Kate stared at the vaguely familiar man barreling across the police station toward her. She couldn’t place him and that was frightening. It was strange how hard it was hitting her; it didn’t feel like she’d just forgotten him, it felt like her mind was somehow failing her.

“Kate, I’ve got a new lead,” he declared when he reached her, his eyes glittered with a fanatic’s intensity. Kate found herself caught in a storm of conflicting emotions; he was an ally, a source of hope, a source of disquiet, a vigilante of the worst sort.

“What kind of lead?” Kate asked hoping he’d say something that would spark a light in the black pit she could almost see in her normally clear memories.

“I located two more vampires,” he said.

Kate couldn’t fight the derisive laughter his words brought. “Vampires don’t exist she said.

“They got to you,” her visitor replied sadly. “They went into your mind and took your knowledge from you. I’m surprised they didn’t just kill you... I suppose it's possible that they didn’t want to deal with the death of a police officer. I suppose your life will be easier for not knowing. Goodbye Kate.”

Kate watched the man turn and walk out feeling disturbed; vampires didn’t exist, she was more sure of that fact than she was that the sky was blue… and yet… what he’d said about her mind, that struck a cord deep inside her and it rang true.

_____________________________________________________________________________

“Vision!” Cordelia yelled. Angel dropped the book he was reading and bolted to her side, catching her as her knees began to buckle. For a few second her body convulsed in his arm then she was still, utterly drained.

Gently Angel set her on the couch.

“Aspirin, right,” Wesley said, hurrying to be of assistance.

“No,” Cordelia mumbled. “New stuff, prescription.”

After she’d downed two of the pills Cordelia began talking, “Parking garage. North side of town. Fantasy mural on the side. A girl, Mercy, alone, hunted, terrified. He killed her… I don’t know, it’s confusing… Her lover? Her father? Both of them maybe. She’s never been alone before, always taken care of, no one left. So hungry, but she doesn’t know how to get food. Afraid, so afraid. It’s not supposed to be like this!”

“We’ll help her,” Angel promised. “Just rest Cordy.” Angel stared at Cordelia’s face and the pain that still heavily marked it. “Wesley, maybe you should stay with her, she doesn’t look too good,” he said softly to the ex-Watcher.

“Of course,” Wesley agreed, forgetting that he didn’t believe that Angel was completely healthy as he watched a few tears trickle down Cordelia’s cheeks as the pain of the vision consumed her.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Angel saw a flash of color out of the corner of his eye. “Mercy?” he called.

When the girl stepped out of the shadows Angel just stared, he’d never seen a real person who looked quite so much like a china doll before. The girl was barely five feet tall, with curly pale golden hair cut in a page boy style that made her look no more than fifteen years old. She had cornflower blue eyes, wide set in a heart shaped face. Tears tracks marred the carefully applied blush on her cheeks and her frilly, impractical dress was torn and dirty.

“Did Gary send you for me?” she asked in a quavering voice. “No… he couldn’t,” she continued before Angel could answer. “Gary’s dead.”

Fresh tears filled the girl’s eyes and she began to tremble. Angel disregarded the strange vibe he was picking up from Mercy and went to comfort her.

“Shhh, it’s alright now,” he said slowly reaching out to brush away her tears, trying not to startle her. “I’ll help, I promise.”

Just as his fingertips brushed her cheek a shot crack through the air. Shot gun, Angel thought as a few pellets from the near miss lodged in his arm. He grabbed Mercy’s hand and pulled her to a run.

Mercy stumbled awkwardly after Angel. He glanced down to see she was wearing heels even less practical than her dress. With a sigh Angel scooped her into his arms and kept running.

Angel climbed up to the next level of the parking garage then stopped to shove a rock under the door, jamming it shut.

“All right,” he said putting Mercy back on her feet. “We’ve got a few minutes. Who’s after you and why?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said tearfully. “He just attacked us. Gary told me to run so I did. Gary fought him; he was trying to protect me. Gary always takes care of me, but that man killed him. It just doesn’t seem real; Gary can’t be dead. What am I supposed to do without him?”

