Power Play – Part 3
"Angel," I called to him as I approached him to give him the Funland report.
"Fred," he greeted me. "Have you met Senator Dearborn?"
"No!" I cried, turning to the woman at his side with a smile. I tried to let my smile be bright, eager, even going so far as exclaiming, "I always love meeting famous people!" But, thinking about how Illyria had seemed so ready to kill Wes, again, should the opportunity present itself, had me losing my grip on the content persona I tried to present to everyone. I supposed only Illyria knew how unhappy I was deep down. Trying to shake it off, I pulled my smile tighter and shook the lady's hand when she offered it, saying, "One time, I met Michael Douglas!"
"Oh, the actor?" she asked, a kind smile on her face. Politicians always get that one down first, don't they?
"Actor? Oh, no," I laughed. "I meant Michael R. Douglas, of Stony Brook University. He's one of my favorite modern physicists. His work on superstring theory has really influenced major portions of my own work."
"Oh," she said, looking to Angel, probably for further explanation. Sometimes normal people just don't get me.
"This is Winifred Burkle," he said, drawing my hand away from the Senator's. "She's the head of our science department."
"Oh? Will you be supervising Doctor Sparrow's work?"
"What? Who?" I asked, confused. Was I supposed to know what she was talking about?
"No, no," Angel insisted. "I'll be supervising that case myself. Don't worry, Senator," he said, shaking her hand, and then that of the aide at her side, "you'll have nothing to worry about."
"Thank you, Angel," she nodded. "You've made yourself a very powerful ally in Washington today."
"The pleasure is all mine," Angel nodded again, watching as they left to the elevators.
"Washington?" I asked, following Angel as he returned to his office.
"Yeah, you got a problem with that, too?" He sounded angry, though I didn't know who'd gotten under his bonnet most recently.
"No," I told him carefully. "No problem with Washington." I watched him shuffle papers around on his desk restlessly for a few seconds before stepping closer and asking, "Angel, are you okay?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Fred," he sighed, meeting my eyes only very briefly. His face and voice softened as he told me, "Not now in any case." Then, Angel took a folder out of his desk and picked up the phone. "Did you come in here for a reason? 'Cause I've got work to do…"
"Oh, right!" I said, opening the file in my hands and laying it out in front of him. "There's been reports of another death at Funland."
"What?"
"That old abandoned amusement park. I can't say yet for sure, but this is the second death in as many nights, and it looks like the work of a demon to me."
"Why are you showing me this?" he demanded, angry with me again.
"Because it's what we do!" I replied, getting angry right back. "Fight the good fight, help the helpless? I thought you'd like something to go hit."
"Thanks for thinking of me, Fred, really," he said, voice almost sarcastic, closing the folder and handing it back to me. "But I don't have time for this right now. Keep an eye on it for a few days, huh?"
"A few days? Angel, whatever this thing is, it's been killing every night! In a few more days, a few more people are going to die."
"So what?" he said, clenching his jaw. "People die. People leave. All the time, Fred. It's not something we have to worry about, not when we have to focus on the big picture."
"Are you sure you're okay?" This was about what had happened with Spike and Buffy, wasn't it? He said he didn't want to talk about it yet, but I couldn't help but ask again, since he seemed so helplessly non-Angel-like.
"I'm busy, Fred. I don't have time to be anything other than okay." With that, he put the phone to his ear and started dialing, ignoring my presence in the room.
"Okay," I said walking away. Yelling back at him, I added, "Just let me know when you're ready to talk about it."
"Don't hold your breath," he said, then turned his chair around and started speaking into the phone as someone on the other end picked up.
I found Fred in Wes' office, pouring over a book on his desk. "Hey," I said in greeting, coming around the desk to take a look over her shoulder.
"Hi, Charles," she responded absently, obviously involved in whatever she was reading.
"Haven't seen you much in the past few days," I said, waving my hand in front of her face to get her attention.
"What?" She looked up at me, blinking. "Oh! Hi, Charles. When did you get here?"
I laughed, a welcome feeling that I hadn't had enough of lately. "Ten seconds ago when you said 'hi' the first time."
"I did? Oh, sorry," she said, turning back to whatever she'd been reading.
"Fred?" I asked her, pulling the book away from her and kneeling down beside her chair so she would look at me. "When's the last time you went home?"
