~Part: 5~
Drusilla peered in through the window of the china shop. She could see Spike, running in a mad circle. And Drusilla could see her reflection, wearing the clothes that belonged to her. Her favorite skirt, the one with the tartan pattern Grandmother said made her head ache.
But right now it was Drusilla's head that hurt. All the dishes were flying about in the china shop, shattering into smithereens and creating a kind of blizzard of broken china. So much crashing. Drusilla only liked crashing when she made things crash. Then she liked it a lot.
Did her reflection's head hurt, too? She had the same head as Drusilla, after all. They both had long, dark hair in pretty curls, and they both could see forward and backwards all at the same time, and Spike didn't seem able to tell the difference between them at all.
Spike was laughing with her reflection now. Their mouths were all bloody.
"They've been having a lovely party," Drusilla said, frowning. "No invitations were sent, and I have no cake."
She wanted to ask the reflection why she'd swapped their clothes. She also wanted to ask Spike which of them he liked better -- or perhaps he liked them both. Drusilla took a moment to consider how that might be, and shivered in pleasure. She smiled. "A party, a party. Crackers for everyone."
But as Drusilla began skipping toward the china shop's door, she started seeing forwards again. She froze in her tracks and gripped the sides of her head. Too many things to see -- all locked up inside her head, and her head was full to bursting -- "Daddy?" she gasped.
Angelus was running. He was in the street behind the theatre, the place with all the lovely costumes and the people who sang for their suppers. But he wasn't alone, oh no, oh no. They were waiting for him. A mob with terrible fire and spells, and they were a net, and Angelus was a fish. She could see him, the only point of clarity in the maelstrom of her mind's eye. He was writhing and twitching as though he were caught on a hook.
They were going to do terrible things to him. Not stake him. Worse than staking him, so much worse --
"Daddy!" she cried out again. She forgot about her reflection, about the party, about everything except getting to Angelus' side.
Desperately, frantically, she started to run.
***
"You sure you're all right?" Spike said. "Looked like a nasty one, that."
"Verrrry nasty," Dru said, unclenching her fists from her hair. She'd still had shards of china in her hands when the vision overtook her, and now their broken edges had cut up her hands. Smiling, she held out her palms to Spike, who began doing something between kissing them and licking them. Either way, she liked it.
Between licks, Spike said, "What was that, anyway? You were shrieking about Angelus something awful. Don't tell me his little theatricale has gone wrong." He snickered. "Not that I'd mind pulling his irons out of the fire, watching him try to explain it all away."
"He's in the fire now," Dru said sadly. She knew not to go running off this time, but it was hard, so hard. Poor Daddy. "It will make him too warm to stay in the night with us. He will have to go into the day, no matter how much it burns."
"This is music to my ears," Spike said, moving on to her fingers. His tongue flickered over a knuckle.
"I went to him before," she said. "When there was only one of me. I went there, but I was too late, and there was ever so much crying. I followed him into the forest, and I was all alone, and no one was there to stop my tears." Dru looked down at Spike with vague displeasure. "You'd found yourself a traveling salesman, and you were playing with his wares."
"Sounds like fun," Spike said genially, not attempting to understand her. Then he straightened up and frowned. "When you say 'wares,' is that a euphemism?"
Dru was not thinking about the salesman. He had not happened. Other things would happen. Some of them were very painful to see, very frightening, but they would make her story come out right at last.
"I shan't be alone in the forest this time," Dru said.
***
Angelus walked easily through the streets on his way to the theatre. He paused from time to time, glancing over his shoulder, then shook his head and continued on his path.
A few moments after one backward glance, Cordelia, Fred, Gunn and Angel all stood up from behind the small cart they'd ducked behind. "That was close," Gunn said in a low voice. "It's like he knows he's being followed."
"He senses a vampire," Angel said.
"Where?" Cordelia said, looking around. Everyone stared at her, and she folded her arms across her chest. "I think we have more important things to do than make fun of me for saying that."
Fred turned to Angel. "If you're setting off his vampire radar or sonar or whatever it is, maybe you should stay further back and let us follow him."
"This is too important," Angel said, shaking his head. "I can't sit back and hope the gypsies get to perform the curse. I have to do something."
Cordelia took his arms in her hands. She could feel the tension coiled inside him still; he was desperate to strike, to act. "If the 'something' you do is tip Angelus off to a trap, then that's not so great, right? Just take it easy, cowboy."
"Cowboy," Angel repeated, looking skyward. She couldn't tell if she'd amused him or annoyed him. As long as it kept him from doing something stupid, Cordelia would take either option.
"All right," Gunn said. "Let's think strategically, okay? I may not know jack about Sighisoara or Romania or gypsies and all, but I know street fighting, and that's what's about to go down here."
Fred smiled up at Gunn, her face expressing both surprise and relief. Angel didn't say anything in agreement, but he was listening calmly, always a good sign. "Strategy," Cordelia said. "Strategy is good. Except -- can we maybe strategize and walk at the same time? He's getting ahead of us."
They started to follow the dark figure ahead of them again, keeping to the shadows. "He's going straight to the theatre," Gunn said.
"We think he is," Angel said. He was staring straight ahead at the past version of himself. Cordelia knew Angel's night vision was much better than a human's, but unless he had some kind of vampire fog-vision he'd never mentioned, she doubted he could see Angelus any more easily than she could. A light mist was forming, and to Cordelia, Angelus was a blurred and indistinct silhouette. "He could decide on an impulse kill at any moment," Angel said.
