Title: Watching Over
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended to either
Author's Note: An Angel story with Love Song elements

The next two weeks he waged a losing battle. He knew he was losing, could feel it every time one of the minions of his ex-employers came close to killing his brother. Every time his personal defenses slipped and the attack instantly switched targets, every time he went back to his hotel room a little more drained, a little weaker. Mama Azula saved Billy's life, and on occasion saved Lindsey's, but her powerful Loa were centered on Billy and Camille. Lindsey was still on probation as far as the Vodoun priestess was concerned, and he couldn't blame her.

After all, if it wasn't for Lindsey, Billy wouldn't be in danger.

For a brief, insane moment he considered leaving, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. Even before he'd realized why he was heading to New Orleans he'd been on his way to protect his brother. They'd found his Achilles' heel and they weren't going to stop trying to sever it if he simply left. They'd still follow him.

They'd kill Billy first.

So Lindsey did what he could, where he could, when he could, and tried not to think about the fact that he was losing not only the battles, but the war.

"We're going where?" Wesley sounded incredulous.

"New Orleans. And it's not us. Just me," Angel told him firmly.

"Excuse me," Cordelia broke in loudly. "Who's the Seer, here? Oh, that rhymes. Anyway, you can't go without me. How would you know where to go?"

Before Angel could answer her, a vision -- the third in the past four days, all with the same gory subject matter -- smacked her between the eyes and knocked her off her feet.

Again.

Snakes everywhere, and God, but she hated snakes. They were biting a man, who was naked and bleeding but still fighting, waving his hands, flames flying from his fingertips. Each time she saw him the flames got thinner and died faster.

Probably not a good sign.

The snakes were biting and they stung like crazy. Her brain felt like it was melting and she really should know this guy but he wouldn't look up, kept looking at the snakes, not that she could blame him. She was doing a lot of looking at the snakes herself. She really, really hated snakes. More than Indiana Jones did, she hated snakes.

There were other people there, but the were on the edge of the snake pit. Another man, bleeding in places but not knowing it, hair falling in his face, his back turned to the man in the pit. A woman, glowing so much Cordelia couldn't tell what she looked like, just a white-blue-orangey light that made her brain hurt, as if it didn't hurt enough with all the damned snakes. Another woman, a pretty black woman hiding behind the man with the long hair. And music, eerie screamy music, like somebody was playing Iggy Pop and Nine Inch Nails backward with a lot of saxophones being tortured to death in the background.

It was one of her weirder visions.

She could feel Angel's cool chest under her cheek, and it felt good, because she felt like she was burning up, and he was a nice cool wall to lie against so when she actually did catch on fire he could put her out. The snakes were crawling up her arms and legs, and the bites were sharp, and they hurt. Then she was in the pit, but for once she wasn't the man, she was in front of him, and his face lifted to hers, and his mouth was open and his eyes were closed. She leaned forward to kiss him and his mouth closed and his eyes opened and they were bright blue and full of pain, then streaming red, and he was dying from the inside out, and she knew him.

"Lindsey!" She didn't know she screamed. She didn't know anything, because she'd passed out, and finally, finally the damned snakes went away.

Angel climbed out of the trunk in a dark alley a few blocks away from the French Quarter. Wesley smirked as he brushed the wrinkles out of his clothes but maintained a dignified silence when Angel raised a brow at him. Gunn sprawled at his ease in the back seat, nodding his head in absent response to something Cordelia was gushing about from the passenger seat.

"Food?" asked Angel in an aside to Wes. Wesley shook his head.

"Shopping."

"Of course. What was I thinking?"

"Food's next, no doubt." Wes sounded more than a little enthused about that prospect himself.

Angel walked over to lean on the side of the car next to Gunn. Cordelia must have been going on for awhile, making the trip seem longer than it actually was, and that was plenty long enough. Gunn actually looked kind of happy to see him.

"So, we gonna hit some spots first?" he asked Angel, cutting across Cordelia's paean of praise for the jewelry stores in the French Quarter.

"Jewelry?" Angel asked Gunn. Then to Cordy, "They sell jewelry? I thought they did touristy stuff."

Cordelia sniffed at him. "They do everything in New Orleans," she informed him haughtily. Gunn snorted, then covered his mouth with his hand and tried to look innocent. He failed. Cordelia stared at him, confused. Wes shook his head. Angel cleared his throat.