"I don't know," she said, trying to pull the book out of my hands again. "What day is today?"
"It's Tuesday, Fred. I went to the lab looking for you and Mary said she hasn't seen you since Friday morning."
"I've been working a case," she replied, still trying to get the book out of my hands.
I stood up, taking the book with me and walking away a few paces so I could read it without Fred trying to grab it back from me. "Borritz demons?" I asked her.
"Shh! Angel doesn't want us to sweat the small stuff."
"And Borritz demons are small stuff? It says here they've got a poisonous bite and are keen on killing the homeless."
"Last night a teenage girl, a runaway, died," she told me, standing up and taking the book from me again. "I'm fairly certain at this point a Borritz demon was involved."
"And Angel's the reason you're hiding out in Wesley's office, using his books instead of the fancy computer in your lab?" I scoffed, "Yeah, I've been hiding in a bottle of scotch, myself."
"Even though this demon has been killing people every day for the last week, Angel doesn't want to hear about it. Since Spike left, all he cares about is the big picture." Fred huffed and sat down at Wesley's desk again.
"He gave you the 'big picture' speech too, huh?" I sighed, sitting down across from her.
"Yes. Several times," Fred muttered, turning back to her book.
"How is reading about the demon going to help us convince Angel we need to take care of it?"
Fred opened her mouth to respond, but then gasped instead, her eyes still fixed on the page in front of her.
"What is it?" I asked, leaning over the desk to get a clearer view of whatever had caught her attention. The words on the left-hand page were slowly disappearing and being replaced with something else. "You didn't tell it to do that?"
"No," she shook her head as new words appeared. "You are looking in the wrong place," Fred read out loud.
"That's what I'm sayin'," I scoffed, watching as the words on the right-hand page were replaced with a black circle, pointy outcroppings all around it. "Okay," I said, drawing my brows in confusion, "what does that mean?"
"I don't know," Fred muttered before looking up to the ceiling for a moment and nodding. "Illyria doesn't know either."
"I thought you had to talk out loud to one another," I pointed out.
"We've worked out a system for simple yes and no questions," she explained, setting the book down and getting a pen and some paper out of the desk drawers. "It wastes less time." Quickly, she sketched out the pattern shown in the book, though her circle ended up fairly oblong. Fred may be many things, but artist has never been one of them.
"It's probably a wasted effort, but could you go ask Angel about this?" Fred handed me the drawing, standing up and heading for the office door.
"He doesn't want to talk to me," I tried to tell her, but when she turned around, her eyes were and eerie blue.
"Your king wants to talk to us even less, dark-skinned one." She turned to go again, and I followed her.
"And what are you up to, princess?" I asked Illyria, still creeped out by her appearance.
"Winifred and I have come to an agreement," she told me as we walked up the stairs and toward her lab.
"And what agreement is that?"
"It is time to ignore Angel's commands and rid his kingdom of the demon he thinks unworthy of his time."
"This Borritz demon? Why would you help Fred with that?"
"I wish to do violence. Since she will not permit violence toward your kind, I must settle for killing demons she considers 'evil'."
"Do you, uh, want some help with that?"
"No, Charles," Fred replied, stopping just outside the door to turn and look at me. "Illyria and I will be fine by ourselves. Time-bending and super-strength are good for something, anyways. You need to figure out what this means," she insisted, tapping the paper still in my hand.
"Why? We don't even know who sent that message."
"Because it's better than doing nothing, isn't it? It's better than letting another innocent person die because we didn't look into everything that came across our desk right away. Now, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but Angel's been getting worse and worse every day."
"Yeah, Fred," I replied, "I had noticed. First was the senator, and then he started taking all these secret meetings with Hamilton, and just today, I saw Harmony had him scheduled for racquetball with an actual devil!"
"That is weird. I didn't know Angel played racquetball."
"You're sure I can't come help you? I haven't been out on the street, fighting the good fight, in far too long."
Fred's posture changed, her eyes flickering to blue again. "Charles. I have included modern projectiles in my combat style. The risk of your damage in my presence is too great to justify."
"Did you just say you cared about me?" I asked, smiling a little as I teased her.
"I find you most pleasing to the eye. Your death would be unfortunate."
