The evil that men do

This story is my second fanfic. I intend to write this before I finish with my big project "The Morning Star".

This is written for all of you Angelus lovers out there;)

The story takes place during season 4 of Angel and season 6 of Buffy and is intended as a crossover story. So in my story season 2 and 3 of Ats happens during season 5 of Btvs, a little complicated but I wanted Angelus like he was in season 4 of Ats to crossover, and I really didn't like season 7 of Buffy (season 6 was just as bad but I can work with it). It begins just as Angel investigations have taken Angel's soul in order to get information about the Beast from Angelus. At first some use of the original lines from the show, but the rest is purely my imagination using Joss Whedon and Co's characters.

No Copyright infringement intended.

The pain was gone. It felt like a heavy shroud that had pressed on his entire body, suffocating him, had been lifted. The agony had been every second, as he remembered the faces and the deeds. Now the memories didn't hurt him, now they gave him strength and pleasure.

He turned on the bench and saw the faces of his little detective club. As he saw their worry, and in some places outright fear, he started laughing. They had really set him free just to get some information out of him? Man, they really were as stupid as they looked.

Slowly they all turned round one after the other and marched out of the cellar, his laughter ringing in their ears. This could really turn into something interesting, he could already sense the doubt in several of them.

Angelus hummed a little tune to himself as he sat with his back to the wall, eying the camera with a smile. Wesley had been down in the basement for hours, trying to get some information out of him. He had enjoyed every second of it as he planted further seeds of doubt and mistrust in the already disintegrating group.

Then little pretty Fred had come down with some blood for him, did they really think he would be contended with pigs blood? He should have snapped her head instead of talking about it, but if he just killed without any art he was no better than Spike. It was an art to spread the fear and doubt in the minds of people before he finally killed them.

He wanted to tear these people to shreds, one at a time. He wanted to punish them for all the human feelings they had forced on him. But in the midst of all this fury he still felt an undefinable loss, like there was a great hole in his heart that something had left in him. He didn't think it was the loss of his soul as he hadn't felt anything the last time he lost it, it must be the blond slayer's influence on him. The pain of not being around her had never abated in all his time in L.A, and at times it was even more unbearable than the weight of his soul.

He felt an uncontrollable longing to see her again, smelling her, feeling her skin and draining her powerful blood. He had never tasted anything like her in all his time of carnage, she had given him a force that would have made him rampage across the town, tearing everything to pieces, had he not had his soul (and the slightly pressing matter of her dying in his arms).

Should he stay here and play mind-games with these lost little children, or should he seek out the supernova of his mind, his sun and his moon, his worst enemy and his greatest love? Should he find her and haunt her like he had done last time, watching and testing her, unleashing his minions on her night after night? Should he force her into his own darkness until she embraced him as he was, a true lord of darkness?

He smiled to himself as he made up his mind. The children had to be taught a lesson, and then he would seek out the blond force of nature.

But first he needed an army to make his presence known in this town, he could make another one when he got to Sunnydale. He had never had any difficulty in forcing other vampires and demons to do his bidding, and he knew a few magic tricks to get their attention to where he was. Other vampires had to use magic to force their minions into doing their bidding, but he had never needed more than the fear they all felt for him. He still cherished the memory of how he had gotten one of them to let herself burn up in the sunlight just to send a message to Buffy. That had been a really good day.

So... He needed to draw a pentagram on the floor with his own blood and do the rite without alerting the others. He really hated it, but if they found out what he was going to do they would tranquilize him, and probably chain him to the wall for good measure. He also needed the blood of a human to make a couple of intricate symbols around and inside of the pentagram. But how could he get blood from one of them without alerting the entire place?

Suddenly he heard the sewer hatch open in the back of the room, and in came just the perfect candidate for his little spell. Lilah came limping into the room, clutching a wound in her side and carrying a crowbar. This was almost too perfect, he needed someone the others wouldn't miss, and how could they miss someone that they didn't know was down here?

