Warp & Weft

By Medea

Chapter Six

The following evening found Willow on her way to the cooperative that Cyrene, Hannah, Tara, and Zoe ran. Still troubled by her recent discoveries about some of the developments in human society, the red-headed vampire found herself appreciating what she had more and more.

Dark, liquid night air clung to her, gentle as a mother's caress. Walking through the shadowed streets, Willow, like all the night's creatures, was in her element. She recalled how, once, she and Angel had shared a moment of longing for the sun. And part of her -- the part that was linked to the natural magic that wove through her and her coven sisters, entwining them all like roots grasping the earth -- still resonated with the desire for daylight. But she had been a demon for many years now and knew what it was to be drunk with the night.

It was for the sake of this feeling that she slowly made her way to the Co-op on foot, rather than by car. That, and she wanted to keep an eye out for trouble. Funny. It was like patrolling the cemeteries of Sunnydale, so long ago. An entire lifetime ago. Except now she was one of the monsters, policing the naughty, bad mischief of other monsters -- some of whom were human. Kind of gave her whole situation a nice, hellmouthy twist.

Across the street, a visibly fatigued woman yawned as she pumped gas into her car. Willow's hunger rose at the reminder of yet another reason she'd chosen to walk. With the practiced ease of a consummate predator, she circled around behind her target. The woman's dull, unfocused gaze remained locked on the rapidly ticking display on the gas pump. $9.70...$9.84...$10.01...So preoccupied was the woman, whether by the cost of gasoline or some other matter, that she didn't notice the lithe, elusive form emerging from the shadows.

A sharp sting on the neck.

A brief dizzy spell, followed by lingering drowsiness.

The woman clapped her hand down on her neck, then brought forth fingertips lightly smeared with blood. Frowning, Willow's latest victim waved her hand around her head as if swatting at an unseen mosquito.

But Willow was already half a block away.

Over thirty years ago, Spike had taught her to "skim" from the living. Willow had learned much since her first, inept attempts at feeding without killing -- including that there were times when she wanted a good kill, when the demon hungered for the sharp taste of death. But those moments were increasingly rare now.

A commotion in the distance caught her sensitive hearing. Strained, muffled pleas; the scuffle of shoes against pavement; bodies thudding and slapping against one another. Willow quickened her pace and rounded a corner just in time to see three large men wrestling with a fourth. A nondescript van waited nearby, the engine running.

With caution bred from years among demon communities where joining a fight too hastily could prove costly, Willow approached the struggle.

To her astonishment, one of the burly men suddenly snapped his eyes toward her. Scowling, he muttered, "vampire" and reached beneath his jacket. Willow's eyes narrowed and immediately her guard was up.

But not quickly enough.

An instant later, she was howling in pain and clutching at the blistered skin where a stream of holy water had sprayed her cheek.

She'd underestimated these humans, but although it had come at a mildly painful price, Willow understood the situation much more clearly and she was even more resolved to sabotage the attempted abduction.

One of the would-be kidnappers managed to press a cloth over the captive's face. As he did so, he barked at his two henchmen, "Dust it, already!"

Seeing that the captive's struggles were quieting, the man who had fired the stream of holy water turned his full attention to Willow. Cautiously, never taking his eyes off of her, he edged toward the van, reached in, and withdrew a crossbow fitted with wooden bolts.

Although one side of her face was still raw and smarting, Willow deflected the first shot. The second gouged her deeply in the shoulder, but nonetheless missed its mark.

A third shot never came.

The thug wielding the crossbow fell in a heap at Willow's feet, his neck contorted in a hideously unnatural angle. His cohorts dropped their captive and squared off against her, but she stood between them and the supply of weapons in their van.

Unfortunately for them, not for long. Squealing tires announced that the driver of the van had decided a retreat was in order.

Left on their own against a vampire -- an *angry* vampire -- the two men tensed and nervously backed away. Willow's senses were awash with their fear: their frantic heartbeats thundered in her ears; their skin radiated a sudden, panicked flash of heat; and their blood...

Willow could literally taste their blood. Her demon clamored for it.

She could resist, but in this instant, she chose not to.

In a blur of motion, Willow unleashed the full force of her demon. She drained the first man before he even had a chance to see her move and cast him aside. The second made a vain attempt to flee, but Willow tackled him before he'd gone ten paces. His head smacked the pavement with a sickening crack and he went limp. Willow yanked him up sharply and listened.

A heartbeat...faint, but it was still there.

