Title: You Forgot To Mention Hell, Horatio
Author: JR
Email: JRR42@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Status: Complete
Warnings: Nope. Not this time.
Category: Crossover with Highlander
Disclaimer: All other characters belong to their respective owners and are used without permission. This story is not intended to infringe upon any copyrights, nor is any profit being made from it.
This is what happens when you get involved with too many different fandoms.
Universe setting: For you Highlander fans, this story takes place sometime after ‘Archangel’ (sorry to all those Richie Forever people). Please forgive me for playing with the timelines of the shows, but hey, it’s fan-fic and I can do that ;-)
Thanks: As always, to Carrie, and to Marius, the oak and the ash to my birds in the forest.

Angel woke Willow about a half an hour before sunset. After preparing a quick meal -- warm blood for him and some soup for her -- they quickly made their way out of the apartment, completely unaware of the three pairs of immortal eyes that followed their progress.

‘He is as beautiful as they say,’ Eleni Vasqeria Goya y Garcia thought as she stood on a nearby rooftop. For all of her 500 years, Eleni had been obsessed with two things: beauty and power. In her own mind, she was already in possession of the former, and she was well on her way to securing the latter.

The only thing that remained was finding the perfect consort to be at her side.

Her search for such a man began long before she reached the primate backwater known as Sunnydale. It was unfortunate that a viable Hellmouth hadn’t opened somewhere more...civilized, like her native Seville. It was a pity; but then again, such things could not be helped.

Dismissing her tangent thoughts, Eleni once again focused on the dark-haired vampire below her. Ever since she’d arrived in Sunnydale, she’d heard stories of Angelus, of his cunning and ruthlessness and, most importantly, of his curse. Although no one she talked to was certain of the details of his disappearance and subsequent return; all were in agreement that Angelus was once again fighting against his own kind. Such a tragedy.

Not for long, however.

He alone stood out above the pitiful flotsam this place had to offer, like a single diamond in a bucket full of coal. Her time of victory was near, and she wasn’t about to walk into the face of triumph alone. Angelus was the perfect choice, despite his curse. ‘After all,’ Eleni thought, ‘if it was broken once, it can be done again.’ Now it was time to make it happen.

“Kill the girl and bring him to me,” Eleni ordered the underling that accompanied her.

“Should I bring her across?” the minion asked.

“No,” his mistress replied without hesitation. Despite the need to increase their numbers, Eleni wasn’t about to allow the creation of potential rival. Not that she even considered the possibility of Angelus choosing the girl over herself. Eleni’s beauty had been legendary for more than half a millennia. Instead, she wanted the girl dead for being near Eleni’s chosen one. “Feed from her if you wish, but make sure Angelus sees her die before you bring him to me.”

“As you wish, Mistress,” the underling replied.

Her orders issued, Eleni pivoted sharply and disappeared into the night.

“You want me to go where?” Angel asked skeptically as the pair turned the corner before Sunnydale park.

“A college fair...over at Washington High tomorrow at six o’clock. I mean, it’s no big deal if you can’t go. I know that we’re supposed be fighting this whole Legion prophecy, but Giles said that we can be spared for an hour or two tomorrow. We’ll just meet up with everybody at the Restfield Cemetery later on.”

She was rambling out loud from nervousness, but internally, she busy berating. ‘Right, like Angel would want to go to something as stupid as a college fair.’ Nevertheless, when she mentioned the possibility of attending to Giles earlier, the Watcher had insisted that she not go unescorted.

“...I mean I understand if you don’t want to go. It being a school thing and all, and you probably wouldn’t be interested...”

“I’ll go.” Angel interrupted absently, only half-listening to Willow’s babbling. The vampire was jumpy, and he was irritated that he couldn’t figure out why. “...in something as boring as...”

“Willow, I’ll go,” he repeated a little more loudly.

“...a college fair.”

Angel couldn’t help but smile at her prattling, but he didn’t need to hear anymore. “Willow! I said, I’ll go with you.”

“Oh.” she replied in what seemed like confusion. Not that her response, or lack thereof, surprised him. He could almost envision her mind stopping and rewinding the conversation to search out exactly what the vampire had just agreed to do.

“Oh! You’ll really go?” she asked. Angel merely nodded his head to reaffirm his agreement. “Oh Angel, this is so nice of you!”

“It’s really not a problem,” the vampire insisted, barely remembering to give Willow a smile of reassurance. He was preoccupied by his feelings of unease, yet he didn’t want to upset Willow unnecessarily. Instead, he did his best to make some small talk. “What I don’t get is the time of it, though. I thought that the police were actually cracking down on that curfew they established.”

“Supposedly they are, what with all the missing people lately. But this college fair was set up months ago. I guess they didn’t want to inconvenience all the reps coming from out of town,” Willow surmised.