He learned from the pounding of her heart, and the smell of the blood on her clothes that she had lost a great deal of blood and probably wouldn't be able to get away if he tried to grab her. On the other hand, she wasn't a complete idiot and purposefully stayed well without reach for him. He had to use simple trick and deceit to get her closer.

"The great Angelus.", she said as she made an attempt at a casual stance. The pain of her wound however made her face twitch in agony.

"Oh come on. You can do better than that, huh?." He smiled viciously at her. She smelled so sweetly of fear, coming here and trying to put on a brave face. He couldn't wait to drain her of every drop of blood in her body, but until then he was going to have some fun breaking her down even more. "Try playing up the awe and the reverence a bit. "The Great, Angelus!""

Lilah gave him a heartless smile.

"Great. Being locked in a cage." she stepped a little closer to the line drawn on the floor. Angelus didn't need to look down to see she was still beyond his range.

"Yet still managing to display better grooming habits than you." Angelus casually strolled closer to the bars, giving her a mock sweep with his eyes. "Look at yourself Lilah. All these years wanting to meet me, you couldn't have run a comb through your hair, maybe slap on a little lipstick? Evil doesn't have to mean sloppy." he shook his head as he continued to eye her body, searching for slow reactions and trying to make out if her breathing was too irregular.

"Stop it!", her fake smile had drained away quickly under his scrutinizing gaze.

"Ooh, feeling touchy are we?" his smile grew wider as he noticed how she could barely lift her left arm. That would be his opening.

"The beast. I want you to stop it.". Of course she was here with an agenda, always an agenda with these lawyers. They never did anything for fun. Well now that he had his weak spot, all he needed was to get her closer to the bars. He decided to play along for a while, until she made a mistake.

"Oh, not sure I really want to. Don't get me wrong, not a big fan of the horn job." he strolled to the back of his cake before turning around. "Although he did bring on permanent midnight. Got to give him props for that.".

"Can you do it or not?", the anger and desperation radiated of her like a bad ooze. Angelus smiled inwards, he was getting to her.

"Why is your thong in such a bunch councilor?" he eyed her crowbar, with that he wouldn't need a spell. "You're a professional.".

Somehow that made something snap in her and she gave an almost deranged laugh.

"Working the sewers." She held up her arms in mock presentation. "Beast took everything. Killed them all."

"Salve the damage, he does have a flair for it."

"Not just at the office. Everybody. Field off, liaisons, people who had sick that day." Really? He thought to himself, that sounded a little to planned for the beast he remembered.

"But not me. Not yet." she took a step forward and her toe barely crossed the red line on the floor. "Why is he picking on us, we're the bad guys?"

"Apparently not bad enough. But there is an upside. You have a devoted boyfriend who loves and cares... Oh wait, you don't." he chuckled as he saw another brick of her inner wall smash into pieces. "Your life really is crap."

She turned away for just a second, but that was all he needed. He flung himself across the room and grabbed her by her throat, he snapped her neck before she had any time to make a sound. He then took the crowbar, and with one swift pull he forced the gate of the cage open.

"Free at last." he gave the camera a deadly grin. "Time to visit my friends."

"You guys had any luck" Fred asked, trying not show how embarrassed and guilty she felt.

"Yeah, but it was all bad. Shaman doesn't have the soul, doesn't know who took it." Connor answered.

"Well maybe it's because I found it in Cordy's room upstairs." Angelus voice sounded from the floor above. They all looked up in horror as he held the shimmering vial in his hands. "I really didn't think our little, sweet Cordelia had that kind of evil inside of her. Letting a monster loose on the town, and then making me loose my soul to give you all a big distraction."

Gunn made to grab for a tranquilizing gun, but Angelus disappeared back into the maze of rooms upstairs. They all circled around Cordelia who put on one of her biggest fake smiles.

"Come on guys, it's not as if we can trust him.". She turned to the incredulously looking Connor eying her. "Connor, you won't let them hurt me will you?"

He barely looked into her eyes as Wesley asked the question on everyone's mind.

