SUMMARY: Doyle's lost in the land of the dead, and Angel Investigations gets a new case.
RATING: PG-13
CLASSIFICATION: Doyle/Cordelia
DISCLAIMER: "Angel" and all of its characters are actually the property of
Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, the WB, 20th, and Sandollar/Kuzui,
Greenwolf and Mutant Enemy. No infringement is intended.
FEEDBACK: Please don't feed the animals. Please do feed the ego.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This has sorta become a series. "Apparitions" is the first
part. There will be more at some point. Yay. Eternal thanks to Chelle and
Anez for the excellent and ego-inflating beta-reading.

PART 6

Angel sat on the front edge of Cordelia's desk, one thigh resting on the smooth wood with his foot dangling above the floor. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he frowned, his eyebrows drawing together and his head tilting slightly to the side as he regarded his young assistant. Cordelia stood at the window behind her desk, looking out. There was little more than alleys and walls back there, and nothing interesting to look at, but it was obvious that her surroundings were the last things on her mind.

"Cordelia," Angel said, softly. She didn't seem to hear him, her eyes still fixed on something far distant -- most likely, Angel guessed, the past. "Cordelia," he said again, louder this time.

She blinked once, startled, and finally turned away from the window. "Yeah?"

Angel sighed, standing, and stepped toward his own office. "Let's talk."

Hesitating, Cordelia glanced at Wesley, who had claimed the entire couch, himself seated at one end and an array of books spread out along the rest of the cushions. He glanced up from his research of the spirit world long enough to smile encouragingly at her, then he turned his attention away again, muttering to himself as he contemplated the books, clearly fascinated by their contents.

Cordelia smiled back, though Wesley didn't notice, and she followed Angel into the office, the door clicking softly shut behind her.

+++

As an admittedly elitist snob in Sunnydale, Cordelia had been involved in too many staring contests to count. And she'd won them all, though a combination of haughty demeanor and ice-cold determination.

But the ice had thawed since her parents had lost their money, and the attitude had fallen victim to her efforts to survive LA. It'd been a long time since anyone had tried to stare her down. She was out of practice at staring right back.

At least, that was what she told herself to explain the fact that she'd lasted only a few seconds under Angel's intense gaze before averting her eyes.

They sat like that for maybe a minute; he stared at her, and her eyes looked at anything but him. Time stretched out for Cordelia, and she shifted awkwardly in her seat.

"I'm worried about you," Angel said, softly. The concern was easily detectable in his voice.

"I'm fine," she answered, still not looking at him.

"You're not," he countered, and his gaze left her face. He stood, abandoning the chair behind his desk and coming around in front of it, taking the seat next to Cordelia's and leaning over the space between to take her hand. "You're hurting," he said. "That's healthy. But you're getting lost in the past, Cordelia. And I need you in the present."

She abandoned her detailed visual study of the back of his desk clock and her eyes finally met his. "Remember that time Doyle saved me from a vampire? I was going to ask him out for mochas, and then his wife walked in. Remember?"

Angel nodded. Cordelia's fingers gripped his tightly, and her other hand joined in, covering his knuckles. She leaned over the arm of her chair, regarding him intensely.

"I keep thinking," the girl continued. "What if Harry hadn't walked in right then? What if we'd gotten those mochas? What if I'd really given him a chance and listened to what he had to say? What if I'd paid attention to him? What if I'd realized that I felt something for him and that he felt something for me before it was too late for us to do anything about it? And I keep coming back to the same answer with every question."

He didn't have to urge her to go on, but his thumb swept gently over the back of her hand in a small, comforting gesture.

Cordelia bit her lip for just a moment, and tears welled from her eyes, streaming down her cheeks and gathering at her chin. "I could've loved him," she said. "I would have. Deep down, I know it."

In the many days since Doyle had died, Angel couldn't remember Cordelia ever crying in front of him. Not really crying, anyway; there would be tears in her eyes, and a quiver in her lip, but she'd bravely held it in. Somehow she must've known that Angel had needed her strength, at first, to combat his own pain. But he was the strong one now, and it was Cordelia's turn to break down.

Her shoulders shook with her sobs, and the pain of loss twisted her face. Her hands left his to clutch at her stomach as though she were ill, and her hair fell over her face as she dropped her head, pulling in halting breaths.