"He can't kill anybody else!" Cordelia whispered. "We've already monkeyed with history once. That's enough monkeying. No more monkey do we need."
"Not to devalue the lives of any innocent Romanian citizens," Fred said, "but shouldn't we be watching out for Drusilla?"
Cordelia groaned. "She's already done her damage."
"We don't know that," Angel said. "She might keep watch until she's sure the danger has passed, and it hasn't."
"So, two objectives," Gunn said. "Keep Angelus on his track, and don't let Drusilla or anybody else get too close. Anybody who ain't a gypsy with a chip on their shoulder, I mean."
Cordelia realized they were all already walking a little faster, purpose driving their steps. Angelus' outline was a little clearer. She gathered up the hem of her heavy skirt in her hand. "What positions do we take?"
Angel said, "I'll stay as far back as I can, in case I tip him off. Gunn, that leaves you."
"And me," Cordelia chimed in. When Angel stared at her, she said, "Trained fighter, remember? I know everything he knows, because you know everything he knows, and you taught me everything -- dammit, I can handle it."
"I don't like it," Angel said, but to her surprise he then continued, "but I don't like any of this. Fred, you and I will stay on the outskirts. We'll steer people away from him, and if we see Drusilla -- we stake her."
The hesitation in his voice was so slight that Cordelia was sure Fred and Gunn hadn't noticed. When she looked at Angel's face -- stern with resolve -- Cordelia wondered if she had imagined it. She said only, "Let's go."
***
Tendrils of mist curled along the street outside the theatre, blurring the edges of buildings and lending the night a mysterious, almost sinister edge. Angelus curled his lip in wry amusement at that thought -- after all, it wasn't the fog that made this particular part of Sighisoara more dangerous than anywhere else. It was him.
Nevertheless, something about the way the fog swirled and churned, distorting familiar shapes out of recognition, disquieted Angelus, and he wasn't sure why. The vague sense that another vampire was close wasn't new -- eastern Europe was crawling with the undead, most of them barely one step up from the ignorant, ill-bred peasants they had once been and now hunted. No, it was the odd sense of familiarity that bothered him -- not Darla or Drusilla or Spike, or even Penn, if by some unfortunate coincidence he had come to Romania too. This was something else, something that was at once more familiar and more alien than any of them.
Ridiculous thoughts. Darla had always said he was too inclined toward pensiveness, and for once Angelus was inclined to agree with her. He reached for his pocket watch, before remembering Drusilla's clock-destroying spree. Well, no matter -- he could tell the time well enough by the height of the silver-hazed moon above the mist. Lord Dalton was late and, unlike the fictional vampires that had caught his Lordship's imagination, Angelus had no particular love of lurking in cold, damp alleys. Not when a roaring fire, a comfortable bed and a pliant -- for the moment, at least -- woman waited for him back at the villa.
Tomorrow, Angelus would play the role of contrite friend again. Tomorrow he would earn his invitation into Lord Dalton's home. Tonight, he was simply bored and irritated, and in no mood for play-acting.
He started to walk away from the theatre.
***
The rain-barrel Cordelia was squeezing up against was almost as tall as she was and easily wide enough to conceal both herself and Gunn. It was also, unfortunately, damp and cold and more than a little slimy. While Gunn peered around the barrel's curved edge, Cordelia concentrated on not getting green gloop on her borrowed clothes.
"Fog's getting thicker," Gunn said. "I can't see nothin' out there."
"Do you see Drusilla?" Cordelia asked.
"No."
"Do you see the gypsies?"
"No."
Cordelia sighed. "Well, at least you can see Angelus."
"Actually," Gunn said after a second, "I can't."
"What?"
Cordelia pushed in next to Gunn and looked around the side of the rain-barrel with him. At once she saw what he had meant about the fog -- the light mist that had descended while they had been following Angelus to the theatre was now a soupy murk through which it was impossible to make out much of anything. "Where'd he go?"
"He's probably still there. We just can't see him."
Cordelia squinted, trying to make out definite forms in the haze. But every time she thought she saw a man's silhouette, the fog's twisting vapors revealed it to be something else -- a stack of crates or a sack hanging on a hook. She felt a stab of anxiety as she realized the street outside the theatre was empty. Angelus was gone.
"He's not there." She hit Gunn on the arm. "He was there a second ago! How'd we lose him?"
Gunn was looking up and down the street, his face serious. "Damn. He coulda gone either way. If we want to find him fast, we're gonna have to split up."
Cordelia stood up. "Fine. I'll go left, you go right." That made it sound more as if they had a plan, and less as if the plan they'd had was rapidly coming apart.
She started to leave, but Gunn's voice behind her made her look back. His face was grave as he said, "If you see him first, you stay back. Stay out of sight."
Cordelia nodded. "Sure."
"Cordy, I mean it," he said, more harshly. "Don't think just 'cause Angel taught you a few moves you can take him. And don't go thinkin' that 'cause you're buddies with our Angel you can appeal to this one's better nature. Because, until those gypsies get hold of him, he doesn't HAVE a better nature."
***
The fog made surveillance difficult, but it had certain advantages, Fred thought. Such as, the ease with which she was able to hide herself at the side of the street, keeping watch without fear of being seen. She was hiding near the theatre's side entrance; from there, she could hear muffled applause from the audience inside. The playbill above the door was in Romanian, so Fred wasn't certain what they were showing their appreciation for, but from the sounds of raucous laughter, she guessed it was a comedy.
