Chapter 13

The distant sun set harmless beyond the bruised horizon as dusk arrived in the City of Angels. Willow stepped out of a limo onto the curb before adjusting her cocktail dress then followed behind Franz. They walked to the front of the Wolfram & Hart building. She glanced up at the glittering skyscraper of evil incorporated as she entwined her white gloved fingers with his. If she had been still human and girlishly excitable, she would have said it was a perfect night for romance.

Franz had ordered some charms to ward off seers but he promised it wouldn't make them late for their dinner reservation. Ever since she had sneaked out of the beach house, Franz had tried to keep her occupied. Tonight would be their last in Los Angeles before they headed east to Washington D.C. He had assured her that the only difference in LA and Washington was everyone was at least twenty years older and thirty pounds heavier. It would only be another type of show business. "Imagine this as practice for when you greet Matilda. Reveal nothing on your face including the adorable lip biting. These lawyers drink more blood than we do."

"I'll do my best impression of your professional, businessman, ultra-serious vampire face." Willow tried to focus on the raw sensory experience that was California before she started the newest chapter of her unlife. The balmy smoggy night wrapped around her like a shawl as the rhythm of the city echoed off the asphalt.

"My what?" His eyes twinkled as his smile grew. He squeezed her hand.

She leaned her head on Franz's shoulder and grinned up at him. Death hadn't silenced her sense of whimsy. It only made her more confident in herself.

Then a sickening feeling over came her, her smile faded, and she pulled away from him and hunched over. Dry heaving, she groaned at the pain that burrowed under her skin. It felt as if someone rubbed a cheese grater from the inside. A familiar and hated presence laid siege to the demon's influence. Taken by surprise, she couldn't even set a name to the sensation that ripped through her. Agony dulled her mind. The demon found no defense for this foe as an outside power rallied its strength. Mystical chains bound it in submission.

Falling to her knees, she looked up at Franz with new eyes. Willow was confused and horrified as she got to her feet on shaking legs. Memories that couldn't have been hers drag raced through her mind.

"Willow, whatever is wrong?" Franz tried to take her hands. His gray eyes were wide and searching. Memories of those eyes shifting from possessive, demonic, cold, aroused, angry overlapped the present worry in them. She remembered the blood he shared and the blood he took, the home he broken and the one he had made, she began to remember it all. Like the tide rolling out, she saw the dirty secrets left behind.

She shuddered and backed away as she stumbled again. What had he done? She looked at the limo, idling at the curb, and knew it was the one she had died in."What did you do to me?" What had she done? Willow gasped as she remembered the night before, the fear, the blood, the double murder. It was all becoming horribly clear. Her trembling legs wanted to give way again. "I killed people."

"Oh, no." Franz shook his head as rage clouded his expression. He stood still, empty hands falling to his sides, shocked. "He wouldn't."

Willow backed away as she gagged as blood rose up in her throat. Her head pounded as the sensations and emotions became more intense. Memories built to a crescendo of bitter death and cruel grace. All of it horrified her to the core. This meant only one thing. A soul. She thought of Angel. He had been both her rescuer and her tormenter yet now he was the only one on Earth who could help her. Instinct forced her feet to a run. Spotting a brunette in a dress suit leaving a taxi, Willow raced to the stopped car, hopped in, and told the cabbie. "Step on it!"

"Where too?" The taxi driver turned around to look at her.

"Just go now. I'll pay you double." She slammed the door. Willow looked behind her to see Franz run into the street as cars honked and swerved around him. They locked eyes before he turned to stalk into the Wolfram & Hart building. Holding a hand to the window, she yelled, voice cracking, "Now!"

"You're running, girl, why?" He asked as he merged into traffic. His heartbeat seemed to echo in the car and a rusty smudge of blood lingered near his chin where he cut himself shaving. His brown eyes were concerned as they looked at her in the rear view mirror. "I can call the policia. You look troubled."

"You wouldn't believe me and its too long a story." She told the cabbie where Angel lived in stutters and stops. Her whole body shivered. Rubbing her arms, Willow wanted to scratch her skin away, rid herself of the blood that drenched her, the stolen blood that fueled her.

He urged her to call the police again and then tried to tell her in halting English that his brother-in-law on the police force could help her before offering her his car phone to call her parents.

Willow felt tears come to her eyes at his kindness and concern that she no longer deserved, but she only shook her head. There was no home for her. She had caught the scent of his blood and wondered, horrified, how it would taste. She bit her lip as she forced herself to focus. Falling to pieces wasn't an option yet she wanted to scream and cry. In the silent car ride, she went over the past weeks as the memories settled hauntingly into place. Lost in the last moments of her human life, she hadn't noticed that the cab reached Angel's neighborhood. She gave the taxi driver a hundred dollar bill with as much of a smile that she could muster which was not a frown by only a technicality. "Gracias. Keep the change." Her eyes flickered to his cab license on the dash. "You should switch to the day shift, Mr. Ortega. You're far too kind for this city at night."

