He didn't know why he had returned to England. It was home, he supposed, although he hadn't been there in years. Not since he had been given the assignment in Sunnydale. He had climbed on a plane, back then, and said his goodbyes to all this. To the places he had grown up in, the scenery and feel of the places he had always known. To everything that his former life had been. He was still saying goodbye to it now, in so many ways. Still leaving little bits of his old life behind, with every decision he made, every new thing he learnt. Every step forward he took on the path of discovery. He was a different man now, which made it all the more peculiar that he had chosen to come back.
London. It was no more his home than any other part of England. Of Britain, of Europe, of the world. It was where his parents lived, at the moment, anyway. They were ensconced in one of the family homes there, as Roger Wyndam-Pryce tried to gather together those few of his cronies from the old Watcher's Council who had survived the recent massacres brought against them. Wesley had no intention of visiting his parents. His father was the last person he wanted to see right now - or ever - and his mother, welcoming though she might appear to be, would only end up infuriating him. Standing politely by whilst her husband tore shreds off her son, never once stepping in to prevent it, to stand up for Wesley, to do anything that might be of use. A part of Wesley wanted to go there anyway, and present himself before the domineering bastard who had so shaped him into what he was - to show him what he had made; what circumstance, past and experience had shaped his son into. He was so different to how he been before. No more the bumbling fool, no more the weak, helpless buffoon good only for translation and study. He could hold his own against demons, vampires and magicians now, and had done so many times. He could best his father even in his young, strong days - and probably any other Watcher come to that, save perhaps for Rupert Giles. He so wanted to show his father all that he now was, and prove to him that he needn't be a disappointment. But he knew that he wouldn't. He could defeat a whole horde of vampires with his bare hands, whilst his father stood and watched. He would still be the useless son who couldn't do a thing right. And in his heart of hearts, he still felt that he deserved that abuse - for as well as being useless, he was also the son who had killed his father. Not for real, perhaps, but the fact that the creature into which he had fired all those bullets had turned out to be nothing more than an enchanted cyborg didn't change the other obvious fact. He had thought that he was firing the bullets into his father; into Roger Wyndam-Pryce, his tormentor and nemesis. And that, to him, was what mattered.
Which was why, he supposed, he had come to England. He hadn't been able to stay in LA, or at least not amongst his friends. Oh they had all been supportive enough. Even Spike had tried to make him feel better; Gunn and Fred had offered their best wishes, and tried to cheer him up. Angel had done the same, even though their relationship had seemed peculiar and distant just lately. Wesley hadn't wanted to be with them though. Not yet. Their smiles, their support, their attempts to understand, all conspired to make him feel worse. They didn't know. How could they? Angel and Spike had killed their parents, but they had done it as evil monsters. Gunn barely remembered his parents, and Fred's were wonderful people who nobody would ever want to hurt. None of them could know how he felt. How good it had felt, somewhere deep inside, to fire all that hot, terrible lead into his father's chest. They would never be able to understand the disappointment, stirring deep within him, that had appeared when he realised that it had not been his father he had killed at all. And so to England, where he could pretend that he was going to visit his father, and explain and apologise and make amends. Where he could get drunk in bars he hadn't dared visit in the old days, and look for fights with the kind of people who wouldn't ever give a damn what he had or hadn't done to his father. He could pretend to himself that it would help, too.
But none of it made any sense at all now that he stood at the airport doors. On the aeroplane there had been a sense of detachment to it; an air of unreality, that probably came from far too many hours enclosed in a pressurised capsule with a crowd of anonymous strangers. Now that he was actually here, and faced with the prospect of having to do something, he felt peculiar. It was home, but it didn't feel like it. He was here, but he didn't feel like it. Maybe it was just the airport; airports were the same all over the world, for the most part, and it certainly didn't look decisively English. He was just looking for problems, he decided. There was probably a part of him that was determined not to relax, or to be happy. The part of him that wouldn't feel at home wherever he was.
There was the usual array of buses and minicabs lined up outside the airport. Harassed looking parents struggled to gather together their children and force them through the doors of idling vehicles. Drivers of every description fought to fit a multitude of suitcases into spaces that were clearly not big enough. People hugged, kissed, shook hands politely. Brisk businessmen in slightly crumpled suits headed for shiny black cars, nodding greetings to waiting chauffeurs or colleagues or cab drivers. The usual sights. Wesley thought about hiring one of the minicabs himself. He had to get into the city somehow. Swinging his small bag onto his shoulder, he headed across the long, broad car park looking for a car that didn't seem to be doing anything. He didn't fancy the buses. Too many people; he'd had enough of that on the plane. There was one small blue minicab waiting a short distance away that didn't seem to be waiting for anybody. There were no holidaymakers trying to force their way inside, and no businessmen clutching briefcases and laptops heading its way. An opportunist then. Seemed ideal.
