. This was the third night she'd found trouble, or it had found her. Even Justine's ferocity had to run out sometime. Certainly her luck must. He should have known that.

He shouldn't have let her get him angry.

"Go find her and get out of here," the barkeep said. "Boss's orders."

Wesley pushed back his chair and stood. The bartender grabbed the sleeve of his leather coat.

"Boss says you don't come back either, eh?"

A hot flash of temper zipped up his spine. "I've paid for a week with the books."

"Too bad," the bartender shrugged. "Blame la mujer. Bitch makes too many enemies, gets us too much attention. Gonna get herself killed, and we don't need the trouble."

"No more than I," Wesley agreed. "But as neither of us has much choice, I suggest you not try to make threats you can't fulfill. I'll be back tomorrow."

"Boss says – "

"Tomorrow." Wesley met the bartender's eyes and held the stare. "Now let go of my sleeve."

Nobody bothered him on his way through the crowd to the door; he'd only had to make one example so far, and word had gotten out. People sensed the darkness around him, he'd decided. They gave him room, like a leper, so that it didn't infect them as well.

The distorted boom of bass cut off with the closing door, and he stepped outside into a hot Zacatecas night. His boots crunched dry gravel. After the sweat-and-stale-beer reek inside, the night smelled clean and arid, spiced with dry sage.

A rich white fall of desert starlight gilded the parking lot a chill, faint blue. He listened and finally heard a scraping sound; he followed it past two battered trucks and a gleaming Harley that he rather coveted. Justine was nowhere to be seen, but there was a man on the ground behind the last truck, twitching like a partially crushed bug. Wesley crouched down. Yes, it was one of the two who'd been helping Justine's playmate back to his feet after his defeat inside.

"Where is she?" he asked. The man cursed him in Spanish. Wesley grabbed greasy hair and slammed the man's head into hard-packed dirt. "Just point."

A shaking finger gestured off into the shadows. Wesley released the man and wiped his fingers absently on his pants as he stood. Of course, it would be the shadows. That was where Justine lived … one day, it would likely be where she died. He took a step closer and heard something, heard the scuffling of feet and harsh, heavy breathing. Ripping cloth.

He flicked on his penlight flash.

Justine was standing, barely, arms twisted behind her back by one man. Wesley couldn't see her face, only the ragged auburn fall of her hair. Her stained flannel shirt gaped open, and her pants were off in a pile on the ground, revealing startlingly white, surprisingly shapely legs.

The two men were human, or at least as human as such ever were. The one in front of Justine was the one she'd humiliated; he had his hands on the fly of his jeans, unzipping or zipping up. He flashed stained teeth at Wesley.

"Walk away," he growled. "Not your business, gringo."

Justine – not quite unconscious after all -- turned her head, and Wesley met her eyes. All her arrogance, gone. Nothing left but empty desperation.

It came on him in a cold stinging rush that he'd wanted something like this to happen. Had fantasized about seeing her beaten, bloody, humiliated. Left to die. Dear God. How far had he fallen, to think that? To believe that somehow his own pain made that right?

The reality sickened him, but he couldn't let her see that -- she'd hate him for feeling pity. "Had enough fun?" he asked her, deliberately cool.

"For now," she whispered. Blood trickled from her mouth, and he had a hideous thought that she looked more vampire than human.

Wesley shifted his attention to the two men. "Let her go."

They thought it was funny, he gathered. "Or?"

"Or you might get hurt," he said mildly.

"By you?" the man sneered.

While her attacker's attention was focused elsewhere, Justine threw her weight backward, into the body of the man holding her, got both feet off the ground and kicked the man in front of her in the crotch with all the strength in her legs. His choked rattle of agony blended with the moist sound of Justine's shoulder ripping out of its socket. She didn't let it slow her down. She allowed momentum to swing her back down to her feet, bent at the waist, and flipped the man holding her over her injured shoulder. He staggered toward Wesley, who dropped him with two quick jabs, then added a hard kick to both men’s heads to put them completely out.

"By her," he said. It was pointless to quip now, but he rather enjoyed it.

Justine fell hard to her knees in the dirt, hunched forward and braced herself with her left hand. "Fuck," she muttered, and wiped blood from her mouth with the back of one shaking hand. "Guess it got away from me. Thought I had 'em."

"What's the damage?" Wesley asked, and crouched next to her.

"Right arm."

He flipped off the penlight and stuck it in his pocket, took hold of her injured arm and stretched it out.

"I need to reduce it. Ready?" he asked. Her skin was hot, her muscles trembling and jerking against the pain.

"Do it."

He twisted and pushed in one smooth motion, felt the grating hitch as the ball slid back into the socket, and Justine let out a single sharp sound that lingered in the air like a cry of passion. He caught her as she fell forward. For a long second she was limp and shaking, held up only by his arms around her.

He had to ask. "Anything -- anything else?"

"No," she said, and pushed away. She was still pale and shaking, but her attitude had bounced back nicely. "Dammit. My best shirt."

"I believe it's your only shirt," he corrected. He went to one knee, took the two halves and knotted them together. "Lucky for you, I hear the filthy homeless look is all the rage in Paris."

She laughed, but it sounded wrong. He helped her up, and held her elbow as she retrieved her blue jeans and pulled them back up bruised thighs. Her hands were shaking.

"Justine," he said. She stopped in the act of buttoning her jeans, but didn't look up. Are you all right? The words stuck in his throat, wedged tight enough to choke him. He wanted to reach out to her. Wanted to ask. Wanted to be that Wesley again, just for a moment.

He didn't even recognize his own voice when he said, "Don't do it again. Next time I leave you."

He turned and walked away.

###

The ruined mission had once had a real name, but nobody remembered it anymore. Old as the swords of Spanish invaders, it had drawn unfaithful priests and conscript worshippers since the day it was built, and no amount of incense and blessings could consecrate what was, at heart, unholy. Even the most grimly devoted had finally fled after some hushed-up scandal with a black mass and a murdered priest. That was how it had earned its name, La Iglesia Muerta, the Dead Church.

Or at least, that was what Santana Orellana had heard, back in his breathing days. A black church, buried in the jungle, slowly devoured by its own corruption.

And here it was, in glorious ruin all around him. He looked around in satisfaction, shoved a ruined pew aside, and ascended the steps to the nave. He turned and looked back at his pack -- idiots, mostly, but the best refuse of the Ciudad he'd been able to recruit and turn -- and assumed the posture of a priest at prayer. They laughed.

"Amen," he said in satisfaction. "Let's eat."

Yolanda, his hawk-faced beauty, shoved their captive forward. The girl -- Mestizo, one of the villagers from down the overgrown path -- screamed in mortal terror and tried to run. Santana sat on the cracked, overgrown altar and waited for the pack to bring her down -- and bring her down they did, not quite at the door. Yolanda knew the rules. She grabbed the girl by the foot and dragged her back screaming to dump her in a heap at his feet.

"New rule. Anyone who runs gets a two minute head start," Santana said. He was feeling generous today -- after the filth and discomfort of Mexico City, this place might as well have been the vampire's version of Club Med. He knew about Club Med. He'd worked as a waiter in Cancún, serving drinks to fat Americans and rich, tanned Europeans, and gone home every night to a two-room hut built with the discards from the foreign construction companies. Every night until the night he hadn't made it home, because he’d met a pair of sharp teeth in a dark alley, instead.

On the whole, he found he was living much better as a vampire than he ever had as a man.

Yolanda smiled. She had the face of a Mayan angel, beautiful and cruel. He'd taken her just for that face, but she'd turned out to be a very good hunter indeed. Her ancestors had slaughtered each other at a truly impressive rate, after all. It was to be expected. "Shall I let her go again? Maybe she'll give us a good game."

Santana considered it. The girl was ripe and sweet, but she was also sniveling; he hated sniveling prey. Still …

"Yes," he decided. "You. Girl. If you make it to the church door, we'll let you run home, understand? ¿Comprende?"

She nodded jerkily. He waved a hand, and the pack let her go. Yolanda shoved her off balance. Someone else shoved back. Claws slashed, and Santana sat back again as the smell of fresh blood spiced the air.

And then, inexplicably, one of his pack died. Tomás, the big one -- he had his hands in the girl's hair, pulling, and as Santana stared he collapsed into an ash-gray cloud of dust. Before he could shout a warning, another was dead, and a third. Yolanda snarled, whirled and struck at empty air.

The man who'd killed Santana's minions stood up, stakes in each hand, and put himself between the bleeding victim and the rest of the pack.

Anglo. Matted shoulder-length reddish hair. Male. Past middle age, but hard, very hard. There was a scent of danger on him. Santana came to his feet and down one step, moving slowly; the man's eyes followed him, but never disregarded the rest. Smart, this one.

"Who are you?" Santana asked in Spanish. Anglos were rare, this part of the jungle.

"Does it matter?" He had a low growl of a voice, with a Continental accent, and answered in English. Most Europeans were weak at heart, consumed with their pleasures and their comforts, but this one had never known rest, or comfort. Nor, Santana thought, had he ever wanted it. "You may as well call me Death. I will certainly deal it, unless you let me pass."

"Pass to where?" Santana asked, switching to English himself. "There's nothing here, fool. Nothing but us."

"Then you have nothing to lose by letting me pass," the man said, in a broken-glass purr. "Whereas you have everything to lose by trying to stop me."

Santana considered him for a few long seconds. Unnerving, narrow eyes, and no fear in him. Not at all.

Curious.

Santana liked a good puzzle.

"The girl?" he asked. The man shrugged.

"You may have her if you let me pass."

Not one of those fools who sought to rid the world of vampires, then ... just a fellow traveler on the road to evil. Santana grinned, gestured at his pack and drew them away. The man waited until a polite distance was achieved, then turned and took the girl by her arm. She gave him a fragile, trusting smile.

He shoved her directly at Yolanda. Yolanda hissed, opened her mouth wide as a cobra's, and buried fangs in the girl's neck. Instantly the rest of the pack fell on the girl's spasming body, grabbing for naked flesh and devouring the life from her.

The man's detachment was impressive. Santana raised his eyebrows and came down the last step, to stand directly in front of the man.

"Tu nombre?" he asked again. "I find you very curious, señor. I'd like to know your name."

The man smiled slightly, inclined his head, and said, "Daniel Holtz."

"Well, Daniel Holtz," Santana said, "welcome to the Dead Church."

And in as lightning-fast a move as his vampiric strength could manage, he struck, grabbed Holtz's arm and twisted. Bone shattered. The stake dropped from Holtz's hand, but even as Santana struck so did Holtz.

