Disclaimer: The following characters are the property of Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt and so forth. They are used without permission, intent of infringement or expectation of profit.
Spoiler: This story contains spoilers through the ATS third-season episode "Double or Nothing" and is rated R for occasional violent content.
Feedback: of any remotely constructive nature is welcomed at Yahtzee63@aol.com and ruthhanna@freenet.co.uk. Character-, relationship- or show-bashing is not.
Authors note: We're very grateful for the beta help of Corinna and everybody else at the Angel Fanfic Workshop.
Summary: The story of 104 years and five months.
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"The past isn't dead. It's not even the past."
-- William Faulkner
~Prologue~
"Museum closes in ten minutes, folks. Please make your way to the exit."
Vern's voice, raspy with age and a thirty-a-day habit which his doctor said was going to kill him, cut through the silence of the main display hall of the Museum of Victoriana. The three visitors left in the room -- a middle-aged man who had an air of academia about him, and two elderly Japanese tourists -- looked at Vern with, respectively, annoyance and incomprehension.
For the benefit of the tourists, Vern pointed at the clock hanging above the "Great Exhibition of 1851" wall display, then at the way out. After a brief discussion in Japanese, the couple shuffled toward the door. A second later, the professor-type followed them, shutting his notebook with a firm snap.
"Thank you," Vern said pleasantly. "Come again."
Once the Great Exhibition room was empty, he switched off the lights, and continued on his last circuit of the museum for the day. Panels on the walls directed visitors around the various exhibitions, but Vern didn't even have to glance at them on his way past. The displays sometimes changed, but Vern's route never did. Main concourse, exhibition rooms, cafeteria, gift shop, lights out, lock up.
The last stop on Vern's tour was the small display room, used for temporary exhibitions. The current installation was dedicated to Victorian china dolls -- row upon row of them, with hard, white faces and glassy eyes. Vern wouldn't have admitted it, but the doll exhibition creeped him out. At least he wasn't alone -- visitor numbers had been especially low, and the small display room was usually empty.
Tonight, it wasn't.
"Museum closes in five minutes, miss," Vern said.
The girl didn't answer -- just kept staring at the dolls, enraptured -- so Vern came into the room. Up close, she almost looked like a doll herself. Her hair was uniformly dark and glossy, as if it had been woven instead of grown, and her skin was chalk-pale. She looked as if she belonged here, in a room filled with mannequins.
"Miss, it's time to leave," Vern said, more firmly.
"Time," the girl said, drawing out the word into a sigh. Her accent was -- English, maybe? Vern thought so, but he wasn't sure. She didn't sound like any of the British visitors who'd come to the museum recently.
"Time," the girl said again. She reached out and lifted the nearest doll from its stand. Holding it up, she said, "Time is naughty. It makes everything change. But we don't change, do we?"
"Put the doll back, please, miss," Vern said. "It's not permitted to touch items on display."
The girl ignored him and instead held the doll up higher, her fingers tugging the silk bow in its curly hair before stroking the green velvet of the miniature ball gown it wore. "Such a pretty dress," the girl said. She looked down wistfully at her own dress -- a crimson-red slip of chiffon that showed a little leg and a lot of back, the sort of things girls wore for special occasions, not for visiting museums. But this dress looked as though it had seen a few special occasions too many: The hem was torn in several places, and Vern could see a few dark stains. "We used to have real dresses, not scraps and handkerchiefs," the girl continued. "Real dresses. Beautiful dresses. And there was music and dancing and everyone said I was beautiful."
Vern fought down a sigh. What was it about museums that attracted crazies? "Look, we're closing now, and you can't stay here tonight, you understand? There's a shelter on Stanford Avenue where they'll give you a bed and a hot meal." As he said it, Vern noticed how pitifully thin the girl was. "You look like you could use it."
The girl leaned toward the doll, and whispered to it, "I had a clock, but it only ran forward. I wanted to know if the clock ran backward, would time follow it?" She lowered her voice. "It didn't."
"No kidding," Vern said dryly.
"I pulled out all the springs to see what made it go. And then there wasn't any tick-tock any more. It went all quiet." The girl turned around, looking at Vern for the first time. Her gaze, unlike the rest of her manner, was focused and intense, almost hypnotic, and Vern was filled with the unnerving conviction that if he looked too long into those dark eyes, he might never be able to look away again. "People are like clocks, you know. Tick-tock, tick-tock, and then nothing -- unless they start up again." She smiled. "I started up again."
"Okay, that's it," Vern snapped. "It's time for you to go." Reaching out, he took the doll away from the girl and put it back on to its stand.
"Time to go," the girl repeated, her voice a lilting sing-song. "Time to go. It's time to go, but I haven't found what I came for yet."
"You've seen the dolls," Vern said.
"Not the dollies," she said scornfully. "I came for something much prettier."
Vern put his hand on the girl's arm, intending to guide her to the door. She didn't move, and when he tried to pull her away from the display of dolls, he felt her body stiffen, muscles tightening. Her thin arm hardened to iron in his grasp. She was stronger than she looked.
Attempting to sound persuasive, he said, "Whatever you came see, it'll still be here tomorrow."
The girl smiled, and suddenly Vern wasn't standing beside her anymore. He was on the museum floor, pinned down by a yellow-eyed, smiling monster.
"There isn't any tomorrow," Vern heard the girl whisper, as if from a great distance. "There's only yesterday."
That was the last thing he heard.
Book One: "The Tenth of Never"
~Chapter One~
"So, the beach was really beautiful," Cordelia said. "You should have seen it. At night, of course, unless Coppertone now makes SPF 8000."
Angel knew she was trying very hard to make a joke. He knew he ought to smile. He wanted to smile, to ask her about her trip, to do his best to be happy for her and Groo.
But he didn't care about the trip, and he knew she didn't either. It was just something to talk about, so they didn't have to talk about what they were doing, which was boxing up Connor's things.
"They had a limbo contest," Cordelia said, stepping sideways. She had on her oldest jeans and a soft-green T-shirt white-flecked with bleach; a simple clip held back the bangs of her newly short, newly blonde hair. >From that angle, her body almost hid the little pile of baby blankets she'd folded. "Groo just couldn't see the point of the limbo. Not that there really is a point to the limbo. But yours truly took third place."
Connor's teddy bear. Its fur was matted together with soot and grime from the fire. Angel stared down into its glassy, doll-like eyes. "Only third place?"
"Hey, I'm proud to say that my knees don't bend as wide as some people's."
If he shut his eyes -- even for a moment -- he could feel Connor in his arms. His son's living warmth, his weight, the faint pressure of each breath. The overwhelming desire to protect him, take care of him --
Angel felt a moment of disorientation, then shook his head and tried to concentrate on Cordy. She was studying his face carefully, looking, he knew, for any sign of strain. Quickly, he cast about for another topic. "What's that you're wearing on your arm?"
"Oh, right. This." Cordelia looked, if it were possible, even more awkward. She held out her slim wrist; the strip around her arm shimmered in a dozen colors. "Behold the hologram bracelet, available from only the beach's finest souvenir shops."
She was grimacing slightly as she looked at it. Angel shook his head. "Let me guess. They don't have holograms in Pylea."
"Groo thought it was pretty," Cordy said with a sigh. "Apparently, if you've never seen a hologram before, it looks like a beautiful, wonderful, shiny miracle bracelet instead of, well, beach crap. I guess Groo just needs to be in L.A. a while longer before he figures out that haute couture generally costs more than $3.99."
"It's like I always say," Angel said. "You can't go wrong with jewelry."
He'd given Darla and Dru jewelry whenever he could procure it -- through murder, through theft or, on very rare occasions, through legitimate purchase. For one moment, he could see them as vividly as though they were in the room: a crystal tiara glittering in Drusilla's dark locks, a choker of black pearls sheathing Darla's swan-white neck --
-- Darla, lying on the pavement in the rain, begging Angel to take good care of their son --
"Angel?"
He snapped his head up. Cordelia had a pained look on her face, but right now, Angel didn't want her pity. He turned back to his work, stuffing Connor's mobile in a box more roughly than he meant to. "So, what else did you guys do?"
"We -- well, we --" Angel didn't have to look up to know that Cordelia was trying to figure out whether or not to draw him out or keep trying to distract him. She chose the latter. "We ate out a lot -- I figured it'd be a good way to introduce Groo to Earth food. Turns out he loves Mexican. Should give him and Fred a lot to talk about."
Angel was hungry. He hadn't eaten in days, not since the last time he'd drunk his son's blood. He hadn't wanted to. "Glad Groo enjoys that." Connor's little shoes would fit in this box too. Everything his son had owned would just about fit in two boxes.
"And -- oh, I went and got my hair done. What do you think?"
Angel didn't look up. "I don't like it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Sorry," he said flatly. "I don't." He glanced up finally to see that Cordelia was staring at him, hands on hips, nostrils flaring in an unflattering manner. He'd made her mad, and Angel dimly knew he should feel worse about that than he did.
