"Prophet - Wings of Passion"

Author: Vatrixsta Cruden
Contact: trixieangelsomething@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP to their fans <g>) gives us "Affairs of the Heart."

She looked at me across the room
Emerging from a silk cocoon
Along beneath venetian chandeliers
Against the moon her body rocks
Her eyes were cunning like a fox
The wings of passion fly on all frontiers

Of all the sights Lindsey had thought might greet him, the one that actually did certainly hadn't registered high on the old probability meter.

He felt it happening all over again. The mindless devotion he'd had toward Darla was building up inside of him. Lindsey would have had to be stupid not to see the similarities between the two women. Buffy and Darla. Darla and Buffy. Physically, they were nearly identical -- blonde, petite, deadly, beautiful, intelligent. It was when you dug deeper, looked at the core -- both of the person they'd once been, and the demons they'd become -- those differences began to assert themselves.

Lindsey prided himself on his ability to research with the best of them. He dug so deep into a person's life that he could probably tell you what their childhood invisible friend had been called.

(Buffy's, incidentally, had been Fred. Fred had come to stay with Buffy and her mother when Hank Summers went away on extended business trips. Fred never went away, and always reminded Buffy her father loved her. Lindsey had worked up a fairly accurate psychological profile on Buffy based solely on that tiny nugget of information alone.)

His attention was pulled from his inner musings to the couple on the floor in front of him. The research staff had been working overtime, and he'd located Drusilla. Intensely lacking any sort of self-preservation instinct, Lindsey had sought out the newly turned slayer, hoping to earn her good graces.

To say that finding her astride the man Lindsey hated most on this earth was a shock was putting things very mildly.

"Company," he heard her whisper to Angel.

Angel merely growled, sunk his teeth into Buffy's shoulder, and continued to thrash about beneath her.

Lindsey turned away, unable to look at the sight before him. It made him think of Darla, and Angel and Darla together, Darla leaving, Darla coming back, but only because she wanted to use Lindsey, Darla, Darla, Darla . . .

Moans and grunts and purrs tormented Lindsey's senses until he thought he'd go mad. Then, nothing but eerie silence. Still, he didn't dare turn around. Images he'd rather not have were burned into his brain. Buffy inspired nothing but respect from him. The only desire he felt in regards to her was the possibility of taking something from Angel that he considered his. However, therein lay a greater danger for Lindsey than if he'd actually been in love with her. His desire to see Angel destroyed had become a part of his being over the past two years.

Given Buffy's single-minded devotion to the biggest thorn in Wolfram & Hart's side, however, Lindsey was willing to wager taking her from Angel was highly unlikely.

"Lin," she called airily, "did you pop over for a reason, or did you just sense we needed a snack?"

"You wouldn't like him, love," Angel murmured, and Lindsey could have sworn a hint of Irish colored his voice. "He reeks of humanity. Likes to pretend he's big and bad, when really all he wants is someone to play his mommy, tuck him in and make him feel safe at night. Isn't that right, Lindsey?"

Lindsey turned around sharply then, his eyes widening slightly at the sight that presented itself. Buffy and Angel were both fully clothed, Angel all in black, Buffy wearing red leather pants and -- incongruously -- a large sweatshirt. Angel sat on the table in the center of the room, Buffy on his lap. Her face had returned to its normal human guise, but Angel's still bore the mark of his demon. Which, Lindsey conceded, might have something to do with the fact that Buffy was holding a severed hand covered in blood to his mouth.

"I have the information you wanted," Lindsey said, forcing a calm indifference into his voice he was far from feeling as Buffy flung the hand in the direction of a body slumped against the floor. He wanted to throw up.

Buffy smiled brightly. "Good boy," she praised. "Where is the 'ho these days?"

"Drusilla was last seen crossing the border into Mexico. I've sent a team to locate and retrieve her."

"Why?" Angel asked.

"Silly," Buffy murmured, playing with the cuff of his shirt, "because I have to kill her."

"You'll do no such thing," Angel growled, standing suddenly, dropping Buffy to her feet.

"Uh, pardon me, lover, but you don't seem to get the rules here. She's touched you in the naked, lusty wrong way. That means her continued existence on this planet no longer works for me."

"She's my favorite," Angel insisted, "and I won't have you staking her. What kind of a vampire are you, anyway? You spend most of your time staking our kind. Your sire, my sire--"

"My sire was a loser," Buffy said, beginning to tick off her points with her fingers, "your sire, as I mentioned, touched you, as did Drusilla. I didn't kill Spike, and I had the perfect opportunity."