She heard footsteps approaching before she saw their owner and tensed as she peered into the foggy darkness. But the shape that started to form out of the murk was familiar -- tall and broad-shouldered -- and Fred relaxed a little. Just Angel, back after making a sweep of the other side of the street. She stepped out to meet him.
She realized, a second too late, that this Angel had longer hair than he should have, and wore a finely tailored jacket instead of the peasant's wool coat the gypsies had provided for him. If she ran he would hear her, and any moment now he would see her --
Hands grabbed Fred from behind and pulled her back into the shadows. Instinctively, she started to struggle, before realizing that the hands holding on to her were pale and cool. She tried to stand still, but her heart was thudding in her chest and her breath seemed to explode out of her, air warmed in her lungs condensing into clouds that thickened the mist. Fred sucked in a lungful of air and held it as long as she could, until her heartbeat pounding in her ears threatened to deafen her. Next to her, Angel stood so rigidly that it was easy to imagine she was being held by a granite statue that someone had put clothes on.
Angelus' steps slowed as he passed them. He looked over his shoulder. But he walked on, and didn't stop.
Fred exhaled. Angel let go of her arm, and it was only when she tried to move it she realized he'd gripped her tightly enough to bruise her.
"He's going," she whispered. "Angel, he's not supposed to leave."
Angel nodded his agreement. "We have to stop him." He stepped out of the alcove and began to follow the already-indistinct form of Angelus. From inside the theatre, more laughter rang out, the happy sound a stark contrast to what has happening in the street outside. But it gave Fred an idea.
"Help me get this door open," she said, indicating the stage door. Angel hesitated, still staring after Angelus, but when Fred started to tug more urgently at the door, he came back to help her. "In about a minute, he's going to walk right past the theatre's main entrance."
Angel wrapped his hands around the stage door's handle and pulled hard at it. "How does that help us?"
There was a snap from within the door, and it swung open. The previously muted noises of laughter and applause were suddenly loud and clear. "I'm exercising my power of free speech," she said. "Turns out there is a good reason to do this, after all."
"Do what?" Angel was still confused, but Fred had no time to answer, so she just ducked inside.
She was standing at the side of the theatre. The first row of seats was in front of her, and steps to her left led up on to the stage. Opening the side door had allowed a blast of chill air into the warm theatre, and one of the actors standing at the side of the stage looked down at her in irritation. But his costume consisted of a bright red turban, a sleeveless shirt that opened all the way to his navel and a pair of gold and blue pantaloons, and so it was hard to take his annoyance very seriously.
Fred ran up the steps and on to the stage, almost knocking over an actress wearing a belly-dancer's costume on the way. The actor dressed as a sultan who was currently standing in the middle of the stage giving a speech broke off when Fred barged in front of him, launching instead into a stream of angry Romanian that was aimed at her. Fred was glad she couldn't understand what he was saying.
The audience, meanwhile, laughed louder. They thought this was part of the performance.
"Everybody has to get out," Fred shouted. "There's a fire."
More laughter and applause.
Fred cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted again, her voice cutting through the noise. "I said, there's a FIRE!"
Some people were still laughing, but others had stopped and now looked uncertain. Fred didn't know how many of the theatre audience understood English, but apparently her urgent tone and frantic hand-waving was getting the message across. "Fire!" she yelled again.
At the back of the theatre, she heard a voice shout something which she guessed was the Romanian translation of what she'd just said. That did it. Within seconds, people were clambering out of their seats and running toward the theatre exit. Some pushed past Fred and fled out of the stage door, but that was okay. Most would run out of the main entrance into the narrow street -- and that was a lot of people, because whatever they'd come to see had been playing to a full house. Until the crowds cleared, it wouldn't be possible to move in the street outside. Fred hoped that delaying Angelus' escape by five or ten minutes would be long enough.
On the other hand, it was possible that neither they nor the gypsies would be able to find him in the crowd. And that wouldn't be good.
The theatre was empty. Fred followed the last of the audience out through the stage door, and back on to the street where Angel was waiting.
But he wasn't. When she got outside, Angel had gone.
***
Angelus was walking past the theatre's doors when they burst open, engulfing him in a stream of terrified humanity. For a second, he was too surprised to do anything except stay where he was while the crowd surged out of the building. They reeked of fear, and he could hear shouts of, "Fire!" in English, Romanian and a few other languages, too, but he quickly realized there was no smell of smoke in the air. A hoax, then.
Usually, Angelus relished this kind of hysterical mass panic; on many occasions, he'd been its instigator. Tonight it merely exasperated him, and as he tried to fight his way against the flow of the fleeing crowds, he seriously considered snapping a few necks to make his progress easier. As tempting as the idea was, he rejected it. Only the desperate or the inexperienced killed in public, and Angelus was neither.
Instead, he allowed himself to be carried along with the stampede until an opportunity to extricate himself presented itself. As the throng pushed him by the entrance to an alleyway at the side of the theatre, Angelus slipped into it. He quickly realized why none of the crowd followed him -- the alley was a dead end, and if the theatre had been burning down, it would have trapped anyone who tried to shelter in it. But the theatre wasn't on fire, and Angelus only sought a place to wait while the fleeing hordes dispersed.