If it hadn't been for Yolanda leaping on Holtz's back and spoiling his aim, Santana would have taken the second stake in the heart; instead, the wood struck home with bruising force and buried itself just to the right. Santana hissed in pain and pulled it out; it dropped to the stone floor with a harsh wooden clatter. He hit the man very hard, hard enough to snap some mortal necks, but this one was tough. Dangerously so.

It took four vampires to hold him. Santana came closer and looked into the man's eyes. The arrogance in them displeased him.

"Welcome to the Dead Church, Daniel Holtz," he said again. "What's your hurry? You don't like us?"

He stabbed a finger out, felt the slick rubbery resistance of Daniel Holtz's eye, and the pop as his fingernail broke the surface and slid into the gelatinous wetness.

"How do you like us now?" he asked, bending close, as Holtz's ruined eye bled juices over his fingers. "Better?"

It raised a tingle of what might have been fear along his spine when Holtz failed to scream.

###

Knock knock. Now there was a joke that had never been funny back in good 'ol Sunnydale, where knocks on the door late at night – or early in the morning, for that matter – were nothing to raise a crop of chuckles. Never knew who was knocking ... or what ... and that Sunnydale mentality had gone with her to L.A.

Cordelia Chase took a hasty, cautious look out of the peephole, sighed, and wished she hadn't looked. Because there was a lime-green demon standing outside.

It only made sense that they'd send Lorne.

After all, if Cordelia Chase was going to spill her guts to anybody, it would be Lorne … Fred was too fragile, Gunn too -- well -- too much of a guy, and Angel … Angel hadn't said a word in six days. Not to her, not to anyone. And over at the Hyperion, things were going from worried to crazed. Cordelia knew that; she'd listened to enough of the updates on the phone.

Hadn't gone there, though. Hadn't been able to.

"Hey, baby doll," Lorne said when she opened the front door. He was standing there holding a shopworn bunch of carnations. They clashed with the chartreuse shirt and navy-blue shiny jacket -- which was, for Lorne, a downright sober ensemble. He thrust the flowers at her, and she had to take them in self-defense. "Sorry. I was going for something tropical, but who knew, there was a rush on orchids. Some kind of prom thing."

"Thanks," she said. She didn't move out of the doorway. He wavered, but didn't go away.

"You know, sweetie, even on Pylea, that's the signal to let the visitor in the room. Unless I've done something specifically to get uninvited." The flowers and Lorne looked just about equally wilted.

She couldn't keep the game face on, not with him. "Oh, hell. Come in if you have to."

"Gee, with so much enthusiasm, how could I resist?" He shut the door and locked it behind him. "So."

"So," she agreed, and dumped the flowers in a handy vase that Dennis floated in from the kitchen. "I guess you're here to find out what's the what."

"Kind of the plan," he nodded. "You being the big black hole of info, recently."

She fussed with carnations. "How is he?"

"I'm going out on a limb and guessing you mean Angelcakes. Between the brooding and the skulking, hard to say. He's not exactly Chatty Cathy -- ever -- but now even Fred can't get him to open up. The only time we get any reaction out of him is when we talk about getting you to come over."

"Yeah?" She froze, staring down at the stupid dyed flowers. How pathetic was it, to have to dye flowers? How humiliating was it for the flowers? "What kind of reaction does he have?"

His voice was so gentle. "He just -- goes away."

"Oh." She swallowed hard, abandoned the carnations and took a seat on the couch. Lorne eased down into a chair, facing her. "So it's that good, huh?"

"Look, there's no easy way to ask this, sweetie, so I'll just shoot from the hip, so to speak … did you and he ... " Lorne, at a loss for words. That was new. "Oh, you know. Break the rules. Which I am so praying did not happen, by the way."

"Oh God," she whispered, and closed her eyes.

"Okay, and if you said 'Oh God' rhythmically at any time that evening, I'm thinking that answers my question."

"No," she said. "We didn't. Exactly. Or -- I don't know. I guess it was kind of -- look, is he okay?"

"You mean is he evil?"

"Yeah." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Is he? Evil?"

Lorne gave it serious thought. "Creepy as this is, I'm not exactly sure. He's not brimming over with sweetness and happy thoughts, but he's not twirling mustaches and munching virgins, either."

"Well, that's something. Believe me, he had the munching thing down cold last time he was here. Okay, not a virgin, but still. Pretty thoroughly munched." She eased back the neck of her shirt and gave him a look at the scars.

Lorne's face went two shades paler, to some color Martha Stewart wouldn't have dared put in her collection.

She let the collar fall back in place. "And so I hit him with the big jolt of Cordy Power. Which was about as pleasant as a relaxing acid bath, for both of us."

"And then …?"

Then they'd fallen asleep curled together like frightened children on the couch, drawing together just for the sheer animal comfort of it; he'd been so badly wounded, so scared, and she'd been so very tired.

When she'd opened her eyes he was watching her with those dark eyes, deep as night, and all she'd wanted to do was kiss him, kiss him so deeply that she'd fall into him, lose herself in that dark, aching place …

"Sweetheart?" She jerked back to the present at Lorne's gentle question.

"Then he left," she said flatly. "At first he was kind of dazed, then … then he freaked. Like he couldn't stand to be near me. Couldn't touch me. Couldn't even look at me. I tried to talk to him but he just threw his coat over his head and ran out. I went after him, but he ducked into the sewers and lost me."

How could a guy with blazing hell-fire eyes look so sweet and compassionate? Lorne always seemed to know what she was feeling, although she knew he didn't; he just had that tell-me-all-about-it face on.

"He got back home about noon," he nodded. "Fred found him in the basement talking to himself. He's been -- quiet, since."

"So, is he quiet, like thinking it over, or quiet, like deranged and biding his time?" Would they even be able to tell? "Never mind, I don't think I want to know." So much heartache. She was tired of heartache, she'd done nothing but think about it for almost a week, working up the courage to go back to the Hyperion. "Is he okay? Generally?"

"Okay? Pumpkin, his son's lost in some hell-dimension with his worst enemy, Wesley's gone Benedict Arnold, and you ... " Lorne shook his head.

"Me what? What did I do, besides get a tooth tattoo and try to save his life? And love him, Lorne? You know I love him. You of all people."

"I know," Lorne murmured. "I'm just not so sure it was a great idea to, you know, make it that special kind of love."

"Yeah," she sighed. "Me neither."

They stayed in the living room. She thought about offering coffee, but didn't want him to see the kitchen, which still worse for wear; honestly, she hardly wanted to go in there, most of the time. Too many heartbreaking memories.

"No word from Wes?" she asked, without much hope. Lorne shrugged.

"Did you really think there would be?"

She shook her head. Thought about things, and wished she could think about nothing for a change. That would be nice. Thinking of nothing but clothes and parties and getting a makeover. But it wasn't happening for her.

To be fair, it had stopped happening before she ever moved to L.A., but still ...

"Should I try and see him?" she asked.

"Wes?"

"Angel, you goof."

Lorne looked at her for so long she got uncomfortable looked somewhere else. Her eyes fell on something lying on the floor, next to the couch.

A dried, dead rose, all its beauty destroyed. Her mouth went dry.

"I don't know," Lorne finally said. "I just don't know, baby doll. But I do know one thing."

"What?" She blinked and pulled her attention back to him.

"If Connor doesn't come home, it might not matter what any of us does."

He stood up to go. She reached out and caught his wrist -- his skin was cool, faintly scaled, and up close he had a much better manicure than she did, the bastard.

The look between them stretched. Deepened. Lorne's face became oddly -- well -- interested.

Then she got it. She looked down at herself.

"Hey!" she squeaked. "Are you looking down my shirt, you perv?"

He sighed. "Do yourself justice. You're a fully lickable bit of vanilla goodness, sweetie."

"I thought you -- you were -- "

"Oh, please." She'd never seen a smile like that on Lorne's lips before -- wicked, delighted, definitely sexy. It was almost enough to make her forget that it was a demon smiling at her. "Snappy dresser, carry a hell of a tune, full of witty repartee, yes. Gay, no. Not that there aren't some luscious munchables floating around the other side of the gene pool, too, but I've always been one for the curves."

"Oh." She pulled her shirt together. "So much for treating you like one of the girls."

"Oh, no, honey, you go right ahead. Frilly nightgowns are my favorite."

She shook herself out of the mental image of Lorne in a frilly nightgown and focused. "Angel," she commanded. "Spill. What do you know?"

He lost the playful look. Lost everything but the deep ruby seriousness in his eyes.

"I know he's coming apart," he said. "He doesn't have a center anymore. You and Wes -- you were his touchstones. Won't take much to send him all the way over the edge."

"News flash, Lorne, he already jumped." Boy howdy. She couldn't forget how far, or that he'd taken her with him.

"Not into evil," Lorne clarified. "Into eternity. That boy's looking to die."

###

It was a long walk home through back alleys and dark tunnels, but that was good; it gave Lorne time to think about things. In the largest sense, it was really none of his business. He'd thought that before going over to Cordelia's and having the heart-to-heart, too. It being none of his business didn't seem likely to stop him and besides, it was his business, at least a bit. He'd talked to Angel that day, and he'd tried to stop what was coming, and he'd failed. Angel had gone from him to Cordelia, to do ... the Powers spare him the details, but whatever it had been, it was bad. Good. Whatever.

Long walk, big thoughts, not much in the way of conclusions. Typical. At least he got exercise.

Lorne stepped back in the entrance of the Hyperion and shut the door. The big lobby was furnished with shadows and a smell of neglect that hadn't been there a few weeks ago. The hotel, Lorne sensed, was a consciousness all its own -- not too bright, but perceptive. It responded to Angel most of all, and his despair and depression had soaked into the walls and floors and furniture like stagnant water.

Speaking of Angel, he was on the lurk again. In the shadows, facing away from him. Lorne stopped a little distance away, light on his feet and ready to run, and counted the odds on which would be the better plan: avoid Angel and go upstairs, or say something now.

The odds were better if he kept his mouth shut. But he'd never been very good at playing the odds. "Well, at least now I know," he said.

"Know what?" A dry, light tone, nothing of Angel in it at all. Just sound and air that came out of Angel's lungs no warmer than it went in.

"What the deal is with you and Cordelia. That's what all this dark broody penance is about. You tripped over your libido and fell."

Angel didn't make a sound as he turned, not a rustle of cloth, not a scuff of shoes on carpet. It was as if he levitated around until that pale, indistinct face appeared. Dead man walking, Lorne thought, and shivered in spite of himself. He knew lots of things worse than vampires. Lots. They just weren't standing in the room with him.

"Fell? Oh yeah," Angel rasped. "Fell, hit bottom, bounced down a couple of flights. Should have been there, Lorne. It was one hell of a show. Want me to hum a few bars?"

The thought made Lorne's stomach clench.