He was halfway to it when a large black car drew up alongside him. He ignored it for a moment; it couldn't be anything to do with him, so there seemed no point in turning and looking through its partially smoked windows. When one of the windows slid down, though, he did turn. The driver had obviously mistaken him for somebody else. Who, he couldn't imagine. He didn't look much like anybody else from the airport, either from his own plane or from any of the others. His casual clothes and leather jacket were mirrored a hundred times in the other people around him, but his three days of stubble and generally haggard appearance marked him out as an individual. He was fairly sure that the contents of his bag did as well, although fortunately that was hidden from all prying eyes, including electronic ones. Not a complicated spell, but a useful one, just like the one that had allowed him to walk through half a dozen airport metal detectors with a gun in a shoulder holster just underneath his jacket.
"Hey Wes." The voice came from the front of the car, and he blinked in surprise, fighting the instinct to draw the gun. It hadn't been a friendly voice. A cheerful one, yes, but one filled with definite mockery. The inside of the car seemed dark in comparison to the bright day outside, but he could make out the shape of a man at the wheel. A bulky man, he thought, although it wasn't easy to tell in so little light. "Get in," the man told him, without bothering to identify himself. There was authority in his voice, but not the kind that Wesley felt inclined to acknowledge.
"You forget, Smith." This time the voice came from just behind Wesley, but when he began to turn to meet it, a hand slid neatly under his arm and moved him towards the car. "He only obeys orders from vampires."
"Weatherby." This voice at least was unmistakable; Wesley would have known the man anywhere. He glanced over to the other side, and saw another unmistakable figure sliding in to flank him there as well; Collins. The alleged crème of the Watcher Council's enforcement division. He had met the threesome before, most recently several years ago in LA when they had been trying to recapture Faith. They hadn't been very happy with him, he recalled with some considerable pleasure, when he had sided with Angel and thwarted their plans.
"Get in," Collins told him. Wesley hesitated. He could easily throw off Weatherby's hold, although he wasn't sure that he could fight the two of them, especially if the man in the car joined in as well. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't want to make a scene here. The decision was made for him by a definite pressure that appeared suddenly in his side. Weatherby had a gun, which was pressing most unpleasantly into his ribs.
"Get in," repeated Collins. There was a tight, hard smile in his voice. Wesley allowed them to push him forward the last few paces, and watched dispassionately as Collins opened the near rear door of the car. Even now he could probably make a break for it; they wouldn't want to fire a gun in a crowd, especially with airport security being what it was these days. Their car, its license plate, and probably their faces, would be all over the television news by lunch time. He was curious though, and he couldn't help it. What exactly did they want? A part of him didn't really believe that they wouldn't cause a scene, anyway; that they wouldn't fire their guns. They were more than ruthless enough. There were a lot of civilians standing around, and the last thing that his already disturbed conscience needed was the death of an innocent person to weigh it down even further. Responding to the insistent pressure on his arm, he climbed into the back of the car. Weatherby followed him, and Collins went around to the far side, sliding in to trap Wesley in the middle. He smiled in a manner that was almost friendly.
"Comfortable?"
"Not particularly. What's this about?"
"A happy chat between friends?" Weatherby was grinning, his manner every bit as abhorrent as Wesley remembered. "Anybody would think that you're not pleased to see us. What's wrong? Not as delighted as you thought you'd be to be back in the old mother country?"
"What's this about?" repeated Wesley. Weatherby smiled, and nodded at Smith to get the car moving. They swung out into the general flow of traffic, and settled into an easy, unhurried pace. Collins took up the talking then, leaning back into the seat with his arms folded, eyeing Wesley in a half friendly manner that was anything but genuine. Collins had been all about the pretence of friendship the last time, too, remembered Wesley. Apparently well meant words, and the promise of help, favours and acquiescence, all hiding ice, dislike and disapproval.
"We'd hoped you'd be pleased to see us, Wes. I mean, granted we're not vampires, but you haven't entirely turned your back on the human race, have you. You even work with a couple of humans, alongside the undead and the horned and inhuman."
"What do you want?" He spoke with resignation; none of these three were likely to abandon their comic book heavies act any time soon. Now that he was trapped in the car with them he was going to have to put up with it. Collins grinned.
"We need your help. That's all. There's few enough people left with our various qualifications, in case you hadn't noticed. The Council is gone, our mutual 'friend' Rupert Giles seems to be putting a new one together, but to be perfectly honest I can do without the sort of help that comes with Buffy Summers as part of the package deal. You, on the other hand, I can stomach. Just about."
"Especially without your vampire boyfriend in tow," put in Weatherby. "What happened anyway, Wes? Why did you come back? He throw you out now he's got another vampire to play with instead?"
"What sort of help?" asked Wesley, choosing to ignore the other man's jibes. Weatherby laughed. Smiling tightly, Collins continued the story.
"You ever hear of a vampire named Beatrice?"
"Beatrice? Yes." There might be more than one, admittedly, but there was one specific one who bore that name. Since she was of especial relevance to one of Wesley's particular fields of expertise, he was reasonably well versed in her history. "She was turned by Angelus, some time in the early nineteenth century. He did it as an act of revenge against an obscure religious order, so it's not as if she was ever a part of his little family. She was a religious maniac prior to her Becoming, anyway, and some part of that seems to have remained in her psychological make-up. She's reputed to be very powerful, and decidedly unhinged."