Having sated her bloodlust on the first thug, Willow weighed her options. The temptation to eat this one was still great, but she knew he might prove useful alive. Decision made, she dragged his unwieldy form back toward the unconscious man he and his partners had been trying to abduct.

The cloth that one of the kidnappers had pressed over the victim's face lay on the ground a few feet away. Willow retrieved it, noting the dampness, and waved it experimentally beneath her nose. She jerked back, grimacing at the strong fumes. Chloroform.

Pulling a cell phone from her coat pocket, Willow dialed Angel's number. A few, brief statements after he answered were all that was needed: Angel understood the urgency of the situation as well as Willow. Andrew Murdoch's warnings about the black market, and their ability to deal with vampires, loomed in the forefront of her mind. If they guarded their secrecy as jealously as Loïc had suggested, the van might return soon with reinforcements.

With nothing to do but wait, Willow scrutinized the two unconscious men at her feet. The surviving thug was much what she would have expected: large and muscular. His dark hair was clipped short, but he had a somewhat scraggly moustache. A lump was swelling on his forehead and a stream of blood trickled down from his hairline.

Shifting her attention to the intended victim, Willow spared a cursory glance for his outward features. His sandy hair and smooth, boyish face reminded her a little of Riley Finn, but his physique seemed less athletic. More concerned with his survival, though, she attuned herself to his vital signs and was pleased to sense that his pulse was strong and regular. He wouldn't be out for long.

Traces of blood scented the air around the fair-haired man, prompting Willow to kneel down and inspect him for damage. She found nothing more serious than a few scratches and scrapes. More than likely, the men who'd attacked him had been trained to avoid inflicting massive blood loss or serious trauma to the internal organs before the unfortunate victim could be harvested.

Willow sighed. She'd thought she'd left this behind when her travels among the world's demon communities had ended.

Continuing her examination, Willow searched through the would-be victim's clothing and was relieved to discover a billfold with his i.d.

Edgar Lytle.

His California state i.d. card listed his address as just a few blocks away. ATM card, movie rental card, discount card for a supermarket chain...none were particularly revealing. A white pass key with a magnetic strip identified him as an employee of a company called Genomix. The fact that his i.d. cards were still with him was a hopeful sign. Given the circumstances in which Willow had come across them, she hoped that the kidnappers hadn't had time to check the identity of their victim. All the better for helping him lay low for a while, once she got him to safety.

That thought gave her pause.

The human population of Los Angeles was large and, apart from film stars and prominent city leaders, anonymous. Vampires were a different matter. Their anonymity was guaranteed in the case of most mortals who didn't even believe in the supernatural. But if this black market organization knew how to deal with vampires, odds were that they had also educated themselves about the local vampire communities.

As one of the few, red-headed, female vampires in the city, Willow was distinctive enough to be tracked.

On the other hand, her coven sisters and their co-operative had considerable experience helping people just like Edgar -- and there was nothing to link them to this man. Decision made, Willow put through a call to them on her cell phone. Hannah answered, and listened attentively as Willow explained the situation and gave her location. Hannah then assured her that someone would be sent to help immediately. Even better, one of their out-of-town couriers was still at the co-op, and his van would be difficult to trace even if anyone saw them. Relieved, Willow disconnected.

She rose to her feet and paced the sidewalk, her senses alert for the sound of car motors, the approach of heartbeats, or other vampires.

After a few minutes, Edgar began to stir. His feet twitched and, with a soft moan, he slowly craned his neck. Edgar's chest rose and fell dramatically as he drew in deep breaths. Then, his eyes fluttered open and he let his gaze roam until it landed on the deceptively young-looking redhead who crouched beside him, watching him intently. Startled, Edgar struggled to sit up. When he swayed dizzily, Willow reached out to steady him.

"W-who are you?" Edgar demanded, jerking away from her touch. "What happened?"

"My name is Willow. I was out walking and found you being attacked by three men. How much do you remember?"

Edgar leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he rubbed his still woozy eyes with one hand. "I was...on my way to a bar when this van pulled up," he began haltingly. "Next thing I knew, some guys jumped me. They didn't even say anything. Then one of them was smothering me with...something..."

"Chloroform," Willow supplied.

Frowning, Edgar pressed his hand over his eyes and muttered, "I knew I shouldn't have gone out."

Cocking her head to one side, Willow prompted, "What do you mean?"

Edgar glanced at her sharply. "If you have to ask, then you shouldn't be out on the streets alone at night, either. It's dangerous." His voice dropped as he leaned toward her and confided fearfully, "The police keep the details quiet. All they tell the press is that there have been 'unsolved murders'. But everyone's heard the rumors about some kind of cult -- they bleed people and carve them up. You should be careful."