Angel stared down at the girl in dismay. He couldn’t help but flash back to the Halloween when a spell had turned Buffy into some helpless damsel in distress. He felt confident he could save Mercy from the shotgun-totting nutcase chasing her, but what exactly was he supposed to do with her afterwards? He was apparently too late to save her caretaker, and she didn’t seem even vaguely capable of caring for herself.

_____________________________________________________________________________

“I’ve gotta call the doctor,” Cordelia groaned trying to sit up.

“Why?” Wesley asked. “Where’s the number, I’ll take care of it.”

“Purse, outside pocket. They wanted to run some tests on me right after I’d had a vision… migraine, can’t tell the doctor I get visions.”

“Oh, of course. I think I found it.”

Wesley showed the card to Cordelia then dialed the number. “Hello, is this Dr. Gerim’s office? Cordelia Chase, one of his patients, has just had a severe migraine. What should I do? The hospital!” Wesley’s voice rose in alarm. “Yes, we’re on our way now.

“I have to get you to the hospital,” Wesley repeated to Cordelia.

“That’s probably where the medical stuff for the test is,” Cordelia said.

“Certainly, you’re right. I’m over-reacting. I’ll just call a cab and we’ll go… or maybe they could send an ambulance?” Wesley stammered.

“A cab,” Cordelia suggested.

“Right, a cab.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

“This is a woodchip,” Angel said in confusion, examining the pellet he’d picked out of his arm. “Who loads a shotgun with woodchips… soaked in garlic juice?” He added feeling a burning in his fingers and smelling the pungent herb.

Mercy reacted to his statement with a panicked moan.

They’d been trying to find a way past Mercy’s pursuer. After five minutes in her company Angel had decided that the best course of action was to get her to the relative safety of his car and then go back after her assailant alone. That way he wouldn’t have to worry her fainting, Angel had reasoned.

Only the other man had turned Angel’s trick with the doors against him. Now every stairwell they’d tried was jammed shut, trapping them on the sixth story of the parking garage. They were being driven into a dead end trap.

Another shotgun blast shattered a car window beside Angel.

“Stay down,” Angel ordered pushing Mercy toward a narrow gap between a concrete pillar and a van. “I’m going to end this.”

With Mercy safely stashed away, Angel began stalking their hunter. He’d had enough of pretending to be prey.

A few minutes later Angel spotted the hunter closing in on Mercy’s hiding spot with an uncanny precision. “What’s he doing here?” Angel thought as he recognized the man as Kate’s vampire hunting friend, Corin.

Seeing the hunter was almost even with Mercy’s nitch Angel stepped out into the open. “I thought you were interested in more dangerous games than terrifying little girls,” Angel said.

Corin spun. “You!” he snarled bringing up the shotgun.

Angel dodged the worst of the blast, but still got caught in the edge of the hail of wooden pellets it produced. The garlic added a burning agony to the injuries sending Angel to his hands and knees, fighting the instinct to change to his normally more powerful demon-form. To change now might very well render him unconscious and waking to another of Corin’s question and answer sessions wasn’t on his to do list.

Seeing Angel go down, Corin turned his attention back to Mercy. The slight girl hissed at him, golden eyes glowing in the shadows, looking and sounding more like a frightened kitten than the monster Corin knew her to be.

As the shotgun leveled on Mercy, Angel lunged off the floor at the Hunter. He defected the barrel of the gun upward, letting it discharge harmlessly before ripping it from Corin’s hands and sending it flying into the night. Angel yanked Corin’s arms behind his back then turned to check on Mercy. When he caught sight of the vampiress he froze.

Corin pulled himself free of Angel’s loosened grip and fled. Mercy met Angel’s eyes then she began wailing, her human guise returning as she did so, changing her back into the frail china doll.

“Why me?” Angel asked the heavens glancing between Corin’s rapidly retreating form and the sobbing vampire-girl.

_____________________________________________________________________________

“Now I’m going to have to give you an injection," the medical technician told Cordelia. “It helps things to show up more clearly in the CAT Scan.”

Cordelia held out her arm nervously chewing on her bottom lip as she tried to find somewhere reassuring to look. Not at the big needle sliding into her arm, certainly not at the machine they were going to use on her. Wesley had been left in the waiting room. Finally she settled on the technician’s face.