"Very good." Collins nodded approvingly. "Anyway, she's why we need your help. She's holed up somewhere here in London, and she's got some kind of plan up her sleeve. We've been hearing very interesting things about her just lately. Seems she's planning a ritual that, if it all goes right, will turn her into something beyond a mere vampire. Something really powerful. We have to stop that, and I rather think you'll agree." He smiled sardonically. "Unless you're really that much of a vampire fan these days."
"Angel has a soul," spat Wesley, well aware that that cut no ice with these three. "And quite apart from being dead, so does Spike now, or I doubt he could exist as a ghost. And you know damn well that's the only reason I work with either of them. I don't have anything to do with any others."
"Even though you work with Wolfram & Hart?" Weatherby was regarding him with open hostility now. "Never mind, Wes. We don't care about that right now. We just want your help to stop Beatrice. The rest doesn't matter."
"What rest?" Wesley shook his head, as repelled as ever by the trio of agents and their resolutely hostile demeanour. They were quite determined never to see things his way, and arguing with them was about as worthwhile as arguing with a ten foot Stromoth demon. In fact he had met Stromoths that were less intractable. "Look, just forget it. You say you need my help. Perhaps you should start by being a little less unfriendly."
"Unfriendly?" Weatherby seemed astonished. "Call this unfriendly? Believe me, Wes, if we wanted--"
"Leave it." Collins' voice was sharp. Weatherby lapsed into silence, staring out of the windshield in faint disgust. He would dearly have loved to prove just how unfriendly he could be, and his body language showed that he still hoped to one day get the chance. Wesley shot him a look of faint distaste.
"Unfriendly," he repeated, having no intention himself of bending to Collins' order. "You kidnapped me at gun point. That's not the way that most people go about obtaining assistance."
"We're not most people," pointed out Collins. "Us or you. Come on, Wesley. If we had strolled up for a little chat, or phoned up your hotel room or whatever, you'd never have listened to us. You made it quite clear the last time we met that you don't like us. You disapprove of our methods. You'd rather mollycoddle the psycho who practically stove your head in, as well as trying out her home tattoo kit on your various body parts. Fine. Whatever. But we need your help, and we need you to listen."
"Then maybe you'd better stop with the insults." Wesley's voice was like ice; the mention of Faith had been more than enough to cause that. They had been enemies and more, he and the Slayer he had been sent to Watch. They had loathed each other, and been ready to kill each other in the past, but they had parted eventually as fellow warriors with a genuine mutual respect. Any insult to Faith was an insult to him; but Collins and the others couldn't be expected to understand that. They might be Watchers, but like more than ninety-nine percent of their colleagues, they had never Watched a Slayer. They didn't know about the bonds and the ties. Which, given his past with Faith, was an interesting set of metaphors to use. He nearly smiled - but didn't. Not here.
"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot." Collins was speaking through his teeth, tense with the effort of pretending to be polite. Wesley would rather he didn't bother. They hated him, he hated them; it wasn't like there was any point in trying to hide that. He kept quiet though, and listened to the unit's leader as he tried to stay civil.
"This ritual," Collins began, relaxing a little at the chance of hiding emotion in formality. "You ever hear of something called the Ceremony of Beginnings? Or at least I think that's what it's called. The details we have are in some old language I can't be sure of. The translation may be a little ropy."
"The Ceremony of Beginnings?" Wesley frowned, casting his mind back through its remarkable nooks and crannies. "Doesn't ring any bells. Do you have any documentation?"
"Not in the car. It's back at our headquarters. From what we can gather, though, it's your usual magical ceremony. Blood letting, ritual sacrifice. Some kind of representation of the Becoming, leading to... well, to a new Becoming, I suppose. As something rather stronger than a vampire. We need you to help us make sure that she can't go through with the ceremony. Even you can't turn us down."
"What sort of something 'stronger than a vampire'? There are any number of creatures that can lay claim to that." Wesley wasn't being dragged into anything about which he was not yet fully informed. Collins shrugged.
"You'll have to go through our information to be sure of all that. All we can say is that it's something powerful. Something really powerful. There was something about the sun ceasing to destroy, and stakes no longer... I don't know. Something about screaming ashes, you know what these ancient writings are like. About as straightforward as surreal poetry. Sounds to me as though, if she goes through with it, she'll be impervious to just about every method of execution we know of for her kind. Super strong, super powerful, and able to walk in sunlight. You think that's something we can just allow to happen?"
"No, probably not." Wesley frowned nonetheless, wondering why exactly such a ceremony hadn't been brought to light before. "What is it you want me to do? Besides check your translations. For all we know what you've got isn't a magical ceremony at all. It's the recipe for chocolate digestives."
"It's a ceremony." Weatherby came back into the conversation with a voice like broken razor blades. "Unless the recipe for chocolate digestives calls for blood, candles and ancient runes."
"Can't say as I'd know." Wesley folded his arms, leaning back in the seat. "Okay, so she's got hold of something that can make her uncomfortably powerful. What exactly do you want me to do about it?"
