Chapter One
Dreams
The boy held them captive. Why? Why had he rigged explosives to them all, even the one person who the boy really loved? Then the boy's father appeared. They were talking, the boy and the father. But...the father was a...vampire? But that couldn't be possible, vampires don't exist. Who was that boy? He looked so familiar. He was-
Connor woke with a start.
The same dream had played itself over and over again in Connor's head for at least two months. Ever since he had stood up at the dinner table and announced what college he was going to. That night he had the first of those dreams. They were all about demons and vampires...but that stuff didn't exist, did it? Then there was a boy who had a father who was a vampire, but he never saw the boy's face. Just when he was about to he would wake up.
Connor must have fallen back asleep, because next moment his mother was pulling up the shades, letting sunlight in.
"Connor!" she sang out. "Time to get up!"
"Ermph." Connor said, his face in the mattress. He picked up his head so that he spoke a known language and said, "Don't make me."
"You have to go to school, Connor." his mother said.
"Who says?" Connor asked, sitting up.
"I do." His mother was starting to sound irritated.
"Why should I?" Connor asked.
"You are walking a very fine line, mister!" said his mother angrily. "Get out of bed and dressed. Now!" She walked out of the room.
Connor felt like if he thought about it enough he could possibly remember everything about the dreams, but then he thought of what his mother might do if he didn't get down the stairs soon enough. He quickly put on jeans, a t-shirt, and a baseball hat. He walked down the stairs.
"Connor! You are not supposed to wear that thing inside the house!" His mother was referring to the baseball cap.
"Aw, mom!" Connor said, but he took it off. He wanted to have time to think about his dream over breakfast.
"Pancakes!" his mother said. "Pancakes for the A student!"
"Mom, my average is a B." Connor whined.
"But you often get A's, like on that essay you did about beavers." his mother said.
Connor groaned. "Mom, I was twelve!"
"And you're seventeen now. That was only five years ago."
"I'll be eighteen in May!" Connor reminded her. "Remember? There's something called my birthday next month?"
"Connor, always so sarcastic. Always so sarcastic." His mother ruffled his hair. Connor ducked under the table so that she wouldn't kiss him. For some reason it seemed weird, like maybe this was a mother of a friend giving him so much affection. He felt like his mother had died long ago...long, long ago...
But he was being absolutely ridiculous. Of course his mother was still alive, unless he was adopted or something. That was possible, but unlikely.
Suddenly there was a honking sound from outside. "Oh my god, mom, I'm late for my carpool!" Connor grabbed his backpack and skateboard and rushed out the door.
"Connor!" his mother called after him. "You- you didn't even eat breakfast!"
Connor waved as his friend drove him away.
"So Connor..." Alex asked. "How's it going?"
"Oh, fine." Connor said. "How are you? Were you really sick for a week, or were you faking it?"
"I was sick." Alex said, but he winked at Connor so that his older brother Greg (the driver of the car) wouldn't know he was lying.
The car arrived at school. Connor put his skateboard down on the sidewalk. "Thanks!" he called to Greg. Greg didn't notice, just drove off.
He and Alex split up once inside the building. "See you in gym!" Alex called. Gym was the only class that Alex and Connor went to together. It was really called Physical Education, but everyone liked to call it gym just to annoy the P.E. teacher.
Connor's first class was science. A few of his buddies were in science with him. So was a girl called Ashley that almost all the boys liked. Except for Connor.
"So...Ashley..." said a boy called Ray.
Connor snorted. He was the biggest fool in the grade, and was likely to do something stupid.
"What?" Ashley snapped from across the table, tired of boys chasing her every which way.
"Heard about that dance coming up? How would you like to go with me?" Ray leaned back in his chair, trying to make himself look cool. His elbow connected with a bottle of iodine and it flipped in the air, landing face-down on his chest, spilling a bluish-purple stain down his front.
Connor and his friend Nat sniggered. That was about the most eventful thing that happened that day.
"So...who're you going to the dance with?" Alex asked Connor in lunch which was right after gym.
"No one yet." Connor said.
"There are lots of great girls in the school." Alex said.
"Some are nice. Others think they're so great." Connor replied.
"I was talking about looks." Alex explained.
"And I was talking about the real person!" Connor shouted, standing up. Then he realized that everyone in the lunch room was looking at him.
"My gosh, Connor, don't have a fit. Sorry if I offended you or something!" Alex said.
