Title: The One with the Power (Powerless), a Lindsey story in the Angel universe
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Spoilers: For To Shansu in LA

How could a hand that wasn't even there any more itch so damned much? Lindsey had seen, heard, and defended a myriad of strange things during his tenure at Wolfram and Hart. This was too personal to simply accept and ignore. The doctor had warned him about phantom limb pain, but she hadn't told him it would be constant.

Constant, like the rage in his head. Like the mental vision of Angel looking down at him as he lay, screaming through clenched teeth, on the floor of the mausoleum.

Holland could say what he liked about the senior partners appreciating his sacrifice. But it was Lilah who was introducing Darla to her new life, her new mission. He was off doing scut work while she took the glory that was rightfully his. While she took the final steps to destroy Angel. Oh, they said it was because she was a woman, and Darla responded better to her. Who did they think they were kidding? This was Angel's Sire. She'd never responded to a woman in her entire life.

Or after her death, for that matter.

Maybe she didn't like cripples. He glared at the stump at the end of his right arm, and wished for the thousandth time that the damned thing would stop itching. It felt hot, the bandages uncomfortably tight, as if he was wearing a glove that was too small. Only, there was no hand, so the analogy didn't fit.

He growled, a low sound of frustration, and bent his head back to the case work on the table in front of him. He was concentrating fiercely on the petty details when his cell phone rang.

"McDonald," he barked. He made no attempt to hide his displeasure at the interruption. At the work he was doing. At the world in general, and Angel in particular.

"Lindsey," Holland's voice poured over the line like warm honey.

He sat up straight, case forgotten. The only time Holland sounded that sweet was when things were seriously going to hell. Often literally. "What's the matter, sir?" he asked much more respectfully.

"We have ... a situation. Please come down to the secure suite immediately."

"On my way." He was shutting the phone and gathering up the papers to lock them away before the line disconnected. This couldn't be good.

It wasn't.

Darla crouched in one corner, Lilah lay crumpled in the other. The vampire had a wild look in her eyes and blood smeared along her chin. Lilah wasn't breathing. Holland was standing by the door with two Mitrwas demons in full spiked-out body armor, wooden stakes at the ready. Hm. It didn't look like the bonding between the women was going well.

"Sir?" Lindsey asked politely. Darla's head raised and she peered up at him through a mat of tangled blonde hair.

"It would appear that the customary controls placed on a Risen One weren't, in this case, applied. Perhaps you missed a phrase in the spell?"

"It's a possibility," he said as calmly as he could, considering that Darla was now inching toward him. She looked hungry. He glanced over at the guard demons. Neither one left Holland's side. He looked back over at Darla. "Things were hurried, at the end. On the other hand it could be something simpler." Holland looked on with interest as Darla got within six feet of Lindsey. Lindsey didn't move. "Control is tied to the Voka demon. It was slaughtered prematurely." By Angel, went unsaid. "Stop!" he suddenly yelled as he wheeled and instinctively held out his maimed arm.

To his surprise, she actually did. She tensed, staring at his stump, sniffing the air like a dog scenting game.

"Return to the cage!" He put as much force as he could behind the command. She whined, but scuttled backward, and with an unhappy whine did exactly as he'd told her. He waited until she was inside then darted forward himself, slamming the door shut with a clang and shooting the lock home.

"Impressive," Holland nodded. He gestured toward Lilah's body. "Take her to the infirmary and see if there's any way we can revive her." He smiled benignly at Lindsey. "If nothing else, there's always the need for highly-trained zombies."

Lindsey smiled slightly, as was expected of him, then looked back at Darla, who was staring at him with a weird mixture of hatred, lust, and hunger.

"What about her, sir?" he asked patiently. Inside, anticipation was welling up. He was going to be in at the kill. He deserved this. Missing fingers clenched into an invisible fist. He'd earned this.

"Oh, I think it's time we put our little plan into action, don't you think?"