"Okayyy," I said, suddenly realizing why Spike had been so freaked out when Illyria had come on to him. She might look like a human woman, but she sure didn't feel like one when you met her eyes. "I'll go work on this then," I pointed to my sheet of paper and left Illyria in Wesley's office, really hoping she wouldn't get Fred into trouble with this mission of hers. I wondered again whether I should follow her anyway and give back up, but I really didn't relish the thought of being shot by an ex-demon god on accident.
As Illyria and I approached Funland on foot, leaving our Wolfram and Hart company car parked outside the fenced-off area, I wondered, "What's really going on with Angel?
"I have seen this happen with many rulers," Illyria responded as we walked through the abandoned amusement park. All the rides were shut down and rusty. Most of the buildings had broken windows and were covered in graffiti. And there was a homicidal demon somewhere on the loose. I should have been scared, but I wasn't. Illyria made sure of that. "Angel has been corrupted," she continued
"What?" I asked, keeping my gun drawn and my eyes open. "He hasn't been corrupted. He's just sad."
"Because his lover left with another?" Illyria snapped our head to the side, after a small noise that turned out to be nothing.
"Yeah," I whispered, continuing further and wondering why again I hadn't let Charles come with us. "Angel should be happy Buffy is still alive. Some of us aren't so lucky."
"There are many reasons for corruption," Illyria told me. "And once it has started it always goes the same. Now that Angel has realized what true power means, he will only crave more."
"No, he won't," I insisted. "This is just a bad patch. We'll all help him get back to fighting the good fight."
Illyria stopped us again, taking a few steps towards a ramshackle carnival game before turning away. "Angel has already begun pushing you away. He will not suffer intimates for much longer."
"Then we'll just have to try harder to get to him. He's a good person, Illyria. He'll –"
Illyria snapped my mouth shut as we climbed through the planks of an old wooden roller coaster. "There is someone ahead," she told me, taking over as we crept toward the center of the ride.
Suddenly, a man darted out from behind a pile of wood, and we raised our handgun to aim it at him. But he was hurt and wasn't attacking. As he stepped into the moonlight, I recognized him vaguely, "Drogan?"
"Greetings, Winifred Burkle," he nodded.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, lowering my weapon, though Illyria wouldn't let me focus solely on him. "And you're hurt," I pointed out. "Who did this to you?"
"Angel," he replied.
"Our Angel?"
"I'm afraid so. Something is wrong for him to have attacked me like this. I thought having allies against him would be helpful, so I sought you out."
"How did you find us?"
"I can find anyone who has been to the deeper well," he explained, holding one arm, his breath labored and wheezing. "Except for the other vampire, William the Bloody. His location has been obscured from me."
I wondered why the hell Spike's location was being kept a secret. Everyone knew he was back in Rome with Buffy. But then Illyria stiffened and said, "Borritz demon," just as a really strong odor wafted toward us. A big demon jumped out at us, probably looking to pick off an injured man and a skinny girl. But we had other ideas in mind.
I let Illyria take over most of the control, and she said a silent spell that made our whole body tingly warm and slowed the flow of time. We put four slugs into the demon's heart, which I reminded Illyria was in its lower abdomen, before time sped up again. The Borritz demon fell to the ground, making a horrible keening noise and before it could get up, Illyria stomped on its neck, severing its spine and killing it instantly. "Ugh," I said. "I hate how cold you get when you're killing something."
"It was a demon," Illyria replied. "It did not have one of these souls you humans are so invested in."
"Still," I told her, backing away from the demon and holding an arm out to help Drogan walk with us, "it probably had a family at some point."
"You mourn too much over the human man," Illyria said, coldly as Drogan took our arm, looking at us with a confused knit to his brow. "I wouldn't think there be any room for an insignificant demon as well."
"What," asked Drogan, stopping us so he could look in our face, "has happened to you, Winifred Burkle?"
"Oh, that," I waved Illyria's presence off like it was nothing. "Apparently Illyria's personality got imprinted on my brain somehow. And let me tell you, she's not a polite houseguest."
"Imprinted? This is very strange. I've never heard of such an occurrence."
"Yeah, I'm just weird that way," I responded sarcastically. "C'mon, let's get you somewhere safe so we can patch you up."
A/N: Here's the last of my weekend productivity. Don't forget to review!