"Umm, no. But maybe you should talk to the person who can give you some perspective about this. It's dark in here, Angelcakes. Maybe you need Cordelia's light."

It was the exactly wrong thing to say. Angel's eyes flared like a wild animal's in headlights, and Lorne took a giant step backward as if a little extra space would keep something like Angel from killing something like him.

"Never." It was the harshest, most painful whisper Lorne had ever heard. "I can't."

"Can't what?"

"See her. Talk to her." Angel swallowed hard. "Touch her. Ever again."

There was so much despair and desire in him that Lorne couldn't think of a thing to say.

Angel disappeared into the darkness under the stairs, and Lorne let him go.

###

Mexico.

It was well after midnight by the time Wesley and Justine reached the motel. A cheap, featureless place a few miles down the road from the bar, its main attraction was its low weekly rates and a relative lack of wildlife scuttling the bathroom tiles. Fighting evil, like crime, did not pay, and Wesley's meager savings were fast dwindling, even at the high dollar-to-peso exchange rate. Sharing a room was a necessary cost-saving measure.

It was not as much of a sacrifice as Wesley had feared at first. Traveling with a woman like Cordelia would have meant bags of designer originals, trays of makeup, hot rollers, facials, nail polishes, perfumes. Justine brought nothing but a single change of clothes and a bottle of vodka. The bottle of vodka was long gone, and the change of clothes was in rags. Justine had not fared much better.

"Don't suppose you have any painkillers," she said. She sounded tired -- no, worse than tired. Exhausted. She sank down on the single sagging bed, cradling her injured arm.

"Actually, I do," he said. "They're in the bathroom. I'll get some ice to bring down the swelling."

He fetched it from the rattling, rusted machine outside, twisted cubes into a washcloth, and came back into the room.

Justine, sitting on the bed with her back to him, slid the tattered rags of her shirt off her shoulders.

Wesley paused in the act of shutting the door and held utterly still. The golden glow of the lamplight traced the elegant, strong curve of her back, and her spine had a tactile beauty that tugged at his fingertips and begged to be touched. But the light also caught on thick raised scars, bled-over bruises. Whatever pain Justine had, she deserved -- he knew that. But beauty had moved him all his life, and it moved him now, despite everything.

She crossed her arms across her breasts as she turned to look over her shoulder at him -- the first truly feminine thing he'd ever seen her do. Sculpture, he thought, and felt another shock. Brutal, murderous Justine was beautiful enough to have come from the hand of Michelangelo himself. The tragedy of it was painful.

She was watching him warily, frowning a little; he wondered what she'd seen in his face, wondered what frightened her about it. For once, he felt no animosity toward her.

"Ice," he said, and held it up. She nodded. He sat down behind her on the bed and applied the makeshift cold pack to her right shoulder. She hissed, but didn't move.

"Hold it there," he said. She folded her left hand over it and pressed it in place while he touched some of the worst of her bruises with light fingertips. A massive dark area over her kidneys worried him. He pressed and felt her flinch. "Any pain?"

"No, except when you're shoving your fist through my back." She was trembling. He felt the fine, delicate vibration through his fingertips. "Don't worry about it. Nothing broken."

He explored a hand-sized, dark-blue stain over her lower left ribs. Something grated, and he heard her hiss.

"Okay, nothing big broken, anyway," she amended. "Quit fussing. I'll live."

"You're not a Slayer, Justine. You have to let yourself heal. Not unless you want to lose even worse next time."

She stiffened. "I didn't lose. I was saving my strength."

"Try saving your life. You don't have to fight every man in sight."

"Girl's gotta stay in shape. Besides, what am I supposed to do? Sit around like you and read? Give me a break. I'm not the bookish type."

"Consider it a vacation," he said. "Rest. Relax. Find some hobby besides getting yourself beaten bloody."

The satin curve of her skin drew him on a level beyond thought. He touched his fingertips lightly to the back of her neck and drew them slowly, gently down the length of her spine. Nothing in his mind but the sensation of skin on skin, the way hers pebbled into gooseflesh under his touch. The two of them sat, frozen, unspeaking and somehow not silent at all.

Look at me, he thought. He needed to see her face, see what she was thinking. But she didn't turn. She finally got up off the bed, walked into the bathroom, and shut the door. He stared down at his hand and felt the phantom sensation of her skin against his fingertips.

God help him. He hadn't seen this coming.

###

In the bathroom, Justine stared at herself in the mirror, at her chalk-pale, discolored face and tried to remember the last time she'd seen herself without bruises.

She couldn't. She also couldn't remember the last time she'd gone to sleep without the help of a handful of pills, or gone into a fight without a hit of crystal meth to get herself wired. Or the last time she'd felt a man's light, delicate touch running down her spine ...

"Dammit," she whispered. She unzipped Wesley's toiletry kit, felt pain drill in her shoulder and dropped the bottle of pills. It rolled behind the toilet. She cursed again and scrambled after it, twisted, felt something stab her side hard enough to dizzy her. Broken ribs. She opened the bottle and dry-swallowed two, considered the level of pain, and swallowed two more.

When she closed her eyes she could still feel two things, two tactile, distinct impressions.

Wesley's fingertips traveling slowly down her back.

A knife in her hand slicing through his neck.

"Stop fucking thinking," she whispered, and pulled her knees up against her chest, crouched there next to the toilet against the cold white tile.

Wesley had touched her so very gently. Wesley had said, Next time I leave you.

She covered her mouth with both hands and ruthlessly swallowed the sobs.

###

When she came out, dressed in a ragged oversized t-shirt, Wesley was already lying in bed, reading. He didn't look at her, but she felt his attention shift like a blazing spotlight. She got into bed without comment, turned away from him on her side, and pulled her knees up for comfort.

"Justine," he said. There was a rasp to his voice, the ghost of her knife passing through his throat. "Tell me why."

"Why what?"

"I understand why you were loyal to Holtz. I even understand why you tried to kill me." That was difficult for him to say, she could feel it. She heard the dry rustle of pages as he set his book aside on the nightstand. "But why do this to yourself?"

"You mean hang out with you?"

"Partly." She felt the smile in his voice, knew it was bitter as much as amused. "Why do this?"

He touched a bruise on her neck, one with a dull hot aching core. She resisted an urge to push back against his hand, transform ache into pain. Pain was good. You couldn't overthink it.

"Better than being dead," she heard herself say, and it surprised her. The desolation in her voice surprised her even more. "I thought you knew that."

He did, of course. "It's not much better."

When she didn't reply, he sighed and reached up to switch off the light. It was warm in the room, but she felt cold, chilled by distance and time and damage. She shivered and burrowed deeper into the sheets, searching for oblivion.

Oblivion wasn't there, wouldn't come. It was one thing she couldn't bludgeon into obedience. Wesley's warm animal heat at her back made her made her shake, made her sick with self-loathing. She listened to his quiet, even breathing and realized he might actually go to sleep, just go to sleep without touching her.

She had the bizarre, terrifying thought that if he went to sleep she might just fade out into the darkness, as if she'd never existed at all.

No.

She turned over, rolled, and pinned him flat underneath her weight. She couldn't see his face in the dark, but she felt his whole body tense. She knew it was flashing across his mind in a red blur, the sense memory of her killing him that night in the park.

He could have struck back. He had the strength, and she was wounded.

He didn't.

She parted her legs and straddled him. She heard the uneven hitch in his breathing when she moved her hips in a slow, hard circle against him, felt his muscles fight against a need to push back.

She wanted him to touch her, put his hands on her. He didn't.

"What in God's name do you want, Justine?" There was more of a rasp to his voice here, in the anonymous dark. She leaned forward and found his lips, kissed him hard. She could feel the hot, pulsing need inside of him, tasted it in his mouth and tongue.

"Same thing you oh-so-obviously do, big boy."

His voice was thick and rough, but still reasonable. "Why?"

It stunned her, because as soon as she heard the question she knew the answer.

"I'll tell you," he said, there in the dark. "Because you want control of me, Justine. But I'm not going to give it to you."

"That's not what this says." She moved against him again, and felt the hard, hot column of his cock straining against those ridiculous cloth pajama bottoms. She heard the breath rush out of him. "All I have to do is take off your pants. You'll fuck me. You know you will."

And then he did touch her, just the way she'd wanted him to – gentle, tracing touches along her arms, her throat, down lightly over her breasts. Touches as if he couldn't stop himself.

And then he grabbed her and threw her down, hard, next to him on the bed, and the assertion of his strength was so sudden and complete that it left her stunned. She felt a lightning bolt of fear rip through her. Next he'd be on top of her, and then –

-- wasn't that what she'd wanted?

But he didn't climb on top of her. He let go.

She gasped for breath and turned on her side again, curled her knees in, and tried to slow down her racing heartbeat. God, God, it was all broken, all chaos, nothing clear and nothing clean. Not even this.

He was on his side, spooned against her back. Close, but not quite touching.

Then he moved closer, and the heat of his skin melted into hers, a caress that reached from her neck down to the soles of her feet. She could still feel his erection pressing hard against her, throbbing with its own feverish beat. His hand rested lightly on the curve of her hip.

He touched his lips to the back of her neck and whispered, "Sleep. You're safe."

She had been prepared to defend herself against every kind of attack, but she had no defense against understanding. The shakes started, racked her in shudders like sobs but without the luxury of tears. She felt as if she might shake herself apart, and all she could do was press herself against his warmth, praying for sleep, praying for a morning that felt as if it would never, ever come.

He put his arm around her, and a sense of great safety folded over her with it. It was stupid, ridiculous, meaningless. He was just a man. Bled like any other man, God knew she'd proved that. But his silent, unforced presence had a sense of strength to it like nothing she'd ever known. Wesley just was. Without hearing him say it she knew that if men came and dragged her off the bed and ripped away her dignity and forced her down on her knees with the taste of her own blood and humiliation in her mouth …

He wouldn't leave her. He was the first man she had ever met, including Holtz, who wouldn't turn around and walk away. I wish …

Before she understood what she was wishing for, it was gone, and she was asleep.

###

Los Angeles.

The vision hit Cordelia around midnight. No pain -- she didn't get pain from them anymore -- but a sense of horror and urgency that drove her right out of bed, trying to think what to do about it, how to stop it. No Wesley available, and God, she'd never needed him more. She needed to talk, needed to think ... Gunn, Fred ... she couldn't put them in the middle of this, it was too big. Too ugly.

Too personal.

Strangely, the vision was already fading, like a dream; she remembered a flash of electric-blue eyes, golden skin, some kind of Greek outfit that was so very toga party. She knew who that was ...

... but then it was gone, too.

What the hell ...?

All she remembered was the important thing.

I know how to get him back. I know!