"Sorry." Connor said, going red. He sat down and started to eat his spaghetti. "Isn't cafeteria lunch so gross? This stuff is disgusting!"
"What is it?" Alex asked.
"It's supposed to be spaghetti in meatball sauce, but for some odd reason I have a belief it is cow brains in lizard gizzard." Connor said, inspecting the food on the tray in front of him.
Alex laughed. Connor had a talent for making people laugh. He always had. He was said by everyone to be a good-natured person, but that wasn't entirely correct. Connor felt sometimes like there was a terrible tsunami of anger inside of him at the mention of a few words. Jasmine, angel, vampire, vortex, and the names Cordelia and Darla. In fact, for the name Cordelia he felt more sadness than anger. Like it was an old friend that had died. And if someone said something that sounded like Sahjhan or Holtz, Connor felt like screaming.
"Hello...earth to Connor, did you just die or something?" Rob asked. It was the middle of math class. He had been spacing out for almost the entire time. The class giggled, desperate for something other than the boring lectures on Archimedes given by the teacher Mr. Englo.
"Robert, was that entirely necessary?" asked Mr. Englo. "I believe that you owe Connor an apology."
"No, sir, I really don't think I need one." Connor said. The class roared with laughter.
Mr. Englo cleared his throat. "Mr. Brown, I feel it is necessary for-"
"That's not my last name!" Connor roared, suddenly on his feet and angry.
"Excuse me?" asked Mr. Englo.
"I said that Brown is not my last name." Connor said quietly.
"I have it written that it is Brown." Mr. Englo said, checking his attendance list.
"It's registered wrong. My last name is Angel." Connor said.
"Is it now? What a remarkable last name! Except legal records prove that your name is Brown. Sit down!" Mr. Englo barked.
Connor sat down. Why had he said that? His father's last name was Brown, and his mother's married name was Brown. But for some reason he knew his last name was Angel.
"Mr. Brown, that is the third outburst this week. I am sorry, but you are given detention."
Connor rolled his head back and muttered, "Ergh!" Detention. Detention. Detention. That was all the teachers wanted to give him. Detention.
"Honey, how was your day?" asked his mother.
"What, besides detention?" Connor asked. "It was really great."
"Well, just one detention isn't that bad." his mother said. She changed the subject, seeing the grimace on Connor's face. "I heard about this dance coming up. Have you got a date to it?"
"No way!" Connor said. His mother looked shocked so he said, "I mean, nobody asked me."
"Connor, you're a man, men are the ones who ask the ladies." said his father.
"Yeah, like anyone would want to go with me." Connor said. "I'm ugly."
"He's right." Connor's cousin Elizabeth said. "Nobody would want to go with someone that ugly."
"Elizabeth!" Connor's mother exclaimed. "How dare you say something like that!" She turned to Connor. "Connor, you are not ugly."
"Says my mother." Connor said and stalked up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door.
"Think I should have said something?" his father asked his mother. Elizabeth laughed.
Connor was playing on the computer when an instant messaging box popped up. In it was written, "I dare you to break into the law firm building down the road. –Alex"
Connor quickly wrote back, "I dare you to come with me."
"Fine. 5:30. My house. Don't be late." was Alex's reply.
Connor grabbed his jacket and ran out of the house. It was five fifteen already.
Connor pulled back the breaks on his bike, kicked down the kickstand, and jumped off. "Okay, Alex. You're the one who's late." he called to the house. "So get out!"
Alex opened the front door and walked out. "Yeah, yeah, mom had to give me 'The Lecture' on bicycle safety."
"Did you tell her about the dare?" Connor asked. "Because that's strictly forbidden!"
"No, I just told her I was going on a bike ride, which proved to be a mistake. I should have just said I was going out." Alex said.
"Let's go." Connor said. "Or we'll both be late."
They got on their bikes and rode up the hill. Connor was always ahead of Alex's bike. It seemed that Connor was build for speed, for the wind in his hair, for the racing feeling of exhilaration.
"Oh, no you don't!" Alex said, but he still couldn't keep up.
Connor, of course, got to the building first. On it was written in huge black letters: WOLFRAM AND HART.
"Wolfram and Hart?" Connor asked. "That sounds familiar. Very familiar. Where have I heard it before?"
"Uh, Connor, we've been planning to break into it for the past few months." Alex said. "You alright? You've been acting weird lately."
"I'm...fine." Connor lied. He was not fine. He needed to know who the boy in his dream was, why he thought his last name was Angel instead of Brown, why he thought Wolfram and Hart sounded familiar.