"Get us inside." Collins spoke now with a trace of something very like triumph in his voice. It might have been just because of Wesley's apparent willingness to help - but instinct told the renegade Watcher that it was something rather more than that. His felt his hackles rise, in readiness. "Get us to where we can stop this, before it's ever allowed to begin. If she goes ahead with this ceremony, Beatrice could be the biggest threat that mankind has ever faced. Well, at least since the last one. But there's one sure way to prevent it."
"Which is?" This was like getting blood from a stone. Wesley was certain now that he was not going to like what he heard. Weatherby's smirk was hardly reason to change that opinion.
"The sacrifice in the ceremony. It has to be her Sire." This time Collins didn't bother to hide the pleasure that he was gaining from all of this. Neither did Weatherby. "We have one way - short of killing Beatrice, which might be rather difficult since we don't know where she is - to stop her from turning herself into a creature we'd probably never be able to stop. And that's to kill Angel, before the next full moon." He glanced at his watch, as though such phases of the moon were there to be read alongside the time. "Which by my reckoning is two nights from tonight." The grin grew, and his eyes sparkled with ill-suppressed pleasure. "Better get moving, Wes. Wouldn't you say?"
The flowers were very pretty. White ones, pink ones, yellow ones, blue ones. Even some blood red ones, that made her feel quite thirsty. Tall, short, tough, delicate - a beautiful array that made her heart want to sing. Or some part of her that might once have been her heart, anyway. She didn't think that that particular organ did much of anything anymore. It just sat there in her chest, dulled and silenced, and waiting for somebody to force a stake through it. She sometimes thought about cutting it out, just to see what it looked like; just to find out if she really needed it anymore. It might be nice to hold her own heart in her hand, just for a moment. Would she get to see it turn to dust before the rest of her did, if it turned out to be fatal? Or would she turn to dust and leave her heart untouched, the way that sometimes the things that vampires were holding when they died were left unscathed. She rather liked that idea - of her heart remaining behind. Perhaps somebody would bury it, and give her the Christian burial that a part of her still sometimes wanted. Or would the consecrated ground just burn her poor little heart into ash?
But the flowers were pretty, anyway. She blinked at the thought, because flowers and hearts were not especially connected; unless one was cutting out the hearts of newly-wed brides and grooms, and draping them with garlands of flowers. She had done that once... twice... more times perhaps. She remembered a very pretty church decorated with orange blossom, and another somewhere much hotter, where there had been giant pink flowers. Spike had made her a bouquet from them, and she had laughed excitedly, and made a terrified official perform a wedding service for her and the young human groom whose bride had just been unceremoniously drained dry. Afterwards, when she had eaten her young 'husband', and Spike had been cleaning the official out of his teeth, they had lain together on a beautiful beach, watching the waves in the moonlight, and listening to the terrified cries of the humans discovering their dead. And the flowers had been so pretty then, too.
"But the flowers like the sun," she said to herself, her voice filling the little room with sound. She so wanted to go outside and walk amongst the flowers; to smell the rich scent of a garden warmed by sunshine. She hardly remembered what that was like. Jasmine smelt beautiful by night, but it was no substitute for a full, sun-drenched flower garden. It didn't seem fair.
"What was that?" Her companion glanced up from the book that she was reading. Drusilla cast her an unhappy look. Beatrice never seemed to understand the thoughts that played havoc with her fellow vampire's mind. She never stopped to listen, or think, and she never tried to open her mind to other thoughts. She was the only audience that Drusilla had right now, though - so she would have to do.
"The flowers," she said sadly. "They like the sun."
"Pick some tonight. Bring them in here."
"That's tonight." Beatrice didn't understand; Drusilla had known that she wouldn't. Tonight was no good - tomorrow was irrelevant. It was now that mattered. She wanted the flowers now, as they lay soaking in the sun. They were singing, and she couldn't hear them properly from in here. The glass in the window was too thick. Double-glazing, probably. Everything seemed to be double-glazing these days, except the pretty, atmospheric housing built in ages past, where ghosts glided everywhere. Ghosts were good company, usually. They were more open to vibrations and sensations. They understood things that living people - or unliving vampires - didn't. But here was sterile and new, and double-glazed. Here was cold and shrouded from the killing sun, and here was too quiet. Much too quiet. There was no old framework to tell her stories of the history of the building; no current of old traumas and joys. And she couldn't hear the flowers.
"Tonight, tomorrow. What does it matter, Drusilla?" Beatrice had no patience. Dru didn't like her. They had met for the first time when Dru was still young, and they hadn't liked each other then. Beatrice had called her a hopeless child, touched by spirits, and Drusilla had gone away to talk to the little children buried in the local graveyard instead, to tell them of her sorrows. In the 1920s when they had met again, her Spike had been there to protect her, and he and Beatrice had fought over some insult that Dru no longer remembered. She had enjoyed that; jumping up and down in excitement at each blow on either side, and clapping her hands in delight. Spike had tasted good afterwards, all covered in blood and the fever of undead adrenalin. But Spike was gone now, and she didn't know where. They had gone their separate ways in a fluster of angry words and recriminations, and he had run back into the world she had stolen him from. Never like the other vampires, was her Spike. Just like her. An anomaly. Something that Beatrice refused to understand.