"Okay, we're picking you up a copy of Tact for Dummies," Cordelia said. "You can't just tell someone you don't like her hair!"
"You asked me," Angel pointed out.
"Yeah, but -- but --" Cordelia gestured with one hand. "The question, 'do you like my hair?' is in the same category as 'does this make me look fat?' Honesty not required."
Cordelia's hair used to be long and soft and dark. He'd buried his face in it once, drunk in the scent. Angel hadn't been himself at the time, but more than a year later, he could still remember the smell, the feel of it against his skin. "The cut is okay," he said. "It shows off your neck --"
"So NOT the compliment I was looking for from you."
"-- but the color's all wrong." Angel could tell Cordelia was going from merely angry to furious, but he still didn't care. In fact, weirdly, he felt himself getting angry in return. No -- it wasn't anger -- something else building up inside him, pressure tightening all around him, inside him.
"Well, excuse me for expecting good advice from a hair-gel addict."
"You asked me what I thought --"
"I didn't expect you to TELL me!"
Angel slammed his fist into the wall and yelled, "I just want everything back the way it was!"
Cordy stared at him. He stared at the wall. The plaster had cracked all around his hand, a spiderweb of cement. His fist hurt, and he felt his throat closing up. "Cordy -- oh, God, Cordy, I'm sorry."
"Jesus," Cordelia breathed. "Angel -- are you --"
"It's like I can't concentrate," Angel said. "I can't think about Connor, and I can't stop thinking about Connor, and nothing makes any sense to me anymore."
She flung her arms around him, hugging him tightly. "I know you didn't mean it. I know you're upset. I'm being so stupid, talking about my hair -- I just don't know what to say."
Angel hugged her back. "You don't have to say anything," he said. "You're here."
"I want to say something to make it all better, and I can't, I can't make it better --"
"It's okay. It's okay, you can talk about anything, I won't get mad again, I promise --"
Cordelia lifted her head and blinked several times, hard. She forced a smile. "You know what? On reflection, I'm not sure 'Golden Shimmer' was the right shade after all."
Angel tried to smile in return. "You're always beautiful to me."
"Are y'all okay?"
Fred's voice from the doorway brought Angel back to something like clarity. He realized that Fred, Gunn, Groo and Lorne were all staring at them -- brought up the stairs, no doubt, by the sound of his punching the wall. Now they were all staring at him and Cordelia.
Angel stepped away at the same moment Cordelia did. She smiled and wiped quickly at her eyes. "Everything's fine," she promised. "Angel and I were -- we were talking about my hair."
Gunn nodded sympathetically. "I figured you had to be upset about that. Don't worry, Cordy. It'll grow out."
"Excuse me?" Cordelia scowled.
Gunn held up his hands. "But, hey, what do I know about hair?"
"I see you kids have been busy," Lorne said, stepping gingerly through the debris. "It's no longer a federal disaster area in here. I'd downgrade this to a plain ol' mess." Lorne patted Angel's shoulder. "What say I get some of this out of your way?"
Angel looked down at the two boxes sitting on the dresser. Once they were gone, Connor would be, too. "Not yet," he said quietly.
Groo put his arms around Cordelia's waist. "Truly you have worked miracles, my princess. So much has been done in so little time." He kissed her lightly on the forehead, and she smiled up at him.
"Maybe that's your demon power, Cordy," Fred suggested. "Amazing cleaning-up ability."
"What demon would that be from?" Cordelia asked. "The Tidy-Bowl Man?"
"Sounds like a demon candidate to me," Gunn said. He, too, was joining in the forced cheer. "I mean, you gotta wonder why the man's choosing to float his rowboat in the toilet in the first place."
"I do not understand," Groo said. "You explained what the toilets are for, princess, but you never spoke of boats."
"Stick with the first explanation," Cordelia said quickly.
Angel kept looking at the cracks in the plaster. Just like a spiderweb. Drusilla had loved spiderwebs. She pretended they were bridal veils and tried to put them in her hair, and when they broke she cried and cried --
All at once it came together. The glassy doll's eyes of the teddy bear. The memories of the tiara, of the feel of dark, silky hair against his hand. The need to protect. The need to attack.
"Drusilla," Angel whispered.
Everyone stared at him. Finally, Cordelia said, "Drusilla -- what?"
"She's here," Angel said. "In Los Angeles. Not far away."
Cordelia looked skyward. "And I thought it could not get worse."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Gunn said. "How do you know this, Angel? You got spidey-sense or something?"
"Something like that," Angel said, though he didn't have slightest idea what "spidey-sense" was. "I could always tell when the vampires in my line were close by. And Drusilla's close by now. I've been feeling it for a while. I didn't realize it earlier because -- well, I didn't."
"Um, I think I didn't get the memo," Fred said. "Who's Drusilla?"
"Bad-ass vampire from Angel's own bad-ass days," Cordelia supplied. She stepped away from Groo, already all business. "If she thinks she can waltz in here and kick Angel while he's down, she's got another think coming. Assuming Drusilla thinks anything at all." Fred frowned. Gunn held his hand up to his temple and twirled his finger around in the international sign for "crazy as a loon."
"Just peachy," Lorne said. "You sure about this, big guy? Not just a bad dream, some tuna salad that was just a smidge off?"
"I'm sure," Angel said. Now that he'd identified the sensation, he couldn't believe he hadn't recognized it before. Drusilla was very close, within a few miles.
Groo held up one hand uncertainly. "Of course I wish to join in the slaying of the Drusilla beast," he said. "But what of the vampire attack Cordelia has foreseen? I am certain we all remember the eventful vision of this morning, and the unfortunate fate of the pancakes."
"Oh, great," Cordelia sighed. "We have to be at LAX in an hour and a half, Angel. Any chance Drusilla's hanging out at the airport?"
"She's closer than that," Angel said.
"Here's a plan," Lorne said, stepping to Groo's side. "How about the Boy Wonder and I cruise down to the terminal and take care of the undead ruffians? That frees you guys up to hunt down Drusilla."
"You are willing to go into battle with me?" Groo said. He smiled at Lorne. "I am surprised, for your unwrinkled clothing and well-trimmed nails do not speak of a warrior. But I salute your courage, my groomed friend."
Lorne closed his eyes in a pained wince. "I can go with Groo," Cordelia offered quickly.
"Oh, no, you don't," Lorne said. "I haven't met Dru for myself, but I've gotten a peek during Angel-cakes' musical numbers. And there is no WAY I'm going anywhere near that chick. She makes Anna Nicole Smith look stable, and my head will probably explode if she so much as hums."
"That settles that," Gunn said. "Only question is, where's Drusilla?"
"Someplace she likes," Angel said. "Someplace -- fun."
"That could be anyplace where people can bleed," Cordelia said. "Can you narrow it down?"
Angel took a mental tour of the surrounding blocks, then remembered a museum he'd passed before. He'd thought of Drusilla then.
"I think I can," Angel said.
***
Fred lowered herself through the skylight, straightening her arms slowly while pressing her feet together to avoid the shards of broken glass still clinging to the edges of the shattered pane. It was hard work, and before she was halfway through her arms ached with the effort. Then, just as she was sure she was about to drop the rest of the way and land in an ungainly heap on the floor, she felt broad shoulders rise up under her feet, bearing her weight. Strong arms gripped her legs, anchoring her.
"I got ya," Charles said from below her, and Fred felt herself sinking smoothly and gracefully toward the floor, like a ballerina descending from a high lift. Once she was safely on the ground, she tugged her T-shirt back into place and peered into the gloom around them, trying to make out the details of their surroundings. The Museum of Victoriana had probably looked very elegant 25 years ago. But the wood paneling was darker than was now fashionable, the ceilings a little low. The wall-to-wall carpeting had worn thin. Fred thought it looked genteel but shabby -- a place built with care and then forgotten.
Cordelia, who was standing next to Angel, frowned. "THIS is your idea of 'someplace fun'? Angel, I've been in morgues with more atmosphere."
"Not my idea," Angel said. He sounded distracted, Fred thought, as if he were only half-concentrating on talking to Cordy. "Drusilla's. She always liked museums. This way."
He set off along the hallway; first Cordelia, then Charles and Fred, followed him. As they walked, Fred's attention was drawn by the paintings and even some photographs of men and women in stiff poses and stiffer clothes that lined the museum's hallways. In the gaps between the wall displays there were cabinets filled with strange, old-fashioned objects. Fred had always been more interested in science than history, but even so her fingers itched with the desire to pick things up, shake them, figure out what they were for and how they worked.
"Museums ARE fun," she said. "All these things are little pieces of time, preserved like -- like the marshmallows in a gallon of rocky road." Fred broke off and frowned to herself. "That wasn't a very good analogy."