Angel snorted. "Spike you could have killed," he muttered.

"But he's so hot," Buffy objected.

Angel growled, low in his throat, a dangerous, possessive sound.

"I think I missed a chapter," Lindsey declared, too fascinated by the scene before him to inch toward the door.

"Are you still here?" Angel asked him, sounding bored.

"The last time my people checked in on you," Lindsey continued, looking straight at Angel, "you were seriously bent on staking her, no questions asked."

Angel rolled his eyes. "Yeah, gotta give me credit on that one. You know, I think I might have had the right idea when I told the little witch 'no curse, just stake the bitch.'"

"You don't mean that," Buffy said confidently. Then, a thought seemed to occur to her. "What do you mean 'no curse'? You didn't try to curse me?"

Angel looked at her as though she were deeply stupid. "Did you feel a soul enter your body?"

"I thought you tried and failed," she said, angrily folding her arms over her chest. "So what, you weren't even going to =try= to curse me? I'm changing and growing, and you can't deal, so instead of trying to work things out between us, you were just gonna shove a piece of wood through my heart?!"

"Not me!" Angel tried to defend himself. "Soul boy."

"Same song," Buffy insisted, "different verse."

At this point, Lindsey had taken his seventy-five percent suspicion up to a hundred percent certainty. The demon that stood before him was Angelus, Scourge of Europe, in all his glory. Of course, glory might have been the wrong word, given how, despite his threats to the contrary, the demon seemed extremely devoted to the small blonde vampire glaring up at him.

"I'm beginning to think you're a little bit more trouble than you're worth," Angelus declared as he got in her face.

"And I'm beginning to think I like you better with a soul," she snapped. "Plotting to kill me or not, at least you still love me."

"I love you," he allowed. "I just hate myself for it."

"But I'm evil now!" she declared, as though it made all the difference. "I can understand hating yourself for loving the goody-two-shoes, stuck up former me, but this is Buffy version 2.0." A little frown marred her perfect brow. "I'm all new and improved."

"Why do I even both--" Angelus froze, mid-sentence and clutched at the table.

"Are you dizzy?" Buffy asked.

Angelus shook his head, but didn't attempt to stand without aid of the table. "What . . ."

"The drugs are wearing off," Buffy deduced matter-of-factly.

Now upon the bridge she waits
Dreaming of our tangled fates
Her face was like a ghost with eyes of jade
I fell just like a falling star
A victim of this coup d'etat
I could not see behind this masquerade

"Then why don't you give me another dose?" Angelus snarled.

Buffy frowned. Her test hadn't really been completed. They hadn't even had a chance to hunt together. Besides, she still wasn't sure which Angel she liked better -- souled or unsouled. Granted, Angel was always walking around, trying to stake her, but Angelus seemed kind of unstable. And =not= in the good way.

Maybe the demon really was driven insane after all that time locked up with a soul, Buffy mused. Cause, the way she figured it, she was as evil as could be, but she wasn't all whacked out like some OTHER vampire in the room who will remain nameless.

Calmly, Buffy tucked her hair behind her ears and opened the desk drawer where she'd put the rest of Angel's 'happy' pills. Psychotic or not, she still owed it to them both to give Angelus full opportunity to show he was more fun than Angel was. Given the way they'd spent the day, she was already willing to concede him a =lot= of points.

Tapping a small capsule into her hand, Buffy made her way to where Angelus was clutching the table. He leaned his head toward her palm, but she moved her arm, bringing the pill out of reach. He glared at her, and she gifted him with a smile.

"What do we say?" she singsonged.

"Give me the pill or I'll rip your throat out," he snarled.

"Close enough," she conceded, feeding it to him.

He swallowed it dry, and within moments, stood upright without the assistance of the table. His face also shifted back to its human guise.

"You know, that's two times now you've clutched that table," she pointed out.

He gave her a condescending look. "I assure you, it's not a sexual thing; the table doesn't have to die."

The scathing retort she was about to deliver  -- something involving him wishing that table held some sexual appeal for him if he continued to mock her -- was cut off by Lindsey clearing his throat loudly.

"Am I to assume that given your current circumstances, you won't be requiring Wolfram & Hart's file on Angel any longer?"

Buffy stalked over to where she'd abandoned the file earlier, gathered it up, and slammed it against Lindsey's chest.

"Good as new," she announced. Then, she leaned in to whisper in Lindsey's ear. "By the way, the profile on how to drive him crazy . . . very nice. Your work?"