"It matters..." She sang the words because she couldn't hear the flowers singing, and she wanted music from somewhere. Beatrice glared, and turned back to her book. She was reading about spells and glories and blood, and pretty little ceremonies with pretty little candles, and big, wicked knives. She wanted power, and she thought that Drusilla didn't know. She thought that Drusilla didn't understand, just because she talked to her dolls during the day, and tried to share with them the blood of her kills. Drusilla understood though; she had read the book as well. She had read it when Beatrice was out hunting, and she had understood it all readily enough. The ceremony, the death of Angel, the power. Drusilla supposed that that was why, when they had met quite by chance in an alleyway in Liverpool three weeks ago, Beatrice had asked her to join forces for a while. Drusilla was her best way of getting to Angel. Dru wasn't sure how she felt about that, really. Did she look like somebody who would betray her Sire so smoothly?
"Matters, doesn't matter... really Drusilla, I couldn't give a care. Just be quiet, I have to read." She was bent over the book again, struggling to understand what Drusilla had understood straight away. The requirements of the ceremony; the way to kill Angel, and bring forth powers that would turn an ordinary vampire into something much greater. The creation of such powers would make everything unbalanced, and Dru's dolls had told her of this several times. The balance would be all wrong, and Beatrice would have too much power, and all kinds of spirits would be able to slip from world to world on the currents of the unnatural vibrations. Dru had seen it all in her dreams. Besides, imbalances notwithstanding, she didn't want Angel to die. He was her father. He was her creator, her designer, her architect, her destroyer, her tormentor. He had been all things and more, and he had loved her and hated her and abandoned her. Set fire to her in a cold, dark place. She ought to hate him, and revel in his painful destruction. She ought to clap her hands at the sight of it, and cheer every stroke of Beatrice's ceremonial knives. Instead she had resolved to prevent it all. Prevent Angel's death, prevent the unleashing of the unnatural powers, prevent the imbalances that her dolls so feared. She didn't know why she had set herself upon such a course, for she had no real interest in saving the world from the after-effects of Beatrice's spells. She had even tried to kill Angel herself, once - but now things were different. She listened to the whims of her dolls, and it was they who stood against Beatrice. She felt their unease with the building currents in the air, and saw that she had to do as they wished. They showed her things that troubled her, and made her see that Angel had to be saved. She just didn't know where to begin. To stake Beatrice would be the natural choice, but she had tried that already, when the other vampire had been asleep. Nothing had happened. Some part of the ceremony must already be underway, she assumed, but she couldn't know for sure. She had read only the one book, and there were many others. Many scrolls, many parchments. Beatrice couldn't read most of them, although apparently she knew as much as she needed. She must do, if her magicks were already underway. Dru had tugged the stake back out of her chest, and watched the hole close up as though nothing had ever pierced that useless heart beneath. Then she had wandered back to her own bed, and talked the problem over with her dolls. They hadn't known the answer either; they had just told her that she couldn't allow such a setback to interfere with her attempts to save Angel. She had no idea why they were so adamant about that, since none of them had ever met him, but she agreed with them anyway. The things they whispered to her invariably turned out to be of worth, sooner or later. Rising to her feet now she wandered away from Beatrice, leaving her poring over her book and muttering obscure calculations, and went instead to the other room; the big, grandiose library. It was still new, still double-glazed, but it had an air of the old about it at least. The books told stories that the rafters and the foundations couldn't. She ran her hands over the ancient spines, and smelt the old leather, the old pages, the old ink. It reminded her of things; of people and places and sights and sounds, and it helped to focus her mind. A vase of cut flowers, long dead, stood on the table, and she asked them what they thought. An orchid winked at her, though its petal were all gone.
"I agree," she told it, undeterred by its drab and withered appearance. She hadn't seen her own reflection in so long that the appearances of others were of little concern to her anyway, and the orchid spoke so wisely that it really didn't matter what it looked like. She gathered up its browned petals all the same, and tried to stick them back on as a reward. They wouldn't stick, and she scolded them, then threw them aside. She had a lot to do if she was going to take the orchid's advice. A lot to read, a lot to study. A lot to discover. Singing softly under her breath, she went to the bookcase and climbed up to reach the highest book. Always start at the top, she told herself, and settled down to look at what she had found. She didn't have a clue what language it was written in, but there was always the chance that something might suggest itself, so she settled down on the floor, legs crossed, and started to read. It was gibberish, but it was pretty gibberish. The words that would save Angel would be pretty ones, she was sure, so she carried on looking. Carried on until the day had darkened into night, and she could go outside at last. When she returned it was with new petals for the wizened orchid, and she stuck them to it with sellotape and string, and told it what its sleepy cousins out in the garden had said. The orchid nodded wisely, and Dru nodded as well. She definitely had a lot to do tonight. As usual the flowers had been the wisest of councils.