"Worked fine for me," Charles said, taking her hand lightly in his. "Hey, my uncanny sixth sense is tellin' me you might want to go grab a midnight sundae after this. Am I right?" In reply, Fred squeezed his hand and smiled at him.
"The summer we went to France, I visited the Louvre in Paris," Cordelia said. "It was okay, I guess, although after a while you start wondering how many marble statues a country actually NEEDS. And the Mona Lisa looked like she was about to say -- ohmigod!"
Somehow, Fred sensed that quote wasn't from the Mona Lisa. Charles tightened his hand around hers, and together they hurried to catch up with Cordelia, who was standing in the doorway of the next exhibition room.
The room was filled with dolls from floor to ceiling. A hundred or more glittering eyes gazed down at Fred unblinkingly. The dolls' painted faces were individually benign -- but there was something unnerving about the sight of ranks of undifferentiated perfection.
"Creepy," Fred said.
"Creepier," Cordelia amended. She pointed at the floor.
The body lying in the middle of the room belonged to a man in his late fifties or early sixties, gray-haired and jowly. Or he would have been jowly, if most of his throat hadn't been ripped out. But Fred saw straight away that Cordelia hadn't been talking about the gore.
The man on the floor had been killed savagely, by something that had taken pure, visceral pleasure in the act of violence. But, after the kill, the same something had rolled the body on to its back and tucked a cushion under the corpse's head and a teddy bear into the crook of its arm.
"Drusilla wants to care for things," Angel said. "But she doesn't know how."
Charles slipped his hand free from Fred's and flicked his wrist. When she looked down, she saw he was holding a stake. "If she's crazy, that plays better for us. A vamp that doesn't think straight is a vamp that's easier to dust."
Sharply, Angel said, "That's the biggest mistake you can make about Drusilla. She's insane, but she's smart. She thinks differently -- but she does think. That's how she's survived this long. That's why she's so dangerous." Suddenly, his stance changed, becoming harder, tenser, and his face darkened. "Isn't that right, Dru?"
As he spoke, Angel stepped to one side and turned around, revealing the figure who had been standing behind him, in the doorway of the doll room.
In the last year, Fred had slowly grown used to the idea that vampires looked like the people they had been when they'd died -- normal people, fat or thin or ugly or handsome, superficially no different than anyone you might see on the subway, except a whole lot more dangerous. Well, maybe a little paler, too. But the girl who was gliding toward Angel carried about her an aura of the supernatural so strong it seemed to make the air around her hum. Her skin glowed moon-white, and her black hair rippled over her shoulders like a veil of mourning. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glowed feverishly. The body sheathed in its grubby red dress was skeletal even by L.A. standards. There could be no mistaking this vampire for a normal person.
"My thoughts are wasps," Drusilla said. "They sting my brain all over. Pzzzt!"
As she spoke, she lifted her hand and waved her finger through the air, mimicking the helter-skelter flight of an insect. Her gaze followed her fingertip as it spiraled and danced in front of her; the sight seemed to entrance her, as if she had no idea what direction her hand was going to take next. Maybe, Fred thought, she really didn't.
Drusilla's finger darted toward her bare arm, like an insect diving to attack. Her nails, talon-sharp, left a red score on the delicate skin.
"That's enough, Dru," Angel said.
Drusilla's hand continued to arc and dip in the air. As Fred looked on, she realized that there was a rhythm to the apparently random motion, a pattern that was strangely soothing, even hypnotic --
"I said that's ENOUGH."
Fred blinked. Angel's hand was wrapped around Drusilla's thin wrist, encircling it easily, preventing her from moving. He was gripping her tightly -- so tightly that Drusilla gasped. Then she gave a soft moan which was equal parts pain and pleasure. She looked up at Angel and smiled. "Hurt me again."
Angel stared at her, then at his fingers digging into her arm. Slowly he released his grip. "No. I know what you want from me. But I'm not going to give you what you want anymore."
Drusilla cradled her wrist to her chest. She looked up at Angel with huge, sorrowful eyes. "Why did you go away? That was when all the bad things started. You all went away, one by one, and now I'm the only one left. I'm all alone."
Cordelia glanced at the body on the floor. "Keeping friends is easier if you don't brutally murder everyone you meet. I'm just throwing out an idea, here."
"Spike's gone away. They put metal in his mind, and now he can't drink. It poisons him from the inside out." Slowly, Drusilla's voice was taking on a dreamy quality; she sounded as if she were telling a story she had rehearsed many times to herself. "She was next. I wasn't there, but I felt her crumble, with remorse in her heart and little hands and feet in her belly."
A tear rolled down Drusilla's cheek; her gaze had turned inward, and she didn't appear to be aware of anyone else in the room. Softly, Angel took a step back, then another. He motioned to Charles, who silently threw him the stake.
The movement caught Drusilla's attention. She lifted her arms toward Angel in a gesture of entreaty. "Daddy," she said.
Angel froze. In a low voice that sounded as if it might crack, he said, "Never call me that again."
Then he struck.
Angel moved fast, the motion a blur in the dimness, but Drusilla was faster; she seemed to know what he was going to do before he did it. Fred heard his stake clatter to the ground and saw a slash of red chiffon and black hair dart through the door of the doll room.
Led by Angel, they ran after her, but the hallway outside the doll room stretched emptily in both directions, and there was no sign of Drusilla.
"She's going to get away," Fred said.
"Not this time," Angel said. He sounded as determined as Fred had ever heard him. "She's caused too much suffering. I've let her go too many times already. It's time to end this."
"I'll second that," Cordelia added. "Did you see the stains on her dress? I'm adding 'crimes against couture' to the list of reasons why Dru's gotta be dusted."
While she'd been talking, Angel had been looking intently up and down the corridor. Now he pointed to an exhibition room just a few yards away. The doors to the room were quivering on their hinges, not much, but enough to indicate that someone had recently passed through them. "She went in there."
Fred read the sign above the door out loud. "'The Old Curiosity Shop: Victorian Inventions and Curios.' Well, that sounds interesting."
"More importantly, it sounds non-lethal," Cordelia said. "Unlucky for us if Dru holed up in the Antique Weapons Gallery."
Charles was studying a museum floor plan on the wall. He tapped it to draw their attention. "There's no other way out of this room. She's trapped."
Angel nodded. "Then let's finish this." He pushed the door open, and they looked into the room.
"Jeez," Cordelia said. "It's the garage sale that time forgot."
Fred saw what she meant. The room they entered was more like an attic that hadn't been cleared out in years, instead of an organized museum exhibition. Some of the objects in cases and on stands around her were old-fashioned but recognizable -- Fred saw a sewing machine and a telephone in the 'Household' section -- but others were entirely mysterious. A printed label on a black box which spewed copper wires identified the device as an early X-ray machine, but what was the equally strange contraption resting on a tripod next to it?
A high pitched, reedy giggle broke the silence. "Cold!" Drusilla's voice sang out. "Cold, colder, coldest."
Gunn started. "What the hell?"
"It's a game," Angel said in a low voice. "Hide and seek." He took several careful steps forward.
More laughter. "Coldest, cooler, warm."
Cordelia shook her head in disbelief. "She's giving us HINTS so we can find her and stake her? Whatever."
Fred tipped her head, trying to place the source of the laughter. "She's over there."
Directed by Drusilla's voice, they ventured further into the exhibition hall. It seemed to Fred that the further they went, the more arcane and fantastical the objects on display became, until it was impossible to tell what any of them might have been intended to be. Fred was unwillingly reminded of how she had felt as a child waking up from a bad dream to find her bedroom suddenly a strange and unfriendly place, filled with distorted, wavering shapes. In Pylea, she had crouched in her cave, overwhelmed by the same sense of dislocation, but on a massive scale. The memory still made her shake.
Ahead of them, Drusilla's voice was growing louder. "Hot. Hotter. Flames licking all around, hot coals!"
But she'd been alone in her cave, Fred reminded herself. Now, she could reach out and take Charles' hand. And that made all the difference.
"Burning," Drusilla whispered.
She was crouching inside one of the exhibits, sitting cross-legged in the base of a pyramid which seemed to be made of some kind of black stone. The pyramid was so large it had been placed on a plinth by itself, apart from the other exhibits; it had a square base and four sides that tapered to a sharp point some ten feet above. The near side was hinged, to make a door. Fred had never seen anything like it before.
"The game's over, Dru," Angel said. "You know how this is going to end."
"I know how it began," Drusilla said. "Such a long time ago, like a bedtime story. You used to tell me wonderful stories, with screaming in them. The ending stays the same, but the beginning can change. I'm going to tell the story the way it should have been."
And she quickly pulled the door at the front of the pyramid closed, sealing herself inside.
No one spoke for several seconds. Finally, Cordelia said, "Is it just me, or did Dru just do a really, really stupid thing?"
"She ran into a dead end, told us how to find her, then went and locked herself up right in front of us," Fred said. "Tactically, not the smartest moves."