After a hundred years of guilt and pain, Angel knew exactly what she felt like. She felt the same way he had when he'd walked away from Sunnydale and Buffy. The same way he had when the Oracles had returned the day to him, and the love of his life had walked away, never knowing of the time they'd spent together as human lovers. She felt the same way he had when Doyle's scream had echoed through the cargo hold and their friend had vanished in a flash of killing light.

Angel abandoned his seat only long enough to scoop Cordelia into his arms, and then he sat again, cradling her in his lap. Her legs hung over the chair's arm, and her face burrowed instinctively into his shoulder, her fingers clutching at the material of his shirt.

"It's not fair," she gasped, against his chest. "It's not fair."

He nodded his agreement, his cheek resting against the top of her head, and said nothing. She cried for a few long, agonizing minutes, until her grief left her tired and feeling weak. After taking another moment to compose herself, she slipped gracefully from his embrace.

She grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on his desk and carefully dried her eyes, wiping the tears from her face. "Thanks," she whispered, meeting his eyes somewhat bashfully and offering a small smile.

"Feel better?" he asked, pushing himself up from the chair and giving her some distance by putting his desk between them again.

"About losing Doyle? No. But maybe... about getting on with life. He's not coming back... but I'm stuck here without him, so I may as well forget about what didn't happen and just remember what did. Right?" She smiled again, and Angel smiled back as she straightened her shoulders, lifted her head a bit higher, and exited the office.

Angel slumped into his chair once she was gone, resting his head on folded arms, the tip of his nose touching the surface of his desk. Cordelia's grief made his own pain surge to the surface again, made him want to keep himself hidden away in the office with the lights off, brooding and contemplating the ache in his still heart.

Only a month before, he could've expected the door to open and Doyle to waltz in, inviting himself to take a seat. The young Irishman would've rambled on about getting out and having fun until Angel almost felt like doing just that, or he would've asked about Cordelia until Angel's mind was distracted from his own problems.

But things were much different than they had been a month ago, and now there was no Irishman to lift his spirits; there was only the hole in his life where his friend had been. Without lifting his head, Angel reached on and flicked off the lamp. No cheerful brogue intruded on his depression, and the office remained dark and silent.

PART 7

Doyle had been riding for at least five minutes, and the sisters had been out of sight and out of earshot for three of those before he had the presence of mind to release his death grip on the horse's mane and grab for the reins, which rested further up on the animal's neck. With the strong leather strap in his fingers, he pulled back, gently at first, then harder, until the horse's pace slowed to a trot, and then a walk.

With the flight from certain death no longer on his mind, Doyle's body reminded him of other things: that he was tired, wet, very cold, and now covered head to foot in mud. The freezing rain had become a drizzle, slowly sluicing the mud away and replacing it with a bone-deep chill.  Though it seemed simple enough, Doyle had never ridden a horse before, and his legs were unaccustomed to straddling anything so broad as the large animal's back. But riding was decidedly better than walking, and even if it stretched his legs a bit, that was preferable to slogging through the mud. The horse's large feet handled the terrain effortlessly, and it didn't seem to mind the work.

"Good horse," Doyle praised, with a smile. One hand stretched out to pat the damp side of the animal's muscular neck, and he settled deeper into the saddle with a slight creak of leather.

The trees were quiet, devoid of chirping birds and busy squirrels. But from somewhere in the woods, there was an answering creak, and a sound he'd come to recognize as a horse's footsteps. Frowning and hoping it was only an echo, Doyle shifted in his saddle again. The leather groaned audibly, but no complimentary noise came from the trees, though he could still hear the footsteps of another animal, and more from the other side of the trail. They seemed to be drawing closer.

This time, he didn't even care what was lurking in the darkness. Odds were it wasn't anything good, and he felt that he'd had more than his share of trials lately. He gave the horse a sharp kick, and managed not to tumble back over its rump when it quickly responded, setting off at a fast gallop.

Holding on with his knees again and crouching down over the horse's neck, Doyle quickly found the animal's rhythm and moved in counterpoint, the reins clutched in both hands as he clung to his steed and tried to keep his seat and his cool.