"C'mon." Alex said. "Well, come on!"
Connor got off his bike and they walked over to the building. They started with the most obvious thing- the front door. Connor slid it open and they cautiously walked inside, careful to step over the beams of the motion detectors. They opened another door and they were in a lobby. They crossed the lobby and opened a small door. Nobody in the lobby was looking. They sneaked inside...
Suddenly the door banged shut behind them and a fog was rising. It was some kind of gas, Connor knew it wasn't good. He tried not to breath but it curled into his pores, down his throat, up his nose. He and Alex fell over and both hit the ground with a THUD.
A lady opened the door. She had a filter mask on. She turned to the two men behind her, who were obviously security guards. They too were wearing filter masks.
"Take the dark boy." said the lady. "Take him back to his house. Make up some explination to his parents, like he got in a bike accident or something. Mention nothing of this building."
The two guards nodded and picked up Alex. As soon as they were in another room at the other side of the lobby the lady bent down and picked up the unconcious Connor and carried him to the medical lab.
The boy was talking to his father, but Connor did not see either of their faces. Then he saw the father's face. How familiar. Then the father started fighting the boy. He held a knife to the boy's throat. Connor looked at the boy's face. It was a blurry swirl of colors. Then he looked closer.
The boy was Connor.
Connor sat up, coughing. Memories flooded back to him in complete recollection. He continued coughing. Doctors pressed him down, trying to restrain his heaving chest. There was a resperator over Connor's mouth. Then he saw the lady walk in the room. Connor pulled off the resperator. The lady signaled for the doctors to leave Connor alone.
"Clever, Lilah. How did you do it? Memory wipe me, and everyone who is in my 'family'? But why? Now I remember, and all your little plots have been in vain." Connor hissed.
Lilah scoffed. "Connor, the eventual plan was for you to remember. Once you needed to. See, there was something called you wiring everyone in a shopping mall to explosives. We just can't have that happen again. We need you, Connor. You're part of a prophecy.
"Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say." Connor said. "Wasn't I part of a prophecy, you know, the one with the lady that ate people? The Devourer? Jasmine? And she expected me to love her, a being of evil, more that I loved Cordelia?"
"You'll be wanting to see your father, I suppose." Lilah said.
"Yeah, once you give me my clothes back." Connor said freshly. "I don't particularly like lying here, in a hospital ward, with no shirt on and some hospital shorts.
Lilah laughed. "Alright, here are your clothes." She handed him some clothes made of animal skins. Connor snorted.
"Excuse me?" he asked. "Those were only my clothes because there didn't happen to be any stores in the dimension I lived in for seventeen rotten years."
"Wear them." Lilah said.
"Just so that you know, stopping Jasmine didn't stop the apocalypse." Lilah told Connor as they walked down the hallway. "We only stopped part of the apocalypse. The worst is still to come."
"And why are you telling me?" Connor asked.
"Well, we need a full team to stop it." Lilah said.
"Hang on...didn't Angelis kill you?" Connor asked.
"Yes." Lilah said. "But I'm not a ghost."
"I figured." Connor said. "Being that you're not made of ectoplasm, and you're not walking through walls."
"Wipe that smirk off your face." Lilahs said. "Wolfram and Hart's science lab resurrected me."
"I'm not bowing to you." Connor said.
"Always so rude." Lilah said. They stopped in the science lab and a lady in there took off her goggles and squealed, "Connor!"
"Fred?" Connor asked as Fred rushed towards him and hugged him so hard he could barely breath.
"Oh, sorry. Please don't try to blow me up, I know you tried to blow up Cordelia..." Fred apologized, backing away.
"No, no, I'm not going to blow you up!" Connor said. "I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to be back in reality."
"Come on, Connor, I only stopped here to pick up something that I need to deliver to Angel." Lilah said.
"And what is that?" Connor asked, trying to conceal his excitement at hearing his father's name.
"This." Lilah held up a large black camera. "Takes photos of vampires, vampires only. Fred's invention."
Then they stopped and Lilah opened the door. "Stay here until I tell you to come in." she commanded.
Connor didn't protest. He could wait a few seconds. He heard Lilah's voice say, "Your vampire-camera, sir."
"Thanks, Lilah." Angel said.
"I have a surprise for you." Lilah said. "Come in." she called to Connor.
Connor walked inside. Angel leapt up from his desk. "Connor!" he shouted.
"Dad!" Connor shouted.