She paced, silk gown whispering over the carpet. Dennis put a chair in her path, but she went around it, straightened the photographs on the mantel over the tiled fireplace. Her family. The old Scooby Gang, back when the world was new and high school was the biggest pain in the ass there was, even counting vampires.

"I need help," she said aloud. Dennis's invisible hand pressed her shoulder, and she patted it even though she couldn't really feel it. "Thanks, Dennis, but a little more help than the Casper kind."

Dennis floated over something she hadn't seen in a while ... her old Tommy Hilfiger plaid address book. "Right. Thanks. Good idea."

She flipped pages. Nope, dead; nope, undead (and still bad); nope, total loser, and why hadn't she scratched his name out of her address book, anyway?

She paused in the "H" section. Speaking of people she should have scratched off her list ...

"I'm going to regret this," she said to herself. Or maybe to Dennis. "Who's kidding who? I'm already regretting it. Why wait?"

She dialed half the number, and hung up. She kept her hand on the phone receiver, picked it up, dialed half, and hung up again. She actually got a couple of steps away before she turned back, sat down on the sofa, and picked up the handset again.

She dialed the number and managed -- barely -- not to hang up. Sitting through two rings was enough to stretch her to the breaking point, and she shivered with the need to hang up, right now, before it was too --

"Hello?" He actually sounded awake. Too late to pretend it was all a dream.

"Xander Harris?" She aimed a beauty-queen pep-squad smile at the empty living room, trying to squeeze charm into her voice. "Hi! So! How are you?!"

Ten long seconds before he said, as if he didn't believe it, "Cordelia?"

"In the flesh! So!" Her brain had turned into strawberry Jell-o. God, why in the hell had she done this? What had she been thinking? "So! What's new at the Hellmouth? Meet any interesting new demons at the Bronze -- "

He cut her off. "You're kidding, right? What, you called to gloat in the middle of the night?" Xander sounded -- angry. Dark and moody and absolutely not like the goofy, funny guy she'd left behind. Great. What was it about her that turned every guy she met dark? "Yeah, you heard right. The wedding's off. Boo hoo. Get your kicks in now, Queen C, because I'm all out of the whipping boy business."

"Wait, I didn't -- wedding? What wedding? Wait, you and -- and Demon Girl? Married?"

"Her name's Anya, which you sure ought to know, seeing as you summoned her to make my life a living hell and boy, you have so succeeded."

"You married Anya?"

"Obviously you missed the off part of the wedding being off." Xander was silent a few seconds. "So you really don't know."

Cordelia had only intended this to be the hi-how-are-you portion of the conversation, right before she cut to what she really wanted, but she was frozen by the idea that Xander, of all people, should have had a wedding. Even if the wedding was off. Because that meant he'd actually been engaged. And plans had been made. Expensive jewelry -- Xander? -- had been exchanged.

"I left her at the church," he was saying. "Funny, right? Big joke all around. Much laughter down here in Hellmouth-land. First I screwed it up with you, now Anya -- "

The idea of it was too, too strange. Anya in a wedding dress was enough to overload her brain. Anya at a church in a wedding dress … she shook herself out of the trance. "You know, entertaining as this might be if I actually still cared, Xander, I need some info from Giles. I tried the Magic Box but -- "

"Giles is gone."

Her heart thudded to a dull stop. "Gone?"

He must have heard the shock in her voice. "Not six feet under, gone, leaving on a jet plane gone. I think he had it up to here with all us wacky kids, got a craving for warm beer, something like that."

"I needed to ask him -- " She let out a sigh. It didn't matter. "Dammit. Well, okay. Let me talk to Willow, she's big with the spells."

Wrong, again; she heard the stubborn protective tone snap into place. "Willow's not doing the magic thing anymore, and you'd better not get her back into it, Cordelia, or I swear -- "

"Whoa, Altar Boy, not really in the loop here. Willow's not Spell Girl anymore?"

"She got hooked on the magicks," he said. "It was bad for a while. Real bad. But she's getting better."

"You can get hooked on magick? Whoa. Making a mental note about that one ... Well, wait a minute, Willow's not doing the spells, Giles is gone -- who's your brains? I mean, obviously it's not you." This conversation, Cordelia thought, was why she didn't call Sunnydale very often. Talking to these people was like climbing back into an old cheerleader uniform -- all the old habits came flooding back. Like saying the cruel and unusual and excusing herself because it was also true. "Sorry, Xander, I didn't mean it like that."

"Was that an apology? All right, who are you and what have you done with the real Cordelia, pod person?"

She laughed and curled up on the sofa, smiling for real now, not just to make with the happy. "They giving you a hard time? For, you know?"

"Let's see, I invited a hundred people, including my oh-so-very-hated-relatives, made my friends dress up in ugly outfits, not to mention paid for a honeymoon I didn't use. Why would they ever give me a hard time?" Xander sighed. "No, actually. They've been really -- decent about it."

Cordy twirled phone cord around her finger. "And Anya?"

"Eh. Not so much."

"Which is so not surprising. So what was it? Another girl?" She couldn't stop that thin edge of anger from slicing through, and felt him wince. "Okay, that probably wasn't fair. Unless it was another girl."

"No! It was just -- I'm not ready, Cordy. You know about my family. Not like I have a lot of faith in the sacred institution of wedded bliss." He was quiet a long time, and she wondered just how much he'd actually talked to the others. "Anyway. You called for a reason, right?"

"Right. I'm trying to find out more about a demon dimension called Quar-toth. Like, how to get there. And back. The back part's crucial."

"Spelling?" Xander asked.

"Like I'd know. I've been through all the books here and I'm scoring zip. Maybe something at the Magic Box -- "

"Yeah, I'll take a look …" His voice faded out. "Oh."

"Let me guess. Anya's at the Magic Box."

"Seems likely. It's her shop now."

"Okay." She sucked in a breath and tried for cheery again. "I'll call her. No problem."

"No. No, I don't mind. It's important …?"

"Yeah," she said. "It's important." And she proceeded to tell him the whole story … the birth of Connor, Angel's strangeness, Wesley kidnapping the baby, Holtz. She omitted the fact that Angel had come as close as she'd ever want to see to becoming what they all feared. She also glossed over the biting, but she put a hand over the healing scar on her throat. "If we don't get Connor back -- "

"I get the picture," Xander said. He sounded different, solid, someone she could trust. And looking back on it, she realized that she'd always trusted him, because Xander was the one who never wavered, never backed away, never let his feelings stop him from doing what needed to be done. Buffy had the strength. Xander had -- and this was quite the revelation -- the courage. "I'll hit the books. Call you at home?"

"I'll be here," she promised. Nowhere else to go, really. She didn't think the Hyperion was a safe haven, at least not yet.

"I'll be here," she repeated, and hung up.

###

Xander proved to be a morning person, and he proved it by ringing Cordelia's phone at ohmyGod before dawn, just about an hour after she'd finally gotten to sleep. As surprises go, it wasn't especially pretty, and neither was she -- fresh out of an unquiet sleep, hair tangled and matted with sweat, her favorite Snoopy nightshirt as wrinkled as if she'd pulled it out of the bottom of the laundry. God, she needed coffee. Espresso. Gallons of the stuff.

"Hang on," she said to whatever Xander was chattering about. She thumped the phone down on the kitchen counter and spooned grounds into the coffee maker. Instant morning, just add caffeine. When the machine started sputtering and steaming, she picked up the phone again. "Speak."

He made a barking sound. She resisted the impulse to invoke some big whacking demon powers and strangle him through the phone cord. "All righty then, Queen C. You know, I thought time in L.A. would really improve your 'tude, but -- "

"Xander." She cut him off. "Taunting hours are over. We are now in full relaying-of-information mode. Spill it or -- "

"Or what?" Xander asked smugly. He knew she was down to her last phone-a-friend, damn him.

"Or I'll come back to Sunnydale and tell everybody we're dating again. Including what's-her-name. Vengeance girl."

He made a creeped-out noise. "Okay, no need to get nasty. This Quar-toth had only a couple of references to it, in the books Giles didn't let just anybody read … not that they could, dead languages and all …"

"Meander toward a point, Xander."

"Quar-toth's a demon dimension, all right, but it's not just another demon dimension. You've heard of Hell? Well, this is the place Hell calls 'the bad place.' They send things there that Hell thinks are too mean and evil."

"Great." Cordelia looked down at the floor. Fresh scars in the linoleum there from Angel's fingernails -- claws -- whatever. And the bleached-out Rorschach stains of her own blood. It threatened to make her remember all of what had happened here -- the dark, the sex, Angelus -- and she brought herself back to the practical. I am so totally losing my security deposit. There. That was of the practical. "So how do we get there?"

"Hello, this is the listening-for-comprehension part of the exercise, Cordy. Quar-toth is Hell for Hellspawn, so how about we don't get there! And plus, that 'we' thing that's referring to somebody else, because I may be outrageously stupid, but not competing for the Darwin Awards just yet, thank you very much." He was chattering because he was nervous. She knew all about that. It didn't get less annoying -- or less sweet -- with time. "Besides, you can't get there."

"And finally he gets to the point. Can't why exactly?"

"Because Quar-toth doesn't have any portals. Also no windows, no doors, and for sure no cable TV. So again, why go?"

"Things have to get there somehow. Evil things, right? Things Hell doesn't want?"

Xander hesitated a long time. "Cordy, you don't want to do this."

"You know what? I really don't. I'm tired, I can't sleep, I reek like a horse, and my hair would make a bag lady ashamed. Also I need coffee." She sucked in a deep, deep breath, held it, and let it out in a cleansing stream. "How. Do. I. Get. There?"

"I've always wanted to say this," he said. "Go to Hell."

That's what she was afraid of. "You mean literally. As in, the fiery pit of. That place Dante went for vacation."

"You're awfully up on it for a girl who wouldn't turn pages because she might ruin a manicure. Yep. Not so tough to find a door to Hell, by the way, any bingo parlor or Marilyn Manson concert oughta do it. From Hell to Quar-toth, it may be a little bit tougher, but there's definitely a portal." Xander hesitated. "Cordy. Tell me you're not thinking of -- "

"Yeah, totally," she jeered. "Like I hit my head and woke up Buffy. Please."

###

Mexico.

Wesley woke with the first dawn, as was his habit; the threadbare curtains didn't do much to keep the rising sun out in any case. It took him ten long seconds to remember where he was, and with whom.

He was lying curled against Justine, his numbed arm still around her waist.

Recriminations came and brought their guilty relatives, and he had time to luxuriate in all of the myriad ways this was wrong, so very very wrong, before a full bladder reminded him it was time to attend to some basic needs.

When he moved, though, he felt her come awake in a flash. She tensed all over, like a startled animal, and he froze for just a second before he continued drawing his dead-weight arm back against his body.

