~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Laura needs a doctor doesn’t she, Angie?” Kevin asked quietly.
“She does, I know Laura says to save the money for the mortgage, but I can’t deal with this. It’s some sort of respiratory infection, I don’t know what to do for her,” Angie said.
“I thought as much, I’ll get the doctor tomorrow before I look for work,” Kevin said.
“I thought the meat packing thing was supposed to last for another week?” Angie commented.
“There were a lot of people, we finished the shipment early,” Kevin said. “The shipments aren’t coming in regularly so the company just lets us go and hires another crew when the next arrives.”
“The railroad still needs hobos kept from the trains at night, they need it worse every day, so I’ve still got work, at least until they decide it’s not worth the bother,” Angie reported.
“Angie, you don’t have to…” Kevin started to say.
“I like helping Kevin,” Angie said softly. “You’ve seen what I’m like when I don’t have a purpose. Consider letting me help a favor to me.”
“I guess I’ll just be grateful for your oddness again,” Kevin said with a warm smile.
Both men turned at the sound of a window cracking open, together they headed for the kitchen. A ragged looking man holding a gun stood outside the now open window.
“Just stay there,” The thief said pointing the gun between Angie and Kevin. “Don’t make me hurt anyone.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Angie said in a low dangerous voice.
“I don’t have a choice,” the man said. “I need money.”
“Pick another house,” Angie replied, a touch of gold entering his dark brown eyes.
“My wife’s sick,” Kevin added, “With the doctor’s bills we don’t have enough to make it worth your while.”
“You haven’t called the doctor yet,” The thief laughed. “I’ve been casing this place for the last couple days, I know you’ve been getting ready for an expense. You’ve got more than enough to make it worth my while. Now one of you two gentlemen just step over to the door and let me in. The other stays in my line of fire.”
Angie nodded toward the door. Kevin understood instantly, once he was out of danger the vampire would be free to take care of their thief.
Kevin walked slowly to the door, which put the icebox between himself and the gunman. As soon as Angie saw that Kevin was safe he vamped out with a growl. The thief triggered two shots before Angie ripped the gun from his hands and yanked the man halfway through the window. The blood scent hit Angie a second later. Heedless of the damage he was doing to the thief, Angie pulled the man the rest of the way through the window then tossed him in a corner. The thief’s head smacked the wall and he slid bonelessly to the ground.
Kevin stood, hand still on the doorknob, a look of shock on his face as he stared at the growing red stain on his shirt. “It ricocheted,” he said in disbelief bring up blood as he spoke, then collapsed to his knees.
Shaking off his own stunned disbelief, Angie caught his friend and gently lowered him to the floor. Numbly Angie inspected the wound, there was massive bleeding, possibly signifying damage to the aorta.
Behind them the door creaked open. Glancing over his shoulder Angie saw the six-year-old Shannon standing in the door holding a teddy bear. “Go back to bed!” Angie ordered abruptly, his mind still focused on treating the girl’s father. Without a word Shannon backed out of the room.
“Stop the bleeding,” Angie thought. “Everything else comes second.” The tablecloth became a makeshift compression bandage, but Angie could see the wound was still bleeding badly, he could hear Kevin’s heart laboring, adrenalin making it beat faster, driving the blood from his body that much quicker.
“It should hurt more,” Kevin commented vaguely.
“You’re going to be all right,” Angie insisted. He needed to do something else; Kevin was bleeding out as he watched. The blood scent was overwhelming, making it difficult to think clearly. It had been so long since he’d been exposed to this much blood.
Angie didn’t know what to do. Experience told him these kinds of wounds were fatal, but this was Kevin and Kevin wasn’t supposed to die. There had to be something he wasn’t thinking of. Except all he could focus on was the blood. “That ‘s why I can’t couldn’t fix this, the blood scent’s too distracting,” Angie thought.
There was something he could do to fix this, he just couldn’t think of it. Angie’s panic stricken gaze fell on the unconscious thief. Blood, free for the taking, then he’d be able to concentrate, to figure out a way to save Kevin, despite the wound that was rapidly killing him.
