E-MAIL: Ciderbreak@aol.com
SERIES: Path Less Traveled #14
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon and the WB own all BTVS characters. No infringement implied.
DISTRIBUTION: Charity's site, Fever of Fate, My Website.
NOTES: Believe it or not, this is the last story in this series except for the Epilogue.
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The day the police found Linda Bonner's body was the same day Willow was kidnapped and beaten nearly to death.
Angel found out about the first from Kate, who called him on her cell phone after the investigation was over in case he needed to stop by and "visit" after hours. The autopsy suggested no foul play but Kate was bringing in a specialist, considering the woman's relation to Grayson Bonner, the dead teenager responsible for the murder of a salesclerk. Both cases cut and dried like lavender in autumn.
He discovered the second around dinner time, well past the time Willow usually arrived back from campus. In the middle of transferring pig's blood from the large tupperware to his favorite black mug, Angel was struck with a sharp pain in his gut and almost dropped both containers. He shoved them roughly on the counter and waited for the pain to pass, but instead it doubled, bringing him to his knees on the cold linoleum floor, panting and massaging his abdomen.
He hadn't felt this kind of pain, pain that felt personal and vindictive, pain with a purpose, since the night on the roof when he and Willow survived the maelstrom of truth. He choked out the spell that unlocked the mindspeech, his heart going numb with fear. Instantly, his ears rang with Willow's screams. She sounded infinitely desperate, as though she had been trying to call him for a long time. But if she unlocked the roads to non-spoken speech, why didn't he receive her cry for help then? Unless the thing had limitations due to range…
"Angel!" Willow cried over and over again.
"Where are you?" he shot back at her, wincing when he heard her scream in pain and beg for her captive, whoever that was, to cease his torment.
"Taking me away from LA. It hurts!"
Angel, still curled up on the floor, silently agreed. Hurt like a sonofabitch.
"We're stopping," she said a few minutes later. "Oh, I've been here. Angel, I've been here, it's Santa Fuego, near the docks. Hurry!"
Angel managed to stand, wondering how in the world he was going to drive down the coast during rush hour traffic and a cramp in his belly that felt as though it was being eaten slowly by a baby dragon. His only recourse was to call Scott Dirklin and beg for a transfer of energy particles to jet him down the coast without having to brave the freeways, which at this point, were more daunting than evading modern science.
He hated to call the cocky surfer freak but he did anyway, thrusting a valuable statue of Dionysus at the young man and using the couch to prop himself up. Scott knew what he needed before he even asked and was unusually respectful.
"My friend Karl spread the news your wife was kidnapped," Scott informed Angel, sliding one beefy arm underneath Angel and helping him to stand.
"Karl the Fear Demon? How did he know?"
"I'm not the only one who thinks she's a goddess," Scott said wryly, a devilish glimmer in his eyes. "He's always clued in to people's fear, he feeds on it. And the way he tells it, the witch screamed so loud on a supernatural level his entire English class fell to the floor with their hands over their ears. It freaked Karl out, and not much does that. He said to tell you to expect the worst."
"What could be worse than-" Angel didn't finish his sentence. He was too busy gritting his teeth against the sudden loss of gravity and the roller-coaster twist of hurtling through space. Scott let go of him and let him tumble onto the beach, a little shaken but bruise-free and no longer wrought with intense pain. He was obviously in the right place.
"Santa Fuego," Scott welcomed him with a grim face. "Lovely time of year, actually. In a month we'll have the kiddies out of school, but May is a pretty slow time. Hey, how was the honeymoon, by the way?" he teased, referring to the week Angel and Willow spent almost solely in bed. Angel wondered how in the world Scott knew about that and then shook it out of his head. Priorities. Small talk with the randy surfer was very low on the list.
"None of your business. Look, I'll give you another thousand dollars worth of cut emeralds if you go back to LA and drive my car down. We're gonna need to leave in something and I don't want to ever, ever travel your way again. Also, any ideas on backup? I can pay for the muscle."
"Caped crusader doesn't have a boy wonder?"