"Uhm, guys, we do have a mission, you know. Might be a good idea to -- " Cordelia let out a muffled shriek and curled up in a ball, nearly conking herself on the dashboard in the process. " -- find out what's up with that," Angel finished, holding on to Cordelia's head as she thrashed about, blessing vampiric speed for getting to her before she managed to really hurt herself.

"Music, ouch," she whimpered. An address on Bourbon Street followed, along with a few editorial comments on the general ickiness of serpents and the need to get a move on.

They made an odd little group as they rushed through the crowded streets, but few people gave them a second look. A frail-looking woman held up by one dark and two very pale men was not, apparently, an uncommon sight in the French Quarter. Of course, the fact that Cordelia was dressed in very little and was draped artistically in Gunn's arms no doubt helped. Anyone who wondered probably thought she charged by the hour and gave a group discount.

Angel shook off the thought and the internal snicker that accompanied it, concentrating on lurking threats. There was the taste of strange magic in the air, hot and humid and heavy on his tongue, unlike anything he'd ever tasted. It made his fangs itch in his gums, even though it felt benevolent and didn't seem to be directed at him. It did, however, get stronger the closer they got to the site of Cordelia's vision.

From the outside the place didn't look like much. A tiny bar in a row of other tiny bars, people wandering past with drinks in their hands and smiles on their faces. Happy or pretending damned hard to be. Angel went through the door first, then stopped dead a few paces inside.

Lindsey was up on-stage, with a full band backing him and a lovely black woman crooning along beside him. His hair looked different, way too long, and he didn't have his bracelet on. He was wearing a tank top and tight jeans, and sweat was dripping along his collarbone. For an instant Angel was hit with hunger so strong his knees nearly buckled, and it took him a moment to figure out that it wasn't bloodlust as much as it was the pure need to run his tongue along that line of sweat all the way up and all the way down.

Angel blinked.

There was no scar around Lindsey's right forearm.

And the woman was kissing him between lyrics.

Now, Angel believed that Lindsey could find a band, a woman, and a gig in the month or so he'd been gone. He might even get a hair weave. But there was no way the scar would just disappear.

Ergo, his early education asserted, this must not be Lindsey.

Angel swung around to see his various friends all standing staring slack-jawed at the stage. Caught up in the performance of the man they thought they recognized but didn't, because it wasn't him, they completely missed the real Lindsey leaning against the wall next to the front door.

Staring at the stage.

Scar and all.

Not only that, Lindsey's hands were moving, and so was his mouth. He wasn't playing air guitar and he wasn't singing under his breath. He was weaving spells. Protective enchantments from the look of them, and every one of them was aimed at the boy who looked just like him up on the stage.

Angel slipped around his friends, now acting ridiculously like groupies, and walked over to Lindsey.

"I didn't know you were into cloning," he said sweetly.

Lindsey jumped six inches in the air. Interestingly, neither his chant nor his hands missed a beat. Angel took advantage of his erstwhile enemy's distraction to stare closely at him.

He looked like hell.

There were lines at the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth that hadn't been there when Angel had ushered him out of LA. His eyes were bright, but it was a feverish brightness, not a healthy light. He'd lost weight he couldn't afford to lose, and his clothes hung on him, giving the impression that a stiff wind would knock him over. There were hollows at his temples, under his cheekbones, and along his throat.

If the boy on the stage made Angel hungry, Lindsey made him absolutely ravenous.

Stamping down the inappropriate reaction, at least until they'd gotten to the bottom of Cordelia's recently-acquired preoccupation with snakes, he leaned closer. From the sound of it, and the slowing of the hand motions, Lindsey was winding down. Probably a good thing. His voice was starting to break. If Angel was any judge, and after several decades of torturing people until their voices gave out he was, Lindsey had been chanting for awhile.

"What the fuck do you want?" Lindsey whispered at him. Angel leaned closer. The whisper was thready.

You, he almost answered, but caught himself in time. "Cordy had a vision." He offered another truth instead. "You were the star. Well, you and a bunch of snakes." Lindsey started but controlled it well. Angel continued nastily, "Personally I don't know how she could tell the difference, but she did pick you out of the lineup, so here we are."

"Shit!" Lindsey hissed, much like one of the snakes Cordy had reported seeing. Then he shoved past Angel, heading for the stage. His movements weren't as graceful as they usually were, and he stumbled. Angel caught him automatically.

He was trembling.

It wasn't only exhaustion, although he was definitely at the end of his rope. He was also under attack. Angel could feel the energy sliding over his own skin, seeking and finding entrance into Lindsey. The power sizzling through the magic was dark, soul-sucking, and he instinctively retreated from it. When he unwrapped his hands from Lindsey's arms, Lindsey shot past him toward the stage.