He was pleasantly surprised, then, when someone else had the same idea. As Angelus was straightening his cravat and brushing off his jacket, a girl stumbled out of the mob and into the alleyway. She couldn't have been a member of the fleeing audience, he realized immediately -- she was wearing the rough, coarse clothes of a peasant rather than the theatergoers' finery. Her headscarf had fallen down over her eyes, blinding her, and she fumbled as she tried to adjust it, before giving up and taking it off. The hair underneath had been sliced short and was a deep blonde color, unflattering to her complexion. That was a pity, Angelus thought, because in all other respects she was a comely lass. Very comely, in fact.
He smiled to himself. A pretty girl, a secluded alleyway and the noise of a crowd to mask the screams. Perhaps tonight would not be entirely wasted, after all.
The girl knotted her headscarf and pulled it back into place. To herself, in English, she said, "Okay, Cor. Time to get back out there."
"There is no hurry," Angelus said pleasantly. "Tarry a while, here with me."
The girl started and looked round, seeing him for the first time. Her eyes widened.
"Oh, hell," she said.
***
Fred had given up trying to go in any particular direction -- it was all she could do to stay on her feet, and if she fell she was sure she'd be trampled in seconds. Swept along by the tide of people, she clutched at coat-tails and cloaks, anything to keep herself upright. With relief, she saw that the street opened up ahead of her into a large, paved square -- if she could make it that far, she'd be okay.
She couldn't. The shoes she'd borrowed along with the maid's uniform -- heavy-soled and clumsy -- were too large on her, and she tripped. Fred gasped as she started to lose her balance, putting her arms out in front of herself as she fell. For an instant, she felt nothing except blind terror -- this is it, I'm going to die, I'm really going to die -- then it passed, replaced by a kind of obstinate determination. She'd survived Pylea. She'd staked vampires. Those were difficult things. Right now, all she had to do to survive was something easier. She had to get up. GET UP.
She levered herself up on to her hands and knees, and from that position somehow regained her footing. A moment later, the force of the crowd pushed her out into the paved square, like a cork popping out of a bottle. Fred was hurled forward, unable to stop until she collided head-on with some unfortunate person who was trying to go in the opposite direction.
"Sorry --"
"Fred!" It was Charles. Fred wanted to weep with relief; instead she just grabbed him. He hugged her back, then pulled her to one side, out of the way of the thinning crowd. "Are you okay? What the hell's happening? Where'd all these people come from?"
"Theatre," Fred gasped. "Fire --"
"The theatre's on fire?"
"No." Fred was slowly catching her breath. "But the people inside thought it was, and they panicked."
"That's all we needed," Charles said. "Some idiot startin' a riot for fun."
"The idiot was me."
"Oh." Charles paused for the briefest of seconds before saying positively, "Good thinkin'."
"No, it wasn't!" Fred cried. "I mean, I thought it was. Angelus was leaving, and we just needed to hold him up for a couple of minutes, but now we've lost him, and I don't know where Angel is either --"
"Whoah, backtrack," Charles said, holding up one hand. "You saw Angelus? Where?"
Fred pointed back down the street. "Right outside the theatre."
Charles looked grim. "Hell. That's the way Cordy went --"
The clatter of hooves and wooden wheels on cobblestones interrupted him. Fred looked around, and saw a caravan almost identical to the one the gypsies had given them racing up. After a second, she realized that the similarity was no coincidence -- this wagon was packed with grim-faced, armed gypsies, and more of them clung to its sides.
"Hooray for the cavalry," Charles said in a low voice.
The gypsy driving the caravan was the tall, gray-bearded man who Fred remembered was Gia's father. He tugged on the reins, guiding the horses toward Fred and Charles, but even when he was close enough to be heard above the noise of the crowd, he didn't speak to them. Instead he simply eyed Fred and Charles with an interrogatory, half-hostile stare.
Charles pointed back along the street. "He went thataway."
The gypsy nodded, and cracked the reins. Leather snapped against the horse's flank, and the caravan charged up the street Fred had just left, forcing a passage through the thinning crowd.
Charles watched the gypsies go, looking pleased with himself. "I always wanted to say that."
***
Be careful what you go looking for, Cordelia thought. You just might find it.
That wasn't exactly how the saying went, but it was close enough. She'd gone looking for Angelus, and she'd found him. But this part of finding him -- the part where he found her, too -- that hadn't been in the plan.
He sauntered toward her, smiling slightly, and she was amazed not at how much like Angel he was, but how different. Sure, the old-fashioned clothes and even stupider hair made for a superficial distinction, but it was more than that. It was in his eyes, she realized. She'd gotten used to seeing warmth and affection in those eyes, but Angelus' gaze was coldly appraising. Acquisitive. There was nothing of Angel in the creature in front of her. Cordelia had known that, but she hadn't truly felt it until now.
"Come, now," he said. "The crowds have frightened you. Take my hand. It will give you courage."
He held out his hand to her. Instinctively, Cordelia backed away. She was closer to the entrance of the alleyway than he was, so running back out into the street was still an option. It probably wouldn't do her much good, though -- if he decided to chase her, her heavy skirt and cloth shoes meant she didn't stand a chance of outrunning him. Cordelia had never wanted anything quite as much as she now wanted a pair of Nikes and a fifty-yard head start.
Angelus' hand was still extended toward her, but the look on his face was growing noticeably less kindly. Too much effort to keep up the act, Cordelia figured. Still, she had to do something -- she couldn't stand here staring at him forever --
She looked at his outstretched hand, and suddenly saw Angel standing in exactly the same position on the mat in the training room in the Hyperion's basement. A few seconds later, he'd been flat on his back, and Cordelia had been jubilant because the judo move she didn't think she could possibly pull off had worked.