He'd think better if he knew what the plan was, but Lindsey nodded obediently. Whatever it might be, he'd be there when they put an end to Angel, and that was all that mattered.

It hit shortly after she got home that night, and nearly scared her to death. Cordelia wasn't used to visions happening outside office hours. True, once one had hit during an audition, but technically, that was office hours, she'd just been taking time off in an attempt to resuscitate her corpse-like career.

This was something different. Oh, the world exploded like it always did, and there was the usual scratch 'n' sniff aspect of sweat and blood and death, and she needed mega-doses of Excedrin to see again afterward. Same old same old.

What was different was the subject.

Usually, some poor victim was getting beaten, or chewed, or sucked, or otherwise harmed in various disgusting ways that she had to experience second hand in Technicolor and Dolby sound. This time, though, this time made her cry afterward. This time the victim was Angel.

That told her a couple things. One, she couldn't go to the boss with this one, or he'd rush in and get crunched by some dumb blonde with a grudge, bad hair and really sharp teeth. Two, she couldn't tell Wesley, because she didn't trust him not to go drag Angel into it and get him dusted. Third, there was no way on earth she could handle it alone.

So she did what Angel usually did. She followed the vision, and went to find Gunn.

She shivered as she drove into the derelict part of Los Angeles where Gunn and his friends lived. It made her nervous, as it would any ex-rich suburbanite princess, even in the daylight. But if she could find Gunn before she got mugged, or raped, or got her skirt dirty, it would all be okay. Part of her felt very brave for doing what she was doing. The majority of her felt very stupid and more than a little insane.

They appeared from out of nowhere, or so it seemed, weapons raised.

"What, do I smell like a vampire now?" She stopped the car before she hit anyone and hopped out, doing her best impression of a worldly woman completely at ease in her surroundings. She wasn't an actress for nothing!

"It's cool," a voice said from behind the mass of weapons and grim faces, and she let go of the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Whassup?"

She smiled nervously, blinking flirtatiously, unconsciously. His grin widened. "I need your help."

The grin disappeared. "Why?"

The guys, and girls, with the guns, stakes and assortment of jet-propelled anti-demon weaponry, melted back to wherever they'd come from, and he moved closer to her. She had to crane her neck to meet his eyes.

It was kind of sexy. He was kind of sexy. She blinked, and put the feeling away to look at when it wasn't quite so time critical that they save Angel's life.

"We have to save Angel's life," she blurted out. He stepped even closer. She shivered again. He was really sexy. She shook her head, more to clear her vision than anything else. "I saw a woman, a vampire, and she's really dangerous somehow, more dangerous than your standard issue vampire, not that those are anything to sneeze at, but she's especially dangerous, to Angel in particular, and if we don't take care of her before she gets her little fangs into him he's a dead man. Well, he's already dead, I know, but Angel will be dead, and Angelus will be back, and I really don't want that to happen, not least because if he's dead then they come after us next --"

His finger touched her lips briefly, cutting off her babbling. She looked up at him gratefully.

"Where?" he asked quietly.

"I have to show you." He started to protest, looking stern, and she rushed on, a little desperately. "I can't tell you! I don't know. I know what it looks like, what it feels like, but it's not like visions come with maps and landmarks! Just smells. Yuck."

The stern look transformed into a grin, and she lost her breath again. God, but he was cute.

"Take me," he told her, pushing her gently toward the car and raising his arm in a signal to his troops.

Any time, she thought, just give me a chance and a moment's privacy. Then the modified Hummer with the grenade-cum-stake-launcher mounted on the back moved into position behind her, and the mini-cavalcade of two vehicles went on a vampire hunt. Through downtown LA, in the middle of the day.

Nobody so much as blinked.

The itching had turned into agony, and Lindsey only realized how bad it had become when Darla reached over and took his stump in her hands, rubbing her mouth over the bandages. She'd been doing well, not attacking, listening to his plans for revenge against Angel, joining enthusiastically in Operation Restore Angelus. He'd felt secure enough to sit with her and one Mitrwas demon, mapping out every move she would make in their campaign, ignoring the ache and the itch, subconsciously using it to sharpen his determination to take out his enemy.