Willow turned and made herself walk normally around the side of Angel's office building before she chucked her expensive cellphone, a gift from Franz, more than a block down. Her hearing proved sensitive enough to hear it break into pieces. If she had been thinking straight, she would have tossed it sooner. Franz and his crack team of evil could track her with it. That hard earned composure seemed to desert her with every step. She bolted up the stairs two at a time despite wanting to fall to her knees and scream as her resolve crumbled with every inch closer to Angel. The painguiltshamefear, that she had held bottled up as best she could in the taxi, came loose.

Angel had to know how to deal with this. Was he the one to do this to her? Was it Jenny?

She rushed down the hall before turning to the door of Angel Investigations. Willow looked behind her and ran into Angel, halfway into his coat and staring at her with wide eyes. She looked up at him and fell against his chest, crying. Her will broke and crumbled as she muffled her wild sobs against his shoulder.

He took her into his arms, held her up, and led her inside.

"Either that was short notice or she's a greyhound," Doyle commented as his eyes darted upwards for a moment. "What do you need me to do, boss?"

Willow turned her head, absurdly feeling guilt that his shirt was now stained with her mascara, and pulled away only to stumble against him. She mentally added his gray shirt, probably the lightest color in his wardrobe, to her list of victims.

Angel shook his head, holding Willow around the shoulders, her tears soaked into his shirt. "Its late and they will suspect she came here first. Go lie low for a day or two. Not your apartment."

"Willow, congrats on being soulful and all that. Welcome back to the club." Doyle nodded and walked out after putting on his fedora before he said, "Good luck with her, Angel. Mind yourself, all around, you got enemies mingin' up the mission."

Willow leaned against Angel and all she could think about was that girl that she helped Franz kill in the parking garage and then the bound man- Franz's surprise. Just thinking about how delicious his blood and his struggles had been made her wonder if she could still throw up because she felt sick. After so many years of fighting besides Buffy, Willow had become a vampire. It was as if she had been living on borrowed time since that night so long ago in her freshmen year when she had tried to seize the day and would have ended up Master-food if it hadn't been for Buffy. The Hellmouth had finally claimed her in the city of Angels.

She let Angel guide her into an elevator even as she kept asking, "Why?"

"It was your friends in Sunnydale who did this. I only just learned about it." Angel took his arm off her shoulders to face her. He remembered how hard it had been that first night after the curse when he had wandered the countryside, tearing at his clothes and hair, as his crimes seemed to be branded onto his soul. His heart broke at the loss in her eyes. He wanted to say that it would get better but that would be a lie. "How did you get here so fast?"

"Franz and I were dropping in on his lawyers before going out to dinner. I ran into a taxi and made the cabbie push the speed limit all the way here." Willow looked away from him and at her gloved hands before rubbing her hands on her bare arms and gazing at the ground. "Huh." She bent over and took off her white shoes then picked them up. "I broke my heels."

The elevator door opened and Angel directed Willow to sit down on the small sofa before making his way down to the sewer where Drusilla and Spike still toyed with Lawson. "Willow is here." He folded his arms and frowned at Lawson. He might not have been the puppet master but he hadn't minded the strings until they had wrapped around his neck like a noose. "I guess we don't need you." His eyes darted to Drusilla and Spike. A silent request for privacy passed between them. His focus needed to be on Willow. "Make sure he doesn't get noisy or attempt escape."

Drusilla smiled as she pulled on a opera glove then picked up an antique razor with a mother of pearl handle. "Of course, Angel. Mustn't scare the poor dear away."

"Then he's yours now. I want him near dead by sunrise. I might wake up feeling traditional and force him to meet the sun. " Angel nodded, mood grim, as he gazed at the vampire who had once been a promising young GI. The dripping of the damp sewers reminded him of the submarine and a night long past where he had to make dark choices. Angel had felt profound sorrow in that mission under the sea when he had turned Sam Lawson to save that sub, now all he felt was relief that he would finally let the poor man die and get him out of his hair. "You wanted in the Order of Aurelius. How does it feel?"

"I wanted a mission, Chief." Lawson spit out, resigned and hoarse.

Spike saluted him mockingly but his tone was more gentle. "Good luck with that one up there."