"The bastards who took Willow killed boy wonder."
"Woah, dude, I'm sorry. Okay, look, I'll get you some backup. Give me twenty minutes."
"Ten."
Scott gave him the thumbs up, took a traditional surfer pose, and blinked away like a flashy music video.
Transportation taken care of. Damn, at least Superman could fly. Angel didn't even have a weapon.
"Willow?" he asked, concentrating. The link was still open and he heard her sobbing. "Will, answer me."
"I'm sorry," she said, desolately.
"Willow, listen to me. I'm here, I'm in Santa Fuego. Where are you?"
"Warehouse next to the car dealership on the boardwalk," she said flatly, sniffling. She did not sound happy to know he was in town, which gave him pause. What had they done to her? Who were they, and what did they want? The thought also crossed Angel's mind that the people hurting Willow might be autonomous from the investigation. It could be anyone.
"They're involved," she informed him. "Angel, this goes deeper than we thought. It's a ritualistic cult and I'm the next human sacrifice. The Amazon woman is going to possess you and make you do it."
"Like hell," Angel spat.
"That's what I said to them," she said, her voice trembling. "They're not afraid to hit girls."
Angel hurried up the street, dodging a woman carrying a bag of groceries and two local kids dancing to the Backstreet Boys. He saw the warehouse, a clean and respectable looking building with a fire escape leading to the roof. Climbing to the top, he ripped off a tiny piece of roof and peered inside, biding his time before Scott's backup arrived.
End Part 1
The scene below him was bloodier than when Spike tortured people with railroad spikes. There was far too much vital fluid spilled on the floor for it to be all Willow's… right? Angel swallowed hard, a lump of dread in his throat at the sight of her broken form curled up in a ball, shivering on the cement. There was no sign of her captors.
The warehouse itself was mostly empty. An ancient yellow forklift collected dust in one corner while a stack of wooden pallets lined one wall. Other than that and an industrial metal desk with no chair, the building was empty. Angel didn't even see that many lights, just a few buzzing fluorescent ones chained to the steel beams in the ceiling. It smelled like sawdust and mildew with the acrid iron scent of blood overpowering everything, churning the insides of his empty stomach.
"I'm on the roof. Don't look up. Help is on the way," he reassured her. She disregarded him, forcing him to check and make sure their mind link was still unlocked. "Willow, answer me, please…"
"I'm sorry," she said.
Angel realized that was the second time she'd said that and hastened to deal with it. There was no reason for her to feel guilty and he started in on a diatribe of encouragement meant to force her to think correctly and also to keep her from passing out. He had no idea how she managed to endure all the pain they'd obviously inflicted on her. Her shirt was in tatters over her whipped back and her legs were just soaked in blood.
"Angel," came a familiar voice as he was about to ask Willow the extent of her injuries. Angel turned around and saw two familiar faces on the ground standing with two strangers who mercifully carried weapons. He sighed and climbed back down the steady ladder.
"Buffy. Thank you for coming," he said honestly, looking at his ex-love for the first time in almost six months. Her blonde hair was long and tied up in a pony tail, and she'd gained a few pounds so she didn't look so scrawny. She was dressed in fighting gear, as was Xander and the two guys he didn't recognize. "You look good," he added politely, because she did. However, his heart sang to know that he wasn't plagued with guilt or shame or even wanting. He was just genuinely glad to see her.
"Thanks. Wish I could say the same," she murmured, looking worried. Angel knew he was not at his best, but didn't know how much of it showed on his face. Where Willow was concerned, he couldn't hide his emotions.
That fact did not go unnoticed by Xander, who began the journey ready to ream Angel out for letting this happen to his friend. But now… if Angel felt as bad as he looked with the messy hair and rumpled clothes and haunted eyes, then he was doing just penance.
"I'm fine. What's with NATO?" he asked, and a good-looking blond kid stepped forward, hand extended. Angel shook it, knowing instantly who he was.
"I'm Riley Finn," the guy said. "This is Forrest."