With a bemused smile, Willow replied, "Thanks for the warning, but I can take care of myself. I've already called some friends. They'll be able to hide you for a while."

"Hide?" Edgar furrowed his brow in confusion. "You think those guys will come back? But why would they risk getting caught? I would've thought they'd just move on to another part of the city."

"You saw them," Willow countered gravely. She gestured toward the burly kidnapper who lay nearby, still unconscious. "I stopped the three who grabbed you, but the driver got away. And I think they're part of an organization that guards its privacy pretty fiercely -- and is well-connected enough to track down an unwanted witness."

"Whoa..." Edgar breathed in awe. Willow detected a slight increase in his heart rate and knew that her warning had struck a nerve. The sandy-haired man scanned the sidewalk and spied his would-be attackers, all collapsed in heaps. Shaking his head, he grinned at Willow in admiration and murmured, "You did that? I guess that makes you my hero. You saved my life. Thanks."

Willow's expression darkened. She averted her gaze, rose to her feet, and walked over to the man she'd drained. Staring down at his lifeless corpse, she thought back to the woman at the gas station. Under different circumstances -- if Willow had hungered for death that night -- she might easily have killed that woman, as she had so many others. When she gave into the demon's cravings, ethics ceased to be a consideration. It mattered little if the unfortunate human who crossed her path was an innocent or an evil-doer. All that mattered was the rush, the powerful burning that coursed through her veins. If the conditions had been slightly different that evening...if she'd wanted it, and Edgar had been just another anonymous human on the street...

"I'm not your hero," she replied at last, her back to Edgar. "In many ways, I'm as bad as the men who attacked you. You warned me about the dangers that roam the night..." Turning to face the confused young man, she stated bluntly, "I'm one of them."

Edgar's lips parted as if poised to contradict her, but he paused and frowned thoughtfully. He shifted his gaze from one fallen kidnapper to the next, staring long and hard at them. His attention flitted from the one unconscious man to the two who were dead, and Willow saw his eyes widen in realization as he watched the one man's chest rise and fall, while the others were utterly motionless...lifeless...

Warily, Edgar raised newly suspicious eyes to her once again. Just as he was about to speak, though, a light blue van in desperate need of a new muffler came rumbling up to the curb. Willow tensed for a fight. It could be reinforcements from the black market ring.

But when the driver hopped out and approached them, his face left Willow speechless.

And when the driver saw Willow, he froze in his tracks.

He was older, true, and there were differences in his appearance. He'd grown more muscular and his once smooth face was now framed by a short, thick beard that suggested he'd come to terms with the beast within. But his eyes were as alert and insightful as ever. When he flared his nostrils, sampling her scent, the familiar mannerism sent a pang through Willow's entire being.

"Willow?"

Even his voice was the same: relaxed, patient, soothing. Willow only hoped she'd be able to keep her own voice from shaking.

"Oz?"

*****

Spike arched an eyebrow as Angel eased the convertible up to the curb. Some of what he saw, he'd expected. Willow, naturally. A few dead blokes, yeah. A pale, bookish git whose heart was fluttering like a kid at a carnival, okay.

But the wolf was unexpected. What did a werewolf want with a vamp and a human?

Spike narrowed his eyes. Whatever it wanted, it had better move along, 'cos now it had three vamps to tangle with.

However, to Spike's surprise, Angel peered uncertainly at the wolf, frowned slightly, then sniffed and said, "Oz?"

"Hey, Angel," the werewolf replied easily.

Spike froze. He blinked, then stared long and hard at the wolf. Oz? This was *that* Oz? Spike stared intently and he sniffed, finally recognizing the man that had been Willow's first love.

Once again, Spike's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. So what was Oz doing back again, slinking around Red?

<*My* Mate,> the vampire thought to himself.

"Thanks for coming," Willow greeted them. Spike felt a momentary, warm flush as she reached out to him through their bond. He relaxed as he felt her flooding through him, claiming him. "I saved one of them for you," she nodded toward the hulking brute of a man who lay slumped on the sidewalk, his heartbeat still intact but faint. With a resigned lift of her eyebrows, she added, "Although we should probably clear all of them out of here."

"How 'bout him?" Spike asked, cocking his head toward the nervous-looking human who stood near Willow.

"Are you okay?" Angel followed with genuine concern.