"Yes," Lindsey confirmed, keeping an eye on Angel, she noticed. Smart boy. Buffy knew if she pressed herself just a little bit closer, Lindsey would have to learn how to breathe with his lungs on the outside of his body.

"Too bad you got one little detail wrong," Buffy noted.

She also noted the genuine irritation in Lindsey's eyes when she discredited his work.

"What's that?"

"The perfect way to torture Angel -- the souled version, at least -- is to torture me." Buffy smiled, getting a little rush. It was fun to pick at Lindsey's work -- something he obviously took pride in -- and show him that he'd never get inside Angel the way she had if he had a thousand years to study. She stepped away from Lindsey and back into the waiting arms of her lover. Those arms wrapped around her so tightly that if she'd needed breath, it would have been deprived. "If you had a prayer of getting close enough to lay a single finger on me, I'd say that would be your best course of action."

"Thanks for the tip," Lindsey said sincerely.

He apparently acquired an ounce of common sense, because he turned on his heel and quickly left the warehouse.

Angelus' face was buried in Buffy's neck. He was sucking at her skin, and she was arching against him.

"I'm bored," she announced.

He pulled her hips back against his body tightly. "Sun'll be down in an hour."

Spinning in his grasp, she pressed herself against him, took his lower lip between her teeth and tugged at it sharply before sinuously rubbing her body against his. Her words drowned out his groan.

"Wanna go look up some old friends?"

Sometimes I think I'll never learn
Were all those promises in vain
Do the wings of fire still remain

"If this is what B's been going through since the day she was called, I take back every nasty thing I ever said about her whining about the burdens of slayer-dom."

"I take it, then, that you've never experienced a prophetic dream before?"

Faith stared into Wesley's eyes. "Is that what this was? Cause I thought they were just some intensely bad nightmares. Food in prison, you know, it'll give a girl indigestion. Worse than cold pizza before bed."

Faith sat on the couch in the Hyperion's lobby. Giles and Wesley sat on the coffee table in front of her. Both watchers were taking turns debriefing her after her rather cryptic comments about Buffy and Angel's appearances in her dreams.

When she'd been told about Buffy being turned, Faith had seemed unsurprised. Heartbroken, saddened, even guilty, but not surprised in the least. Angel's absence for the past day had put her more on edge, if that had even been possible.

"It's like the nastier parts of the Bible," Faith added quietly. At the looks both watchers gave her, she shrugged, and continued, "It's the only thing there was always a copy of on the book cart."

"Could you try to describe Buffy and Angel's roles in your dreams in more detail?" Wesley asked.

"Angel's easy. One minute he's like an avenging angel with a sword, cutting down the wicked, the next he's an animal, ripping anything that bleeds apart with fists and fangs. B . . . she's harder to pin down. I can't get a bead on her at all."

"Angel is transitory by nature," Giles began. "For as long as you've known him, he's walked a very fine line. Whereas your mental image of Buffy is one of . . ."

"You can say it. Goodness and light, purity and honor, everything I'm not." Only a hint of bitterness remained in Faith's tone, for which she was proud. The year she'd spent incarcerated had given her plenty of time to think. Using that time wisely, Faith had begun to ferret out her inner demons and make like a good slayer with them.

"It doesn't matter," she announced out loud before either watcher could stumble out some response. "The point is what I'm seeing is an apocalyptic battle. Not the last of all time, in fact the read I get on it says it's just the first of the new century. Sort of a 'are you ready for the millennium?' blowout, courtesy the PTB and all the minions of hell. Who knew when they got together they'd throw such a killer rave?"

What Faith didn't tell them about her dreams was of an extremely personal nature. For the past month she'd been dreaming of a man, a man she'd never met, but whom she recognized. In her dream, she never saw his face; only his eyes. Shrouded in darkness, his beautiful blue eyes beckoned to her, teasing her with promises of home and peace.

Nope, no way was she sharing that nugget of information with the stuffy British guys. Maybe when Angel got back, she'd unburden herself to him. The big guy would understand about lofty, idealistic fantasies about a supposed soulmate she'd never actually met, only glimpsed from afar.

Faith also didn't tell them about how truly frightened she was. The graphic, horrific detail of nightmarish battles that would someday occur in a future that she would no doubt take part in -- to say she was massively wigging was an understatement. It had taken a considerable amount of self-control to show up at AI to begin with. Her terror had nearly sent her running straight from the prison to the first bar that would serve her.

"There's more," she said quietly, thinking of something good, something she could tell them.

"I shudder to think what more there might be," Wesley commented honestly.