That didn't explain their camouflage outfits or the high-powered rifles, but as Angel knew, lengthy explanations weren't helping Willow any.
"Thanks for coming," he said. "Sorry about Scott."
"Oh, you mean his flight plan or his warped idea of a compliment?" Buffy quipped. "No, it's fine. Bizarre, but then again, so is everything in my world. What's the plan?"
"Go inside, rescue the princess, get the hell out of here," Xander ad-libbed.
"Pretty much," Angel shrugged. "The people who took her know I'm investigating a series of grisly murders and they figured if they hurt Willow, I'd stop snooping around."
"And we disagree with their logic because…"
"They're not that powerful. This is a bluff and I'm not going to let some Amazon cult beat me down. They're merciless but scared. They know their scheme is almost over and they don't want to fade to black."
"Okay. Anything else?" Riley asked. "Could you see Willow from up there? How is she?"
The boy's genuine concern for Willow touched Angel and he almost broke down and cried like a baby. He'd never felt so vulnerable or helpless in his life and didn't know how to express it, even if he wanted them to see his weakness, which he didn't. Especially Xander.
"There's a lot of blood. She'll need a doctor. Hold on a sec…" Angel held up a hand and paused to communicate with Willow. "She keeps saying she's sorry. It's making me nervous."
"Is it a trap? Wait, you can talk with her?" Xander nearly yelped. Buffy jabbed him in the side with her elbow and he closed his mouth, looking sheepish.
"No, it's not a trap. She just told me the women who took her went out for dinner since I'm supposedly stuck in traffic for hours on the freeway and Willow's too beat up to go anywhere."
"I love it when the bad guys are stupid," Buffy smiled at Riley.
"Only this time they're women. And once we spring Will, you're gonna have to wait for them to come back or we'll be doing this every weekend. And frankly, I'd rather be fighting with Anya than traveling through the time space continuum."
"Xander's right. Come on, let's go," Angel decided, and the five of them crept around the building. Buffy kicked through a rusty side door with little effort, a determined look on her face. She was the first to reach Willow, sliding down to the cold cement floor, despite the pool of blood, to hug her friend. Angel was right after her, gathering the stricken witch into his arms and pressing a kiss to her forehead. She felt cool and clammy to him, obviously headed for shock.
But she was safe, in his arms, alive, thank God. Angel nearly wept with the sheer relief of seeing her blue-green eyes trying to appear brave for him.
"I love you," he thought privately.
"I know," she replied verbally. "Angel, I'm so sorry."
"Here," Riley said, shrugging out of his olive coat and gesturing for Forrest to do the same. Angel wrapped Willow in both coats, ignoring her cry of pain when the fabric brushed her back.
"Willow, it's not your fault," he stressed. "Look, Xander will take you to the hospital and keep you safe until I get there. We need to wait here for the Amazons."
"I can't walk," she said weakly, looking up at Xander with plaintive eyes.
"He'll carry you. Forrest will help. Angel, Riley and I will stay behind and kill the bitches and then meet you with flowers and chocolate in hand, 'kay?" Buffy said confidently. Willow teared up but nodded.
"They're not Amazons. Just tall demons, not Amazons. Don't call them that, they get really mad. I can't pronounce their given names. Don't make them mad. They'll rip your guts out," Willow said frankly, trying to rise. Xander and Angel supported her, Xander eyeing her stomach for protruding intestines or something.
"Uh, not literally, right, Will?" he hedged.
"Not quite," she whispered, unable to stand upright. She stood hunched over with her legs pressed tightly together and looked right at Buffy. "I'm glad you're here."
"We'll take care of this, Will, I promise," the slayer vowed.
"They can control you and make you do whatever they want and then you die like Grayson did on the CNN tape. I still don't know *why* they're doing the ritual murders every few months but if you can get that out of them I bet that's how you could win," Willow reported. "That's all I know, I'm sorry."
"You did great," Riley told her. "Now please leave before you go into shock. Wait, Forrest, should she be moved at all?"
"She has to be," Angel argued. "I don't want her in harm's way while we kill these things."