He found the latter to be the more difficult; it was easy enough to stay on the horse, but it was harder not to panic when he heard the flurry of hooves tearing up the trail behind him. He didn't dare to look back, knowing that he definitely would fall off his own horse if he tried. But his pursuers didn't make him look back; their horses were faster, and they were obviously more experienced on horseback. He caught only a glimpse of cloaks and helmeted heads before an armor clad arm shot out, slammed into his chest, and threw him from the saddle.

His body fell backwards, but one foot caught in the stirrup, and he hit the ground mostly head-first on the right side of the horse, which kept running, dragging him along for several paces before his foot slipped free and he finally rolled to a very painful stop. His horse kept going, vanishing into the trees. His attackers did not.

There were two of them, clad entirely in shades of gray and seated on pale gray horses. They blended into the fog like phantoms -- which he supposed they actually were, considering the location. Both were dressed like old English knights, with dull sugarloaf helms and heavy cloaks around their shoulders, casting the rest of their armored bodies in deeper shadow.  Their gloved hands gripped the reins with confidence, and their heels guided their horses with an ease born of experience.

The horses pranced with tightly controlled energy, their feet churning up the earth and coming dangerously close to stepping on Doyle. The knights looked down on him impassively from their much higher perches, and then they drew their swords.

The fall from his horse had left Doyle fairly addled, and he could feel blood streaming down one side of his face. He scrambled to his feet and only the very real need to flee kept his knees from buckling.

"Hey, fellas," he greeted, looking up at the two phantoms and wishing that he could watch their faces instead of the blank metal of their helmets. "We can -- we can talk about this, now, there's no need for bloodshed, yeah?"

Misted breaths came from the horses' mouths and hung in the air, blending with the fog. Then Doyle noticed that thin plumes of mist rolled from the animals' flanks, too, and from the knight's cloaks, and he realized that both riders and mounts were made of the fog. But they were still real enough, and even a dead man like himself could die a bit more permanently.

The horses pranced closer. The swords were raised to the ready. Doyle slowly backed away, only to lose the gained ground again when the knights nudged their horses closer still.

"Really, y'know, I'm already dead, so there's no need to kill me. I'm nothin'; Hell, when I was alive I was nothin'. I'm just a messenger!"

Doyle stumbled over a fallen branch and nearly lost his footing, sure that he was done for. But the horses had stopped advancing, and when Doyle looked up, the knights were sheathing their swords.

When one of them spoke, he couldn't even tell which it was; the voice was deep but insubstantial, as if it had come from the fog itself. "Where do carry tidings, Messenger?"

He stood up straight, pulled back his shoulders, and tried to put on a brave front while his mind frantically searched for a reply. "The... portal," he said, sending a silent prayer to his patron Saint Francis. "The portal to the living realms."

Neither knight moved, but something in the forest did. Doyle flinched back from the sound, hoping that if he had to run, his legs would carry him. But all that emerged from the trees was another pale gray horse, this one without a rider but outfitted with saddle and bridle. It stepped calmly up to stand alongside the two knights, and both men and beasts looked at
Doyle.

"We will escort you, Messenger," the voice said, and Doyle had little choice but to step forward and awkwardly mount the riderless horse. The knights turned their animals and set off at a walk, leaving the path and vanishing into the woods.

After a moment of Doyle trying to figure out exactly how to guide the horse where he wanted it to go, the animal gave up waiting for him and followed the others on its own.

Though it had been like perpetual early -- albeit foggy -- evening on the path, it was darker inside the forest. The trees allowed less light through here, and where light did penetrate, it filtered down in shafts, so that some spots were dark and others lighted, giving the entire place an odd spiderwebbed appearance.

Doyle kept a sharp eye out for the branches that threatened to unseat him, and his horse stayed obediently on the knights' heels, so he didn't worry about getting separated from his strange guides. The forest was strangely calm, but he had a feeling that things wouldn't stay that way for long.

PART 8

When he heard the knob turn and his office door swing open, Angel kept his head down on his desk, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and imagined Doyle standing in the doorway. He could visualize it clearly in his head: the half-demon would linger for a moment with one hand on the knob and the other on the doorframe, regarding Angel's bowed head with a small frown. Then he'd retreat again, closing the door softly behind him, leaving the vampire to his thoughts.