Confidence surged through her. She could throw him. She'd thrown Angel --
(-- just once and he'd let her do it --)
-- and she could do it again. She reached out to take his hand, trying to adjust her stance the way Angel had shown her. She'd only get one shot at this.
She gripped his hand, tensed all her muscles -- and pulled Angelus forward.
In the judo move, what should have happened next was that the opponent, in this case Angelus, went flying head over heels. What actually happened was that Angelus stumbled a little, then glared at her. Oh, shit, Cordelia thought.
She was still trying to decide whether running or fighting was the marginally less suicidal plan, when a brick plunged through the layers of mist and landed with comical accuracy on Angelus' head.
He slumped onto the ground, and the hand Cordelia was still holding went limp. A dark shadow dropped down through the fog, landing with a soft thud just behind Angelus' still form. Cordelia let Angelus' hand fall and looked at Angel. "Where did you come from?"
"The roof," Angel said, pointing upward. Then he looked down at his unconscious past self. "You shouldn't have tried to throw him. That would never have worked."
Cordelia put her hands on her hips. "Hey, I could've done it. I just -- didn't."
"Your stance was all wrong," Angel said. "Your feet aren't far enough apart."
"How can you even tell where my feet are under this tent?" Cordelia asked, holding up a handful of skirt for emphasis. "Okay, sure, something was off, and we need to practice --" On the ground between them, Angelus gave a low moan as he started to come round. "You really don't stay out for long, do you? I think I'm gonna have to clock you again."
"Be my guest."
Cordelia picked up the brick, but before she could strike, a caravan pulled up at the alley's entrance. Quietly, Angel said, "They're here. Come on."
Taking Cordelia's hand, he pulled her to the edge of the alley, leaving Angelus still woozily trying to sit up. Before he could, a gang of gypsy men were leaping down from the sides and back of the caravan and crowding into the alleyway. As far as Cordelia could tell, every man in the camp who could lift a weapon had come, from teenagers to white-bearded grandfathers. They swarmed around Angelus, who was now sufficiently recovered to offer some resistance, but he was disoriented and hugely outnumbered. Within seconds, he was bound tightly.
Cordelia expected them to stop at that, to bundle their prisoner into the back of the wagon and go. But overpowering Angelus only seemed to fuel the gypsies' anger. They kicked and stabbed and punched the hunched figure on the ground with a collective fury more extreme than anything Cordelia had ever seen before, and in their faces she saw something that was not unlike Angelus' inhumanity.
Then, as if on some signal, the attack was over. Four of the burliest gypsies lifted Angelus -- who, incredibly, was somehow still able to struggle -- and threw him into the cart. The wagon pulled away, and she and Angel were alone in the alleyway. Cordelia was surprised to find she was shaking.
She heard the clatter of footsteps, and Gunn, swiftly followed by Fred, appeared at the top of the alley. "The gypsies --" Fred gasped.
"They were here," Angel said. "They have him."
Gunn grinned, and punched the air. "All right! We fixed it."
We fixed it, Cordelia thought. She breathed out in relief.
Behind her, Angel said, "Not yet. We can't be certain until they perform the curse. Tonight isn't over yet."
Relief drained away as Cordelia realized Angel was right. Drusilla could still interfere; the night wasn't over. Not by a long shot.
"So what do we do now?" Gunn asked. "Follow them?"
"That's exactly what we do," Angel said. "Spread out. Cover as much ground as you can. It's just another few minutes -- but if Dru can still stop us, she will."
***
Cordelia could feel the dirt road turning into scrubby grass beneath the soles of her cloth shoes. She was out of breath and exhausted; apparently her demon powers didn't include long-distance running. She held one hand to her chest and desperately sucked in air. Angel and Gunn and Fred had separated, like Angel had said; she knew they weren't far away, but it didn't change the fact that she felt isolated and on edge, alone in the dark.
She hadn't lost sight of the gypsy caravan. The mob was beating the sides of the wagon with sticks and shovels, shouting at the bound figure inside. Cordelia didn't understand one word of what they were saying, but the tone of the chorus was clear. Fury. Pain. Contempt.
Against all logic, she felt herself becoming angry at the gypsies. Cordelia bit down on her lip and forced herself to remember that the creature in that wagon was only a part of the Angel she knew. "It's okay," she whispered, not knowing if she spoke to the Angel of the future, the Angel of the present, herself or all three. "It's supposed to happen like this."
"'Tisn't."
Cordelia whirled around and saw Drusilla, crouched low to the ground, her curved fingers digging into the earth like a burrowing beast. Her hair was wild, and blood flecked her dress, her hands and her face.
The dress -- pencil straps and filmy red silk -- was from Saks. Cordelia had longed for it to go on sale, but it never had; it had been galling to see it a faded, soiled wreck on Drusilla at the museum. Now it was bloodied and torn, spoiled utterly by the vampire's casual destructiveness. Ruined in the same way she wanted to ruin Angel's future. All their futures.
"Drusilla," Cordelia said, taking her stake from her belt and brandishing it. "So lucky I ran into you."
"You know my name," Drusilla said wonderingly. "I don't know yours. I saw you with your funny hair, but I didn't see your name."
"Funny hair? Excuse me, but I have just one word for you: Volumizer. Try it." Cordelia snapped at her, but the anger was all for her words. She kept her body still and her eyes focused on Drusilla. Funny -- she'd never thought about it, but Drusilla probably didn't know her name. Not that it mattered.