Angel turned and climbed up the rusty metal stairs back to the apartment. He stuck his head out and saw Willow sitting with her face in her hands on the ottoman. He had been in her position once but he had hope for her. She had been a vampire for less than a fortnight so her body count couldn't be that high. Not that it would mean much to the victims. Willow would be haunted but she couldn't have plumbed the depths of depravity so soon. Right now was the hardest time, when one had to process that they were a vampire and a killer and that their body hadn't been their own. He climbed up and out before leaning on the kitchen table across the room from her. "Willow?"

She raised her face and wiped her eyes. "Oh, hi." She looked away and bit her lip as she seemed to come to a long internal debate with herself. "What am I going to do, Angel?" She brushed her hair away from her face. "My parents saw me die, my best friend is the vampire slayer, and I don't know how I can control myself. I could only hear the cabbie's heart beating in the taxi and I just could imagine what his blood tasted like. He kept trying to get me to call the police to find help. Just being a nice guy to a complete weirdo, he couldn't understand. I wanted to bite him. " Willow looked off into the distance. "I must have scared him." She shook her head. "I don't know what to do with myself."

Angel didn't smile but he was amused to notice that the trademark Willow-babble was courtesy of the soul. Her unsouled incarnation had been so measured with her speech. Maybe there was hope for Willow to find her way back to something resembling a normal life.

"How do I make it not hurt, Angel?" Willow looked down. She had been a teenager when she was alive but there was bitter wisdom in her eyes that belied her true age. Sighing, she smoothed down her dark green dress and tilted her head. "Isn't that horrible? I killed two people and I'm asking how to make it better for me." Willow snorted, saying ruefully, as if remembering a time long ago. "The magnificent predator has come down to Earth." His confusion must have been plain because she explained, "Franz called me that once. It was what he wanted me to be."

Angel internally seethed at Franz's name but he kept it off his face as he knelt in front of her and took her hands. "It'll always hurt."

"I'd ask how you stand it, but I guess you just do or you don't." Tears swam in her wide eyes before she wiped them away with a gloved thumb to compose herself. The pragmatic girl who had once asked him what the rules were shone through. "How do you survive between worlds?"

"Practice. I can show you how to built life without a pulse and an assumed identity, even help you find a job in a magic shop, but something bigger has to push you forward." He shrugged. Angel couldn't claim expertise on the subject since he had spent a hundred years drifting in penance until a balancing demon with questionable taste in menswear pulled him out of his funk. It was only after meeting Buffy that he even made contact with humans on a friendly level. All Angel knew for certain was that he didn't want Willow making the same mistakes that he had. "I have a purpose to make amends. " He got up and sat beside her. "You'll have to find what will keep you waking up at sunset."

Willow's shoulders slumped. "Its not just me that I worry about. He told me that he left my parents alive but I can't believe him- or can I?"

Angel closed his eyes for a moment as he collected his thoughts and said slowly, "Franz didn't lie but there is more to the story."

"What?" Willow angled herself to face him. "Don't leave me in suspense."

Angel hesitated in saying the diplomatic and caring words to deliver another blow to the girl.

"Just spit it out already. I'm a vampire now, I'm hardly delicate anymore." Willow rolled her eyes.

"Your father killed himself." He said it as if the sad truth was a bandage that needed to be ripped off quickly.

Willow blinked and turned away as her hand rose to her mouth to muffle her grief. Her dark hair shielded her face from view but it was obvious she was crying again. She shuddered with each sob. Slumping over her knees, she rocked as she pressed her other hand against her eyes. Mumbling between her smothered wails, words like "suicide" and "fault" melded with incoherent regrets. Her words sounded as fragile as fractured glass. She lifted her head, mouth cracked open as if all her screams had escaped, and her wet gaze seemed to pass through him. Her hands fell limp to her sides. "I leaned so much on him that I never realized how much he relied on-," Willow began before sobs wracked her again. Words gushed from her as if blood from an arterial wound. Some soft and quiet, others loud, most were indiscernible. "-felt safe. I could breathe again with him. I was home!"

Even Angel's sensitive hearing, honed over centuries, could barely make out the rest. He didn't need to hear her words to know that she blamed herself as she always did.

"He had tried so hard to make everything up to me." Her head fell back into her hands.

He didn't know what to say to her so he sat beside her in silence, letting her cry on his shoulder, before standing up when she turned away. Getting blood out of the fridge, Angel tried not to look at the crying woman, letting her have privacy, as he tore open the bag of blood. He poured the blood into two mugs before heating it in the microwave that Doyle made him buy.

She shook her head and rubbed her eyes with jittery hands. Willow hugged herself, seeking composure yet finding none, and stood on legs that trembled, threatening to fall. Her raspy voice sounded far away despite the mere yard between them. She closed her eyes as if awaiting the worst when she asked, "And, my mother?"