Charles looked at Angel. "What was it you said? Oh, yeah -- 'She's insane, but she's smart.' Man, I think you should've just quit at 'insane'." Angel didn't respond; he just kept staring intently at the pyramid.
Cordy was eyeing the black pyramid as well. "How heavy do you think that thing is? I mean, could we load it on Gunn's truck, take it outside and open it up after sunrise? Because I'm thinking simple, risk-free Dru-disposal."
Tentatively, Fred stepped up on to the plinth, and rapped the outside of the pyramid with her knuckles. It was smooth and cool to the touch, and felt solid -- could it be marble? Given the pyramid's height, even if the sides were only six inches thick, that would still imply a mass of at least -- Fred did some quick mental calculations and frowned. "This is way too heavy for us to move."
Without warning, the door of the pyramid started to swing open again. Fred heard Charles shout, and she stumbled back, trying desperately to get out of Drusilla's reach --
-- But Drusilla was gone. The space inside the pyramid was empty.
"Damn, that thing's got a back door," Charles said. "She musta got out."
Fred peered inside the pyramid and, when she was completely certain it was empty, went inside. The interior was surprisingly roomy -- there was enough space for at least a few people -- but there was nowhere to hide. The floor was solid, and although the walls were covered in all sorts of intriguing dials and levers and golden rings, there was no other door. "I don't think she could have."
"She's not here," Angel said. "Not even close. She's -- gone."
"Pardon me for asking the obvious question," Cordelia said, "but what the hell is that thing, and what's it doing in a museum filled with nineteenth century English stuff?"
Fred started to read the notes for exhibition visitors, displayed on a board attached to the side of the plinth. "According to this, it belonged to the fifth Earl of Ashford. He was an eccentric millionaire."
"Eccentric?" Charles said, raising one eyebrow.
"As in, died in Bedlam," Fred said. "He was an amateur Egyptologist --"
"A lot of Victorians were," Angel said.
"And he built this as a -- as a --"
Fred's eyes went wide. The silence stretched out, and she knew the others were impatiently waiting for her to speak again, but no words would come.
"Fred, you wanna help us out here?" Cordelia prompted.
She still couldn't come up with anything to say, so Fred just read the plaque's words aloud. "The Earl of Ashford's many delusions included his belief that the ancient Egyptian religion held the keys toward practicing various forms of magic. Experts disagree on the interpretation of this device, though most believe it to be a private sanctum of worship. But theories are as diverse as experts -- some think it was a mausoleum, others a sculpture, and one writer even posited that it was intended as a --" Fred took a deep breath. "As a time machine."
There was a short pause. Then Cordelia said, "I don't guess there's any hope for the 'sculpture' option?"
"This is not a time machine," Charles said. "Ain't no such thing."
In a quiet voice, Fred said, "Then where'd Drusilla go?"
For a long time, no one spoke. Fred was aware that her stomach was churning, her mind humming with surprise and fear, and she wondered if the others felt the same way. Finally, Angel said, "I've been around a long time, but every time I think I've seen it all, something new comes along. A time machine -- is that possible, Fred?"
"There's no technology -- not even an approximation of the technology -- for that," Fred said. "But there's a whole heap of different ideas. Some people don't think you can travel in time, even in theory. Some think you could go back, but not forward. But, as a general principle, do most physicists think it's possible? Yes."
The other three were staring at her. No, Fred realized, not at her -- past her, at the black pyramid, looming silent and empty behind her.
"This is NOT a time machine," Charles repeated, shaking his head.
"I know it sounds farfetched," Angel said. "But Drusilla used that device to do something -- to go somewhere. We have to --"
"No, no, NO," Charles said. He started pacing. "No time machines! Absolutely not. I mean, okay, vampires are real. Found that out a few years ago. Freaked out, dealt with it. Then I found out that zombies are real. Werewolves are real. Witches are real. Freaky telekinetic chicks with personal problems are real. But not time machines! Okay, maybe every single other weird-ass thing out of a horror movie is real, but not this!"
"Charles?" Fred wasn't used to seeing him out of control, and it unnerved her more than it should have done. She looked around at the others to see if they were as worried as she was. They didn't seem to be.
Charles looked at them all in a mixture of frustration and misery. "I just want one damn thing not to be real," he said. "Just one fake thing. That's all I ask."
"I hear the Easter Bunny is a crock," Cordelia offered. She patted his shoulder and smiled ruefully. "I know how you feel. I've been there myself. You just have to face it -- that moment when you realize, no matter how high your weirdness threshold gets, it's never gonna be high enough."
Fred went to Charles and squeezed his arm. "This is weird, I know. But we have to focus. I think we might be in a lot of trouble."
That seemed to work, and Fred was relieved. Charles breathed out. "A time machine. That's -- crazy. I mean, you'd have to be crazy to even --" He broke off, his face changing. "You'd have to be crazy."
"Suppose that thing is a time machine," Angel said, "and suppose Drusilla just used it to go somewhere, then -- hypothetically -- what kind of damage could she do?"
Cordelia said, "Just before she closed the door, she was ranting about changing the beginning."
Fred felt her heart flutter as her mind started to work out the implications. "She could go back to the beginning of human history and kill the first homo sapiens. Or create so many vampires that human civilization never develops past the stone age. She could --"
Cordelia held up a hand, cutting Fred off. "Okay, so she could do very bad things, up to and including wiping out civilization as we know it." She frowned, then brightened. "Wait a second. Dru can't have changed the past -- if she had, we wouldn't be standing here having this conversation. Right?"
She looked so hopeful that Fred hated to let her down. "It's called the ripple effect. Reality is a little like the surface of a pond. Drop a stone in it, and the waves move out from the point of impact. So if the past has changed, we probably haven't got that long before the effects work their way to 2002."
"We have to figure out where Dru went -- when she went," Angel corrected himself. "Then we have to follow her."
Charles grimaced. "Man, I KNEW you were gonna say that."
"Fred --" Angel said.
Fred nodded and hopped on to her feet to enter the pyramid again. "There's some kind of writing in here, around all the dials and such. It looks a little like Egyptian hieroglyphics."
Angel, Cordy and Charles crowded into the space inside the pyramid. Four bodies was a crush, but there was just enough room for them all. "Can you read it?" Angel asked.
"Math is my thing, not languages. I mean, I've picked up bits and pieces from W--" Fred stopped herself from saying the name just in time. It didn't make any difference -- from the uncomfortable looks on Charles and Cordy's faces, she knew they were thinking the same thing she was. But, as useful as Wesley's presence would have been right now, Fred doubted he was ever going to get the opportunity to do any translating anywhere near Angel, ever again. "I've picked up a little, but not enough. I can't read this."
"Lemme see," Cordelia said. As she jockeyed for a better position, she nudged against Fred. Fred put her hand against the wall of the pyramid to steady herself, and felt something give under her fingers. The pyramid door swung smoothly shut, and they were suddenly confined in darkness.
"Cozy," Gunn's voice said. She heard him fumbling in his pocket, and then he pulled out his lighter and flicked it. "Now we can see exactly how much trouble we're in."
"This had better be a time machine," Cordelia said, "because I do NOT want to have to explain how we got trapped in here to the museum staff when they open up tomorrow."
"What are all these rings for?" Charles said. The highest level of the pyramid was covered in small, carved hooks; from each hung a small golden ring. No, Fred realized -- from all but one. One of the rings had been taken. Acting on instinct, she reached up and took one herself.
"I don't think that's a good idea," Charles said.
The ring shone dully in Fred's hand. "Why not?"
"Didn't you ever see an Indiana Jones movie? This thing could be booby trapped."
"Decapitated by a museum exhibit," Cordelia said. "Yeah, that's gonna look really dignified on my death certificate."
"Something's happening," Angel said.
He was right, Fred realized. On each of the four walls of the pyramid, individual hieroglyphs were starting to glow softly. She counted seven -- no, eight -- in all, each one exuding a soft lambency. Each was under one of the dials; Fred didn't understand the settings, but she knew not to change them. She touched the nearest glowing symbol. Immediately, it went out. "I think you're meant to use the rings to activate the machine. Like -- like the key of a car. You use the dials to set it, to determine where you're going, maybe like the steering wheel. And the symbols record -- something."
"What kind of something?" Charles asked.
"I'm not sure. The most recently used settings, maybe?" She frowned. "I can't think of anything like that on a car."
"You mean, these could be the settings Drusilla used," Angel said.
Fred shook her head. "I'm not sure."
"Only one way to find out," Cordelia said determinedly. She reached up and placed her fingertips on two more of the glowing hieroglyphs. Both instantly went out, making the pyramid's interior noticeably darker.
Charles pressed the two lit shapes closest to him, and Angel took two more. Now only one symbol still glowed.
"If we press this, and nothing happens, we are gonna feel so dumb," Cordelia said.
Fred's hand hovered over the last glowing hieroglyph.
"Do it," Angel said.