They took him to a building near the Thames, where the sounds of the boats echoed in the near distance, and seagulls yelled rude stories at each other in the air. A big building, old wood under a new façade, with almost no furniture inside save tables and chairs. There were books everywhere of course; Wesley wouldn't have expected anything else. Presumably the best they had been able to gather together, to replace the ones lost when the Council Headquarters had been blown into so much dust. The sight of them made him feel a little more at home, a little less tense, which was a positive boon after the atmosphere in the car. He had been just about ready to shoot one of them then. They had been arguing all the way here, about Angel; about whether or not the risk of an indestructible vampire was worth his life; about how exactly they would go about killing him. Everybody knew what a difficult and dangerous target he was, and how so many people had tried and failed to liquidise him in the past. Collins wanted Wesley to lure him away and drug him; Weatherby wanted him to be the one to actually do the killing, to prove that he still had some loyalty to the human race. Wesley had sworn at the pair of them, quite eloquently, and in a manner he would never have considered the last time that the four of them had been together. Collins had looked faintly impressed; it was clear that he was revising his opinion of the renegade Watcher all the time. It might almost have been something to celebrate, had Wesley not had so much on his mind. He consoled himself with the thought that Beatrice had no more chance of killing Angel than any of the others who had tried from time to time. It wasn't much of a comfort. Determined to prove that there were ways to stop Beatrice besides the majority's favourite, he had turned, as always, to the books. There had to be something, he told himself as he studied. There had to be something somewhere.
There wasn't. He had checked their translations first, to make sure that they were on the right track to begin with, and had been disappointed. They were right. There had been no mistakes, no misreadings, no misinterpretations. Beatrice's ceremony required Angel's blood, and Angel's death, and would lead to a quite impressively powerful renewed vampire at the end of it. He tried to find reference to the ceremony in other books, but had no success. It was as though it had come into being, complete with its ancient scrolls, just a short time ago. Lilah had spoken of inter-dimensional book sales though, and he himself had made use of her remarkable book buying contacts even if, for some reason, he couldn't quite remember why. There was no reason why Beatrice shouldn't have gone looking in similarly out of the way places, and if so that explained the dearth of information. When he asked Collins how they had found out about the ceremony he had growled something about not revealing his sources, although it had eventually turned out that he quite simply didn't know. The information had turned up out of the blue, delivered by some anonymous contact who had then disappeared again without trace. Wesley supposed he should be glad for the tip-off, although frankly he wasn't sure that it wouldn't have been better had it all remained a secret. At least then he wouldn't be left wondering if killing his friend might be for the greater good. He scowled, and pushed a pile of books across the table. Damn it all. Usually he was so good at deciding what to do. He could see all the arguments spread out before him, neatly annotated and colour-coded, allowing him to analyse, compare and cross reference every small detail within his mind. He could compare the tiniest points, and overlay them all onto what Angel had always called the Big Picture; that giant canvas that was all and everything. For some reason that talent was failing him now. He couldn't begin to see which was for the best; kill Angel, let Angel live. He put it down to his objectivity having been compromised; Angel was his friend and mentor, after all. Not that that was any excuse.
Collins read books at another table nearby, Weatherby paced restlessly. Smith brought coffee at some point, but Wesley didn't notice his until it was cold. He was supposed to be checking their translations and that was all, but he couldn't resist the chance to extend his investigations. Not just into checking where the ceremony might have originated, but also looking for ways to stop Beatrice that wouldn't be quite so fatal to Angel. He met with little success. All that he could discover was that Angel's presence wasn't even required for the spell; merely the presence of somebody well known to him. That hardly made him feel any better. If Beatrice had that, or the means of getting it, then it even ruled out the possibility of tracking her down just by watching airports for a black-windowed plane. Not that that was the most efficient of plans, but it was better than the nothing he was left with after discarding it. He pushed books and pieces of paper around on the table, compared one piece of text to another, muttered under his breath in the languages he was reading. It was hopeless. He was getting nowhere, and nearby Weatherby was getting increasingly restless. Wesley could hear the man muttering, saying things that bordered on the obscene, his body language heading fast towards the openly hostile. Not that he wasn't just plain hostile anyway, but he had at least been trying to hide it to some degree. He sat down opposite Wesley in the end, and glowered at him over the table.
"Well?" he asked loudly. Wesley reined in the urge to glare back.
"What?" he asked instead. If in doubt, try to wind the other man up. His reward was a look of utter loathing.
"What have you found? Were we right? Is this ceremony everything we said it is?"
"And more, by the look of things." It was quite fascinating really. A work of art, magically speaking. Somebody somewhere had put a hell of a lot of work into it, and he couldn't help feeling that they deserved some respect for that. "Angel will never know what hit him. She can do this on the other side of the world, and he won't know a thing about it until it's too late."
"He'll never know anything about it anyway, given that he'll be dead," growled Weatherby. "We're going to kill him, remember?"
"Not while I'm still alive, you're not." Wesley pushed away the books and stood up. "You don't need to kill him. We just need to find Beatrice."