His nametag told her that his name was Kevin; he wasn’t that much older than she was. So flirting wasn’t eeew or anything, and it would be distracting. She could pretend she was back in High School and that everything was okay.

Putting on her brightest smile Cordelia said. “So Kevin…”

_____________________________________________________________________________

“You’re going to turn me over to him,” Mercy whimpered.

“I’d kill you myself before I’d give you to that sadistic bastard,” Angel replied, then winced as Mercy let out with an ear shattering wail. “Not that I’m gong to,” he yelled over her racket. “The Powers that Be want me to save you for some unknown reason, so I’m saving you okay?”

Mercy quieted, cringing and sniffling in her protected nitch, wide childlike blue eyes welling with tears.

Angel sighed, he’d seen Darla do it, he’d seen Dru do it, in fact every female vampire he’d ever know had done it from time to time, he’d never been particularly impressed by it. “Mercy, drop the helpless fair maiden act,” he said. “You’re stronger than any human and you kill people for food. In fact, you’re the thing I spend most my time rescuing people from, so this whole damsel in distress thing is pretty ridiculous.”

“I never killed anybody,” Mercy protested.

“How do you feed?” Angel demanded disbelievingly.

“You think I hunt?” Mercy asked, her delicate face twisting in dismay. “No one hunts anymore, if we did people would hurt us. Gary buys our blood. I like the nice stuff with Champaign in it, except Gary never lets me have much; it makes me tipsy. But that awful mortal killed Gary. What am I supposed to do without him?”

Tears began spilling over her cheeks again and Angel almost believed they were caused by genuine grief and fear. He felt like a jerk for upsetting her, and like a fool for believing her. He still didn’t know what he was going to do with her. Then he remembered her golden eyes and neat fangs set in an otherwise perfectly human face and smiled. He knew exactly how he could deal with this confusing, frustrating girl. “Come on, I know someone who’d be happy to take care of you,” he said. “He’s a vampire, just like you.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

“They’re all done, at least for today,” Cordelia said as she joined Wesley in the waiting room. “Now I go home and take things easy for a few days while they analyze all the test results. Then they tell me if there’s anything medical science can do about vision headaches. Not that they had much luck last time I was here. Still I did get industrial strength painkillers out of it.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

Angel rang the bell outside of LaCroix’s radio studio then waited for the elder vampire.

Mercy stood beside him, still sniffling and generally looking pitiful. During the half-hour drive across the city Angel had come to the conclusion that Mercy wasn’t faking anything, and that he wished that she were.

Mercy was almost a caricature of everything that he’d always despised about noble women. She’d spent eighteen years as a human being sheltered from the world by her parents and the next one hundred and fifty years as a vampire being sheltered and protected by Gary. In her entire life she’d never once done a single thing for herself. She was coddled, helpless, naïve, and agonizingly ignorant of everything.

Sure she was a vampire, but Angel couldn’t think of her as evil, not in comparison to every other vampire he knew. She didn’t kill or create chaos, her only purpose in life seemed to have been hanging off her boyfriend’s arm and looking lovely. Vampires were supposed to be demonic, soulless, and evil… Mercy didn’t even seem terribly predatory. Angel couldn’t help but feel that killing her would just be wrong, even though she was a vampire and his stated desire was to destroy every vampire in existence. Angel didn’t like to admit it, but he didn’t really want to kill Spike or LaCroix either.

Angel never really wanted to kill vampires he’d turned, it felt wrong. It felt like making them pay for his mistakes. He’d wrecked their mortal lives, and no matter how much damage they did ending their existence as demons felt like he was compounding his original crime. Spike was Drucilla’s; made on Angel’s suggestion that she find someone to entertain her and thus it was Angel’s fault that William’s mortal life had been ended when he was barely two decades old. Angel knew the chip didn’t make Spike any less evil, but it provided him with an excuse for not killing the blond and Angel was happy to have that excuse, he’d already taken too much from William.

