Angel was ready.
Darla and Drusilla were going to die.
Angel's leather coat snapped as he adjusted the collar. He tugged on his sleeves, checking the coverage over the spring-loaded stake strapped to his wrist. The short sword was firm against his back in its sheath beneath the coat. Another stake was tucked into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back.
Turning, Angel's gaze roved over the poshly decorated room. It was the room he'd grown soft in, complacent. A radio sat on the dresser. A pile of books rested on the floor next to a plush leather chair. A fully stocked wet bar waited to be consumed. A queen-sized bed dressed with dark imported sheets promised the comfort of sleep.
But it was the nude blond in the center of the bed, with the dark linens pooled around the luminescent body, that enticed Angel the most.
White-blond hair was mussed in a spiked disarray. Soft lips, bruised red and swollen, were thrust into a pout, the lower lip glistening after a pink tongue darted out to moisten it. Sharp cheeks were emphasized by the shadows haunting the room. Bright blue eyes were shining with an innocence and purity that hid the devil within. Deep ruby blood was sliding down pale skin, from a ragged bite on the gently curving neck.
Absolute sin and temptation in physical form.
"Don't go," a husky voice begged in a whisper.
Angel grasped the doorknob, the metal cutting into the palm of his hand. He said nothing.
"Angel... Sire... don't...," Spike trailed off, dark lashes lowering, creating the shadows of crescent moons against his pale skin. Inhale and exhale, unneeded but uncontrolled, smoothly muscled chest expanding and relaxing with the action.
The metal squeaked under Angel's hand as his grip tightened. Still, he said nothing.
"I'm scared."
It was said in a tiny voice, the words ghosting across trembling lips. But the emotion that had never been revealed before sounded like an explosion in the silence.
Spike raised his eyes and met Angel's across the room. The blond took another breath, an obvious gathering of courage, and spoke in a softly pleading tone. "Don't go. I have this... this bloody awful feeling that if you leave, you... you...," he swallowed and finished in a shaky whisper, "...you won't come back."
Angel stared for a long moment at Spike, his last bastion of sanity against the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him. Nothing mattered to him anymore, except for two things -- destroying Darla and Drusilla, and taking care of his boy.
Spike didn't know that Drusilla was in L.A., or that Angel was hunting both her and Darla. Angel had kept quiet about Darla's re-siring, the truth of what happened with the lawyers, and about what was happening within him. He wanted Spike to remain pure and untouched by the events that had obliterated his beliefs. Angel needed his childe to be a safe haven whose body he could redefine his boundaries in, who didn't judge his actions and obeyed him without question.
The dark-haired vampire gazed upon his boy with reverence, his eyes tracing the contours of the younger man's chiseled face, and he whispered, "'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.'"
Angel took a step back, and the shadows coalesced around him.
And then he was gone.
End