His resolve lasted until she started rubbing her fangs across it. Keening, hungrily. That's when he saw the blood seeping through the end of the bandages, and agony burst across his nerves like flash fire.

He was on the floor, screaming through clenched jaws, but he didn't know how he'd gotten there. The Mitrwas had cornered Darla against the wall, but she wasn't trying to hurt him, or at least he didn't think she was, with the tiny corner of his mind that wasn't crawling with agony. She had vamped out, and she was drooling. It was a little disgusting, but not nearly disgusting enough to distract him from the fact that he knew, just knew, that his arm was on fire.

It took four human guards using all their strength to immobilize him long enough to get him to the infirmary. By the time they arrived and the doctor administered a sedative strong enough to fell the Voka itself, the bandage had fallen away.

Lindsey stared through blurring eyes at the blood and flesh protruding from the end of his sleeve, and screamed again and again until he finally, mercifully, lost consciousness. The last thing he heard under the sound of his own screams was the doctor calling for an exorcist. The last thing he knew before he knew nothing more was that, whatever it was where his hand used to be, it was growing.

Cordelia could feel him sitting beside her as they drove toward the West Side. There was something so attractive about Gunn, and it wasn't just the fact that he had a great body and a cute smile and a nice little butt. It was more the way he moved, quiet but smooth, like a dancer. Or a killer.

Which was just as well, considering what they were on their way to do.

A building stood out like a beacon on the corner, and she turned automatically to the right, following her instincts, trusting whatever it was that the Powers that Be did to her when they took over her brain and turned it into fried mush.

"Close," she muttered, eyes wide open and staring straight ahead, driving on auto-pilot. Gunn twisted in his seat and waved his hand over his head, and the Hummer peeled off to the side. She didn't bother to look in the rear view mirror, she could hear it. His knee was pressed lightly into the side of her thigh. Her heartbeat was in overdrive and she didn't know if it was the threat to Angel, the imminent danger to herself, or the fact that right then she'd like nothing more than to pull into a nice quiet side street, tear his clothes off, and jump on his lap.

She gulped. "Real close." On so many levels.

Then they were there, and she didn't know how she'd found it, she just knew this was it. She pulled the convertible over into the alley between the two tall buildings and stared at the innocuous side door. There were no signs or bells, no indication whatsoever that it was important. So, of course, it was incredibly important. LA, she thought grimly, never show you the real thing even when you're staring it in the face. Shaking off the thought, she pointed at the door.

"They're in there. She's in there. We have to kill her. Now. Totally dead." Her mouth was running, but she wasn't paying any attention to it. Gunn would fix it. Gunn and his gang of vampire dusters. They'd take care of Blondie before she had the chance to do anything permanently bad to Angel. She didn't like the idea of permanently bad Angel. It brought back too many awful memories.

The Hummer rumbled into the alley behind them. Gunn hopped out of the convertible and gathered his troops behind him. She stared at the door a second longer, a fragment of the vision teasing at her memory. Carefully stepping out of the car, she picked her way through the trash until she was at Gunn's side, ignoring the looks the others gave her. She touched his arm, and he looked down at her.

"They don't know we're here. There's a diversion happening. But it's almost over. We have to do it now."

"You trustin' her?" one of the girls protested. Gunn raised his hand.

"We move now," he ordered, and they did. Cordelia stepped back out of the way, shying away from the dirty wall behind her.

"To the left," she called out, remembering her vision. Gunn took her at her word, surprising her yet again. He'd shown a startling amount of trust in her from the beginning. She didn't know why, but when this was over, if they all survived, she planned on asking him.

Over dinner.

At her place.

Somebody had an acetylene torch, and they cut through the door in what was in reality very little time but felt subjectively like a million years. An alarm began to wail and mean-looking demons appeared. The little group of demon hunters whooped with joy and started slaughtering. In moments, blood and goo was everywhere. Cordelia swallowed hard, determined not to throw up out in the open where everyone could see.