Fred touched the symbol. It went out. For a moment, she was kneeling in perfect darkness, the musty smell of the museum in her nostrils and the feel of three bodies -- two warm and one cool -- close by.
Then the floor vanished.
Fred screamed. She thought they all screamed, but she could only hear her own terrified cries. She felt herself tumbling and falling through a vast and empty void, and in her terror, her only clear thought was that this time there wouldn't be anyone there to catch her at the other end.
~Chapter Two~
Chapter 2
Cordelia started screaming the moment the floor fell out from beneath her and didn't stop until it reappeared, just in time for her to belly-flop onto the ground.
"Nyungh," she said, which was about all she could say, or think, after having her breath knocked out of her. She could taste dust in her mouth and hear Gunn and Fred gasping beside her in the dark.
Angel, who'd had the breath knocked out of him in a permanent sense a long time ago, said, "Thank God."
"For what?" Cordelia croaked, turning over on her back. Then her eyes opened wide. "I hope you don't mean for that."
Above them, waves of red-gold light shimmered, fluctuated, bent and shone anew. Cordelia thought it looked like the surface of a pool -- if the pool happened to be on fire.
"If you're thanking the big guy upstairs for stoppin' us falling any further, I'm on board with that," Gunn said. "Next time, we gotta learn the difference between a time machine and a trapdoor, okay?"
Angel turned his face toward Cordelia; she couldn't see him well in the dim, shifting light, but she could tell he was concerned. "Are you hurt?"
Cordelia wiggled her toes and fingers, then sat upright. Her body groaned in protest, but she felt no fresh pain. "Not hurt as in injured, no. But hurt as in, I'm gonna be sore for days -- that's another story " She peered anxiously into the dark. "Drusilla -- she's not --"
"She's headed away from us," Angel said. "It's safe for now."
"What the hell is that stuff?" Gunn said, looking upward.
Angel said, "I think it's the way back to where we came from. It might have closed up when we passed through, and I'm not sure we could have opened it up again. But it's still open."
"Ergo the thanking God," Cordelia said. She blinked and tried to make out their surroundings; the shimmering light from the portal above them cast strange shadows on her friends' faces, and the bracelet Groo had given her scattered rainbow reflections on to the cave walls as she moved, like a mirror ball spinning too fast. "Where are we, anyway?"
Fred's voice echoed slightly as she said, "We're in a cave." She pushed herself up on her elbows, and Cordelia saw that her body and face were tense and drawn. "Smells like a cave. Sounds like a cave. I know caves. This is one."
"Hey, there," Gunn said gently. He rubbed Fred's shoulder. "You ain't alone in this cave, okay? You got your friends, and you got your way out. You're all right."
"I'm all right," Fred repeated, as if by rote. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again and took a deep breath. "I'm all right," she said once more, and this time it seemed as though she meant it.
"I guess the 'where' is not so much the point," Cordelia said. "The 'when' is really what we want to figure out."
"I still don't think that was a time machine," Gunn said.
Cordelia pointed upward toward the gleaming pool directly over their heads. "Does that look like a trapdoor to you?"
"No," Gunn admitted. "But it doesn't look like a time machine, neither."
"How many times have you been through a time machine?" Cordelia demanded.
Gunn folded his arms across his chest. "How many times have you been through a trapdoor?"
"There's only one way to settle this," Angel said as he got to his feet. He offered her a hand, and she let him help her stand. The sudden move made the blood rush to her head, and she clasped Angel's arms tight for a moment, hanging on for support. "Cordy?" he said quietly.
"I'm good," she said. "Just still with the freaky from our death-defying plunge back there."
"Fred, do you still have that ring?" Angel said.
Fred held up the gold circle, still clutched in her hand, as she got to her feet. Gunn dusted her off before turning to himself. "Sure thing. I'm still not certain about its exact function --" She peered at the cave's roof and held the ring up experimentally. Red-gold sparks crackled on the portal's surface, and Fred pulled the ring back in a hurry. "But I think it's our ticket back."
"Very glad that ticket was round-trip," Cordelia said. "So, which way is the exit?"
Fred sniffled, and Cordelia wondered for a moment if she'd started crying. But then Fred pointed to her right. "The fresher air is coming from that direction."
"Let's hurry," Angel said. "It's going to be sunrise before too long, and then I'm not going to be able to go out with you."
As they moved away from the portal's unearthly light, the cave became steadily darker, until Cordelia was forced to feel her way by running her hand along the rough wall. Then, to her relief, the way ahead started to brighten.
"I got a question," Gunn said to Angel. "How come, if we're on the inside of a mountain, you know the sun's about to rise?"
"I don't know how, exactly," Angel said. "I just know."
Score one for weird undead sixth sense, Cordelia thought as they emerged from the mouth of the cave -- Angel was right. The sun wasn't up yet, but the horizon was distinctly lighter in what was apparently the east. Cordelia looked around in the gray pre-dawn murk, and saw what looked like a totally normal forest -- big trees, ferns, moss. Turning to Gunn, she said, "Unless the museum is doing some radical redevelopment to its basement, I think your trapdoor theory is blown."
"Yeah, I'm getting that," Gunn said. "But this looks just like the present to me. I mean, the present in some woods somewhere, but the present."
"Forests haven't changed much in the last hundred centuries," Angel pointed out. "We're going to have to find something we can use to date this place."
Cordelia said, "If we see a whole bunch of people who look like John Malkovich, I'm gonna panic. Just warning you now."
Fred began making her way down the slope that led away from the cave, her feet making rustling sounds through the leaves. She called back, "I think there's a road down here! Or a path, or a trail."
Gunn bounded down after her, and Cordelia grabbed Angel's hand for balance as they followed. He was looking eastward, more than a little worried, not that she could blame him. "How long have we got before you've got to get to shelter?" she said.
"Not long," he said, wincing slightly. "More than five minutes. Less than ten."
Gunn shook his head. "How are we gonna catch up with Dru if you're stuck in a cave?"
"If I can't move, Dru can't move," Angel said. "We're far away from any subways or sewer systems. That means she's going to have to find shelter in a minute herself."
Cordelia sighed, relieved. "Okay, that's good news, right? You vampy types can't move during the day, but we can. So that gives us time to investigate, figure out what's the what, while you two are getting your beauty sleep." Looking at Angel's drawn, tired face, Cordelia wondered if he'd slept since Connor was taken. Probably not, she thought. "Angel, you should go on back. It'll probably take us a while to get anywhere, since I don't see any signs, or cars, or --"
"Found something," Fred called.
She was kneeling on the edge of the dirt road, examining what appeared to be a stone. As the others went to her side, Cordelia saw, etched in the stone -- SIGHISOARA 3.
"Ziggy Sahara," Gunn said. "Don't guess you have any idea where that might be?"
"Romania," Angel said. "It's in Romania."
He spoke quietly, but Cordelia felt her whole body tense up as though he'd screamed. Romania. She whispered, "Angel -- we still don't know when we are --"
"It's 1898," he replied. His hands were clenching by his sides, his face set. "That's the only reason she'd come back here. Drusilla hated Romania. She'd only come back for one thing."
1898. Cordelia's mind was whirling. Just over 100 years ago. That meant --
"We'll stop her," Cordelia said quickly, taking Angel's hand in her own. "Angel, it's going to be okay. Dru's not going to do this."
"Do what?" Gunn said, staring at Angel and Cordelia in turn. "What the hell happened in Romania in 1898?"
Angel said quietly, "That's when I killed a gypsy girl. For revenge, the gypsies cursed me to have a soul. And that's what Drusilla's come back in time to stop. She's going to stop me from getting a soul."
For a few moments, they were all silent together. Fred's hand covered her mouth, and Gunn brushed his fingertips against her shoulder. At last, Gunn said, "I'm gonna go for understatement here and say that would be bad."
"We have to find Drusilla," Cordelia said. She looked over her shoulder at the horizon, which was getting even more pink. "Angel, you've got to get back in the cave. Angel?"
Angel looked zoned, she thought. No -- worse than that. Even more tired than he'd seemed just a few moments ago. She would have thought he'd be worried or angry or plain old pissed-off at Drusilla's plan. Instead, he was just quieter and, somehow, even more sad. Cordelia felt as though she should do something, but couldn't think what. So she simply took his hand in hers. The distant look on his face didn't change, but he came back to reality enough to say, "Can you guys check out the area for a while? Don't confront Drusilla if you find her. Just come back and let us know."
"Yeah, sure," Gunn said. Fred nodded. As the two of them headed down the road, Angel turned and walked back toward the cave. Cordelia had to either follow him or let go of his hand.
She followed him back inside.
***
"Crazy vamp chick didn't have more than a twenty minute head start, and then it got light. So she's gotta be hiding somewhere near the caves. And since there aren't many places to hide -- where is she?" Charles rubbed his ankle. "We musta walked at least five miles already."