Forrest stepped forward, obviously possessed of medical training, and felt for Willow's pulse in her neck. After a few seconds of observation, he stepped back and motioned for Xander to lift her.
"Hurry," Forrest urged. He looked worriedly at Riley and then to Angel. "She's lost a lot of blood."
Willow screamed when Xander lifted her into his arms. All five of them groaned in sympathy. She threw her head back, gritted her teeth, and clenched her hands into fists to keep from howling continually. The pain was colossal and it was only a nod to her immortality that she wasn't dead yet. Evidently she was a little harder to kill than the Willow who came to LA to deliver a book all those months ago.
Xander noticed her skirt first and squeezed his eyes shut, a prayer on his lips. The light fabric was literally dripping with blood from an obvious hemorrhage of some kind. Her comment about ripping her guts out made sense to him and for the first time, he wished he didn't understand.
"Oh, God, Will," he choked out. Buffy said the same thing a millisecond later.
"Go. Now," Riley commanded with all the authority that made him a natural leader. Forrest handed one gun to Angel who stood shell-shocked at the realization of part of his beloved's torture, then preceded Xander out of the building. Angel, Buffy, and Riley watched in agony as Willow left a trail of blood drops all the way out of the warehouse.
"God," Angel whispered in anguish, looking to Riley and Buffy for confirmation of the most horrible nightmare he could ever dream. "She was pregnant."
End Part 2
"Angel. ANGEL!" Buffy nearly shouted. "You need to focus. Come on."
Her words were exactly what he needed to keep himself from sprinting after Xander or falling down a vortex of guilt. He didn't even know. How could he have known? No wonder she kept apologizing; she was grieving. Again.
"Fuck," he swore under his breath.
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Riley agreed. "I'm so sorry for your loss."
Your loss. It was a loss. A baby, or at least, what would have been a baby if he'd protected her better, insisted on keeping mindspeech open at all times, maybe trailed her a little more closely. He just didn't want to smother her. She needed to live her own life and embrace things she loved apart from him. She hated when he constantly lurked in her shadow. And their love, however new and shiny and unexplored, would have created a whole new life. Oh, God, he was almost a father.
"We never used birth control," he said dazedly. "Vampires aren't notoriously known for their parenting abilities."
"Aspects of humanity," Buffy reminded him with tears in her eyes. For what they no longer shared or for his grief, he didn't know. He didn't care. All he could think about was Willow.
What would a child of theirs look like? His visage was only available as a blurry image in the mirror, but he knew his features plainly enough to dream. He wouldn't mind if the child looked like her, reddish hair and those wide eyes, pert nose and mouth given to smiling. Yeah, a little girl with swirly red hair and that pixie grin. Or a boy with her curiosity and exuberance. And maybe, just maybe his father's height and build. Angel's heart constricted and he would have broken down if the "not-Amazons" hadn't returned from dinner.
Riley raised his gun and immediately shot and killed the one on the farthest left. There were six in all.
Now there were five.
"Don't come any closer or I'll shoot again," Riley said calmly. Angel was impressed with the boy's capabilities. His aim wasn't half-bad, either.
The women cackled like hyenas and advanced, losing another member by Riley's rifle.
"He means it." Buffy shrugged as they sent up a collective howl. Nobody moved.
"At least the odds are a little better," Angel whispered to Riley.
"What now?" Riley whispered back.
"You have a lot of blood on your hands," Angel said to the four huge women standing together like a little clump of weeds. They looked human, just incredibly tall and broad. They might have made beautiful models if it weren't for their ugly faces and yellowing teeth. Evidently the glamours hid that in everyday life. "We want to know why, before we obliterate your entire race."
One of the women stepped forward with her hands in the air. You could practically smell her fear.
"We need the deaths to survive," she tried to explain. "Lots of death. Pain, blood, ripped skin, torn limbs, it feeds us, it gives us power."
"Unborn children?" Buffy choked out, trying not to launch herself into the clump and start with the killing.