"Uh, yeah..." the wide-eyed human mumbled. Spike sensed a slight increase in his pulse.

"It's okay, Edgar. They're friends," Willow assured the man gently. Then, addressing her Mates, she explained, "Oz and I are going to take him to the Co-op. They have experience helping people who need to lay low for a while, and I think he'll be more...uh...comfortable with them than with us."

Spike was about to point out that the wolf could manage just fine without her, but Angel was quicker to speak.

"Good plan," the dark vampire said with a nod. "Thanks for your help, Oz. Maybe we can catch up sometime, when the circumstances are better."

"That would be cool," Oz agreed while Willow ushered Edgar toward a nearby van.

Again, Spike was poised to speak when Willow's eyes locked with his and she mouthed a silent entreaty:

Please.

At the same time, Angel hoisted one of the fallen thugs over his shoulder and grunted, "Spike, quit standing around and give me a hand with these guys."

The driver-side door of the van slammed shut. Willow stood beside the passenger-side door and gazed intently at her possessive Mate. "I love you," she said, her soft smile a plea for understanding. "I'll be home before dawn."

Spike's expression softened. Wistfully, he returned her smile.

The van pulled away.

With a thud, Angel deposited the second corpse in the convertible's back seat. Then, he approached Spike, who was still staring after the retreating van, and rested his hand on the younger vampire's shoulder.

"She needs this," Angel explained gently.

Spike sighed and managed a half-smile. "Yeah," he acknowledged. After a moment, his expression twisted to sly, sadistic anticipation. He strode toward the unconscious, surviving thug, roughly yanked the man up, and mused darkly, "Let's get a move on. I need to work off a little steam."

*****

Faint, hollow drips of water echoed through the dark, clammy sewer tunnels beneath the Hyperion.

Angel stared impassively at the naked prisoner he and Spike had chained to the slick, mildewy wall. They hadn't remodeled any of the hotel's rooms to serve as a torture chamber, and the blood would drain away easily down here.

A hollow pit weighed heavily in his gut. The ensouled vampire knew what he had to do -- he could do this in his sleep. And a seductive voice in his head was whispering that this man had probably done as bad or worse to other human beings. The demon offered soothing assurances:

He's evil.

He's a criminal.

He deserves this.

But Angel clenched his jaw, remembering what it had cost him when he'd listened to this voice before. His entire being, everything he was, had been utterly desolate, empty. He'd known just how close he was to losing his soul...and he hadn't cared. His friends had been chilled to learn how calmly he'd left a room full of lawyers to be massacred by Darla and Drusilla. When Cordelia, Gunn, and Wesley had tried to bring him back from the abyss, he'd shoved them away and embraced his darkness with one, single-minded obsession: the destruction of his enemies.

He'd been honest with Willow: he *had* come to understand that human did not automatically equal innocent, and that the blood of those lawyers was not on his hands. But how could he -- how could anyone -- really know how and where to draw the line?

Championing the cause of the innocent was the easy part. How to handle the wicked? That was the $64,000 question.

Angel clenched his fists and continued to stare at his unconscious prisoner.

He needed to draw upon his own darkness again, but he was wiser now. If he wasn't careful, the destruction would be his own.

He wished Willow were here.

When she'd first come to him, he had helped her cultivate the remnant of her humanity that survived within her. Somewhere along the way, their relationship had grown into one of mutual support. They had given each other strength and compassion. Angel sorely wished for that now, but he understood how important Oz had been to Willow when she was alive, and knew how much it meant to her to see him again.

With a thoughtful smile, Angel wondered what they were talking about.

"Angel."

Spike's gentle, baritone voice brought him back to the business at hand. Angel turned toward him and was caught off guard by the sincere empathy radiating from his childe's eyes.

"Let me handle the real nasty stuff," Spike offered with a wry grin. Arching an eyebrow, he added, "My forte, after all. Gotta keep the old skills polished."

Angel smiled and bowed his head slightly, humbled by the gesture. In some ways, Spike was handling the responsibilities of leadership better than Angel. Giving his Mate a grateful squeeze on the shoulder, Angel countered, "I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to rule the clans, Spike. I can't hide from the parts that make me uncomfortable. But...thanks."

"Sure thing," drawled the younger vampire with a smirk. Reaching into his duster, Spike withdrew a cigarette lighter, then shrugged off his trademark leather coat. Unencumbered by restrictive clothing, he sauntered toward their prisoner, ready to go to work. "What say we wake him up and play a few games?"