Doyle had always known when to leave him alone and when to intrude.

Before some foreign voice could rudely destroy the illusion he'd built in his mind, Angel let the mental image fade away, lifted his head, blinked his eyes open, and glanced at his clock. It was nearly morning; he'd fallen asleep at his desk. Mentally berating himself for dozing off when he should've been helping Cordelia and Wesley with research, he turned his
eyes to the doorway.

Wesley looked distinctly uncomfortable, his head turned to glance back pleadingly at Cordelia, who paid him no attention. The former Watcher had yet to fit into their group; Angel and Cordelia were drawn together not just by their previous knowledge of one another, but by their shared grief, too. Wesley had only ties from Sunnydale, where he'd been a passing
crush to Cordelia and a pompous annoyance to Angel. He was constantly trying to prove himself to them, and to remain independent of them at the same time -- which served only to make him nervous and awkward, instead.

"Come in, Wesley," Angel ordered softly, snapping the lamp back on and ending the Englishman's hesitation.

The other man stepped inside the room, leaving the door open, and took a seat in one of the chairs on the other side of Angel's desk. He sat uncomfortably, too, perched on the edge of the seat and not relaxing back into it... as Doyle might have done.

Angel sighed, resting his elbows on the desk and pressing his fingers to his temples. He took one deep breath, then another, and tried to focus on the present. He'd told Cordelia as much only twenty minutes before, but now he seemed to be having trouble practicing what he preached.

Wesley didn't speak; he just studied a piece of paper in his hands and frowned, muttering to himself a little and tracing some path on the page with his fingertip. Angel waited a moment, watching the human expectantly before he spoke up.

"You found something?" he prompted.

Wesley's head popped up guiltily, as if he'd completely forgotten that Angel was there. "Yes," he answered, placing his paper -- which turned out to be a map -- on to the desktop, and sliding it across toward Angel.  "Melanie and Phoebe, as you may recall, told us that this rogue spirit would return at 'the water's side, where spirit forms flesh.' We may have found such a place." He stood, leaning over the desk to inspect the map, then pointing to a spot within a deeply forested area. "It's an energy point, of sorts. Also said to be a weak point in the fabric between this world and the afterlife -- much as the Hellmouth is a weak point between here and Hell. It's actually a cave which extends quite a ways underground. The cave is dominated by a large lake -- the measure of which has never been taken -- whose waters are said to contain some magical
power."

Angel leaned over the map, assessing the spot and taking note of its distance from where they were. "Ever notice that everything strange and sinister seems to happen within a two hundred mile radius?" he mused.

Wesley glanced up at him, thrown for a moment by the interruption. "Yes, well... I imagine if it were further away the Powers That Be would call on some other poor fellow to put his neck on the line," he speculated. "As a vampire, you are somewhat limited in arranging sun-free travel."

"Good point," Angel replied, a small smile curving his lips at the young man's inability to leave any question unanswered and unpondered. "So you're sure this is the spot?"

"As sure as we can be," Welsey nodded, leaning back and taking his seat again, somewhat more relaxed this time, comfortable now that he was treading familiar scholarly territory. "The native tribes used it as a place for vision quests, and shamans often visited to establish a dialogue with their ancestors. When the European explorers and settlers arrived, the natives simply stopped going there. One author speculated that they didn't want to draw attention to the place and have it spoiled by the invaders, but it did make its way into the books. Very few people have visited the place in the last couple of centuries."

"And there's a precedent for people returning from the dead at that spot?"

Wesley nodded, leaning forward, his eyes sparkling. "We found an account of a shaman summoning up the souls of ten dead warriors to fight against a group of cavalrymen who'd been cutting a swath through local villages. As the telling of it goes, the shaman performed a ritual which brought the warriors back from the spirit world. They appeared as faint, shimmering apparitions on the opposite side of the lake. The shaman instructed them to step into the water and walk toward him, and they were completely submerged. When they came out of the water on the other side, they had completed the journey from dead to living. Flesh had formed from the water, and they were men again, just as they had been before their deaths -- flesh and blood, vulnerable, but alive."

Angel knitted his fingers together, raising them to touch his lips as he absorbed the story. "How did that turn out for them?" he finally asked.