Fred looked at the sky and did a mental calculation based on the height of the sun and what she estimated their average walking speed had been since leaving Angel and Cordy at the caves. "Actually, it's more like one or two. You never complain about having to walk back home."
"Because back home, I never have to walk. If God had meant us to wear out shoe leather, he wouldn't have given us trucks." Charles waved a hand around himself, indicating the vast, monotonous expanse of forest. "At least in L.A. there's plenty to look at -- store windows, billboards, the occasional minor celebrity bein' done for possession. Even the trees ain't changed in the last four hours. And how do we know we're not just goin' around in one great big loop?"
"Because we've been walking in a straight line, toward the sun. We're heading due east, so we can't get lost. And the trees are different -- these have thinner, lighter-colored bank, and they have wider leaves than the trees back at the cave." As she looked more closely at the trees, Fred saw something she hadn't noticed before. "And I think there's a village or camp or something nearby."
"How'd you figure that?"
"Those trees don't have any branches low down," Fred said. "They've been taken for firewood. There must be people someplace close."
"Listen to you with the tree forensics." Charles grinned. "You're a regular Girl Scout."
"I was never a Girl Scout," Fred said. They started walking again, picking their way over the uneven road, Fred with considerably more dexterity than Charles. "I didn't know what trees with branches missing meant until I was in Pylea. I went too close to a town, and they nearly caught me -- I was lucky to get away, and afterward all I could think was how stupid I'd been not to figure out what the missing branches meant --"
Fred broke off, remembering those first, terrible months in Pylea, when she'd realized just how poorly equipped for survival her comfortable upbringing and college education had left her. She'd had no idea how to hunt for food; the forest trees had been heavy with fruits, but the first time she dared to try the red berries she'd seen the birds eat, she'd spent the next three days doubled over in agony. And even the berries had disappeared during the first winter, when she'd cowered, shivering in her cave because she had no way of making a fire --
That thought triggered another memory, an unexpected one -- the sense of triumph she had felt the first time her attempts to use the lens of her glasses to focus the sun's rays on to dry leaves had produced crawling red sparks and then the glorious warmth of rising flames. Not long after, the hook and line she'd improvised had caught a fish in the stream near the cave, and Fred had enjoyed her first hot meal in over a year.
Walking with Charles through the Romanian forest, sure-footed and confident she could find her way, Fred found for the first time she could think about Pylea without having to suppress a shudder of panic.
"Hey." Charles's voice broke in on her thoughts. She felt his hand on her shoulder, comforting. "It's okay. I know this has gotta be a lot like gettin' sucked into Pylea. I know you're doing some hard dealin'. But you're not all alone this time. We're here. I'm here."
Charles was so protective and sweet; that was one of the main reasons she'd fallen for him. But she didn't feel frightened now -- she felt strong. Fred opened her mouth to tell him so, but before she could speak, she heard the clatter of wooden wheels on the bumpy ground, accompanied by a rough voice and the clip of hooves. "Someone's coming."
"Must be rush hour," Charles said.
The cart that appeared around the next bend in the track was a ramshackle contraption pulled by a weary-looking horse and driven by an old man whose eyes were tiny slits buried beneath his white-tufted, wrinkled brow. The frown that appeared on his face when he saw Fred and Charles deepened to a scowl when Fred stepped out into his path.
"Good morning," she said politely. "We're not from around here and we were wondering if you could -- well, first, if you could speak English, and if you can --"
The man reached into the cart behind him and produced a large stick, which he brandished threateningly.
"Now, there's no need to --" Fred began.
The man brought the stick down, hard, on the horse's flank. The animal whinnied and broke into a trot. Just as the cart was bearing down on her, Charles pulled Fred out of its way.
Fred ran after the cart -- on the rutted track, she could easily match its speed. She reached out, and her fingers grasped the waxed cloth that covered the cart's load. "Wait! We only want to ask a couple of questions --"
She heard another crack of the old man's stick, and the cart accelerated away from her. Fred gave up the chase and stood in the middle of the track, catching her breath.
Charles caught up with her. "Good roads, and the locals are SO friendly. I'm writing to the L.A. Times travel section about this place when we get home."
"I guess we don't exactly look like we're from around here."
"You mean I don't."
At that, Fred looked up. "Charles, we must have BOTH looked weird to him."
"Sure," Charles said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. "It musta been that blue T-shirt you're wearin' that scared him off and not, say, the fact he's never seen a black guy before."
"Actually, the fact that I'm wearing pants instead of a skirt probably makes me look like a prostitute or something." She frowned. "Maybe I should be glad he didn't stop."
Charles said, "You would think this girl would not be that hard to find. A red dress oughta stand out like a signal flare."
"She's got to be hidden from the sunlight, Charles," Fred pointed out. "So she could be under a log. Or in another cave. Or buried under leaves. Or --"
"I get the picture. Unfortunately, that picture includes us not finding her before dark." Charles exhaled heavily. "Okay, nothing for it but to head back and tell Angel and Cordy --" He broke off. "Man, maybe I'm just hallucinating 'cause I didn't get any breakfast, but I can smell something cooking, and it's GOOD."
Fred sniffed the air -- he was right. The faint aroma of something frying was drifting toward them from the woods on the other side of the track. "The village must be that way. Maybe the people there will be friendlier."
Charles nodded. Together, they crossed the track and followed, first the smell of cooking food, and then the sound of voices laughing and talking, until they came to a low hill. Fred started to pick up her pace, but Charles held her back.
"This time," he said, "let's hold off on the introductions, okay?"
Fred looked at the trees around them. One, an ancient oak, was taller than the rest, with strong branches and an abundance of leaves. "I've got an idea," she said. "Help me up."
Charles needed no further explanation. He laced his fingers together, making a platform to boost Fred up to the level of the tree's lowest branches. Once they were within her reach, it was easy to pull herself the rest of the way. She wriggled upward into the tree, climbing until she had found a solid perch high above the ground.
She shuffled into a secure position on a lofty branch, then pushed the leaves aside to survey the forest from her new vantage point.
"See anything?" Charles called from below.
Fred was looking down on a village -- although not of the kind she had expected. Instead of buildings, there were brightly painted wagons; instead of public buildings, there were large tents, big enough to hold twenty people or more. The camp was bustling with activity, and everywhere Fred looked, she saw people busily at work mending, unpacking, and building. A woman was cooking on a griddle over an open fire, keeping a watchful eye over the children playing next to her at the same time, while near them a man used a knife to extract a stone from the hoof of one of the horses tethered at the campsite's edge.
Fred described everything she saw to Gunn, feeling all the while an odd mix of fascination and slight but insistent guilt at the knowledge that she was spying on these people's daily lives. But there was something compelling about observing, unseen, and it was all the stranger when she remembered that what she was seeing was more than a hundred years old, a slice of history brought to life.
"They look friendly," she decided. "I'm gonna come down and --"
She was about to descend, when the thundering noise of a galloping horse stopped her. Gunn had heard it, too. "What's happening?"
"I'm not sure --" Fred watched, and saw a man on horseback ride into the camp, so recklessly that piles of carefully stacked pots and pans were overturned. Fred could hear more than one person raise their voices to complain -- she was too far away to make out the words, but the tone was clear -- but the new arrival didn't seem to hear them. Instead he dismounted and went straight to a tall man who was standing by the largest wagon.
The horse rider said something to the tall man, then embraced him. The tall man nodded and held out a hand to the woman who had been cooking. She didn't take his hand, but instead collapsed, very slowly, like a puppet whose strings were being cut, one by one. As she started crying, a group of the other women swiftly gathered around and led her into the largest wagon. Fred knew she was watching a tragedy unfold before her.
A hundred years ago, she thought: This all happened a hundred years ago. But she could hear the noise of the woman wailing as she climbed down the tree, the sound of fresh, raw grief piercing the clear, calm morning.
"What happened?" Charles asked.
"They're gypsies," Fred said. "I think they might be THE gypsies. Charles, everything that happened -- I think it just started."
***
"I just want you to try to sleep," Cordelia said again.
Try to sleep, Angel thought. Sleep seemed like some strange, foreign concept -- something he used to do a long time ago, like riding in carriages and powdering his hair. Something that belonged in the museum back in Los Angeles. The last time Angel had slept, his son had been in a crib in the next room with his soft, regular breathing echoing reassuringly from the baby monitor, his good friend Wesley was taking care of things downstairs; and Angel's greatest care had been the fact that Cordelia loved somebody else. That world seemed further away than the Victorian era. In fact, Angel realized, right now it was -- in 1898, Queen Victoria was still alive, but his life in L.A. was more than 100 years in the future. Somehow, that idea made him even more exhausted than he had been before.
"Angel?" Cordelia's voice echoed a little within the cave. "Are you even listening to me?"
"I'm listening, Cordy," he said. "I just don't think sleep is an option right now."