"That was an extra treat, wasn't it, girls?" she said maliciously, her demon eyes flashing. Angel growled and his face morphed and Buffy grabbed his black duster with both hands to keep him from wringing the woman's neck.
"Later," she hissed. "We'll all get a turn."
Riley, still holding his gun, shot and killed another of the women who was inching her way towards the scratched and battered desk to hide.
"Don't. Move."
It was almost a relief to know they could be killed as easily as humans. It was also disconcerting that they let themselves be led into this kind of situation. Why weren't there more of them?
Angel hastily glanced around, hoping they weren't surrounded. No, they weren't. Good. Just empty space and a few tons of dust.
"Why are you doing this?" Buffy demanded. "If you tell us now, your deaths will be quick, like your sisters there. Make us wait and you'll bleed rivers more than Willow."
"She was a bleeder, but Immortals always are. Blood sweeter than ancient Merlot and twice as thick. Much better than our other kills."
"You didn't kill Willow," Angel reminded her. "We got here first."
"Yeah, and you wrecked our plan and you'll kill us all and that will be the end of the story." The woman sounded bored now. "Happens every so often. No matter, someone will call us forth again and we'll find new victims."
"What do you mean, call you forth? Who are you?" Buffy asked. If they knew for sure, Giles could help with the research and maybe find a way to permanently stop them. Unfortunately, their true name was a series of low grumbling sounds, earthquake in nature and definitely not something she could write on a post-it.
"We work for Hollywood. Subcontractors, really. We have the power to manage and distribute… well, power, and for the right price we can finagle anything. All it takes is a couple of human sacrifices to release the energy, standard ritual drama, you've seen it before, I'm sure."
"Who hired you?" This was from Angel.
"I'm surprised you never guessed," the woman baited him. "The first death in November, the next in February, now in May? We were hired by a fledgling television to pad their Nielsen ratings during sweeps months. Of course, now you wrecked it and they'll see a drastic drop this month, thanks to your little witch being too hard to kill. Whatever, It's only ten years before we'll be reincarnated and sent back to try again. I welcome the vacation, really. It's a hard town."
Angel raised his gun and killed the woman with a single gunshot. Riley raised his gun and made short work of the other two, leaving Buffy with nothing to do. The smell of smoking guns mixed with the stale air and the dust and made her want to sneeze.
"That's it?" she wanted to ask. Incredible to come all this way and not have a long, drawn out fight. She'd already imagined a whole fight scenario that had them all over the warehouse, swinging from I-beams and tossing pallets at the women to knock them down. It seemed a little anti-climactic to end it all with a couple of gunshots.
But one look at Angel's face and she knew Riley had made the right decision. This was not the final showdown with these demons. They would have to find a way to stop them permanently and that could not be done today.
Angel was never so expressive as he was now, in full-on vamp mode, his chest heaving with broken sobs and his broad shoulders shaking. Buffy realized she'd never heard him cry his eyes out before. It was horrible. He sunk to the ground, the gun clattering to the cement as the women evaporated with a hiss and a puff of smoke, one by one going back into some unknown dimension until the next greedy bastard called them back into the world.
"It's over," she said to herself, glad for Riley's strong arms encircling her. She laid her head on his chest. It was comforting, a sense of rightness, a sense of home even in the presence of her former lover that this time last year, she thought she could never live without.
Well, that was wrong, Buffy realized as Angel cried his eyes out in a total lack of pride. It took him several long minutes to compose himself and then he gratefully accepted a swig of water from Riley's water bottle.
"Okay, I'm ready," he said, heaving a big sigh and getting to his feet, wiping his face with his sleeve. The crying was cathartic but now he ached to be with Willow. The mind link was silent like it was when she was sleeping, so he knew they could go to the hospital without rushing.
"I'm sure she'll be fine," Riley reassured them all.
"She is," Angel nodded.
"She will be," Buffy stated.
The three of them walked silently to the metal door they'd burst through, propping it up on the hinges after they exited. Now all they had to do was find the nearest hospital, relieve Xander and Forrest and go back to Sunnydale while Angel kept watch over Willow.
A day in the life.