"Well," Wesley answered, slowly, his eyes shifting as he recalled the story. "They slaughtered the cavalrymen, returned a bit of peace to the region. But then strange things started happening. There were odd noises in the woods at night. Children disappeared from their beds. Men were found horribly murdered. The people blamed the reborn warriors, and the shaman was forced to kill them again and complete a very intricate ritual to send the spirits back where they belonged. A ritual which, I might add, has since been lost to the ages... so we won't have that luxury. At any rate, the disturbances stopped when the warriors were killed, and that was the end of that."

Angel nodded, picking up a pen from his desk and circling the area on the map in the bleeding ink of a red felt-tipped pen. "So assuming that this spirit will be attempting to cross over soon, and since we have no idea when, how do we stop it?"

"It can only happen during the full moon," answered a new voice, from the doorway. Wesley turned his head to subtlely -- at least, he thought it was subtle -- admire Cordelia's silhouette in the light from the outer office. Angel watched the younger man with an amused smirk as Cordelia crossed the floor to sink into the only empty chair. "There's some sort of lighting
thing," Cordelia continued, waving one hand in a we-won't-discuss-the-technicalities gesture. "On the one night a month
that the moon is completely full, the light of it reflects into the cave. Apparently that's key. Figures. And as luck would have it, the big night is tomorrow."

Cordelia crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest, very clearly indicating that she was finished. Angel nodded once to her as small thanks for the research, and then regarded both of the humans seated across from him.

"I take it you have a plan," he said.

"We do," Wesley replied, sitting up a little straighter. "We've discovered a spell that should send the spirit back to where it belongs -- namely, not here. It should be begun after the spirit has appeared on the opposite side of the lake, and will have to be completed before it breaks water on the nearer shore."

"We're leaving," Cordelia announced, abandoning her chair and moving back toward the door. "We need to sleep. I'll visit the magic shop and get all the stuff we need, and we'll all meet back here a couple hours before sundown."

Wesley nodded in agreement and stood, as well. He passed Cordelia in the doorway, picking his coat up from the couch and exiting the front door with only a small farewell wave cast over his shoulder. Cordelia lingered just inside Angel's office, watching him with a slight frown on her face.

"Go downstairs and get some more sleep," she ordered. "Try not to think about how crappy life is and just rest. I'll see you later." Then she turned to retrieve her own jacket, and moments later the outer door shut again.

Silence descended on the office, broken only by the vampire's footsteps as he retreated to his downstairs apartment to rest and prepare for the task ahead. He had a feeling that their task would be more difficult than it first appeared.

PART 9

The ride through the woods stretched on, but Doyle couldn't tell how long.  The watch he'd worn that day was still on his wrist, but the hands were frozen at the moment he'd died. Time meant little here, anyway, and it could've been hours or days that he followed the phantom knights through the tall, black, somber trees. His horse stepped gently through the deep
grass and loam, and a century passed, a heartbeat, a year, before they arrived at their destination.

The knights broke through the trees first, with a rustle of leaves and the soft fall of pine needles. Doyle followed soon after, emerging into a clearing where the sudden emergence into sunlight dazzled him. He blinked rapidly, willing his eyes to adjust.

His escorts had fallen behind him; they lurked where the darkness of the forest met the clearing's light, and when Doyle looked down, he could see why. His horse had become insubstantial in the light; he could see the ground through its body, and it flickered as the fog that made its body began to dissipate in the light of the sun. With a short cry of alarm, he pulled his feet from the stirrups and slid off of the animal's back, then tugged its head with what was left of the reins and gave it a solid slap on the rump, sending it running back into the shadows again. The fog fed it once it was there, but it quickly vanished from his view, wandering into the trees.

The two horsemen lingered just inside the cover of the trees, watching him silently. He raised his hand in a parting wave, somewhat confused as to what they expected, and called out, "Thanks, fellas."

Seemingly satisfied, they turned their horses and vanished without sparing him a second look.

Doyle was amazed at their odd behavior -- odd in that he had expected them to eat him or lob off his head or something of that nature -- but he wasn't about to look a gift horse the mouth, metaphorically speaking. He watched them disappear, then turned to see where they'd led him.