"She could be anywhere in the city. She might even have left it by now." Collins smiled sourly. "Wesley, I understand that he's your friend - though heaven only knows why. We're all entitled to our little eccentricities I suppose, and we all know that vampires have their hypnotic side. But he still has to die."
"Hypnotic side?" Wesley shook his head. "You lot should have read more of the set texts during training, and bothered a little less with the daft movies. Hammer House of Horror in the common room after lights out, was it? Look, admittedly she could be anywhere. I know that. But you said that an anonymous source put you onto this. Gave you the information. Well how did that source know about it all? What put him or her - or it - onto all of this? Maybe whoever it was knows Beatrice."
"And maybe they're both nearby." Collins frowned, staring at the book on his lap. "It's a possibility I suppose. The information we have was delivered here one day, by hand. There's no reason to assume whoever passed it on is even still in the country, but they could just as easily be living next door." He shrugged. "Okay. But so what?"
"What do you mean, so what? If we can find her, we can handle this without needing to go anywhere near Angel. There won't be any reason to kill him."
"Except that killing him ends it for sure. What if she's already set things in motion? What if stopping her, or killing her, won't end this?" Smith was sitting on the windowsill, playing with his empty coffee mug, and looking extremely bored with everything that was going on. Wesley shot him a disparaging glance.
"If she's dead, the ceremony can't go ahead, can it."
"For all we know, it might resurrect her. It'll make her super powered - why not immortal?"
"Because the sources here don't say anything about that. They do say, though, that she has to perform the spells on the appointed night. If she's dead, she can't do that." Increasingly tense, and angry at their determination to stick to their original plan, Wesley was close to punching something. "Look, it's all here in black and white. Or blood and pale beige, in certain cases. At any rate, it's clear enough. If we can find Beatrice-"
"If." Collins was smirking his unpleasant smirk, and his eyes showed mockery and contempt. "Listen to yourself. If. If we find Beatrice, if we stop her. Well what if we don't, Wes? What if we can't find her? She does her little ritual, and we wind up with a creature we can't stop, terrorising the world and killing countless people. You want that?"
"Of course I don't want that." He looked back at the books, his eyes gleaming darkly. Of course he didn't want that. But he didn't want Angel dead, either. Whatever unknown obstacle was making their relationship so tense just lately, Angel was still the best friend he had ever had. Killing him was unthinkable. Weatherby smirked at him.
"You sure, Wes? You don't sound too certain. Maybe you really do rate vampires higher than people."
"I rate some vampires much higher than I do some people, that's for sure." Wesley's tone was dark and sharp, but Weatherby didn't seem to notice. He was a hard and brutal man, with an aura of strength and cruelty, and any vibes that he did sense were not enough to make him back down. He didn't need to; he knew full well that he had nothing to fear from Wesley.
"Well that's nice. Honestly, you make me sick, Pryce. Protecting this vampire once was bad enough, but now you're trying to save his life at the expense of probably thousands of humans. We must need our heads examining, ever bothering to come to you for help."
"That'll do, Weatherby." Collins stood up, stretching casually, playing his old, genial rôle once again. "Wesley, we understand how you feel."
"No we don't," growled Weatherby. Smith laughed. Collins smiled faintly, but held up a hand for silence.
"We do know how you feel," he corrected gently. "I know Angel is your friend. Or at least you think he's your friend. You've known him a long time, you've fought a lot of battles alongside of him, am I right? You think he's worth more alive than dead."
"He is worth more alive than dead. He saves countless people. You've no idea of the good work he's done."
"Then why not ask him what he thinks you should do?" It was a gentle enough suggestion, and if Collins hadn't been such an odious man, Wesley might have been impressed by it. It was almost reasonable, after all. He shook his head, his repulsion for his three companions rather destroying any chance of taking the suggestion seriously.
"There's no point in asking him. Knowing him he'd hand me the stake himself. Angel would be the first to offer his life if he thought that it was the best way to save the world. He's always been the first to choose the honourable path." He smiled faintly at the thought; Angel's willingness to sacrifice himself was one of the main reasons why Wesley was so determined to protect him. Weatherby just scowled though, unimpressed by the idea of a vampire ready to die for humankind.
"If he doesn't mind dying, why not give him the chance. Let him be heroic, and do us all a favour. He's just some damn vampire, anyway. Time you remembered who the hell you are, and which side you're supposed to fight for."
"You might want to think twice about saying things like that." Wesley spoke quietly, but his voice had the power to carry whatever the volume. Beneath the stubble he was white with anger, but such signs were not inclined to bother Weatherby. The other man merely laughed at him.
"You're a joke, Pryce. A sick, twisted joke. A human who cares more about vampires than humans. A human who'll let thousands die just to protect a godless creature who should have died hundreds of years ago." He picked up the nearest of the books that Wesley had been studying; a massive tome that he himself had acquired from a London book-dealer several days before. Not that he thought about that now, nor even recognised the book. Not that he remembered taking it from the broken fingers of the dealer who had tried to protect his wares from a man with no intention of paying. He merely felt the leather in his hand, and the weight of all the pages, for the few furious moments before he threw the book straight at Wesley's head. The other Watcher reacted with a speed Weatherby hadn't been expecting, dropping to the ground and rolling aside, coming up again closer to his tormentor with a gun in his hand that nobody remembered seeing him draw. He levelled the gun at Weatherby's head, and smiled a taut, mocking smile.