She took her skirt in both hands and, stepping high over the butchered remains of dead demons, made her way carefully into the hall. There was a big commotion just out of sight around the corner, and she instinctively reached down and took one of the wooden pikes from the severed hand of an unidentified demon guard.

It was a good thing she did.

Coming around the corner like a literal bat out of hell, the diminutive blonde she'd seen in her vision dodged around three of Gunn's troops and headed straight for the door. Cordelia glanced over her shoulder; the alley wasn't in direct sunlight. The blonde might escape if she made it to the door.

Setting her feet firmly in the goop on the floor and dropping her skirt, muttering a single "Damn!" to herself at the cost of dry-cleaning rayon and wishing for the hundredth time that demon-busting wasn't such a filthy job, Cordelia met the threat. Happily for her limited vampire-fighting skills, the blonde was too busy looking back over her shoulder at the pursuing demon hunters to pay any attention to the single mortal woman standing in front of her.

She ran full on, chest-first, into the stake. Startled blue eyes met equally startled brown ones before the blue eyes dried up and turned to dust, falling at, and on, Cordelia's feet.

"Disgusting," she spat, staring down at the vamp dust now mixing with the blood and slime on her feet and swearing to herself she was never, ever going to wear open toed shoes to work again.

"Good one!" Gunn called out, and she smiled at him. If it was a little wobbly, he didn't call her on it.

"At least now she won't be killing Angel."

"She the one you saw?"

She nodded, and he put two fingers in his mouth, cutting loose with a shrill whistle. The fighting stopped immediately and the hunters retreated back out into the alley. Gunn took her hand and pulled her away from the carnage, propping her in the passenger seat and plucking the keys from her purse. She sat there and let him. She was feeling a little drained.

Not to mention icky, wet with unimaginable fluids, and more than a little stinky. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and stared up into the blue LA sky.

Just another day in La La Land.

Someone had drenched the fire.

The air was humming. Power disturbed the room around him. Lindsey gingerly opened one eye and looked directly at Holland.

His mentor was pale, eyes wide, mouth clamped shut. Even from across the room, Lindsey clearly saw the calculation in his expression.

Words rolled around him, weaving over him like a blanket, pressing into his skin. He smelled incense, impacting his sinuses and making him want to sneeze. He stifled it. The examination table beneath him was hard, and there were straps in place around his arms and legs.

His fingers were clenched into fists. Ten fingers. Two fists.

He strained against the hands on his body, holding him down to the table. The chanting spiraled, layer upon layer of Latin and Aramaic, magick sweeping over and through him. The hands lightened and his head rose a few inches, just far enough to see past the heavy leather cuff around his forearm to the fist clenched at the end of what had been, until he passed out, a stump.

It didn't look like his fist. Didn't look like a part of his body at all. It wasn't the usual light tan, with golden hairs dusting the skin. It was silver, glimmering faintly, like body paint had been ground so deeply into the skin it would never wash away. Even the nails were silver, a darker hue than the surrounding flesh. Along the veins, where the knuckles should show white in the fist, were shadows of gold.

There were symbols there, too, archaic swirls of cobalt blue, alien to him. They appeared to be embedded in his hand, painted in the grain of his skin, as much a part of him as the hand itself.

It didn't itch any more. The fire was gone.

In its place, there was a bone-deep shaking, almost a humming along his nerves. Raw Power, at war with itself, his body as the battleground. He didn't know what was going on, and from the expressions on the faces of the men gathered around him, they weren't too sure either.

At least he wasn't dead. Given his job, that was a bonus.

Perhaps.

He concentrated on relaxing, and his fingers slowly unclenched, hovering a centimeter over the surface of the table before the pads of his fingers and the heels of his palms settled down uneasily against the crisp paper. The chanting paused, then swelled one final time.