"Sorry," he said. It sounded inane and inadequate, but there was no taking it back. He slipped out of bed and padded into the grimy bathroom, closed the door, and did his business in a gratifying rush. As he washed his hands he realized that he well and truly reeked; heat, stress and the uncongenial atmosphere of the bar had taken its toll. He got the creaking shower spraying and started to strip off the pajama bottoms, then reconsidered and opened the bathroom door to look at Justine.

She was sitting up in bed, looking blankly at the sun-rotted curtains. There was a certain tension in her still that he didn't quite understand, and didn't want to. "Want a turn in here before I take my shower?"

She didn't answer. He shrugged and started to close the door. Her voice stopped him. "We need to find that fucking portal." She might have been talking to the wall; she certainly didn't seem to be talking to him. But he assumed she was, and he was faintly offended.

"I've been looking. You, on the other hand, have been looking for something else entirely -- I'm guessing it might be oblivion. I suggest you start helping me, if it's that important to you."

"Looking? You've been reading," she said. "I've been talking to the sleazy bastards who probably know where this thing is."

"Or would be willing to tell you they did for the price of a glass of tequila. Sleazy bastards not being the most reliable of sources."

She pulled her knees up under the covers and rested her crossed forearms on top. Still not looking at him. "You should know. Anyway, the one last night said we could find it in a place called La Iglesia Muerta."

"The Dead Church," Wesley translated automatically. "Promising, in a particularly unpleasant way. If you can trust the word of a would-be rapist."

"Please, it's got to be a vamp nest. Put down your books for a few hours, we can go in, stake the suckers and find the portal. Unless that's too much for you."

"It's not me who's been beaten bloody," he replied. "Do you really think you're in any shape to fight?"

She slid off of the bed. Bruises tattooed her thighs in the shape of men's hands, clear as blueprints. He saw it and froze.

"Try me," she said. She pushed past him and slammed the bathroom door. He heard the lock click -- insulting, that, because it implied that a lock that flimsy could keep him out in the first place.

He waited until he heard the rattle of the water change and knew she'd taken his turn in the shower, and decided to go for a run. Sweat pants, socks, shoes, a loose sleeveless t-shirt. He swung the door open on a bright morning glare, then blinked as it was blocked by a large, dark shape standing in the way.

Something hit him hard in the stomach, maybe a fist but it felt like a wrecking ball. Breath rushed out of him in an uncontrolled gasp, and he gagged helplessly for more. Knees like water. Someone or something grabbed him by the arm and shoved him out into the boiling hot sun.

"Not so easy now, is it, little gringo?" a thick Spanish-accented voice said. A fist clenched a handful of his hair, and dragged his head up so fast and hard he felt a jolt of fear that his throat wound would break open, finish the murder Justine had started. "Not so easy in the daylight. But we don't want you. I let you live."

He blinked away haze and saw three men, didn't know the faces, and then they clicked into focus. Of course, from last night. Two of them pinned in the beam of his flashlight as they held Justine between them like a particularly delicious wishbone, ready to pull.

The man let go of his hair and the one holding him shoved him, hard, tripping him in the process. He went down hard on asphalt, scraped skin from his palms and hit his head hard enough to daze him. Tasted blood.

"Run away," the man jeered behind him. "We don't want your scrawny gringo ass. But the woman's ours. We owe her something."

They laughed, all of them. One of them thrust his hips, holding an imaginary partner by the throat. Wesley spat blood and stared at them. Just men, all of them. He'd fought demons and vampires and worse, much worse, but here was the full ugliness of the human race. He knew these men. He knew them because Billy Blimm had once forced him to be one.

"Run away, little man," the taller one said, and stamped his booted foot at Wesley, like he might run off an annoying dog. "Even a skinny piece of shit like you can get another bitch. This one's not worth dying for."

"You afraid we kill her? We won't," the other added. More laughter. "We just break her wide open so she could fuck a horse and never feel it. ¿Comprende? Maybe you like 'em that way. You Americans are crazy, anyway."

He wiped blood from his mouth and got slowly to his feet. He didn't know what was on his face, but whatever it was, it wiped the grins off of theirs.

"Actually," he said in his most reasonable voice, "I'm not a bloody American. But on behalf of my colonial cousins, why don't you all bugger off before I have to dismember your bodies and hide the pieces?"

No grins now. No mercy, either.

"Kill him," the one in the center said.

And it began.

###

When she squeezed the last of the hot water out of the pipes, Justine shut off the faucets and stepped out to scrub herself raw with the thin sandpapery towels. A cold shower would be just what the Brit deserved, anyway. And she had to get the feel of other men's hands off her skin or she was going to have to strangle somebody.

It was suspiciously quiet beyond the bathroom door. She toweled her hair into a tousled mess and listened for a few seconds. Wondered what he was doing. Maybe he'd gone back to bed. Maybe he was lying there listening to the running water, thinking about her naked --

Dear Penthouse, she thought, disgusted with herself. Jesus, he was just a guy. She'd slept with better-looking men; she'd killed nicer ones. It wasn't like she needed him or anything. Except that there was something in those midnight-blue eyes that made her want to be -- someone else.

"Shut the fuck up," she growled at herself, and swung open the bathroom door. Better to get this over with now, before it all got too complicated, before she made it something it wasn't and could never be. Screw him, forget him. That was the plan.

Except he was gone. Front door open on a square of harsh desert light.

She darted over to where her clothes were draped, dragged on what she needed and dispensed with what she didn't. Gun -- she needed that. Stakes. Holy water.

She jammed battered sneakers on her feet and ran outside, into a hot parking lot where sand blew in waves across the cracked tarmac. Wesley's car was still there, and there was blood on the pavement near it. Not much, but she had an eye for that kind of thing. She dragged a finger through it and stared at the red smear.

Fresh. It didn't take blood long to draw insects, and to burn dry in this heat.

Somebody had Wesley, and dammit, she needed him if she was ever going to get Daniel Holtz back from Quar-toth. Son of a …

Instinct tightened the skin on the back of her neck, and she rolled forward in a dive that wrenched hard at her sore shoulder. No way to know what was behind her, except it wasn't likely to be a vampire in full sun. She continued the roll sideways, got her knee under her and came up ready to fight.

Wesley fell into her. She caught him awkwardly, fists still clenched, and his weight overbalanced her back onto the pavement. She protected her head by turning instinctively on her shoulder, which sent a bolt of white shooting pain through her to warn her she was pushing her luck.

"Jesus!" she spat, and shoved him off her with one hand, scuttling backward at the same time. Wesley rolled limply over on his back. Breathing, at least. Eyes open, blind blue staring at the sun. She stopped her retreat, staring at him, then came back. Cautiously. He didn't move. She put out one hand and touched him. His eyes slowly blinked.

"Still alive," he whispered. A trickle of blood escaped his mouth and chased red over skin mottled pale blue, hematomas that would be bruises in minutes. He startled her by making a sound that might have even been laughter. "You poncy bastards. Can't even kill me properly."

Instinct was all over her again, driving pins and needles down her spine; she took her hand away from Wesley and focused on the shadows, the ones thrown ahead of her by the morning sun.

Three men coming up behind her. Three she could see. One of them made a comment in Spanish; she didn't get the content, but the context was pretty plain when the other two laughed. She knew the laugh, had heard it from the lips of a hundred predators. Human, vampire, didn't matter. They all had the same cold, dark laughter, the false glitter of humor over teeth.

She saw the shadow of something blunt raised behind her, took a hot second to calculate, and then pivoted on a knee and a bracing hand. Her foot smashed into the bend of the closest man's knee. He toppled sideways into his friend, and she let momentum spin her farther, pushed up, came to her feet light and free and ready to fight.

A tire iron caught her squarely on the side of her head.

She had no memory of the impact, only of falling; no pain when she hit, just a vast confusion as to where gravity was taking her. Two seconds later, maybe three, she opened her eyes and saw the man leaning over her. He was familiar. Under the cuts and bruises, she saw the man she and Wesley had put down the night before at the bar. She heard a phantom Daniel Holtz whisper in his warm, seductive voice, I taught you better than to leave an enemy breathing behind you, Justine.

She was still trying to think what to say to that when the man raised the tire iron again and she knew, knew deep in her guts, that he was going to smash her skull open and batter her face into a stew of blood and bone, she could see it in his eyes, she recognized the hungry lust of it. Move, she begged her body. It fumbled at the rough asphalt instead, like a punch-drunk boxer fighting the earth.

"Excuse me." Wesley's voice. She blinked and saw drag himself to his knees, brace himself with one hand. "She's no good to you dead. Or to me, come to think of it."

"Stay down, you stupid pig," the man with the tire iron snarled.

Wesley got to his feet. She had no idea how he managed it, but he did; he wiped blood from his mouth and gestured to the man with the tire iron. "Make me."

The other two flanked him, pinning him in the center of the triangle.

As the weapon swung at him, he stepped into it, caught the blow on his arm, kicked back at the second man and got him squarely on the kneecap with enough force to crunch bone. Justine shivered at the scream; it poured adrenaline over her like cold water, and she forced muscles and nerves to work together. She got up to her knees, dug in the waistband of her jeans and found the hard smooth weight of the only weapon she needed for this fight.

Dizziness rushed over her. She wavered, blinked, felt death rushing close enough to brush her with his dark wings. Fucking head wound, just what I need.

When the world steadied again, heartbeats later, Wesley was down. So were two of the other men. The third -- the one with the tire iron -- raised it over Wesley's head for a killing blow.

Justine fired the gun. The shock jammed her shoulder hard enough to steal her breath, but she stayed focused as blood misted out of the man's back. He stiffened, stumbled, dropped the tire iron and spun around to face her.

"Puta," he whispered. He went yellow-pallid. "Fucking whore. I'm going to fuck you with a shovel before I -- "

She shot him once more, cleanly, between the eyes. "Before you what, motherfucker?" she asked the dead body as it fell, and turned the gun on the other one, who was crawling away and dragging his shattered leg behind. "How about you?"

The man cursed under his breath and kept crawling. She almost shot him anyway, but then someone touched her, gently, and she knew it was Wesley as much by the feel of him as by the sight.

"Don't," he said.

"Give me a reason not to. Give me a fucking reason." She didn't feel anything except cold satisfaction, but she was trembling, hair-trigger ready to kill.

"Because I hurt too much to clean up your mess," he said. "Please."

She snapped the safety back on and holstered the gun at her back.

"Get in the car," he ordered. "We can't stay here now."

"No shit." She dabbed at her head, found blood and sharp grating pain. "You okay to drive?"

"Better than you, it appears." He went on a couple of steps, looked back when she didn't follow. "What the hell are you doing?"