The clearing wasn't very large, but it was fairly scenic. A few hundred feet from the treeline, a sheer cliff of rough gray stone rose impossibly high into a shining blue sky. Moisture sparkled on the rock, and on the dense green grass that stretched out across the open space. There were wildflowers, too, blanketing the ground in a rainbow of colors and filling the warm air with sweet aromas.

But the most stunning feature was the portal itself. Doyle hadn't even been sure that such a thing existed, but his gamble had paid off, and the knights had led him straight to it -- probably something to do with codes of honor and not shooting the messenger, but he really couldn't be sure.

The portal was carved directly from the rock, forming a very large doorway, and the protruding archway around it was intricately carved with magical symbols of all sorts. Some he recognized, most he didn't, but the place pulsed with power, and it sent a shiver down his spine.

He approached the portal cautiously, ignoring the wildflowers and the sweet smell in the air, focused only on the gateway, his salvation, his ticket back to the living world, back to Cordelia and Angel, and far from the misted land of the dead. When he stood before the portal, it was easily three times his height, and a pick-up truck could've fit through with plenty of clearance. Shining black filled the intricate archway, looking like soft oil. He stretched out a hand to touch the inky surface,
expecting his hand to go straight through, and his body to follow.

His palm landed flat against the solid obsidian rock.

Doyle bit back the anguished cry that rose in his throat, but he couldn't resist punching the wall in frustration. The surface did not yield, but the two center knuckles on his right hand split, and blood oozed from the wounds, dark red and slick.

He grimaced, clapped his left hand over his right to stop the trickle of blood, and looked back up at the portal. This time, there was something looking back at him.

He jumped back, a startled yelp escaping his lips, and nearly lost his footing in the tangle of tall flowers around his feet. The face stared impassively at him, thrusting out from the shining surface, just the thing's face showing through. It looked like a lion, but the countenance was massive, filling the entire black face of the portal. The planes of the face were angular, chiseled; stone eyelids slid over obsidian eyes in a lazy blink. Pointed ears twitched and swiveled in Doyle's direction. The
mouth opened to reveal long, sharp canines. Traces of Doyle's blood had remained on the surface that had become the figure's chin. A long, rough tongue snaked out and cleaned the fluid from the stone.

The mouth closed, and the expression on the beast's face could only be called a smile.

"Delicious stuff, demon's blood," the face said, conversationally. The animal's face was very animated as it spoke, the motion fluid, and its voice was deep and quiet. "It's so... potent."

Doyle stood slack-jawed, his hands hanging at his sides, wondering if he should flee, or if he'd even be able.

"Well, speak up, demon," the lion said, and though they were nothing but inky black, Doyle got the feeling that the best's eyes were rolling in exasperation. "What is it you want?"

"I -- I want to go home," he stammered, searching for the right words but having no idea what the right words might be.

"Home?" The lion arched one stately brow and smiled again. The expression made him look hungry. "And where is home to you, little demon?"

"Los Angeles," he answered immediately. "I want to go back to my life."

The lion's smile became more and more disturbing each time the creature formed that expression. But this time it closed its eyes and sniffed with its nose. Doyle could feel the tendrils of fog surrounding him before he could see them; they flitted around him, dissipating, and vanished into the lion's nose, inhaled by the stone beast.

"The mists say that you have no life to return to, Allen Doyle," the face replied, finally. "The mists say that you died a noble death. To return to your life would erase your atonement. But this is no matter. Your body is gone. You have nothing to return to."

"There has to be a way," Doyle argued. "I don't care about my atonement. I care about my *life*, and I want it back!"

"There is not a way," the lion growled back, baring his teeth.

"Well, if there isn't a way, then what's the point of this portal? Huh? You gonna tell me it's just here for decoration?"

The lion's mouth snapped shut. It was silent. Its eyes, now washed with a shifting surface of angry red, bored into him. "You have a point," it finally admitted, looked chagrined. The red fled from its eyes, and the tongue slipped out again to lick absently at one side of the upper lip.

"So how do I get back?" Doyle prompted.

The face smiled again, but this time it was unmistakably a leer. "I eat you," it answered.

"E-eat me?" Doyle stammered, taking a step backward.

"Eat you," the face repeated.

Doyle took another step backward. But the face pulled out from the wall, and a thick neck formed, extending the beast's reach. Its movement was lightning-fast, its mouth wide and pitch black as it swallowed him whole.