Five feet from it, Lindsey collapsed. Up on stage, so did the boy who looked like him. The woman shouted and went to her knees beside him. He looked like he was having a seizure.

Lindsey wasn't moving at all.

Dimly, Angel heard Wesley calling to Gunn and Cordelia to take his hands. Then he started chanting, words that sounded familiar to what Lindsey'd been saying when Angel interrupted him. Angel didn't pay much attention.

He was too busy picking Lindsey up off the floor and getting him away from whatever the hell it was that was going after him.

Wesley's voice raised above the confusion of the bar patrons, yelling at one another and the stage, adding to the din. A stranger's voice blended with Wes', an equally strong, liquid-accented melody weaving through Wesley's words. The boy on the stage stopped convulsing, and the band gathered around until Angel lost sight of him. Lindsey was lying still against his chest.

Deciding that the clone could look after himself for awhile, he forced his way through the crowd to stand next to his friends. Wesley looked pinched about the lips. Gunn and Cordelia looked unexpectedly tired and more than a little confused. Angel could relate.

"Hey," he greeted them.

They looked down at Lindsey, back at the stage, then back at Angel, heads moving together as if tied by marionette's string. Then they all started to ask questions, voices overlapping. Angel shook his head. There was no time. They had to get out of there.

"C'mon," he urged them. Wes took a second look at Lindsey lying like a dead man in Angel's arms and started muttering to himself. Gunn and Cordelia looked at one another, then flanked Angel as they all turned and headed for the street. Wesley trailed behind, chanting under his breath. Angel could still feel the magic, but it was muted now, suffused. It made him feel slimy.

Had to be Wolfram and Hart. Nobody else he knew could make him feel like he needed a bath just by being in the same vicinity. And he didn't know of anyone else who would want to kill Lindsey.

Along with anyone who had the misfortune to look like Lindsey.

They made it back to the convertible in good time. It was a tight, uncomfortable fit. Wesley drove, with Gunn riding shotgun and Cordelia and Angel in the back seat with Lindsey curled up on Angel's lap. He was breathing, but he looked even worse than he had when Angel first saw him, and he hadn't woken up yet.

"Hey, Wes," he called, staring with some concern down at the top of Lindsey's head, all he could see from that angle. "What kind of magic does this kind of damage?"

There was a long moment of silence. Gunn was reaching over to prod him when Wesley threw him a slightly irritated look and gave Angel an answer. A partial answer, anyway.

"I'm not completely sure. It's a blend, I think, from what we saw. Attack from more than one quarter, using more than one type of magic, at the same time. Also, we were assisted by a mambo, a female Vodun priest -- "

Before he could complete his sentence, Cordelia squeaked. "Voodoo? Like dolls with pins and zombies and shrunken heads and stuff?" She sounded as fascinated as she did appalled. Wesley sighed heavily.

"Think Africa, not Hollywood, Cordelia, if you can."

She grumbled back at him, but still sat with her shoulders hunched up to her ears as if she expected zombies to come out of the darkness and eat them. Given what she'd fought in Los Angeles, not to mention on the Hellmouth, it was a reasonable assumption.

"This mambo strengthened the protective spell I threw about the young man on the stage. I didn't see Lindsey, or I would have attempted to assist him as well."

"I think he was doing the same thing you were." Angel shifted the weight on his lap, ignoring the fact that he was enjoying it more than he ought. "At least, what he was saying sounded a lot like what you were saying when he was saying it ..." he trailed off. Gunn looked at him like he'd lost his mind and Cordy stared at him like she was the one who was lost. He cleared his throat again. "Anyway, I think that's what he was doing when I interrupted him."

"You what?" Cordelia's voice rose an octave on the last word. "All week I'm having visions of snakes eating him and you come up and knock down the fence?"

"Fence?" Gunn asked. Now he looked lost.

"Metaphorically," Wesley interjected. All three conscious passengers stared at him. It was his turn to clear his throat. "Anyway, the important thing now is to get him to a safe place and find out what's going on with him so that we can put an end to it. Right?"

"Right," slurred a new voice from the general vicinity of Angel's right shoulder. Although Lindsey quickly slumped again, he seemed to be breathing a little more easily.

"That's settled, then," Cordelia proclaimed.

"It is?" asked Gunn, glancing back at Angel. Angel just shrugged and held on to Lindsey. He had a feeling he'd be doing that a lot in the future.

Somehow, he didn't find the prospect as daunting as he probably should.




Next Chapter