She dropped to one knee next to the dead man and stuck a hand in his trouser pockets. Nothing much to show for it -- a few hundred pesos, a photograph she didn't look at because she didn't want to know she'd just killed a father, a husband, a son.

"Robbing the dead, what the hell does it look like? Shut up and get in the car. If we're running, we'd better have gas money."

He didn't argue. She rolled the second man, still unconscious on the ground, and got even less for her troubles. That left the wounded one.

"Take it!" he spat, and shoved money toward her. "Crazy bitch gringa."

She gave him a wild, hard smile and shoved the cash in her pocket. "Better fucking believe it. Now … where do we find the Dead Church?"

###

I can do this. Sure. No problem.

Cordelia looked down at her handiwork, which was not all that handy -- she'd never really paid much attention in arts and crafts. Arts and crafts, in her back-then-opinion, had been for pudgy girls with thick glasses and no sense of style.

At least the circle looked circular. That was kind of important, Willow had emphasized. Just to make sure, Cordelia had hammered a nail into the center of the much-abused kitchen floor, tied a three-foot string to it, and marked out the circle the old-fashioned way. She'd chalked it in just the way Willow had said, but now that it came down to the nasty part she was started to rethink.

She transferred the phone to her right shoulder and reached for the sealed container with her left. The contents sloshed slowly, too thickly. Ugh.

"You're sure it has to be blood?" she asked. "Okay, I know you said blood and I know, you meant real blood, it's just ..."

"Blood," Willow confirmed. She sounded farther away than just Sunnydale, or maybe that was Cordelia's imagination. "Accept no substitute. Well, I mean, the Powers you're dealing with won't. Accept substitutes. They're all about the bodily fluids."

This was not going to be pretty. Cordelia held the container at arm's length and popped off the top.

"Got blood," she confirmed. "Oh yeah, definitely with the blood. It's pretty old, though. Past its sell-by date." She tried not to think about the word clotting. "Doesn't have to be fresh, right?"

"Uh, no, old's good. They like old. Now, just pour it over the chalk outlines."

It poured out in a yak-inducing splat, and Cordelia almost dropped the phone. "Ummm ... this part doesn't have to be really neat, does it?"

"No, they like splatter. Just not, you know, Jackson Pollack or anything."

"They like splatter," Cordelia sighed. "Too much information there, let me tell ya. Okay, splattering away. Hang on."

It took about a minute to splash the dark-red, sticky stuff all over the floor -- more or less in a non-Jackson-Pollacky circle -- and by the time it was over Cordelia was wishing she'd worn something more blood-resistant, and had thought about a gas mask. She coughed, choked, and swallowed a taste she didn't want to think about.

"Done," she said into the phone. "Candles?"

"Five black candles at the points of the pentagram. Plus two you hold, one in each hand. Um, Cordelia?"

"Hang on, I'm putting you on speaker." She pushed the button and set the phone on the counter. Black candles, raided from one of those dusty shops Wesley had dragged her into ... they had a sticky, greasy feel to them, and God only knew what they smelled like because she couldn't smell a thing, her nose had gone numb.

"Don't forget the talismans!" Willow said, too loudly. "You're channeling a lot of power, here, make sure you -- "

"Yeah, talismans I got. I've got so many talismans around my neck, I look like I'm from South Central. Anything else I should know?"

"I should talk to Angel. About what to do when, you know, he gets there."

"Which I would so love you to do, only he's in the bathroom," Cordelia lied brightly. She had no qualms about the lying, not to Willow, not today. Okay, she never had qualms about lying to Willow, but that was another thing entirely. "I need to get this finished. What else?"

"Well, tell him that when he goes through the portal he'll need to be ready to fight, because there's all kinds of -- he does know where he's going, right? 'Cause his last trip to Hell didn't go so well, and Buffy's worried -- "

"Nothing to worry about, we've got his back." God, she was such a good liar it scared her. "Wesley's here, and Lorne, and Fred and Gunn. The whole crew." She held her breath and tried to think about the vision, about what was at stake. Connor. Connor was at stake, and a little discomfort and nauseatingly stinky blood wasn't that big a deal, now, was it? Perspective.

Willow sounded immensely relieved. "That's good. So, light the candles, step inside the circle, light the last two from the five burning already, don't step on the blood or on the chalk, and hang on. Oh, and the weapons would be pretty important."

Weapons. Right. Cordelia looked down at her loaded-down toolbelt -- the biggest hand axe she could safely wield, a sword, stakes, crossbow. She was also wearing about a ton of Kevlar, which sounded good in practice but was making her itch like a fool and there was no way a woman had designed this vest, it felt like a steamroller sitting on top of her breasts.

"Weapons," she said aloud. "Check."

"Lots of weapons. 'Cause going to Hell isn't exactly like a trip to Sacramento -- or wait, maybe it is, remember that field trip -- "

"When Jonathan got chased by the homeless guys through the museum?"

"Who turned out to be kind of Hell-demony."

"Jonathan?"

"Well, no, the homeless guys," Willow amended. "Remember Buffy was late to the bus?"

"Eww, and looked like she'd crawled through the sewer? Oh, wait, she probably did, right?"

"She had to get her ax back," Willow said. "Which makes a cool segue back to the weapons. Well ... I guess we're ready. Can I talk to Wesley? About the chanting part?"

"Bathroom," Cordy said. She was busy making sure the crossbow was ready to fire.

"I thought Angel was in the bathroom."

"Oh! Right! Well ... two bathrooms. No waiting."

"Fine, I'll talk to Fred." Willow sounded firmer. Also more suspicious. "No, wait, let me guess, she's in the bathroom with Angel?"

Willow had gotten way too much with the insight, these days. Cordelia manufactured some mouth-static and said, "Oh, we're breaking up -- sorry -- see you!"

She hung up. No goodbyes. Nobody in the Scooby Gang, whether ex or current, was good at saying goodbye, because they all knew it might be final. Naturally, it started to ring again, but she put the phone down and ignored it.

She clicked the Aim 'n Flame and lit the five black candles, picked up the last two, and stepped into the circle. She bent to light the last two candles, and the second they caught fire she felt energy sweep around her like an invisible wind.

This is it.

She opened her mouth to start the chant ...

... and discovered she didn't need it, after all, as the world disappeared around her.

###

 

The phone rang, out in the lobby of the Hyperion, but Angel didn't consider moving to get it. Fred and Gunn were here, and Lorne flitted in and out … and the phone wasn't important. None of that was important now. Connor was gone, an empty place in his arms and in his heart. And …

… and Cordelia was as good as gone, too. He'd reached for that beautiful light and he'd fallen, fallen so far into the dark that she might as well have been a distant, unreachable star.

Just like with Buffy, he'd let himself feel too much. He'd lost himself in the sensation of warm silk skin, the sharp, urgent scent of need. All the anger, all the pain, all the desperation -- he hadn't been strong enough.

It wasn't only bliss that could break Angelus' chains. Rage was even more dangerous. He couldn't afford anger now, or loss, or even love. He had to become what he'd been before -- alone, untouched, untouching. That was the only way he could be sure he would never hurt her again.

"Angel?" Fred's soft, Texas-blurred voice. "You in there?"

He didn't answer. He was in the dark, of course, sitting in a straight-backed chair with his hands resting on his thighs. Eyes closed. Thinking of nothing but the Void.

It was a long way from the Hyperion. A long way from memories.

"Angel?" She was closer. Light blazed. He kept silent, kept dark, kept the Void close. "Angel, can you hear me?"

She wasn't going away. She was touching him now, even though he'd made it clear he didn't want to be touched, ever. Warm female hand against his marble-cold face. "God, you're freezing! Not that you're usually warm, but ... Angel?"

He'd almost forgotten how to speak. When he finally was able to move his lips enough to make sound, he was gratified to hear himself say, "Go away."

"Well, look, that's not gonna happen," she said. "You've got a phone call. From Sunnydale."

As much as he tried, he couldn't break that tie. Sunnydale, and Buffy. He'd be living with that, or the memory of that, the rest of his long undead life. Too bad. He didn't need more acid poured in open wounds, not now. Buffy had died. The hardest thing he'd ever faced in his life had been a world without her, until he'd lost Connor. The mourning stayed with him, even though he'd seen her, touched her, knew she was breathing again.

He didn't think he could stand to hear her voice right now, not with Cordelia's blood still a memory in his mouth.

"Buffy?" he whispered. He hadn't meant to say her name, but there was some part of him that couldn't ever be controlled on that score.

"No, it's Willow. She sounds upset, I think you'd better -- "

He was up and moving past her before he had any conscious intention to do it. Lorne and Gunn were having a conversation near the weapons cabinet, but they shut up and turned to look as he stalked over to the counter, picked up the phone, and said, "What's happened to her?" He knew his voice sounded harsh, but it was less from anger than from disuse. He cleared his throat. "Willow?"

"Angel! She's in trouble!" Willow sounded half-frantic, and Angel felt that ill-defined sense of dread get stronger. Buffy was always in trouble, but her friends didn't usually make long distance calls to tell him about it.

"What kind of trouble?" Please, not the kind that kills.

"Look, she kind of lied to me, she said you were all together and she wouldn't be the one to step into the circle. But she was the one, right? Because I can't get her on the phone, and when I did the locator spell I couldn't find her -- "

"Slow down, Willow." He wished he had a heart, wished he could hear it pound; without it, dread just made his chest ache like an empty socket without a tooth. "You're not talking about Buffy."

"Buffy? No! No, Buffy's -- well, it's not Buffy." Willow pulled in a deep breath. "It's Cordelia. She said you wanted the ritual for opening a portal to a hell dimension -- "

He understood, then, completely, with a sickening click of connection that was like something breaking inside. "No," he whispered. "She couldn't be that stupid."

Willow was silent. He could feel how wretched she was, how much she hated to admit her own mistake. "I told her how to do it," she finally said. "She told me she was just getting everything set up for you to do it, I swear, if I'd known ...I tried to call back, but her phone just rings. I think -- "

She was talking to empty air. He was already gone, running for the car and leaving the rest of them to scramble after him.

###

Justine opened her eyes, squinted at the setting sun, and opened her mouth.

"I swear, if you ask how much longer a drive it is, I will knock you unconscious," Wesley snapped. "One hour since the last time you asked. I trust you can do the math."

"Excuse me for living, head injury?" Actually, it was just a concussion, nothing much; she'd dry-swallowed aspirin at the same time she'd forced more pain pills down Wesley. Doing drugs together. Ah, the bonding. "Looks different."

"Yes. We've crossed from desert into a more tropical zone. According to the map, we're still about four hours from the turnoff. Roads won't be this good after that."