As suddenly as if a seal had been broken, Power washed from the room, leaving it cold, leaving him empty. The shivering lessened. Whatever it was that was at war within him reacted to the withdrawal of the external challenge, coming to an uneasy truce that left him weak. He rested his head against the table and looked up again, squinting against the light.

Holland's face broke into his field of vision. "Welcome back, Lindsey."

"Where'd I go?" He tried to make his voice light, uncaring, calm. It came out a rusty squeak.

Holland rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Funnily enough, Lindsey wasn't reassured in the slightest. He never was when his mentor got that look on his face. A little too smooth, a little too controlled. It usually appeared right before Lindsey ended up being sent into hell. Sometimes literally.

"It would appear that Angel's connection to the Powers that Be is stronger than we expected. You've been, er, infected by Voka blood that was on the scythe he used to, well, dispatch your hand."

That was one way to put it. Lindsey nodded, keeping his eyes glued to Holland's face. There was more to it than that, he'd bet. He could be patient. Holland would spill eventually. Hopefully.

"And this Voka blood," he croaked. "It caused this ... hand to grow?" It wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened in his law career. Just the weirdest thing to happen to him, personally.

"So it would appear." Holland smiled genially.

Lindsey would have retreated if he could. He really didn't trust that smile. He forced himself to relax again, and attempted a half-smile of his own. It must not have been too convincing, being closer to a snarl than a smile, but it did cause Holland to back off a few inches. Lindsey breathed a little more easily.

"That's not all, however."

Now Holland put on his 'grave' look, and Lindsey bit back a curse. What now? he wondered.

"While you were ... incapacitated, there was a raid on the compound."

Lindsey winced. "Angel?" His voice broke, and he swallowed against the pain in his throat.

"His associates. The guards were distracted by your collapse, and Darla, I fear, attempted to escape."

"God damn it!" The words were almost silent, and Lindsey swallowed hard.

"Yes, quite. It's worse than that."

Lindsey closed his eyes. How much worse could it get? He almost didn't want to know. Only years of using information as his primary weapon allowed him to open his eyes again and quirk a questioning brow at Holland. His boss nodded. Shit.

"She's dead," Lindsey guessed. Correctly. Holland nodded. "Gunn?" He knew he should have done something about the troublesome gang leader, but the man had been useful. Once.

"Cordelia Chase," Holland informed him. Lindsey gaped at him.

"Chase?" he mouthed, his voice giving out completely.

Holland nodded again. Lindsey just stared at him.

"The tool really isn't all that important in the failure of our plan." Holland blithely dismissed the unexpected turn of the girl as vampire killer. "The Raising was doomed from the initial rite, when the Warrior of the Darkness failed to separate Angel from the Powers that Be. Then when the vampire recovered the Scrolls of Obearsain," Holland carefully didn't look at Lindsey's new hand, and Lindsey carefully didn't, either, "and his assistant translated the cure for Ms. Chase's psychosis, the connection was recreated, more strongly than before. So, do you know what we are going to do, as soon as you feel better, Lindsey?"

Unable to force a word out past his tortured throat, he shook his head helplessly. Holland smiled, sharp teeth behind false sweetness.

"We, or more specifically you, are going to remove Angel's connection with the Powers that Be. Permanently." Holland's grip tightened on his shoulder, then released him. "Get well soon, Lindsey."

He nodded. Swallowed. Watched his mentor exit the room, leaving behind two human guards who he didn't think were there solely for his protection. Then he lay back against the unforgiving surface of the table and waited for the doctors to come unstrap him.

His own problems could wait. He flexed his new hand, shivering slightly at the whisper of Power still running loose in his veins. First, he had to deal with Angel. Again. Find a way to shut down Cordelia Chase's connection to the Powers that Be, and do it in such a way that the situation could be turned to Wolfram and Hart's advantage. There had to be a way. He'd find it.

He'd had too many failures lately. Regardless of the cost, he had to find a way to turn this situation to his advantage. He'd saved himself from worse messes than this one, although at the moment he couldn't remember any. It was all Angel's fault.

Wasn't it always?




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