“It was all the thief’s fault in the first place,” Angie justified as he drained the man. Dropping the body he went back to Kevin.
In the few moments it had taken to kill the thief, Kevin had loss consciousness. His heart faltered then skipped a beat.
Now Angie couldn’t deny that the bleeding was too heavy to be from anything but the aorta. Nothing could possibly save Kevin. Another few minutes and he’d be gone, long before Angie could get him to a hospital.
“Turn him,” Angie thought. “That way he wouldn’t die.”
With a sob Angie acknowledged that that wasn’t what would happen. Better than anyone he knew what he would create that way: a vampire that looked like Kevin, but would never be Kevin.
Slowly, tears streaming down his face, Angie say back on his heels and watched helplessly as his best friend Kevin died.
______________________________________________________________
“Kevin was shot by a robber one night,” Angel said. “He died in a few minutes. I got a doctor for Laura, but it didn’t do any good. She died three days after Kevin.”
“I’m sorry,” Xander said.
“After Laura died I should have taken Shannon to her grandparents,” Angel continued grimly. “But I didn’t want to give her up. We moved westward. I worked at whatever came up, taught school for a couple of years, and hunted wild life to keep us both fed.
“How much more do you remember?” Xander asked.
“I remember the rest of Shannon’s life.”
______________________________________________________________
Angie jumped off the train; a knapsack containing his and Shannon’s things slung over one shoulder, Shannon herself balanced easily on his opposite hip. The girl’s face was buried against his shoulder, both arms wrapped securely around his neck. In the months since her parents’ deaths, Shannon had remained close to the souled vampire, never letting him out of her sight.
“We’re in Montana this time,” Angie told the girl. “Near Missoula.”
Angie looked about the countryside. The small town lay just northeast of the Idaho boarder, between the Bitterroot Mountain Range and the Rocky Mountains, thick forests surrounded it. Angie nodded to himself, this place would do.
He hadn’t been able to find regular work since they’d left Chicago. It would have been hard even without the limitations being a vampire placed on Angie. With them, well there just weren’t many openings for someone who spontaneously combusted in sunlight. He could have survived on the streets, but that would have meant giving up Shannon.
“Which you should have done anyway,” his conscious reminded him viciously. “She’d be better off with her grandparents, what the Hell do you think you’re doing trying to raise a child?”
Angie rapidly shut down that annoying voice, he wasn’t giving up Shannon, that’s all there was to it.
Here there would be abandoned houses to take over and wildlife to hunt. He could take care of Shannon here.
______________________________________________________________
Shannon followed Angie from room to room as the vampire sun-proofed the small house they’d found on the outskirts of town, clutching her teddy bear.
Angie worried about her, since her parents’ deaths the girl rarely played anymore, just followed him as if she might loose him too if she let him out of her sight.
“It’ll get better now that we’re not moving,” Angie thought. The cross-country trip had been nightmarish for her, but now it was over. Every day spend in Missoula further increased Angie’s certainty that they could sit out the depression here. The barter system was alive and well in Missoula and he’d managed to arrange an agreement where he’d teach reading and writing to a half dozen children in exchange for some of the things he and Shannon would need.
Angie like the arrangement, it kept Shannon near him during the day but she’d still be with other children. Hopefully their presence would turn her back into the lively, cheerful child he’d known until a few months earlier.
______________________________________________________________
“You taught school?” Xander asked disbelievingly.
“Informally, for nine years,” Angel replied. “I was educated during my life time, it was more than most could say. Even while I was soulless I wasn’t living underground, ignorant of the world around me. The older students helped with anything required out of doors. It did wonders for Shannon, brought her out of the depression caused by her parents’ deaths. She made friends.”
______________________________________________________________
“I’m joining the WAC’s with Meridith,” Shannon announced. “Everyone is taking part in the war effort.”
Angie stared at his seventeen-year-old ward. “Elise and Kristi aren’t.”