"Yeah, and this one's a real prize." Narrow, curving, choked with oil-spewing rustbuckets and blocked by the occasional flock of sheep. At least they weren't going to run out of gas. Wesley had taken the precaution of filling up four industrial-sized cans; they were in the trunk next to the arsenal of weapons and what was left of their luggage. Even Wesley was down to his last change of clothes. She was starting to look back on her time with Holtz as living in the lap of luxury. "How're you holding up?"

He didn't answer. In the full glare of the late afternoon sun, he looked bad -- pale, unshaved, bruised where he wasn't scraped. The scar on his throat looked more prominent than usual. If he had broken bones, he was keeping it to himself; she was more worried about internal injuries, but he'd have passed out by now if they'd ruptured his spleen or something.

"Drink your juice," he said. That was orange juice from the carton, pure Minute Maid from a dusty little store a few hours back. The label was in Spanish but it tasted just the same. She gulped some down, passed him the carton. He shook his head. "How much money did our friends donate?"

"About three thousand pesos." More than enough for the next week, maybe two if they lived on the cheap.

"Good." He turned the wheel and bumped them from pavement to a rutted dirt track overhung with tropical scrub. There was another motel up ahead, she saw. Not any better than the last one, but the prospect of a bed and a shower sounded unexpectedly welcome. "I need rest."

"You need a hospital," she said, and caught the edge of a rare, cynical smile.

"Look who's talking."

Money changed hands. The proprietor gave them a key to the third room on the row; unpainted cinderblocks outside, she swung the door open on a bare, clean room with a sagging bed, a single lamp, a round side table, and a tiny black-and-white TV.

Wesley went straight for the bed and collapsed onto it, staring up at the ceiling. She shut the door, locked it, and checked out the curtains for any sign of movement. Nothing. The whole place looked deserted. Now all they had to worry about was an ambush by the old guy who'd checked them in. She didn't discount the possibility.

"What are you doing?" Wesley's voice was thick with weariness. She took the gun from the back of her waistband and checked the ammunition. One round expended, one in the chamber, nine more in the clip. Probably should clean it, but she was fresh out of cloths and oil. A strip off her shirt would probably do …

"What's it look like?"

He put an arm over his eyes. "Looks like you're spending time with your best friend."

She put the gun down, changed her mind, picked it up and brought it over to the bed. It was clichéd to put it under the pillow, but she wasn't afraid of a cliché or two. "Actually, I have a couple of knives pretty near and dear to my heart. And at least one stake."

"I don't suppose the phallic nature of that has occurred to you."

"Shut up and rest."

She cleaned the gun as best she could, given the lack of tools, and as she set it aside under the pillow she realized she was just about as tired as she'd ever been. She sat down on the bed and gravity did the rest; she kicked off her shoes, skinned out of her jeans without getting up again. Wesley didn't move. She checked him and found his eyes closed, his breathing deep and regular. Poor bastard hadn't even taken off his shoes.

She got up and slid them off for him.

Which was as far as she needed to go. But then ...

What the hell? It isn't like I haven't seen it all before.

She untied the drawstring of his sweat pants and started to slide them off. They slid a couple of inches, just far enough to give her an interesting glimpse of pale skin and a luxuriant growth of dark hair, and then his left hand grabbed hold and halted the progress.

"Leave it," he murmured.

"No underwear? My, my. Aren't you just the rebel."

More force this time. "I said leave it, Justine."

She let go. He pulled them back up to his waist. She got back into bed, slid under the thin sheets, and closed her eyes. God, her head pounded. Trying to sleep just made it seem worse. Still, her muscles were grateful for a release of tension, an excuse to go loose for a change.

If only she could sleep. Forget for a little while. Heal. She envied these Slayers Wesley had talked about, the ones who could shrug off a head injury here, a cracked rib there. Damage accumulated for her, and painkillers and uppers could only do so much to counter that.

The bed creaked. She cracked an eyelid and saw that Wesley was getting up. He braced himself for a long moment, looking pale and drawn, and then walked slowly into the bathroom.

Ah. His turn for the shower. The sound of running water lulled her into a light trance, and while she was in that warm, safe place she had a flash of his body naked under the water, those long, lean legs, narrow hips, those deceptively dense muscles on his chest and arms ...

She punched the pillow. Jesus. You'd think nearly being raped twice in two days would put her off the subject, but no. Now that she had that image in her head, she didn't think she could ever move it offstage again.

He just got himself beaten for you, you ungrateful bitch. And now you want more? She was almost ashamed of herself. Almost

This time, when she closed her eyes, she didn't see the fantasy. She remembered reality. She saw him climbing to his feet with blind, focused intensity to face the men who had almost killed him. He could have stayed down. Could have let them have her.

That heart-stopping look of courage ... she craved it as much as the touch of his skin. She wanted that feeling that she was worth that risk. Devotion. How did you start being worth something like that?

The water shut off. She closed her eyes and tried to think about sleep, but the rustle of cloth in the bedroom distracted her down deep, wakened heat and moisture and longing that made her breath come quicker and her body hum.

He opened the bathroom door. She couldn't help it, she looked.

And kept looking. He was naked except for a thin towel held around his hips ... so much to see she couldn't take it all in at once. Water beaded on his skin, caught and shimmering in the curls that started on his chest and wandered seductively beneath the towel.

Bruises. Lots of darkening bruises on his ribs, his chest, his legs.

She sat up, watching him; he didn't speak. After a while, she said, "You never told me why."

"Why what?" He'd put his glasses aside. Without them, his eyes were almost too blue to be real.

"Why you didn't walk away. You said you would, the next time."

He considered it in silence for a heartbeat. "Apparently, I lied." He didn't move toward her. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Justine ... "

"Daniel would have," she said flatly. "If it had been a choice between him and me ... there wouldn't have been any choice. It wouldn't matter what they did to me before, during or after. He'd have turned his back and gone."

Still watching her with those tired, perfectly steady eyes. "I hope by now you know I'm not Daniel Holtz."

She just nodded. For long seconds neither of them moved, pinned in place by the feeling that was vibrating the air between them, humming under their skin.

"Would you rather I was?" he asked. His voice was deeper, rougher, slower.

"I'd rather you were over here," she whispered. It was the single bravest thing she'd ever said to him, because it wasn't cool, it wasn't mocking, it wasn't meant to hurt.

Because it was true.

She wasn't sure which of them moved, or how, but somehow they met in the cool silent middle, lips meeting and melting, a gentle hot kiss that lingered and deepened and grew. He had lips like silk, lips that knew how to make love to her without forcing or demanding, and she let herself be robbed of strength for the first time in her memory. He pressed her back to the bed.

"You should be resting," she whispered, and felt his smile against her lips.

"And you shouldn't? Want to compare scars and bruises?"

"Later."

When his hands touched her skin she shivered, ached, wanted to feel them everywhere, all at once. Ten fingers drew lines of heat over her shoulders, down her arms, then cupped the weight of her breasts in warmth. She gasped into his mouth as his thumbs gently traced the hardening points of her nipples.

"Shhhh," he whispered, and put his tongue there, tracing a slow circle around the thickening flesh, then taking one in his mouth. She shuddered and arched her back, wanting -- wanting -- she couldn't even put words to the things she wanted. Only for that liquid golden heat to continue. The scrape of his beard against tender flesh was almost unbearably intense.

Her hands were above her head now, grabbing the rusted iron rails of the headboard; she felt Wesley's hands travel up the long lines of her arms, then back down as his lips teased and his teeth nipped. When he blew gently on the slick wet skin she couldn't hold back a tormented moan. He whispered words against her skin. Magic. It felt like magic, pulsing under her skin.

Wesley raised his head to look at her, and close up those eyes were deadly in their focus. She was panting, shaking, almost crying from the force of the storm inside. It felt so shatteringly good to have a man's strength against her, not to wound but to worship.

"Trust me?" He made it a question. She managed to nod, somehow. Words had abandoned her completely. "Relax."

His hand touched her bare leg, chased goosebumps slowly up her thighs. She felt hot sparks of pain as his palm brushed discolored bruises, but it was distant sense-memory, unimportant as the idea that the sun might burn itself out in a few million years.

He slid his hand between her legs. Slowly. Gently. Moved it up ...

She froze.

She couldn't open for him. Couldn't. Felt the hot burn of panic start deep in her guts. Oh God no ...

The bruises on her thighs were suddenly white-hot, aching, fresh, and she could feel their hands on her, feel their strength wrenching her legs apart, their hands --

She must have made some sound because he stopped, moved his hand away, brought both up to cup her face. His wide eyes were guilt-stricken.

"What did I -- "

"I couldn't stop them," she blurted, and buried her face in the damp skin of his neck. Shaking. Shaking as if she might fly apart. "I couldn't. All my training, I couldn't stop a couple of stupid drunken bastards from taking me by surprise and posing me like a doll and God it was so fucking humiliating, you don't know how ... I let them -- "

"No. No, you didn't let them," he said, and his eyes commanded her to believe it. "You lost. That's why it's important you don't fight alone. The two of us could have stopped it -- "

"Stopped it?" She laughed and it came out wrong, it came out bad, it brought all the darkness bubbling up from the sticky unclean bottom of her soul. "Why in the hell would you want to? Why not cheer them on? Why not wait until they're done and take your turn and then cut my fucking throat, you stupid bastard, it was your chance, don't you get it, it was your chance to hurt me like I'd hurt you -- God, how could you do this to me, how could you make me feel …"

She couldn't go on, the tears were in the way, shattering her into pieces. He held her so close she knew every line of him, every inch of velvet skin and hard muscle, and she felt the mercy of it break her heart in two.

"No," he whispered. His breath stirred her hair and was a caress on her flesh. "Enough. Let it go."

"I can't." She put a trembling hand out to rest over the red scar on his throat. "This isn't a fairy tale. We're just a couple of fucked-up left-behind losers. Don't trust me because I will let you down, understand? I can't help it, that's what I do, let people down."

"You too?" He stroked her hair back from her face. "Welcome back to the human race, then. This is all the reward there is, Justine. Moments where we forget."

She had wrapped her arms around him, instinctive as a wounded child, but now she relaxed a little and put some space between them a her heartbeat slowed from a panicked race to just a steady, heightened rhythm. Moments where we forget. She'd been looking for that for a long time -- in the bottom of a glass, in a hit of meth, in a handful of tranquilizers and oblivion.

And now all she had to do was trust.

His breath caught unsteadily when she put her hands flat against his warm, damp skin and began to read his body with her fingertips. Old scars, here and there. The warm tactile blur of hair softening hard planes of muscle. Marks of experience, of survival, of pain.

He made a sound deep in his throat when her slow-searching fingers brushed the hard velvet heat of his erection, and every muscle in him tensed toward her when she folded her palm around it. She felt the strong, racing beat of his heart move faster.