“Idiots.” Angel grumbled at the lunacy of not canceling the entire event.

As they turned the corner into the park, the pair grew silent, more alert of their surroundings. With all the shrubbery and darkened recesses, this was the most dangerous part of their route. Yet, it could not be avoided. Walking around the park would add another fifteen minutes to their trip, which could prove to be just as deadly.

A spike of pain seared through Angel’s head out of nowhere, causing the normally graceful vampire to stumble.

“Angel?” Willow questioned as she reached out to steady him.

“Something...something’s not right,” he gasped as the pain receded. A strange feeling overcame him. For no reason at all, he suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to run. At that same moment, the demon within him grew unbearably restless, as if it was trying to force him to flee. It took every ounce of control that he’d learned in the past eighty-odd years to keep from giving into the demon’s demands, but he wouldn’t leave Willow behind.

“Can you walk?” Willow asked anxiously, her eyes darting around to search for either the cause of the vampire’s pain or other potential dangers. Fortunately, Angel seemed to be recovering quickly.

“C’mon, let’s go,” he insisted, grabbing onto Willow’s arm protectively. Before they could go more than ten paces, half a dozen snarling vampires jumped out of the bushes on both sides of the pathway.

Acting on instinct, Angel immediately shifted into his game face. Adjusting his hold on Willow’s arm, he tugged her close to his body in a possessive manner. He only prayed that Willow would follow his lead. He had to buy her enough time to cast her protection spell. Given his proximity to the teenager, the trickiest part was going to be making sure that he didn’t get accidentally dusted by it himself.

“This one is mine,” he growled menacingly to the other vampires. “Go find your own dinners.”

“Thanks, but we already ate,” the largest vampire sneered.

‘Come on, Willow!’ Angel thought furiously. Finally, he heard her whispering the familiar words of Latin while one of her hands slowly crept closer to the stake hidden within the sleeve of her denim jacket.

It was, however, too little, too late.

Without any warning another vampire, hidden within the shrubbery, jumped Angel from behind. Staggering from the force of the impact, Angel lost his grip on Willow, accidentally pushing her towards their waiting adversaries.

“WILLOW!” Angel bellowed.

Using the forward momentum to her advantage, the young redhead jerked the stake free of her sleeve and slammed it into the heart of the vamp who’d been poised to catch her. Yet, as impressive as the move was, it did nothing to save her from being swatted to the ground like an insect by a vicious backhand from one of the other bloodsuckers.

As soon as Angel realized that the other five were unfazed by Willow’s surprise attack, he knew that they were in real trouble. These vampires were no newly made fledglings. They were seasoned, experienced fighters; prepared to die as long as their objective was achieved.

‘But what do they want?’ Angel wondered.

He never had time to speculate, though. Before Willow could even begin to shake off the effects of the blow she received, the remaining three opponents were all over the vampire with a soul. He fought his best fight, but it was a losing battle.

In less than a minute, Angel was completely overwhelmed. Instinctively, he tried to get closer to Willow, willing to sacrifice himself in the slim chance that his demise would buy her the chance to escape. There was only one vampire between Willow and himself, so he ran forward, hoping to knock it out of his way.

His opponent, however, anticipated the move and, at the last possible second, spun around in a roundhouse kick that sent Angel airborne. Tumbling head over feet, the last thing Angel saw was the green of the park bench before his head impacted against it with a sickening crunch.

“ANGEL!!” Willow screamed in horror. Still dazed from the blow she’d taken, the sound of Angel’s skull fracturing echoed loudly in her head. Her eyes teared over as she cried unnoticed tears for her fallen friend.

Truth be told, she completely forgot about the other hostile vampires as she stared at Angel’s unmoving body -- at least until one of the creatures wrapped its hands around her neck. There was a surrealistic quality of the moment, almost as everything was happening to her in slow motion. Frozen with grief rather than fear, Willow did nothing to resist as the vampire holding her shifted his grip to expose her neck. A loud ‘bang’ erupted in the distance, but the sound was drowned out by the sharp pain of the fangs that pierced her tender skin.

As she was thrown to the ground, Willow’s vision began to fade to black. Her last thought was of Angel and if he would be waiting for her on the other side...

‘Once, just once, I’d like something to be bloody simple,’ the Immortal calling himself Adam Pierson swore silently as he ran. ‘Sure,’ he raged at the idiocy of the plan he’d conceived earlier that afternoon. ‘Follow the girl and wait until she’s alone to ask her about Ahriman. What could possibly go wrong?’

Everything.

For example, the girl could choose to go somewhere other than the home address Adam had so painstakingly looked up in the phone book during lunch. She might actually choose to go to the one warehouse in Sunnydale that’s windows were blackened over with thick coats of paint. She could also choose to while away the afternoon inside said warehouse, only to emerge hours later with what appeared to be a boyfriend in tow -- an older, somewhat dangerous- looking boyfriend, at that. Then, to add insult to injury, Adam could have easily been spotted as he drove past the entrance to the park, not realizing that the pair had stopped less than fifty feet away for some reason or another. Or even better yet, Willow and her boyfriend could get jumped by what appeared to be a gang lying in wait.