Faith smiled at him. "I see people I've never met before who feel like family," she began hesitantly. "But I don't know if they're =my= family, or just . . . family." She shook her head. "I can't explain it. Everything's so jumbled and fucking dire . . ."

"I suspect you're finally feeling the full burden of being the slayer," Giles pronounced quietly. "Buffy's final death -- her rising the next night notwithstanding -- has shifted the balance, as Angel called it, back into order. You are the only slayer, and I believe that now, finally, are more mentally open to the workings of the universe."

A tear slipped down Faith's cheek. "So then . . . my calling wasn't a wrong number?"

Wesley placed a comforting hand on Faith's knee. "I'd say not," he murmured softly. "Faith, if our theory is correct . . . your past instability might be in part due to your being called while Buffy still fought as the slayer."

"I thought no one wanted me," she whispered. "Not God, not the council, not any of you, because you had Buffy, and she was twice the slayer, twice the friend that I was. I've always felt that way . . ."

Wesley squeezed her knee until she looked at him. "We want you, Faith," he assured her in a firm, steady tone.

"More than that," Giles added. "We need you."

"Mr. McDonald, I'm not quite sure what you're asking me to research--"

"Damn it, Lydia, it's not that hard. I want you to find me a spell, or a ritual, or a binding that will restore a soul, but NOT that fruity gypsy curse that was used on Angel."

Lydia took an involuntary step backwards. Ever since Ms. Morgan's death, Mr. McDonald had grown more and more unstable. Office gossip placed his breakdown within the month, his 'termination' from the company a week beyond that. It was too bad, really. Lydia rather liked Mr. McDonald. He wasn't the greatest boss in the world, but he was certainly the upper crust around this place.

Sometimes, he let her have afternoons or evenings when he wouldn't require anything from her off. If Lydia hadn't known him better, she might have called that sweet. No doubt he had an agenda for it, perhaps trying to weasel his way into her good graces so that if he ever asked her to do something like this -- something the senior partners would no doubt find fault with -- she'd do it without thinking of what it might mean for her continued existence on this planet.

Lydia hadn't lived for sixty-four years -- twenty-three of them as a secretary for Wolfram and Hart -- by feeling sympathy for people who gave her an extra hour off every now and then.

"Mr. McDonald, far be it for me to question you--"

"But you're going to question me, aren't you, Lydia?" That half smile he got sometimes, the one that almost made her believe he had a soul flashed across his face before quickly disappearing.

"It could mean my job," she implored. When anyone at Wolfram and Hart implied that their jobs could be on the line, they really meant their lives. It was all the same in this cursed building.

"It won't," he assured her softly. "If this all blows up in my face, that's just what will happen -- it'll blow up in =my= face. I won't even mention your name. I just need you to research other avenues while I make some calls. Please, Lydia."

Lydia felt her resolve weakening, and she kicked herself for it. So he had a pretty face and something resembling a conscience. Had she really been working for these devils so long that she confused one for an angel?

"Look, the senior partners have a plan for Angel," he continued when she remained silent. "They want to drive him crazy. Every attempt that's been made so far has failed. However, I had--" and he smiled, big and wide at this "-- an epiphany today, Lydia."

"An epiphany," she repeated.

"If Angel is so consumed with keeping Buffy Summers from spinning off the edge, he won't have =time= to interfere with Wolfram and Hart's plans. And if seeing her in pain is the final straw that slips him back into madness?" His smile turned into a sneer. "Bonus."

"Bonus," Lydia echoed, wondering idly if she'd ever have an independent thought again.

"So I want you to find something that'll stick a soul to a body's ribcage like superglue."

"Yes, sir," Lydia said, watching as he stalked down the hall to his office.

Once inside, Lindsey took a seat behind his desk, loosening his tie as he began to flip through his contact book. There were half a dozen sorcerers and wizards who owed him a favor -- surely one of them would have a no loophole soul restoration.

Another slight grin crossed Lindsey's face. Once Buffy had her soul back, she wouldn't even consider staking Angel. After all, she was well aware that his transformation was only temporary, an effect of the drugs she herself gave him. In the end, he was giving Buffy something she'd no doubt thank him for -- Angel, gift-wrapped. His soul might not be as permanent as hers, but hey, at least he wouldn't be trying to stake her anymore.

Maybe Buffy might even be able to give the old thorn in Lindsey's side a little pick-me-up.

After all, Lindsey mused, not without irony, what was a moment's happiness in the grand scheme of things?

From this fire there's no returning
No escape your heart is burning
Love becomes a lethal weapon
No one is too smart
In affairs of the heart

The End

<< back