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Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Yet another one-shot in my 'Angel of the Bones' series, this one looking at how Seeley Booth decided to deal with the frustrating threat posed by Christopher Pelant, after Pelant's ultimatum in "The Secret in the Siege" crossed the line Booth couldn't accept…

AN 2: To those regular readers of this series, assume that Hannah never happened but Brennan still took time to consider the idea of actual marriage (And Christine was still conceived at the same time as Brennan wasn't emotionally ready to consider motherhood for a while even if she was ready to pursue a relationship)

The Spell and the Hacker

The moment he'd finished his phone call with Pelant, Booth knew what he had to do.

He didn't like delving into that part of his past any more than he had to, even after Bones and the rest of the squints had accepted him back into their lives so easily despite their shocking introduction to his past and their confrontations with Angelus, but after Pelant had crossed so many lines this past year, it was this final attempted ultimatum that made up Booth's mind.

He'd let the bastard force Brennan into hiding for months, let him get away with creating fake papers to evade arrest, let him take Hodgins' money and cripple Flynn, let him nearly manipulate a young woman into killing Sweets just to make a point…

But when he gave an ultimatum that would stop Booth getting married to the woman he loved, after everything Booth had fought for and overcome to reach a point where he could have a life like that…

Booth wasn't going to take it.

He could stand getting kicked in the metaphorical teeth again, but he was not going to break the heart of Doctor Temperance Brennan because some psycho with a twisted crush couldn't accept that she was never going to love him and wanted to make Booth hurt her instead.

Tracking spells were complicated, of course, but he'd spent enough time during his year at Wolfram & Hart going over Fred and Wesley's research, as well as the company archives, to have some ideas about how to adapt a spell for his current purposes. Add in a particularly neat little amulet he'd picked up a while back after remembering some of Lindsey's tricks during his return to the city- he wasn't interested in being constantly invisible to security footage in case it raised questions, but something to temporarily turn him invisible was another matter- and it shouldn't be too hard for him to pull this off…

A few hours later, as he drove towards the abandoned factory that was apparently Pelant's chosen base, even Booth was surprised at how easy it had been. Having put on the amulet to deflect electronic surveillance, followed by performing a quick spell focusing on his own mental image of Pelant performed in front of the hacker's file, it didn't take long to identify his location. Not even pausing to let Bones know where he was going- given Pelant's mentality, he guessed that his foe was more concerned with tracking his partner than him at this point- Booth headed down to his car and set off for the base, dressed in his 'Angel' attire of leather duster and dark shirt and trousers.

He was going to try and play this by Booth's rules, but it just felt… right… to do this kind of thing as Angel.

Reaching the building, it didn't take long for him to find a suitable way in; Pelant had set up a fairly detailed surveillance network, but everything he saw relied on the idea that Pelant would see someone coming in and be able to react accordingly, which naturally wouldn't do him any good with the amulet taken into account. Walking casually through the factory, Booth followed the hum of power until he finally found the heart of Pelant's operation, grinning as the hacker turned around from his wall of computer screens to stare incredulously at the intruder.

"Hello, Chris," Booth said, cocking his gun as he took in his foe's shock. "Hope you enjoyed your last day of freedom."

"How-?" Pelant began.

"You thought you were the only one with cool tricks?" Booth said, already certain that he wasn't going to give Pelant any more than that; as amusing as it might be to see the guy's expression when he learned that magic was real, he'd settle for just seeing the bastard die. "You know, that arrogance is one of your major problems."

"It's not arrogance when it's fact-" Pelant began.

"Actually, that is your main problem," Booth interrupted, glaring coldly at the arrogant hacker.

"What?" Pelant asked, smiling back at him. "That I'm more intelligent than you?"

"No," Booth said firmly. "That you're a big baby."

The former vampire was eminently satisfied to see his adversary so utterly caught off-guard by that proclamation.

"What?" Pelant said, looking at him incredulously.

"Everything you've done for the past few years, ever since you first broke into the FBI database and got arrested for hacking, has basically been mothing more than a cry for attention," Booth explained, smirking in satisfaction as his opponent stared at him in ever-increasing outrage. "Whatever your 'official' explanation for doing that might have been, you didn't break into our databases because you had some 'moral objection' to what we were doing; you did it because it was the best way to get people to pay attention to you for any reason."

"I hacked those databases because-"

"Because you wanted attention; you couldn't actually give a shit about whatever the FBI gets up to so long as exposing it makes people notice you," Booth countered. "You're one sick son of a bitch, but in the end, all you've done is basically nothing more than a big baby going 'wah, wah, wah, pay attention to me, clean me, change me, feed me'-"

"You-!" Pelant began.

"Oh, and one more thing," Booth said, uninterested in hearing this psycho's further rants. "Bones would never love you."

He was equally satisfied to see Pelant's eyes widen in further shock at that statement.

"How-?"

"I've been around enough stalkers over the years to recognise when a psycho thinks he's in love," Booth said, shaking his head in a mocking expression of pity. "Actually, that just reinforces my earlier comment about you basically being a baby; all the crap you've done to her is basically the psycho-big-kid version of pulling pigtails and pushing girls over in the playground."

"I am not-!"

"You are that pathetic, Pelant," Booth said firmly. "You spent years being subtly treated as a freak because even the other kids didn't like you even if they couldn't explain why, and when you got old enough you started lashing out and hurting people because you couldn't think of any other way to get people to notice you other than making them hate you."

"I'm-!" Pelant began.

"You're nothing," Booth said firmly. "You're not out there trying to make a political statement because you object to policies for any real reason; you just want people to pay attention to you and found it easier to do that by hurting people than helping anyone. We have more than enough hard evidence to put you away for life if you don't just get the death penalty for all the crap you've pulled-"

"NO!" Pelant yelled, turning towards his computers before Booth fired a series of quick shots, each one destroying a monitor or a hard drive while neatly missing Pelant despite his close proximity to his equipment.

"You don't get out that easy, you goddamn son of a bitch," Booth said firmly, grip tightening on the weapon as he stared at Pelant. "You're coming with me, you're going to court, you're going to jail, and then, if you're very, very lucky, you'll get the death penalty and that will be that."

"That's lucky?" Pelant spat at Booth even as he raised his hands in a surrendering posture; whatever else Pelant might be good at, Booth was fairly sure hand-to-hand wasn't one of them.

"Yes," Booth said, keeping one hand on his gun as he walked up to Pelant to apply the handcuffs with his other arm. "Because every day you're alive, I'll be making every effort to ensure that your stay in prison is highly uncomfortable; at least after it's over, you'll know what to expect."

He didn't often take pleasure in thinking about people going to Hell to endure what he'd lived through after his encounter with Alcathla, but Pelant was one of the few cases where he felt Hell was unquestionably what this sick puppy deserved…

As for him, he was just looking forward to sorting out the fine details of his upcoming wedding; the sooner he was married to Bones, the happier he'd be.