"Come on," she said as she stepped to his side. She was smiling gently at him, trying to tease him from his gloom. Angel recognized the look, loved it dearly, but knew even Cordelia's ability to handle his moods had limits. "It's bright and early in the morning. That makes it naptime for vamps, right?"
"Drusilla's on the loose, we're in the past and there's a chance my all-too-mortal soul is in danger," Angel said. "That makes it not naptime. It's about as far from naptime as it gets."
She held out her hands, placating him. "Okay, so, sleep's off the activities list. But you need to rest, Angel. If we're going up against Drusilla, we need you at full strength, right? Fred and Gunn and I might be able to handle her on our own, but I'd feel better if you weren't dozing off during the battle."
Memory pulled at Angel again, and his stomach dropped as the implications hit him. "It's not just Drusilla," he said. "That month in Romania, all four of us were together. Me and Dru and Darla and Spike. There's a chance we could encounter any or all of them."
Even in the uncertain light in the cave, Angel could see Cordelia's face go pale. To her credit, she said only, "All the more reason you've got to rest. If you can't sleep, you can at least lie down. Give your legs a break to get ready for all that running-for-our-lives that's probably coming up."
Angel sat down heavily on the ground; Cordelia stretched out next to him and, to his surprise, pillowed her head on his legs. Of course, he thought. She's tired too. I should let her get some sleep instead of worrying over me. He lay back on the earth, and he was surprised how comfortable he felt.
Cordelia murmured, "Outside -- when we found out where we are -- when we are -- whatever. You looked upset."
The red-gold light on the roof of the cave still flickered nearby. It didn't look as though their portal would close until they went back through. "You guys didn't look happy either. With good reason."
"That's not what I meant, exactly," Cordelia said. "I just wondered what you were thinking, is all. And by now, I almost always know what you're thinking, so not knowing kinda threw me off there."
Cordelia knew so much, Angel thought, and yet didn't know anything at all. "I was thinking that I have to start it all over."
"Start what?"
"All of it," he said. The red-gold light was distracting if he stared at it for too long, so Angel shut his eyes. "We have to stop Dru. We have to make sure that I get cursed with a soul, and spend 100 years wandering the earth alone, and meet and fall in love with Buffy so I can lose my soul again and terrorize her and kill again. And get cursed again, and get Buffy back just to lose her again, and have to leave her. And go to Los Angeles, and start to have a decent existence, and -- and have a son. And lose him."
Cordelia was quiet for a while, and then he felt her turn over. He opened his eyes to see her on her side, her cheek against his thigh, a worried crease between her eyes. "Hey. There's a lot of good in there you just left out, you know. Like your mission, and the whole shanshu prophecy. Not to mention yours truly."
"I know," Angel said. "Believe me, I know that. It's just right now -- so soon after -- just thinking about it all makes me -- tired." The word seemed to mean something else right then, something Angel couldn't exactly define, but it was the force weighing down so heavily on him that even sitting up seemed impossible. "I'm just so tired, Cordy."
She was quiet for a few moments. Then her hand patted his gently. "Let's think about the good stuff, okay?" Cordelia said. "Like -- Angel, you remember the suntan lotion commercial I did? How you showed up on the set and freaked out?"
He knew Cordelia was just trying to distract him. Of course, she couldn't have chosen a much better memory to distract him than that bikini. Angel closed his eyes again and shook his head. "They might as well have made you wear dental floss."
"Dental floss would have been more comfortable," she said. "It was so funny seeing you on the beach set. Like you were going to start playing volleyball or something."
All those stage lights. Angel remembered the stage as broiling hot, but he'd liked the simulation of sunlight. That thought made him remember the daylight outside, felt if not seen; he'd all but learned to ignore its diurnal influence the past couple of years, but right now, he felt it as strongly as ever. The urge to sleep, brought on by the rising sun, bound him up so that he didn't want to move; it was confining and comforting at once, like an infant's swaddling. And so warm.
"The other swimsuit was less obnoxious." Cordelia's voice seemed more distant. "I wanted that one instead of that bizarre macrame thing. It was probably somebody's art therapy project in prison."
"They have prisoners make bikinis?"
"Who knows? Might be a nice change from license plates. Anyway, I got to talking with the other model, and we decided to flip a coin --"
Angel his muscles relaxing involuntarily, melting into the ground beneath them. Cordelia had known what she was doing. She was too good at this.
"-- and I was totally going to call heads, because you call it after you catch the coin, right? But while it's in the air, she called heads, and then --"
Angel fell asleep.
***
"Wow. Amazing what the sky looks like without smog, huh?"
Nobody answered Cordelia. Without the familiar noises of traffic, sirens and overhead planes, the night was eerily quiet. She shivered and wished she had something to put on over her green T-shirt.
Conversation might take her mind off the chill, but Cordelia was realizing there wasn't much chance of that. Gunn and Fred, who had spent most of the day walking already, had little energy for anything other than trudging side by side; Angel's long sleep had clearly left him more alert, but his face was closed off, and by now she knew the body language that went with that look well enough to understand no amount of perkiness was going to penetrate his silence. It was going to be a very long night. "It won't take too long to walk to the city, right?" she asked hopefully. "The sign said Sighisoara was just 3 miles away."
"It's not far," Fred agreed, "but the road runs right past the gypsies' camp."
Cordelia frowned. "Then I vote we take a BIG detour. We know they're out to wreak terrible vengeance on Angel. We don't want our version to get accidentally wreaked upon twice." She tapped his arm. "Right?"
"Yeah," Angel said after a second, but he didn't sound convinced. Cordelia remembered what he'd been talking about in the cave, just before he fell asleep, and realized that Angel's state of mind must be even lower than she'd thought.
"How big a detour can we risk?" Fred asked. "We can't risk Angel getting trapped in the open if we're still walking when the sun comes up. And even when we get to the city, we have to find a place to stay without any money and explain the way we look." She groaned. "This gets more complicated the more I think about it."
Angel opened his mouth to reply, then apparently decided to say something else. "Someone's coming."
Cordelia started -- she hadn't heard anything -- but a few seconds later she saw a light approaching along the dark track. As it neared, she realized it was a lantern, bouncing where it hung on the front of a carriage. The carriage was pulled by a team of four horses and guided by a driver in a smart blue uniform, a plumed hat sitting jauntily on his head. Cordelia didn't know a lot about history, but she knew she was looking at the late-nineteenth-century equivalent of a chauffeur-driven limousine.
"Think we could hitch a lift?" she asked.
"They won't stop for pedestrians," Angel said. "This is the age of highwaymen, remember."
"You never know until you try," Cordelia said with determination. She stepped out into the road and stuck out her thumb -- would nineteenth-century people know what that meant? They seemed to, because the driver of the carriage pulled sharply on the reins, and the horse slowed from a trot to a brisk walk. When the carriage had drawn level with them, another tug on the reins brought it to a stop.
The carriage door opened, allowing Cordelia to see its three passengers -- a broad-shouldered young man wearing a stiff wool suit, an even younger woman whose face, incomprehensibly, went bright red as soon as she saw Cordelia, and a much older woman, small and thin, whose graying hair was wound around the crown of her head in a severe and impossibly complicated pattern of braids.
Cordelia treated them all to her brightest, most winning smile. "Hi there. We're going to Sighisoara, and we were wondering --"
"Sighisoara!" the man exclaimed. He had an English accent, and Cordelia thought -- unwillingly, and just for a second -- of Wesley. "Why, that's where we're going. I don't suppose you know if this is the right road?"
"There's a signpost in that direction," Fred said, pointing. "The city's beyond that."
"But it's a long walk," Cordelia said quickly, "and since we don't have a carriage, we'd be really grateful for a ride."
"Certainly not!" the older woman said, apparently horrified at the idea. "Edgar, what are you thinking, conversing with these -- these circus ruffians?"
"Mama, you were the one who insisted we stop to ask for directions," Edgar began, with a tone of weary infuriation that suggested this kind of argument was a regular feature of his existence.
Cordelia placed her hands on her hips. "Hey! A little less with the abusive language, okay? Who do you think you are, lady?"
The woman regarded her icily. "I am exactly that -- a lady. Lady Clara Oxley. And you, my dear, are plainly anything but. Look at you," she added scornfully, "walking around with your legs showing and your hair as short as a man's! I declare I never saw anything so base! Why, you have nearly shocked poor Elspeth into a faint."
The girl -- Elspeth, Cordelia guessed -- went even redder and covered her mouth with her hand.
"Base?!" Cordelia repeated. "Listen, you old --"
"She's in costume!" Fred interrupted, hastily stepping in front of Cordelia.
Cordelia looked at her. "No, I'm not."
"Yes, you ARE," Fred said. "For -- the play. The play -- we're going to put on in Sighisoara because --" she screwed her eyes shut, struggling for inspiration.
"Because we're entertainers," Gunn interjected. "Traveling entertainers."
Cordelia turned to Angel, but he looked as confused as she was. She grabbed Fred and hissed, "What are you doing?"