"Voll. You. Miser." Drusilla straightened up and smiled. Her teeth were unexpectedly bright in the darkness, and Cordelia realized she was staring. Why shouldn't she stare? Dru was definitely stare-worthy.
Behind them, the gypsies continued to shout.
"You've a pain in your belly," Drusilla said.
"I'm fine," Cordelia said automatically. She wanted to stop staring at Drusilla's mouth, but somehow couldn't look away.
"No, no, no," Drusilla said. "The building has a skeleton, with sharp metal bones. You were falling and falling and falling, and the bones bit into you. I look inside you and I see the bite."
Cordelia gasped in agony as pain cut through her, pain so complete and overwhelming that she thought she would black out. A shaft of heat slashed her clear through -- from her back through her ribs --
She fumbled at her shirt, and her fingers hit metal. Hot blood flowed over her skin. Cordelia looked down, horrified, to see the rebar protruding from her torso. "No --" she choked out.
"Oh, yes," Drusilla said. Her voice grew nearer, but Cordelia could only stare down at the metal bar that had impaled her. "The bite is real. The pain is real. It twists you all up inside, and all that lovely blood's been spilled."
"Help -- help me --" Cordelia didn't know who she was speaking to anymore. She didn't know where she was, who she was. She could only concentrate on the metal pinning her to the ground. Dizziness washed over her, and she could feel herself swaying. Or was that the ground moving? Not an earthquake -- not another earthquake.
"Let me help you," said a voice she knew. Cordelia opened her eyes and saw Xander standing next to her. He looked horrified and concerned and guilty. He had been kissing Willow, and oh, God, Cordelia was going to kill him the very second she was sure she wasn't going to die. Xander said, "I can get this out of you. Then you'll feel better."
Xander would help her. He would, she knew he would, he might kiss Willow, but that didn't mean he didn't care, that he wouldn't help. Cordelia whispered, "Get it out of me."
"I need your stake," Xander said.
Stake. Stake. She didn't have a stake. She had been in the van with Oz -- but no, there was a stake in her hand, and so she must have had one --
Xander said, "Hurry. We'll get out of here. Just you and me."
Oh, God, it hurt so bad. She'd do anything to make it stop hurting. But Cordelia still gasped, "And Willow? And -- and Oz?"
"We don't need them," Xander said.
Xander had said that. Xander would never say that. Cordelia stared at him. With all the strength she had left, she slapped him hard across the face.
He shrieked -- and in that moment, his voice and face turned back into Drusilla's. The pain lifted from Cordelia instantly; the bar and the accompanying agony vanished so quickly that she stumbled, thrown off balance by nothing more than the change in sensation. "You hypnotized me!" Cordelia cried.
"Memories are the best dollies of all," Drusilla said, and she lunged for Cordelia.
It was now, when Cordelia didn't have time to think about it, that Angel's training paid off. She forgot all about complicated judo moves she'd tried once, and instead ducked and spun in the way Angel had made her practice until she was sick of it, and then made her practice some more. By now the response was instinctive, and suddenly Cordelia found she was in fighting stance, her stake raised and ready.
Drusilla clawed at Cordy's face. Cordelia blocked the blow with her free arm, spun and kicked hard. It caught Drusilla, who had apparently not been expecting any kind of resistance, off guard and off balance. She stumbled backward. Now Cordelia was on the offensive.
"What's this? Eager, eager." Drusilla stared at Cordelia. "I see those who fight us in my dreams. I haven't seen you in my dreams."
"You want to dream? Fine. Goodnight, Dru."
Cordelia lashed out with the stake again; Drusilla blocked her, but clumsily -- so clumsily, for a split second she left her chest exposed to attack. Sensing that she'd never get a better opportunity, Cordelia lunged forward and plunged her stake deep into the hollow between Drusilla's ribs.
Drusilla cried out, not in pain or fury, but in what sounded like the disappointment of a child. She whispered, "You broke it. You broke it. You br--"
She crumbled into dust.
Cordelia stared at the heap of ashes on the grass. "I staked Drusilla," she said. It didn't work. She still didn't believe it. She tried saying it a little louder. "I staked Drusilla." Staring at the stake in her hand, Cordelia felt herself begin to laugh shakily. "Oh, my God, I am such a bad-ass." She put one hand out to balance herself on a nearby tree and used the other to feel her abdomen again. The hard, ridged scar near her ribs still tingled faintly. For a moment, Cordelia did nothing but try and convince herself that her surroundings were real. The vampire-dust still swirling in the breeze was real. The scent of the evergreens was real. The faint hooting of an owl was -- not only real, but the only sound she could hear.
"Angel?" Cordelia whirled around. No gypsies. The caravan Angelus had been in was sitting there abandoned -- one of its sides had obviously been bashed through. From the inside.
He's out, she realized. He's loose. While Drusilla had me in flashback mode, Angelus got away from them. The gypsies are after him, and if they can't curse him, they'll just try to kill him.
Far away, she heard a man's shout. Was that Angel's voice?
"Angel!" She began running toward the sound, not thinking of anything besides reaching him. Her feet pounded against the earth, stumbled over tree roots. Branches scraped her legs and her shoulders. Cordelia tried to focus, though it was hard in such total darkness. No, not total -- far ahead, she thought she could see torchlight. "Angel, I'm coming --"
A hand snapped out and grabbed her arm, and she screamed until another hand covered her mouth. One of the gypsies -- the young one with the thick accent, hissed at her, "Shhh, foolish girl! It is being done."