PART 10

The lake shimmered like oil under the beams of their flashlights, and Cordelia sighed, listening to the reverberation of Wesley's voice through the cave. He spoke softly, his voice a whisper as he yammered nervously to Angel, who wasn't really listening. Cordelia didn't pay attention to what he was saying, either; she was seated on the stone floor, leaning against the rough wall, her eyes focused on the other side of the lake, which she was ostensibly keeping an eye on. But her mind was miles away, on a ship called "Quintessa".

"The moon will be at its zenith in two minutes," Wesley warned, interrupting her grim thoughts. "Cordelia, could you lend your light over here? I need to finish getting these things set up so we can proceed."

She sighed a much put-upon sigh and stood, brushing dust and dirt from the seat of her jeans and taking a few short steps over to Wesley's side, shining her light on the things he'd laid out on the cave floor. The objects were dark and ominous in the dim light of her flashlight, but she'd purchased them herself during the day, and she knew what they were. Crystals, herbs, oils; even household items like a lighter and a ceremonial knife -- which admittedly was a household item only for Angel, but she *had* found it in his apartment. Wesley and Angel had drawn some intricate magical symbols on the floor with sticks of colored chalk, but they didn't glow or make noises or otherwise indicate that there was power in them -- so she had to step carefully to keep from rubbing them out with her shoes.

"Almost time now," Wesley muttered to himself, sounding almost giddy, as he lit several candles with Angel's Zippo. The scent of jasmine immediately filled the air, and thin trails of smoke wound from the wicks into the darkness that cloaked the cave's ceiling.

They waited a few more moments, and there was no sound in the cave except the soft sound of breathing from the two humans.

The moon reached its zenith in the next moment, and the effect was sudden: white light flooded in, illuminating the rough stone walls. The lake lost its oily appearance, and suddenly it looked like a giant pool of liquid mercury, silvery and deep.

Then a shimmering gray figure appeared across the water, and Wesley began chanting.

+++

The lion had no throat, and no stomach, and no other real body to speak of. Doyle was only aware of being inside the giant stone mouth for a single moment, then a sensation like his intestines were being pulled out through his nose. And suddenly he was standing on the shore of a silver lake, his toes at the water's edge.

Across the lake, he could see three figures, but they didn't look real; they were insubstantial, indistinct, shimmering, like his foggy horse had been in the light of day. He could hear one of them chanting; the sound carried across the water, and the stabbing pain that quickly developed in his head told him that the spell being cast wasn't one in his favor.

He put one foot in the water, testing the depth, and found it remarkably shallow. His foot began to tingle in a strange mixture of pleasure and pain, and he frowned, stepping in with his other foot, too.

When he looked up again, the figures were still blurry, but as his eyes lit on the last of the three, the image snapped sharply into focus. Cordelia stood there.

Ignoring the odd sensation of the water, Doyle took a deep breath and leapt in, submerging himself; he stayed below the surface, swimming as powerfully as he could manage toward the opposite shore.

Toward Cordelia.

+++

Cordelia was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. Wesley was crouched near her, and Angel stood on the former Watcher's other side, watching the water with a anxious frown on his face. He hadn't recognized the spirit -- but Cordelia had.

She'd seen Doyle's sorely missed face looking back at her from the other side of the water. She'd seen the recognition in his eyes before he'd leapt in. She knew he was coming back to her. She knew that was supposed to be a bad thing.

She didn't care.

Wesley and Angel were both too surprised to react when she blew out the candles. When she tipped over the bowls of scented oil, they reached out to stop her. And when she used her foot and the oil on the ground to smear out the magical symbols on the floor, Angel tackled her, bearing her down to the stone floor.

"What the hell are you doing?" he growled. His body was pressing hers into the floor, and his face had shifted into a vampiric countenance. Cordelia could only whimper and anxiously watch the water as Wesley frantically attempted to set things back up so that he could continue the spell.

+++

Underneath the water, everything was silver. Though his eyes were wide open, Doyle couldn't see anything in front of him but more blinding light, and he squeezed his eyelids shut, stretching his arms out in front of him.  The pain in his head had only intensified each time his legs kicked to propel him, and he finally stopped, taking a break from the strenuous swimming, sinking slowly into the seemingly bottomless stretch of water.