"She hired me to kill Franz." Angel didn't know how to add that her mother also wanted to stake her. That seemed like the kind of information that he might have to make her a cup of tea before sharing. Maybe wait until she had a day's rest then spring it on her. "She's gotten scarier but she's healthy. Physically."

"What about Xander and Buffy? Oh, god, what about Giles? Is he okay?" Willow rushed the few steps into the kitchen. Her voice grew frantic. She steadied herself on the table.

"He's still in the coma." Angel got the blood out of the microwave and handed her a mug.

She grimaced as she looked at it but she sipped it without comment though she winkled her nose at the first taste. The blood did bring color back to her cheeks and stopped the shivering of her limbs. She gulped it like a shot of whiskey before setting the mug down. Pain narrowed her gaze and tightened her mouth. Clenching her fists, she bit the inside of her mouth before she declared. "Then I might as well have killed him too. Jenny doesn't have the strength for draining a wizard and resouling a vampire."

"Don't take the blame for that, Willow." He could see the weight piling up on her shoulders even as she seemed to retreat inside herself. From his memories as Angelus, he remembered how well Willow could put up her poker face at times of greatest distress. Oceans away from serenity now, she could only throw on a grimacing death mask. Angel wished that she would continue crying, the sobs were better than the rigor mortis of her numb expression.

She gave a spare harsh chuckle that could have been the cousin of a sob. "I don't even know if I have room for that guilt. I'm still not even processing my dad. We had gotten so close these few months. Now, he is gone." She rubbed her temples, mask flickering, as she turned away from him. "I miss that fuzzy panic feeling and the vague sense of dread. My panic and dread is way too clear right now."

"You're safe here." The words sounded false to his own ears.

She shot him a skeptical look. "Even if I didn't hear Spike and Drusilla below us, I wouldn't believe that. Franz is working with Wolfram & Hart. We were going to leave for DC so Franz could be the new liaison to the Order. He has guards, vampires, under his command and those lawyers are willing to give him more." Willow closed her eyes and slumped against the table. "He's going to come after me."

Angel nodded. "He'll try at first. He's being paid to mess with my head, but we can get you out of to-"

Willow shook her head and leaned in to speak quieter. "You don't understand. I'm not saying that he loves me, but he didn't just turn me to mess with you. I think he was lonely." She sighed and brushed her hair back off her face. "He definitely acted like I was his girlfriend at least. I'm guessing since I never actually had a boyfriend before, but we did stuff...you know." Her eyes darted away.

Angel knew that this would be a moment where, when she was human, she would have blushed. A feeling not unlike jealousy rose up in him and he looked away to quell his disquiet. Angel's treacherous mind filled in the blanks based off what he had seen when he had walked in on Willow feeding off Franz and that night he had chased her through the night as only vampires could. He could imagine her saucy unsouled smile as Franz and Willow embraced before their clothing fell. How she might bite his lip or how his professionalism might fall to reveal the man underneath as the two entwined. He could see the triumph in Franz's eyes as a torrid vision of him taking Willow's maidenhead flashed through Angel's thoughts. Angel forced his mind away from the subject. He figured that Franz would stake his claim on her in more way than one, but it was unsettling to think of the memories that she had woken up too. Even his jaded human soul had been surprised and overwhelmed at the debauchery and bloodshed that his demon had engaged in. "Understood."

"I think I should lie down." Willow nodded.

He directed her towards his room, as he was about to leave, he paused at her voice.

"Would you sit up with me? Its like there is so much going inside myself right now. Distract me." Willow's composure fell as she curled up on the bed like a wounded animal. Her arms wrapped around her knees while she bit her lip. The scent of her tears wafted to him. "How did it feel when you were given your soul back?"

"Like a train had ran me over." Angel nodded and sat on the foot of the bed. He told her about the girl that Darla had stolen from the Roma camp and how they had feasted on her thus gaining the ire of her whole family. He remembered running from Darla into the night, mind full of nightmares that were only memories, he stumbled through the city to the outskirts of the forest where the Roma witch had cast her spell. Falling to his knees, in the moonlight as the camp fires shuddered in the breeze, the soul of the man called Liam had seen the wide scope of terror that his darkness had wrought. It had changed him forever just as it would change her. "I felt like slime and hid myself for many years. But I was alone. You aren't, Willow." Angel couldn't help but think about how he wouldn't have to be alone either. He wasn't the only vampire with a soul anymore.

She tried to smile at him before a dark cloud shifted over her expression. "He told me this was what I deserved, Angel."

Despite her emotional anguish, he thought of when he chased her through the alleys of the city, and how his demon could only wish that she had been made by him. To a vampire like Franz, turning was a blessing. Angel had to lie. "No, its not." He covered it with the truth. The human that she had been hadn't deserved to die. "You were a good person."