"Help me forget," she said, and tasted his mouth again. His tongue touched and twined with hers, and she drank in the taste of him, the musky rich smell. This time, when his hands asked for entrance between her legs she relaxed.

Fingers drew a hot shivering line up the inside of her thigh. They touched the damp curls of her pubic hair, found the aching slick center of her, dipped gently into that moisture and then moved on to begin a slow hot assault on the bud of her clitoris. She pushed her hips into him and felt him respond; his fingers probed and lightly pinched and stroked until she was trembling and desperate from the force of it.

"I want to taste you," he said, and her eyes flew open again, blind with pleasure. "Say yes."

"Yes." It came out unsteady. She didn't want to let go of him, wanted to keep touching and stroking, but the idea had sent a bolt of pure lust through her like nothing she'd ever felt. "Yes, God yes."

His mouth was back on her nipples now, and she reached for the iron steadiness of the headboard, shackling herself as he slid down her body, lips and tongue tracing a warm wet trail on her skin down to where his fingers still played. She opened wider for him, bracing her knees apart.

When his bent his head down his eyes stayed on hers, fierce and bright and challenging. She felt the cooling, shivering touch of his breath first, then the burning-hot caress of his lips, the rough sweet brush of his tongue on her enflamed flesh. She jerked hard enough to rattle the iron bars, cried out. He licked and lapped and sucked, probing with his tongue, slipping two fingers into her wetness. She felt herself thrown helplessly higher on the wave of her pleasure, all the way to the blinding sun, and she came, shuddering, in a spasm so intense it went on and on and on like the sea, carrying her far away.

Moments where we forget.

She wanted him inside of her with an intensity that shocked all the thoughts into silence. As if he knew that, he moved up her body again, and this time when she reached for him she felt the warm bead of moisture at the tip; she smoothed it over with her palm, spread it slick over the soft velvet head. She wished she had time to taste him, too, but she knew what they both needed now. Release. Absolute, final release.

She gasped when he slid inside, kissed him and tasted herself there, faintly bitter and oddly sweet. It had been a long time, and she felt exquisitely tight; he groaned and she felt shudders ripple through him. He was fighting an urge, she knew. Fighting away an urge to plunge into her hard, let himself go.

So she told him it was all right, whispers in his ear, hands on his hips, her body rising up to meet his, and then it was a blur of sweet, hot friction, sweat gliding down their bodies, racing hearts. Yes, faster. His eyes were closed. He opened them and the drugged beauty of what was in them made her lunge harder against him, want to bury him in her all the way, deep enough to hurt. She was crying out to him now, every stroke of his body against hers, as if it was torture instead of the purest pleasure she'd ever felt. Please …

She didn't even know what she was asking for until she felt him push deeper, hold hard in her, shuddering. Felt the warm sticky unraveling deep within and wanted it to go on, wanted the moment to never end.

He collapsed on top of her, gasping, but still moving, still moving in her until she came again, arching against him as the tide threw her higher, and higher, to the white flare of complete release.

Quiet. Aching, tender quiet. This was the quietest place in the world, just now.

Then he began to laugh. When he lifted his head to look at her, she saw raw delight in his eyes.

"What?" she challenged. There was an unfamiliar warm champagne feeling inside her, something she barely recognized. Joy.

He traced the line of her cheek with one finger.

"Just thinking what your side and mine would have to say about this."

She captured his hand in hers. Strong, both of them. Capable of anything.

"Who says we have a side?"

###

"First, can I say this is a bad idea?" Gunn asked. He handed Angel a hand axe, which Angel tucked one-handed into his coat pocket, steering with the other. "And am I gonna sound like a wimp if I ask you to slow down?"

"Yes," Angel said.

"No," Lorne and Fred said, simultaneously. Lorne craned to look over his shoulder at the speedometer. "Uh, muffin, that's just a leetle too fast even for the Autobahn, much less Sunset. And you haven't told us -- "

"Cordelia went after Connor," Angel said. Streetlights and neon whipped by in a blur; a light changed to yellow ahead, and he floored the convertible to blast through on orange. "She got Willow to tell her how to make a portal. Somehow, she found out how to get to Quar-toth."

In the back seat, Fred audibly gasped. Angel glanced in the rear view -- one thing he'd always been grateful for, his lack of reflection made it easier to see what was going on back there – and saw her clutch Gunn's hand in a death-grip. She'd been trapped in a demon dimension. He could see the terror sweeping through her, dragging her back to memories she wanted buried.

Well, she wasn't the only one. His memories kept rising from the dead, too. The ones he most wanted to avoid were the ones that crowded close ... agony, endless, searing agony while things capered and laughed at his pain, while he forgot who he was and what he'd once loved.

One difference. He'd deserved his summer in Hell. Cordelia didn't.

"I'm hoping you have some other plan than 'let's all go to the fiery pit of evil,'" Lorne said somberly. "Not that I'm not all about going to the muffin's rescue."

"Not us," Angel said. "Me. I'm going to get her. The three of you need to keep the portal open. Willow can help. Whatever you do, don't let it close."

"Uh ... correct me if I take an offramp, but if we keep the portal open, doesn't that mean things can come through it other than you and Cordelia? 'Cause I've seen some of those Hell-beasties back at Caritas, and believe me, Cordy's not going to thank you for inviting them into her -- "

"Lorne," Angel interrupted. "Shut up."

"Sorry. I babble when I'm nervous, sweet potato, it's just that I -- "

"Lorne."

"Sorry." Lorne turned toward him, red eyes almost strobing black and red in the passing streetlights. "I'm scared for her."

"I know. So am I." Angel pressed the gas and rocketed through a red light.

###

Cordelia's apartment reeked of death. Even Angel, unbreathing, could barely stand it; Fred folded up like a paper doll at the front door, eyes streaming, chest heaving; Lorne made it exactly three steps in, then turned a paler shade than usual and ran for the exit.

Gunn came all the way to the kitchen, but he was swallowing convulsively and hiding his nose in the sleeve of his jacket. He'd mumbled something that sounded to Angel like a protest, but Angel didn't listen. He was looking at the floor.

Cordelia's artistic-rather-than-precise protective designs overlaid older, darker bloodstains. Cordelia's blood, a week old, souvenir of their night of -- what could you call it? Love? Abuse? Mutual mortification?

He ripped his gaze away from it and saw that all the candles had snuffed out. Easy enough to repair. He reached for the phone sitting on the kitchen counter and hit redial.

Willow picked up on the first ring. "Cordelia?"

"It's us," Angel said. "She's gone. The portal's closed, but it looks like I can reopen it with the candles."

"Yeah, just light them. There'll be wind, but I can chant to keep them going." She was tense, but businesslike. "You're sure she ..."

"I'm sure." He wished he wasn't, but the stench in the apartment confirmed that she'd opened the doorway at least once. "Hang on."

Gunn took his sleeve away from his nose long enough to say, "Don't got any fresh air spells, do you? 'Cause it's pretty much rancid around here."

"Um, I'm not supposed to ..." Willow said. Angel could almost see that little frown between her eyes, the one she got when asked to do something patently illegal. Just before she rationalized that doubt out of existence ... "Sure! Here it comes!" Cheer in her voice; Willow was never quite so happy as when she was being useful. He felt a strong wind stir his hair and tug at his coat. "How's that?"

Gunn carefully sniffed. "Not so bad. Thanks."

"No problem."

Angel took the lighter from the counter where Cordelia had placed it, looked at Gunn ... at Lorne, who was helping Fred into the kitchen.

"Be ready," he said. "This is going to get ugly."

"It's already pretty much on the putrid side," Fred answered. Angel fixed her with a look. "I mean, okay. We're okay."

Angel nodded and flicked the lighter. He lit all the candles but the two lying on their sides inside the circle, then reached in a retrieved them.

"Willow," he ordered. On cue, she started a low, droning chant, nothing he had ever heard, that sent crackles of power up and down his spine. When had she come into that much knowledge? How much was it costing her? He backed off ... one problem at a time. "I'm going."

"Luck," Gunn said, and took a firmer grip on his axe. "Bring Barbie back, man."

Angel touched the wicks of the two black candles in his hands to one of those already burning ...

... and Hell sucked him down.

###

 

Hell was familiar. Old home week, reeking of rot and burning flesh. Angel shut his ears to the screams and the pain, willed himself not to acknowledge any of the memories that kept struggling to surface like vampires clawing out of a grave. The landscape stretched on, flat and featureless, an endless pain of ash and despair and blood-hot red light. Shadows everywhere, moving at the corners of his eyes. The only good thing about Hell was that everybody saw it differently, so whatever horrors stalked out there were for some other poor bastard.

Where was Cordelia? She couldn't have gone far, could she? She's part demon, something reminded him, and he felt a little tingle of unease. What happened to part demons in Hell, anyway? He knew what happened to him – permanent game face, the urge to rend and kill perilously close to the surface. A panicked fury gouged at him like a tiger in his stomach.

Something caught his eye in the distance. Something ...

Something radiant.

He wasn't the only one moving that direction. There were other things heading that way, twisted, dark, shadowy things. Some limped, some ran, some crawled, but they were all moving toward it. He let himself be drawn in; it wasn't hard, there was something very ... attractive about it. In the literal sense of the word.

The glow got brighter the closer he approached. Most of the Hell-beasts fought the pull, pulling back like cattle being driven to the slaughter, heads lowered – but whatever drew them was so strong it didn't need their cooperation as it dragged them closer, blinded and whimpering. He felt the light like a pressure all over his skin, like hands exploring him. Squinting against the brilliance, trying to see beneath that veil of light.

It was so ... beautiful. Unbelievably beautiful. There was no room for anything else next to it, not pain, although pain ripped through him in continuous, nauseating waves; not fear, although some powerless part of him was drowning in it. It was like drowning in cream, being crushed under smooth, perfect pearls. A sensation so gut-level orgasmic that it reduced every pleasure he'd ever known to bare whispers. Whatever this was, it stripped away all the confusion, reduced it to one simple, profound priority.

I need.

And then he caught the outline of a face, familiar as a dream.

"Cordelia?" he blurted, blocking the glare with his hand. He could barely see her, in the center of that radiance, but she was unearthly, stunningly gorgeous ... he'd seen supernaturally beautiful women, and God knew Cordelia had always been as close to physically perfect as it was possible for a woman to get, but this ...

He was in the presence of something ... divine. And it was destroying him, burning him away in a rush of utter joy. Destroying everything it brushed with its pure white wings, and it was like being burned in a crucible, being distilled down to the most basic essences. Dissolving into light.

"Angel," she whispered. Her voice was rich with music, deep as the ocean. Warm as the sun that burns. "I see you. Cold flesh and fire burning, all that da