His legs had cramped first, but his entire body felt strange now; the tingling he'd experienced on his first step into the water quickly intensified into a burning pain that erased all thought from his mind. His lungs began to burn, and he kicked out again, desperate to reach the shore.

With each motion of his legs, he grew closer to the shore, and memories began to flee his mind. He forgot the river, the old man, the boatman, the fish and the forest. The memories vanished, one by one, stripping away his recollection of the girls in the clearing, the horses, the knights, the portal and the lion.

His lungs still burned in their thirst for air, his body screamed with pain, his mind was confused when stripped of its memories, and he was blinded by the light in the water. He could feel his face shifting, from human to demon and back again several times before it settled on human and he managed to exert the control to keep it that way. When his outstretched
hands touched stone, his fingers curled around it and his toes found a purchase, and the light grew brighter as he neared the water's surface.

When his head broke the surface and his torso followed, the water splashed loudly, roaring in his ears. His eyes blinked open, and his mouth gaped as he frantically sucked in the cool, clean air. He shivered violently, and coughed, and it was like being born again.

He could recognize two of the three figures on the shore now, though he didn't know that he'd already seen them from the other side of the lake or why he was there or why they were there or anything that had happened since the "Quintessa". They were only a few feet away from him, on dry land; the man he didn't know stood off to one side, holding a sword and
looking like he intended to use it, even if he didn't know how. Cordelia was on the ground, her body trapped underneath Angel's as if he were shielding her with his own body -- or pinning her with it.

"Cordy?" Doyle spoke in a whisper, his voice low and rough, as if he'd never used it before. He took another step toward the shore, the water covering him to the hips. He realized he was naked, but didn't really care.

Angel let go of Cordelia, climbing to his feet and taking her elbow to help her up. They both stared at him, and he took another uncertain step forward. His legs were weak, and the gradual stone slope that formed the lakeshore cut and abraded the soles of his bare feet. The water stung in his wounds, his head was still pounding with a migraine worse than any he'd ever felt, and tears streaked unnoticed down his cheeks.

The only sound was the slosh of water around Doyle's hips, until the stranger spoke. "We have to kill him before he leaves the water," he said, his upper-crust English accent just making that phrase sound even worse to Doyle's ears.

Angel reached out with one hand and pulled the sword from the other man's hands, tossing it behind him. The metal blade rang out loudly against the rock floor. "We can't do that, Wesley," Angel said, indulgently, as if he were explaining to a child why the sky was blue.

Wesley sputtered. But Cordelia didn't bother to argue with him or cut him down or any of the usual things she might've been expected to do. Instead, she walked down the slope of the shore and into the water. She didn't seem to mind that she was getting soaked, or that the water was freezing.

Doyle took another couple of unsteady steps forward to meet her, and they collided somewhere in the middle, their lips meeting in an act of spontaneous, silent agreement. His arms wrapped around her, and her hands slid over his shoulders, their bodies pressed tightly together. Their tongues, accustomed to verbal battle, sparred more physically. A small flash of blue light passed from her mouth to his as their lips parted, and his head dropped, exhausted, to rest on her shoulder. The moon moved on, and the ethereal silver light abruptly left the cave, leaving them in darkness until Angel and Wesley snapped on their flashlights.

She led him from the water, over the Englishman's loud protests, and they wrapped the shivering half-demon up in Angel's trenchcoat. When his feet stepped onto dry land, everyone but Doyle stopped and listened... but the world continued to turn, just as it had.

+++

"They didn't take your warning seriously," one of the partners said, breaking the silence in the boardroom. "They didn't prevent his return."

Phoebe averted her eyes, looking down at the tabletop. Her sister met the partner's gaze, instead.

"He's returned, that's true," she answered. "Something made them stop before he could be sent back. They allowed him to leave the water as a living man despite the story we told them."

At the head of the conference table, Mr. Hart leaned forward, his fingers steepled in front of him and his youthful face lined with a friendly smile. "That's alright," he told the sisters, his tone cordial. "So he's alive again. That can be remedied."

Melanie and Phoebe glanced at one another, shifting uneasily in their seats. Mr. Hart leaned back into his chair, and his white-toothed smile grew wider.


THE END



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