A quick flick brought flame forth from the lighter. Spike held it steadily under the man's chin and stared intently at the slowly blackening spot where the skin was beginning to char.

With a sudden start, the man jerked awake. As he raised his chin, however, Spike followed with the lighter. The man's flesh began to blister and he cried out in pain. Satisfied at the sound of screaming, Spike withdrew the lighter and let the flame die out.

"Who do you work for?" Angel demanded coolly. His dark gaze pinned the disoriented man to the wall as effectively as the chains that immobilized his arms and legs.

The man didn't reply immediately, still panting from his abrupt and painful awakening. Angel studied every twitch of his face, every shrewd, calculating dart of the eyes. Drawing upon dark memories of techniques he'd used to keep captives off-balance over a century ago, Angel strode forward and, without warning, snapped the man's right wrist. The faint sound of cracking bone was swiftly followed by an agonized shriek.

"When I ask a question, you answer," Angel coolly informed the whimpering man, whose face had gone white with shock. "Names. Contacts."

"L-look, I don't kn-know--"

Before the terrified man could finish his sentence, Spike whisked a blade from his discarded duster and brought the point up to the man's abdomen. Slowly, and with sadistic precision, the blond vampire eased the blade into trembling flesh. The man cried out in alarm.

"Sure you don't know?" Spike prompted, his voice chillingly calm. "See, news on the street is there's a black market ring that cuts people up for their usable bits. 'f you need me to illustrate the point..."

Spike made his implied threat very real with a sudden, sharp tug on the knife. Another panicked shriek echoed through the tunnels.

"Don't! Please don't!" the prisoner begged. "I don't know the entire network--"

The blade sliced further. Spike gave it a light twist, opening the wound wider. Blood spilled over his fingers. With a cruel grin, Spike leaned closer to his victim and demanded, "Tell us what you *do* know, and I might think about stopping."

Angel listened, stern-faced, as the terrified, quivering man revealed contact names and phone numbers, and described the vast, cancerous network of operatives involved in the black market. It became clear that unraveling the network would be difficult. The center of the operation was hidden from the peripheral cells where most of the work was actually carried out, and shutting down one cell would simply shift activities to another locale.

But at least they had some place to start.

"Enough," Angel said.

Spike stepped back and smirked in wicked satisfaction at his handiwork. Blood seeped freely from a shallow but jagged four-inch slice in the man's gut and blended with the rivers of sweat that drenched his skin, like paint thinned with turpentine. The blond vampire arched an eyebrow at his Mate. "So, drain him or dump him?"

"Dump him," came the soft, even reply.

"You can't...th-they'll kill me," the wretched man panted, horrified.

"Yes," Angel agreed, fixing wide, pleading mortal eyes with a merciless gaze. "They will."

Angel reached into his own jacket, withdrew a cell phone, and dialed one of the phone numbers he and Spike had coerced from their prisoner. When a voice answered, Angel expressed his thanks for the helpful, informative operatives in the organization, and signed off with a warning, "You'll be hearing from us again."

Spike was looking up toward the surface. Absently, he remarked, "We've got a couple hours 'til sunrise."

Angel nodded, not yet sensing the build-up of energy that heralded the approaching dawn. "Still enough time to cut him loose far from the lair."

"No! Please--" The man's desperate pleas for mercy were cut short as Angel knocked him unconscious with a swift blow to the head.

"You know this is something that's too big for us to fix," Spike observed soberly.

Dark, troubled eyes met apprehensive blue.

"I know," Angel conceded. "I only hope Willow has made progress with her coven. In the end...we do what we can..."

Releasing their prisoner from his shackles, Angel and Spike hauled him above ground, piled him in Angel's convertible, and deposited him several miles away from the Hyperion -- and conveniently near one of the locations the man had described as part of the black market network.

A few hours later, his body was on the other side of the city, camouflaged by rubbish heaps at a dump.

A tell-tale Y-incision spanned the full length and breadth of his torso -- his skin, pale and bloodless, dipped low over his chest cavity, hinting at an ominous, eerie hollowness.

Meanwhile, Angel and Spike, their demon nature heated and restless after the interrogation, returned to the Hyperion to "take the edge off", as Spike put it. For all of Spike's brusqueness, though, Angel recognized it as an offer of comfort. Over the years since their reconciliation, Angel had discovered the profound depths of his blond childe's capacity for compassion. Tonight, he was grateful for it.

As they clasped each other and sank to the bed, Angel let go of everything except his desire to drown in Spike until their passion burned away all the killing and ugliness and evil.

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