"You aren't Cordy are you?"

Cordelia turned on him and gave him a gaze that made him shiver in discomfort.

"That simple girl? Thought she could really become a higher being without consequences. I simply needed to come to this plane of existence, and she was stupid enough to let me take over her.

Wesley had a crossbow aimed at her heart, ready to shoot an arrow through her heart.

"Do you think you could kill me Wesley?" She asked condescendingly, "After all these years you would put an arrow into my heart as if was a simple vampire?"

"I will do what I have to." but then Connor threw himself at him, knocking the crossbow from his hands. Gunn reacted instinctively and shot a tranquilizing arrow into Connor's neck, making him slowly fall away from Wesley.

Cordelia used the distraction to try to run for the door, but the moment she opened the door Angelus appeared before her, smiling like he had done every time he knew he had cornered a prey.

"This is where you get off Cordy."

And with that said he sank his fangs into her throat. The warm blood poured into his mouth and he took deep gulps of it, the blood made him feel more alive than he had felt in years, pigs blood really was a poor substitute. Her blood was far stronger than any human blood he had tasted, she was definitely something else. Before he dropped her to the floor he took another deep bite and ripped out a chunk of her throat. He then left her gurgling and whimpering behind himself before he walked inside the Hyperion and closed the door behind himself.

Angelus smiled to himself as he drove his big black convertible along the highway. He had several bruises and cuts, but the fight had been worth it. Sometimes Spike really got something right, sometimes you just had to throw yourself into it with only your fists and fangs.

He lit another cigarette as he contemplated his next move. He hadn't needed to call on any demons to get him out of that cage, he had succeeded all by himself. But now he needed some minions if he was to start another war of the night in Sunnydale, but gods knew that there had never been any shortage of vampires in Sunnydale.

He also needed to figure out where he should stay. He still had his old apartment, but the manor seemed more fitting for a vampire of his status. He just needed to put up some defensive spells against that godforsaken witch so she couldn't re-en soul him just as was starting to have fun again.

Finally he reached the edge of the town, and already he could clearly make out exactly in what direction the slayer was. That sense of her had only grown stronger and stronger over the years, so much that he even started to pick up random feelings from Buffy as he slowly closed in on her.

But as he rounded the corner he could see how Buffy threw Spike into an old house. He leaned against the front of another house as he listened to the fight inside. So little Willy was still antagonizing her? You had to give him props for not giving up, even though it was a lost cause. However he both felt in his sense and heard from the commotion how the fight changed inside, even though the building continued to collapse onto them.

How did he dare? How did he dare touch what was his? It was time to learn little Willy a lesson, he thought as he lit another cigarette, but why interrupt him during such a heated confrontation. Better to wait it out and play the "hurt Angel" card when they where done.

Buffy rose on her feet and looked around nervously clutching her leather skirt to cover up her naked body.

"When... When did the building fall down?"

Spike also looked around with a mischievous smile.

"I don't know. Must have been somewhere between the first and the..."

Buffy looked at him, then at the wrecked building before exclaiming.

"Oh my god."

The bickering had continued as Spike tried to make Buffy stay, and Buffy tried to tell herself how it had been just an accident.

"I'm just saying, vampires get you hot." Spike said with a triumphant smile.

"A vampire, A vampire." She felt how tears began to form at the memory of how he had left her. "But he's gone. You were just... Convenient."

"Too harsh lover.". Buffy and Spike spun around to what still passed for a door.

"Angel?", Buffy and Spike spoke in unison. Spike nervously and a little irritated, Buffy fearful and ashamed.

"Yeah baby." He gave them both a broad grin. "I'm back."

So here it is. Tell me what you think of it. This is just the prolog, but I think it sets the mood perfectly. I don't think anyone has made a crossover with Angelus from season 4 of Angel into Btvs. But I'm not too sure. If you didn't like how I combined/skipped a season please let me know and I will re-edit.

Next update will be considerably longer, if you think i should continue with it.

Have a nice weekend.