"We need to get to the city as fast as we can, which involves them taking us there," Fred whispered back. "We need a cover story -- so start improvising."
Lady Clara was looking down on them from the carriage with obvious disdain. But Edgar and Elspeth, Cordelia saw, seemed interested. "A play, you say?" Edgar said. "How capital! What's it about?"
Fred looked at Gunn. Gunn looked at Cordelia. Angel just looked bemused.
"It's about -- " Cordelia began, "-- about some kind of disaster. A disaster that, um, ruined our clothing and left us in, in rags. Right. A disaster." A single idea popped into her head -- a terrible, humiliating idea that instantly pushed out all her other thoughts and made it impossible to think of anything else. "It's a -- musical. About a shipwreck," she blurted. Her voice wavering, she slowly started to sing:
"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of fateful trip --"
"Oh, no," Gunn said. He looked horrified. "Not that. Anything but that."
It was too late to stop now. Cordelia made frantic motions with her hands, urging the others to join in.
"-- That started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailing man, the skipper brave and sure --"
Cordelia seized Gunn and Angel by their arms and dragged them to stand beside her.
"Five passengers set sail that day for a three-hour tour --"
"-- A three-hour tour!" Fred piped, making a brave but doomed attempt at harmonizing. Cordelia nodded at her in gratitude.
In a timid voice, Elspeth said, "But there's only four of you."
"We're doubling parts," Gunn said. Then, adding his rough baritone to Cordelia's voice, he sang:
"The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was, uhh..."
"Tossed," Cordelia prompted. "The tiny ship was tossed."
"-- the tiny ship was tossed -- thanks -- If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost --"
"The Minnow would be lost!" Fred cried, clutching her hands dramatically to her chest.
The end was in sight. Cordelia took a deep breath and raced through the remaining lines:
"The ship took ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle, with Gilligan, the Skipper, too, the millionaire and his wife --"
She tossed her hair and sold the next line -- might as well enjoy herself --
"-- the MOOOVIE star --"
She was running out of breath now, but didn't dare stop:
"-- TheprofessorandMaryAnnhereonGilligansisle!"
Cordelia took a deep, gasping breath. That wasn't as bad as she'd thought. Grinning, she pointed at Angel, who had remained silent throughout the performance. "Then he does a kind of a hula dance."
"The hell I do," Angel muttered.
"And that's just the opening number," Fred concluded. "It gets even better after that. MaryAnn gets hit on the head with a coconut and thinks she's Ginger -- and then the millionaire finds out he's lost all his money -- and all sorts of interesting people, and Globetrotters, and Gabors wash up on the island too."
"They went wild for us in Paris," Cordelia added.
"Well, I say bravo!" Edgar applauded with what seemed to Cordelia to be genuine enthusiasm, and after a second Elspeth joined in, too. "That was perfectly marvelous. Wasn't it, mama?"
"Hmmph," Lady Clara Oxley said doubtfully.
"But where are your accoutrements?" Edgar asked.
Cordelia blinked. "Our what?"
Edgar waved his hands expansively. "Your play-scenes, and props, and suchlike. The necessary business of acting."
"Oh, THOSE accoutrements," Fred said. She bit her lip, in a way that Cordelia knew meant she was thinking very hard and very fast. "Well, see, we were viciously attacked --"
"How ghastly!" Elspeth exclaimed. Even Lady Clara looked a little more sympathetic. "By whom?"
"Bob Denver's lawyers," Gunn muttered under his breath. Cordelia shushed him.
"Bandits," Fred said. "They took our horses, too. And now we won't be able to open in Sighisoara tomorrow night." She sighed theatrically.
"The forces of lawlessness shall NOT triumph," Lady Clara declared. She turned to her son. "Edgar, why have you not invited these honest people to share our carriage? Have I imbued you with no spirit of Christian charity?"
Edgar obediently leaned forward, offering Cordelia his hand to help her into the carriage. As she reached up to take it, his eyes widened. "My word. What is that?"
He was staring at the bracelet that Groo had bought her; even in the faint light cast by the carriage's lamps, it shimmered with a myriad of colors. "May I?" Edgar asked. When Cordelia nodded, he brought out a pair of spectacles and examined the bracelet closely. "How extraordinary. It's flat, and yet one would swear the pattern hovers above it -- I've never seen anything quite like this. Wherever did you get it?"
"It's, uh, it was -- A prince gave it to me." Well, that wasn't exactly a lie, Cordelia told herself. And, besides, now that she was deep in pretense anyway, what harm was there in rounding out her backstory? That's what they'd told her to do in the acting classes she'd taken.
"A -- a real prince?" Elspeth whispered, agog.
"From a distant land," Cordelia elaborated. "We gave a special performance there. The prince loved it so much, he insisted on giving me this."
"Oh," Elspeth breathed. "How wonderfully exotic. Oh, Edgar --"
"My sister appears to be quite taken with your bauble," Edgar said. "Would you consider allowing me to obtain this marvelous piece of craftsmanship for her?"
"I don't know about that," Cordelia said. "It's got sentimental value."
"I'll pay you."
"Done."
Edgar got out his wallet, and Cordelia slipped the bracelet off her wrist. Behind her, Cordelia could hear Gunn mutter, "Is this a good idea? You remember 'Back to the Future' -- spend one quarter the wrong way, the whole world changes."
Just as quietly, Angel answered, "Sooner or later, you guys will need food. We'll all need a place to stay. We're not going to get those without money."
Gunn said, "And I'm guessin' they don't take American Express round these parts." Cordelia figured that meant he was okay with the plan, which was a good thing, since the bracelet was gone and the coins were heavy in her hand.
Angel murmured, "This is probably the least damaging way to make some money." Easy for him to say, Cordelia thought, a little glumly. Sure, it was tacky, but it was the first gift she'd gotten from a man in years, not counting gifts from Angel. Oh, well, she decided. She'd find a way to explain it to Groo.
Edgar took out his pocket handkerchief and folded the bracelet carefully up in it. "This has turned out splendidly all round. I anticipated a dull journey, but now Mama and Elspeth and I will be richly entertained by stories of your travels."
Six or seven hours of inventing stories about the exploits of the Angel Investigations Theatre Workshop was going to be a trial, Cordelia thought, but it'd be worth it if they didn't have to walk all the way to the city. When Edgar offered his hand for the second time, she reached up to accept it gratefully.
Before she could, Angel stepped between them. "What's today's date?"
Edgar looked nonplussed. "Well, we left Salzburg five days ago -- so today must be the fifteenth. November 15."
"And the year is 1898?" Angel pressed.
Edgar looked at him oddly. "Well, of course."
"Thank you," Angel said, "but we can't accept your kind offer. We have -- other business to attend to before we go to the city."
"Oh," Edgar said. "If you insist, my dear fellow. Terribly sorry to lose your company. We'll be sure to come and see this play of yours. Break a leg, what?"
He signaled to the driver, who cracked the whip once, spurring the horses forward. Just before the carriage jerked away, Elspeth leaned forward and whispered to Cordelia with frank admiration, "I think your hair is awfully daring."
As soon as they were gone, Cordelia hit Angel square in the chest. "What IS it with you? They were gonna give us a ride, and you said no! Angel, are you even listening?"
He wasn't -- he was staring after the fast-vanishing carriage lamps, frowning slightly. "I have the weirdest feeling I've met those people somewhere before."
"Man, I had to sing the Gilligan's Island song," Gunn said, coming to stand beside Cordelia. "In public. With actions. For nothing! That kind of thing sours good relationships, you hear what I'm sayin'?"
Some distance along the track, the faint lights of the carriage finally winked out. Angel blinked, and seemed to snap back to the current moment. "Tomorrow is November 16, 1898," he said, turning back to them. "That's the night I was cursed. We've only got one day to find Drusilla and stop her from changing history."
"Right," Cordelia said. "All the more reason to get to the city as quickly as possible."
But Angel was shaking his head. "There's no point if we don't know exactly where Drusilla is or what she's planning. To be certain of stopping her, we're going to need help, and fast."
"Help from where?" Fred asked. "We don't know anybody in 1898. Well, I guess we know some people, like Queen Victoria, but that's more knowing OF them than knowing them, and anyhow, she's in England and I don't think there's much she could do to help us."
Angel closed his eyes briefly, and Cordelia could sense what it cost him to say what he did next. "There is one place we can go."
***
"The creature who did this," the gypsy said, "the vile monster who stole my child -- he shall suffer. He shall suffer as no other of his kind has ever suffered. For all eternity, he will know our pain. Soon he will feel our wrath."
"Right there with ya," Cordelia said, smiling nervously as she stood in the center of the gypsy camp, where a hundred eyes stared at her suspiciously. "Now, what if you could get some help in tracking down this vile monster?"
The gypsies looked at one another. Cordelia plowed on. "And what if that help came from the absolute LAST place you'd expect?"