"You were saying?" he asked. Weatherby swallowed hard.
"You wouldn't shoot. If you do you'll just be proving me right."
"There's nothing to prove." Wesley took a step closer, moving slowly and smoothly and keeping the smile at full mast. "I don't deny it, Weatherby. I do care more about Angel, certainly than I do about most humans. Do you have any idea how many lives he's saved? How much he's endured to prevent death, destruction, disasters? Do you know how many times he's saved the world, saved humanity? He's not the godless creature, Weatherby. We are. All of us, here in this room. You name me one Watcher who's done half the good that he has, yet we're still here talking about killing him." He let the smile drop, and lowered the gun as well. "Now we're going to find some other way of ending this. Put the feelers out; find Beatrice. If you've got half the contacts in this city that the Council used to, you should be able to find something."
"Not if we don't intend to try." Weatherby eyed the gun, clearly thinking of all the things he would like to do to Wesley if he could only be sure of disarming him first. Collins stepped forward, moving slowly, his own eyes also on the gun.
"You know the Council, Wes. Old, outdated, largely useless. Their contacts were as hopeless as they were. We could probably call in a few old favours, but they wouldn't do us any good. Beat the living daylights out of some twisted supernatural creature in a sewer, and what have you got? Spilt blood in any one of a thousand colours, and a twisted supernatural creature with a few more bruises. Nobody is going to tell us anything. They all know who we are."
"Then I'll ask."
"And what good with that do? If they don't know yet who you are, they soon will. Somebody will have seen you with us, and you know how grapevines work. Wesley, nobody in London is going to speak to a Watcher. They're all still afraid of whatever killed the Watchers. None of them want to risk the wrath of something big enough to take out the whole Council. And even if they did, they certainly don't want to be seen helping the Council's most notorious assassins."
"I don't care."
"You should." Collins smiled patiently. "Wesley, we're going to take out Angel, and the only way you can stop us is by killing us. Do you think you can kill all three of us before we kill you?"
"Yes." Wesley didn't even think about it. Collins' confident expression wavered slightly, but he persevered nonetheless, and his calm smile returned for a slightly less calm encore.
"So say you try. And say one of us survives. Say all of us do. Wesley, if we go after Angel without you to help us, people are going to get hurt. There's no telling who we'll have to go through to get to him."
"And you think I care about the staff at Wolfram & Hart? They're a means to an end, that's all. I'm not one of them, and I never will be. Even the ones who aren't evil just haven't had a chance to turn that way yet. It's hardly a case of them not wanting to be."
"I don't mean the general staff, Wes." Collins had the gleam in his eye of a man who knew that he had some leverage to use. "I mean the others. Your team. There's several of you, aren't there. The heavy, the Texan girl? A demon you seem to think of as a friend? Things can happen, you know. Accidents. People get hurt. Demons get hurt. Sometimes people die." He hesitated for a moment, rather put off by Wesley's silent advance. "Hey, there's no need to look like that. It's not like we'd kill anyone on purpose. But these things happen."
"You wouldn't." Wesley levelled the gun again, this time at Collins, and his pale blue eyes glittered coldly. "You may be the most abhorrent excuses for human beings that it's ever been my misfortune to come across, but you're still Watchers. You're sworn to protect innocent lives."
"We're sworn to do what we have to do, Wesley." Collins couldn't take his eyes from the gun. "We're not from the same drawer as you. And besides, anybody who makes it their business to get involved with the likes of you and Angel can't exactly claim to be innocent. You make us go after Angel without you there to get us in, and we can't promise that it'll all go smoothly. Help us, or risk losing more friends than just Angel." Seeing something flicker in the pale eyes, he took a chance and reached out, very slowly pushing the gun down to point at the floor. Wesley didn't resist. He was unable to pull his mind away from the thought of his friends, all dead at his own instigation. Fred, Gunn, Lorne - he didn't want to think about it, but the image of gunmen bursting into the offices at Wolfram & Hart, and leaving Fred's broken body on the floor, was more than he could cope with. He could certainly take out one of the three assassins - probably two. He might even be able to kill all three of them. But was it worth the risk? It only took one of them to shoot before he could, and one of them would still be alive to carry out the mission. And he himself would be dead, and unable to save anybody. Not Angel, and not the others. Collins twisted his wrist and took the gun away.
"Sensible decision, old man," he said, in a falsely cheerful voice that grated on Wesley's nerves. "Now go and sit down."
"If anybody at Wolfram & Hart dies, Collins; anybody at all who means anything to me; I'll kill you. All three of you."
"Somebody at Wolfram & Hart who means something to you is going to die, Wes. Just as soon as we can get over there." Collins unloaded the gun, then tossed it over onto the table. His smile was gone, and all pretence at geniality had gone with it, for that particular act had long since ceased to have a purpose. "And the sooner the better. We've wasted enough time as it is."