LaCroix had saved his life, more than once; it made it hard to work up any dislike for the older vampire. Beyond that, Angel found himself fighting against a desire to let himself reciprocate LaCroix’s feelings of family. The blood ties that had formed between them when LaCroix had practically remade him showed Angel that LaCroix saw him as a son, and somehow it felt real. Angel had never looked at Darla as a parent despite the fact that she had sired him she had always been his lover. Penn and Dru both saw him as a parent, but he hadn’t loved them; Drucilla had been a project, a challenge to prove just how thoroughly he could twist and break someone. Penn was proof; proof that he could be a better father than his father had been, it didn’t mean he’d cared about Penn. Angel had taken Penn and shaped him into exactly what Angel wanted him to be, something his father had completely failed to do with him. His father hadn’t even been able to explain to him what he wanted from Liam. Back then, when Angel had been alive, he’d wanted so badly to be whatever his father wanted, but he’d never understand how to win the approval he sought.

A part of Angel still stung from Darla’s long ago revelation that even without his soul he had still wanted his father’s approval. “He’ll never approve of you either, not in this world or any other,” she’d told him so very long ago. It was still true, deep down a part of him badly wanted his father to have pride in him, to love him, but that could never happen, he’d seen to that.

It made LaCroix very dangerous, LaCroix promised Angel a chance at something he’d wanted for a very long time, something that once he’d have done anything to obtain, but he couldn’t trust that his and LaCroix’s beliefs coincided in any shape or form. Still he found himself considering LaCroix’s insistence that there was a difference between LaCroix and the vampires he’d always known, hoping that it was true. Angel found himself hoping that LaCroix would like who he was, and fearing the temptation to become someone else to please the ancient.

Angel was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the presence behind him until he heard the click of a shotgun being cocked, and there was barely time for him to pull Mercy into the shelter of his body before the gun went off and he was enveloped in pain.

The woodchips were too light to work as intended, they couldn’t provide the necessary force to penetrate his heart but they burrowed into the muscles of his back where they burned like phosphorous.

“Don’t change, don’t change,” Angel chanted to himself, wondering if it even mattered. The world had disappeared in a haze of pain, for all he knew he’d already passed out. He could feel the change coming, like air pushed before a tidal wave and then it hit and Angel was swept away in the torrent.

LaCroix’s hand was on the doorknob when the shot was fired. By the time the door opened he had been transformed by fury.

For the second time that night Corin’s gun was ripped away from him, this time so violently that his finger broke against the trigger guard. An inconsequently injury, as LaCroix’s fangs broke the scarred skin on Corin’s neck a split second later. When the Hunter’s heart stopped LaCroix dropped him to the pavement.

LaCroix glared at Mercy who had just managed to pull herself free of Angel’s dead weight. “Take care of the body,” LaCroix ordered.

“I don’t know how, I never…” Mercy began.

“Then I suggest you learn,” LaCroix snarled carefully lifting Angel from the ground, trying not to touch his torn back.

Mercy nodded, her voice frozen with terror.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Kate stood in the morgue staring down at the body of one Richard Corin, self-proclaimed vampire hunter.

A person who’d know her, only she couldn’t remember him.

He’d died of shock brought on by blood loss. Nearly half of his blood was missing. All lost through two insignificant puncture wounds neatly tapping his jugular vein.

He’d said he’d found two vampires, which was impossible because vampire didn’t exist. Twenty-four hours later he was dead and real or not it certainly looked like he’d been the victim of a vampire attack.

He’d said they taken her knowledge of vampires from her mind, and there were blank spots in her memories. Ever since he’d said that Kate had been looking for things she didn’t remember, and she’d found them: The Pope Killings for example. The case was technically still open, but she’d filed it as if it were closed. She didn’t know why. She was the one that had found her father’s body, but she couldn’t remember that. Angel had been involved with both incidents. It was in her official notes about the serial killer, he given them a drawing of the suspect. She didn’t know how he’d been involved with her father’s death, but she knew, beyond any doubts, that he had been involved. Every memory she had of Angel after the Pope Killings was hazy, obscured, wrong. Whatever had been done to her, Angel was at the heart of it.

Kate knew that somehow she had to find out what had happened to her.

next