It was plain, dumb luck that he’d caught sight of the gang members out of the corner of his eye. Erring on the side of caution, Adam pulled his rental car over to the side of the otherwise deserted street. Shutting off the telltale headlights, the Immortal reached for a high-power set of golf binoculars and proceeded to watch the encounter unfold. A knot of tension formed in his stomach as the seconds passed. Even with the distance between himself and the assembled group, it was plain to see that this wasn’t a friendly meeting. Yet, he did nothing. After all, Adam Pierson hadn’t stayed alive for so many years by borrowing from other people’s troubles.

At least that was what he told himself until he saw the hidden man jump out of the bushes in a surprise attack. Muttering a curse in a long-forgotten tongue, Adam threw down the binoculars and exited the car at a dead run. He hadn’t come this far only to have the girl he’d been searching for hurt or killed in a random mugging.

Rounding the stone-and-fence gateway, Adam felt a sudden chill run down his spine as Willow’s boyfriend took a serious header into a park bench. With her friend out of the way, one of the attackers grabbed the redheaded teenager and buried his face into her neck. Thinking that the girl was about to be gang-raped, the Immortal felt memories -- some from the distant past and some from less than a year ago -- rise to the surface unbidden.

“NO!” Adam Pierson shouted as he forced himself to move even more quickly. As his feet hit the ground in rapid secession, he was already reaching for his weapons. Seasoned by centuries of battle, he immediately sought out the six round - .38 in his belt with his left hand, while the right slid under his overcoat to reach for the long dagger secured to the small of his back. While many Immortals would have immediately drawn their swords, Adam knew that his trusty Ivanhoe was an unwieldy choice for a close fight with multiple combatants.

Even from this distance, he could see the girl’s legs begin to buckle. As slight as she was, it wouldn’t be difficult for the large man that was holding her to carry her off with him if the gang was to retreat. Realizing that he would never reach Willow in time to prevent such an occurrence, Adam lifted the gun in his right hand, took aim and fired.

Shooting on the run is never as easy as it looks in the movies. Even for someone as practiced as Adam, the Immortal was lucky to hit one of the gang members -- even if he was off target by over a foot. Instead of impacting in the chest cavity, the bullet lodged itself deeply into the man’s stomach.

Then, something truly bizarre happened.

When he was about 40 feet away from the assembled group, all of the girl’s attackers suddenly clutched their heads and began shrieking in pain. Although puzzled by their behaviour, Adam never once slowed down as he raced towards his destination. At 30 feet, the gang members began stumbling backwards, some still screaming as they made their retreat.

At first, their reaction to his presence reminded Adam of the confusion newly made Immortals had when experiencing ‘the buzz’ of another of their kind for the first time. ‘The buzz’ was a tingling sensation that all Immortals felt when they came into proximity to another of their race -- a kind of early-warning detection system that made it possible to recognize each other. While the feeling was less than pleasant for the most seasoned Immortal, it was often disorientating as hell to the younger and more inexperienced. Especially since the older and more powerful an Immortal was, the greater their detection range.

The buzz, however, was a two-way street, and as strong as Adam’s was, he should have been able to sense another of his kind long before they detected his presence. Nearing his destination, the Immortal cast his thoughts aside to focus more of his attention towards the unconscious girl lying on the ground.

By the time he reached Willow’s side, her attackers had disappeared into the protective darkness of the park. Deciding that his gun would be the best choice of weapon should the gang members return, Adam kept it in hand while setting his dagger down on the ground at the girl’s side.

She was lying face down on the asphalt walkway, so the Immortal clutched a petite shoulder to roll her over on her back. Still out cold, Adam could nevertheless make out the damp tear tracks on her ashen cheeks. With a practiced hand, the Immortal brushed her hair out of the way as he reached for her neck. Ignoring the warm, damp blood his fingers encountered, he unerringly found her jugular vein and pressed his fingers against it. Her pulse was thready, but that was not surprising. Shock was a common reaction after such a brutal attack.

Speaking of brutal, Adam left the girl’s side to check on her boyfriend. Having been a medical doctor in several of his ‘lifetimes,’ one look at the dark-haired man’s forehead told the Immortal everything he needed to know. Despite the futility of his action, Adam checked not only for a pulse, but any hint of the buzz that would indicate that the fallen man might be an Immortal.

Nothing.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Adam noted that the man’s skin was cool, in fact, unnaturally so for someone whose life had just ended moments earlier. However, before the thought fully registered, a low, pain-filled groan filled the air.

Willow Rosenberg was waking up.




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