“Elise and Kristi are married,” Shannon replied derisively. “All the guys have already left, Meridith says this is the only way we’re going to meet anyone now.”
“So you’re joining the army to meet boys?” Angie stated, wanting to clarify things.”
“Uh-huh,” Shannon replied happily. “But don’t worry, they don’t let girls do anything dangerous, just typing and stuff.”
“And if I told you no?” Angie asked.
“I’d be sad, but I’m not a little girl anymore Angie. I’d still go.”
______________________________________________________________
“Shannon joined the WAC’s shortly after the US became involved in the Second World War,” Angel said.
“The what’s?” Xander asked.
“The Women’s Army Corps,” Angel explained. “She was originally stationed in New York, but after a few months she received an over-sea’s posting in Europe. I arranged transportation to go there as well, my ship left a week before hers did.”
______________________________________________________________
“Where’s the troop carrier?” Angie asked. “There was supposed to be one arriving today.”
“Haven’t you heard? A U-boat sank it,” The officer on duty replied.
“Not the one carrying the 81st WAC unit,” Angie said with certainty.
“You got a girl with them?” The officer asked sympathetically.
“My niece,” Angie replied.
“You’ll have to go up to headquarters,” The officer said. “I’m pretty sure someone will check for you, seeing as it’s about your family.”
Angie turned and walked off without saying anything more; the idea that Shannon could be dead simply wasn’t real.
“She said they wouldn’t let her do anything dangerous,” Angie reminded himself.
The walk to headquarters was an eternity and waiting for the secretary to get back to him with the news was another.
“I’m sorry,” The man said. Angie slammed his fist into a filing cabinet, deeply denting the metal, then left hurriedly before anyone could notice that the tears filling his eyes were tainted with blood.
______________________________________________________________
“When I arrived in Europe I took up duties as a field medic again,” Angel narrated. “Until I learned that the ship Shannon was to have arrived on had been sunk by a German submarine. I joined a French resistance cell several months after that.”
“Vampires are more cut out for terrorism and sabotage than for soldiering. I learned a lot about explosives with them.”
“When the war ended, I returned to the states.”
______________________________________________________________
Angie stepped off the train at the depot in Missoula, Montana, where he’d raised Shannon. He’d just finished retracing their path from Chicago to Montana, visiting every place that held memories of the child he’d raised and lost.
“Angie?” Elise Martin yelled, rushing out of her office as soon as she recognized him. Elise, one of Angie’s first students, was now the postmistress for the town. “Angie, I’m so glad you came back! She’s not dead! Angie, Shannon’s not dead!”
“What did you say?” Angie demanded, grabbing Elise and lifting her out of the stream of debarking passengers.
“She’s been trying to contact you for years, Shannon was transferred to another unit at the last minute, she ended up stationed in the South Pacific. She sent messages all over Europe trying to let you know what had happened, especially after she heard about her old unit being killed when that ship sank,” Elise said.
“Shannon’s okay?” Angie asked, completely stunned.
“She’s in Portland, Oregon,” Elise replied. “Shannon got married, his name is Wayne Marcus. They delayed the wedding for months because Shannon wanted you there. No one knew how to find you Angie.”
“Portland, where in Portland? Elise do you have an address? I need to get a ticket,” Angie babbled.
“Yes, I’ve got an address and about a hundred letters for you, just let me get them.”
______________________________________________________________
“After returning to the States I learned Shannon hadn’t died during the war,” Angel said sounding incredibly tired.
“So that was a good, right?” Xander asked.
“I arrived in Portland just in time for her funeral,” Angel replied. “Her husband murdered her. I stayed in Portland long enough to bury Shannon’s murderer, I don’t remember anything after that.”
“So you killed him?” Xander asked, somewhat disturbed at the idea of the souled vampire killing anyone.
“Who said I killed him?” Angel said coldly.
“When was that?”
“1947.”
______________________________________________________________
“Xander told us you’ve recovered your memories up to the year 1947,” Wesley said. “I believe I know the next part. You ended up in LA, living in this very hotel, where you met a young woman named Judith…”
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