"WHAT is being done?" Cordelia pulled her arm from his grasp and brandished her stake. "Be specific."
"The curse," he said. "It is the hour of our vengeance."
She stared at him, wondering whether or not to believe him. At last she said, "I'm gonna go see for myself." When he opened his mouth to object, she snarled, "Do NOT try to stop me."
He said only, "When this is over, leave these woods. Leave this time. Tonight we will have our vengeance -- and our purpose in leaving you alive ends."
"Yeah, I'm so tempted to hang around," she muttered as she turned away.
Slowly, quietly, she picked her way through the forest undergrowth. If other gypsies lurked nearby, they said nothing to alert her to their presence or to prevent her from getting closer. The torchlight grew brighter and brighter; Cordelia could hear someone speaking now, one of the gypsies -- but she couldn't quite make out the words.
The gypsy stopped speaking. She heard rustling nearby, as if other figures were moving away. They were done watching. The curse was over.
She crept forward toward the edge of a small clearing. A few torches still illuminated the area, but only she could only see one figure: Angel, bent low on the ground, doubled over in what looked like physical agony. "No," she heard him whisper. "No, it cannot be -- "
Cordelia leaned against a tree-trunk, weak with exhaustion and an emotion she couldn't quite name. That was Angel. Her Angel. It was like he had just been born.
His hair was long. His hands were clenched in fists. She could hear him crying. Cordelia had never seen Angel cry before. The sound of it tore at her, brought tears to her own eyes.
She felt Angel's hands against her shoulders, and she didn't have to turn around to see his face. She leaned back into his half-embrace, comforting the Angel she could reach in the place of the Angel she couldn't. Together, they watched his past self crumble under a swelling, unendurable weight of guilt and self-knowledge.
After a few long minutes, Angel pulled her back gently, urging her away from the crumpled figure on the ground. Cordelia didn't budge. She whispered, "I can't leave him there."
Angel almost smiled. "You have to leave him there," he replied. "He has to be there before I can be here."
Cordelia took a deep breath, nodded and sighed. Somehow she forced herself to walk away with Angel and never once look back.
***
Dru wandered along the street, weaving a random path through the crowd. Spike continued on his way, slightly ahead of her, laughing at the mayhem. There were lots of people shouting and shrieking in words Dru didn't know, but she could see the high, leaping flames that were only in their minds. She didn't remember this part, and that confused her, but so many things confused her that it scarcely seemed worth the trouble to worry about this one.
"The moon is high," she said. "It's time, time, time."
Spike heard her voice even amid the chaos. "Time for what, my venomous black blossom?"
"Crying over spilt milk. Can't pour it back again." Then she laughed in jubilation. "But I did. I poured the milk back up into the glass, didn't I? Didn't I, Spike?"
"You bet," Spike said. He wasn't really listening. Nobody listened to her for very long. Dru didn't mind that. When nobody listened to you, you could scream ever so loud, so loud you broke all the mirrors.
"I found a book," she said. "Many men tried to read it, and they couldn't. They said it didn't make any sense. But they said I didn't make any sense, either. And so I tried to read it, and when I did, the letters untwisted themselves and did a lovely dance on the page. They danced and danced until I knew all the steps. They sang to me. They were crazed, you see? Just like me."
Spike fell back a couple of steps and slid his arm around her waist. "You wear lunacy the way lesser women wear satin," he purred. "It clings to you, Drusilla. It shines in the night, and it makes you beautiful."
"I know," she said. This was Spike as he should be. This was the world as it should be. Except, of course, for just one thing. "Daddy's very sad right now."
"I'm deeply concerned," Spike said, nibbling at her neck. Then he scowled. "You don't want to go to him tonight, do you?"
"No," she said. "That's not what I went backwards to do, oh no. I did that once, and it wasn't any good at all. Ashes, ashes, we all fell down. Do you think the moon knows my name?"
"Yours and no other." Spike was already threading his way among the crowds again, leading her as they went. "Out of an entirely bent curiosity -- what did you 'go backwards' to do?"
Dru laughed and laughed, spinning around in the center of the thronging masses. "You'll see, you'll see," she said. "Save it for afters."
***
"You staked Drusilla," Angel said again. He still couldn't quite believe it.
"Yup," Cordelia confirmed. She had her arm looped through his, ostensibly for support in case she tripped on the rough, potholed dirt track that led back to the caves as they made their way through the pre-dawn murk. She hadn't so much as stumbled once throughout the journey, and Angel doubted she really needed his guidance. But he still let her hold on to his arm. "She swiped me with her nails, tried to scratch my face off --"
Gunn, who was walking a little way ahead, holding hands with Fred, looked back at them. "Hey, how about sticking to the facts? One tiny little nick on your cheek does NOT equate to your face bein' scratched off."
"The quote was, she TRIED to scratch my face off." Cordy was trying to sound annoyed, but with little success. "She didn't. I staked her first. I -- staked -- Drusilla."
Angel could not share in Cordelia's giddy excitement about Dru's end -- he remembered her first death too well for that. Drusilla had been his creation, his responsibility and, in her own, twisted way, a kind of innocent. Angel had always expected to feel both guilt and grief when this day came, and yet he wasn't feeling that at all.
Cordelia giggled and said it a few more times, with different emphasis each time. "I STAKED Drusilla. I staked DRUSILLA."
Gunn groaned. "Enough already! You'd think no one ever dusted a vamp before."
"He doesn't get it," Cordelia said. She squeezed Angel's arm. "You get it, right?"
"I get it," Angel said quietly. He got something, although he wasn't sure it was the same thing Cordelia meant. Angel got that the future he'd thought held nothing for him without his son in it was back on track, and that he felt something about that he hadn't expected to. It wasn't happiness -- never that, not now -- but it was a better emotion than he'd ever thought he'd feel again. Gratitude, perhaps.
It wasn't until they left the track and started to climb uphill toward the cave's entrance that Cordelia let go of Angel. "You know what?" she said. "When we get home, I think I'm gonna have to break a longstanding resolution and call Xander Harris. I want to hear what he has to say when I tell him Dru's dust and I did it."
"When I get home," Gunn said, "I'm gonna eat microwaved popcorn and toasted Pop Tarts and watch TV. No -- first I'm gonna drive my truck around for a while. Or maybe I'll listen to a CD --" Suddenly he broke off and looked at Fred. "You've still got that magic ring thing that's going to get us home, right?"
"Sure I do," Fred said. "When I changed into the clothes the gypsies gave us, I made sure I took it out of the pocket of my jeans." She was silent for a moment. Then, in a very quiet voice, she said, "Of course, then I switched clothes with the maid."
They all stopped walking and stared at Fred. Cordelia clutched Angel's arm again, and this time he thought perhaps she did need his support, a little. Gunn looked most horrified of all.
Then Fred held up her left hand, the ring shining on her finger. "I'm only foolin' y'all. You think I'd lose our way home?"
"That," Gunn said as he stooped to enter the cave, "was NOT funny. Speakin' of clothes -- who's got our regular gear?"
"I do," Fred said, holding up a bundle of pants and T-shirts secured with a belt. She pulled at the maid's uniform she was still wearing. "Can't say I'll miss nineteenth century clothing."
"We can only pray burlap isn't big on the catwalks next season," Cordelia said. "Or ever." She followed Fred and Gunn into the cave.
Before he went inside, Angel looked back one last time, at the dark and deceptively tranquil countryside. It was peaceful, even beautiful, and Angel decided that if it was another century before he saw Romania again, it'd be too soon.
By the time Angel had caught up with the others, they had changed back into their own clothes and were gathered underneath the portal in the cave's roof. It was still, he noted with relief, open and as active as it had been when they'd come through it. The only question that remained now was --
"How does this thing work, again?" Cordy asked.
"I don't know," Fred said. She took the ring off her finger and started to raise it over her head, toward the portal's shining, crawling surface. "But I think proximity may be the trigger --"
As she spoke, the surface of the portal bulged downward, as if drawn by some force exerted on it by the ring. Fred inhaled sharply, and when Angel looked down at her feet, he saw only her toes were in contact with the cave floor. "Everyone," he said, "take hold of her."
Gunn put his arms around Fred's waist, while Cordelia grabbed her raised arm and Angel her free hand. Now he was in physical contact with Fred, Angel could feel the raw power of magic coursing through her. He looked up just as the ring touched the portal --
The ride was no less wild this time. If anything, plummeting upward -- which was the best description Angel could think of for the sensation -- was an even more disorienting experience.
Then it was over, and he was back inside the black marble pyramid at the museum, crammed into the dark, confined space with three other bodies. At least, Angel hoped there were three other bodies. "Is everyone here?"
"I'm here," Gunn said. "And I got hold of someone's arm."
"My arm," Fred said. "I'm okay. Or I will be when my head stops rotating."
"I'm here," Cordy's voice said, "but I think my stomach is still in the 1970s."
Angel put his shoulder against the pyramid's door and pushed. "Let's go home."
They all stumbled out into the museum, which was only slightly less dark than the interior of the pyramid. Angel smelled the familiar smells of a museum -- mustiness and dust, industrial cleaning products and the faint remnants of thousands of people -- and something else too, something less familiar --
"Y'all never asked me what the first thing I'm going to do is," Fred said as they began making their way through the exhibits.
Gunn ducked underneath the extended arm of a Grecian goddess. "I'll bite. What's that?"
"Two words," Fred said dreamily. "Indoor bathrooms."
"Oh, GOD, yes," Cordelia said. "Until yesterday, I never fully appreciated the miracle that is Charmin."
Smoke. The unfamiliar smell was smoke. Angel frowned. Was there a fire in the museum? "I think we should get outside."
"Let's please not shimmy through the air vents again, all right?" Gunn said. "We can hop on out the front. If the security alarm goes off, what the hell. We're outta here."
They went into the high, arched hallway that led to the main entrance. Funny, Angel thought. I remember the ceilings being a lot lower -- of course, we were never out here --
"That's weird," Fred said, pointing at a rough-hewn marble statue. "That looks like a Michelangelo. What's that doing in a Museum of Victoriana?"
The smell of smoke was getting stronger. Angel realized he'd begun to walk faster, as had the others. "Something's not right," Angel said.
"What?" Gunn said. "Like what?"
Angel reached the front door first. The alarm didn't seem worth worrying about, so he flung open the door and saw --
The streets were ablaze. All around them, buildings were going up in flames or smoldering into ash. Distant screams and shouting echoed through the night. Angel realized he could smell the metallic gristle of ruined electrical wiring, the thick haze of blood, the slimy tracks of things not human. Worst of all, he could smell death -- death on a scale he'd never known before. The air was thick with the rancid stench of it.
Next to him, the others stood agape. For a few moments, they could only stare at the carnage before them.
Finally, Cordelia said, "Okay. Who left the gas on?"
the end