Part Three
Angel stormed down the corridor, ringing Wesley as he went. 'Wes, it's me. Doyle's hurt. Something mystical. He can't stop having visions...he's at the hospital. I'm off to try and sort this out, will you come and sit with Cordelia?' He hung up the phone and bumped into Kate.
'Angel!'
'Kate.'
'Are you killing something here as well?'
'I'm sorry Kate, I don't have time for this…' he moved past her. She watched him out, and then turned back to look the way he had come. The Detective was in the hospital because she had had to conduct an interview with a victim of assault. She wondered what the vampire had been doing there. She wandered down the corridor towards the room that Angel had just exited. Through the door she saw Cordelia stood next to a bed. Strapped to the bed was Doyle, and he seemed to be in a lot of distress, writhing in pain and crying out in agony. Cordelia was crying and holding his hand. A nurse was trying to get close enough to inject him with a sedative, but he kept thrashing around and she wasn't having much luck. Just as Kate reached the threshold of the room, Doyle let out a cry of unbearable pain, his skin turned green and the blue spikes shot out from under his skin. The nurse began to scream...
Angel found Gunn around the back of Milano's Italian Kitchen, he and his gang were loading boxes of leftovers into their truck. 'Yo, what up, man?' Gunn asked when he saw the vampire approaching.
'I need your help,' Angel told him.
'Well I didn't think you'd come down here just to inquire after my health. It's pretty good by the way. What you need? 'Cause if it involves throwing a vamp in with a bunch of lawyer types, count me in! That was my idea of fun.'
'My friend has been attacked, something has hacked into his visions and he can't stop having them. He's in the neuro-psychiatric unit at St. Mathew's. My other people are with him. This whole thing has got a Wolfram and Hart stink to it and I need you to keep an eye on my friends whilst I track down the cause of this and stop it. I don't want anyone, demon or lawyer, getting within a hundred yards of my friends. This man means a lot to me, I have to save him, but I need to know he's safe whilst I do.'
'No problem… Hey! Throw down with a lawyer for me, yeah?'
The nurse had backed away from the bed, screaming. Now a demon, Doyle was still convulsing on the bed, and Cordelia had dropped his hand and was leaning across him as far as she could; desperately trying to protect him from the view of the nurse, or anyone else who might walk past in the corridor. Kate closed the door behind her and flashed her badge at the screaming nurse, 'Detective Lockley, LAPD, I'm going to have to ask you to calm down, Ma'am.'
Cordelia and the nurse both looked at her, the nurse was still panting in shock but she had stopped making actual noise. 'Would you give him that sedative please?' Kate asked.
In his demon face, Doyle had stopped thrashing around quite so violently, as his stronger form made the pain more bearable. He still shuddered and shook as the visions crashed into his mind, but it would be possible to get near enough to inject him now. The nurse looked at him, unwilling to get any closer to the green monster on the bed. 'Ma'am, he needs that sedative, please give it to him.' She sounded calm and in control, and that made the nurse calmer as well, having someone take charge in this unprecedented situation.
Nervously she approached the spiky, green thing on the bed, thankful that it was restrained, and plunged the syringe into its arm. As the drugs took effect, Doyle went still, but his red eyes were glassy and Cordelia could tell that the sedative hadn't stopped the visions, it had just stopped him from moving. He was still in pain.
'Now ma'am, this room is going to have to be off limits unless Miss Chase calls for a doctor. I'm going to have to ask you to leave and not tell anyone what you saw, is that clear?'
The frightened nurse nodded and scuttled out of the room, relieved to be away from ...whatever that thing was. She wasn't going to tell anyone about it - they'd think she was crazy.
There was a quiet moment in the room after she'd left. The two remaining women looked at each other. 'Thank you,' Cordelia said.
'No problem.'
'Why did you…?'
'He saved my father's life,' Kate told her. 'And I shot him for it. This is the least I can do to repay him. Is there anything else I can…?'
'Could you … could you stop anyone else from coming in here? And seeing him like this?'
'Sure, I'll sit right outside.'
The detective left the hospital room, inching her way through a crack in the door so as not to expose the contents of the room to anyone who might be passing. She shut it behind her and then pulled up a chair. She settled down, wondering how long it would be before Angel fixed this. She didn't doubt for a moment that he would.
Wesley arrived at the hospital, laden down with the books he had found at 'The All Seeing Eye'. He went to the nurses station and asked which room Francis Doyle was in. The nurse gave him a startled look, almost as if she expected him to suddenly sprout horns or something, and then scurried away, refusing to answer his question. He looked after her, a bemused expression on his handsome face, and then decided to go and find Doyle and Cordy for himself.
He met Kate out in the corridor. 'Detective Lockley!' he greeted her, 'What brings you here?'
'Routine assault case, primarily,' she told him, 'but then Doyle turned green and frightened the bejesus out of the medical staff, so now I'm making sure no one goes in there and sees him.' That explained the nurse's reaction, Wesley thought. 'He's just in there, go on in,' Kate said. He nodded his thanks and went through the door. As the door closed and Kate resettled herself, she noticed a young, tall, black guy in a bandanna walk into the waiting room and sit down, he didn't seem to be with anyone and she wondered what he was doing there.
Cordelia looked up in alarm as the door opened, but then sat back down, relieved, when she realised it was just Wesley. Doyle was lying still on the bed, his hands strapped down, and he was still wearing his demon face. He was moaning, but no words were intelligible, his eyes were glazed over and it seemed for all the world like Doyle wasn't really there any more. He had retreated into himself, into the pain, and all that was left was his demon outer shell. Cordelia looked heartbroken.
The watcher sat down beside her, 'How are you?' he asked, it seemed pointless to ask after Doyle. She just sniffed. 'Can I get you anything?' he wanted to know, 'something to eat? a coffee?' she shook her head, then her face crumpled and she began to cry, in earnest. Wesley put his arm around her and began to stroke her hair, soothingly. He looked at where she was holding Doyle's left hand in both of her own and frowned. There was a smudge on Doyle's skin that the British man did not recall ever having seen before. 'Cordelia, does Doyle have any tattoos?' he asked. She looked at him as if he was crazy, but she answered: 'No, he doesn't like needles ...why?...'
'Look at this mark,' he pulled Doyle's hand free from her own and showed it to her.
'What is it?'
'I don't know, but it's a bit of a coincidence ...he gets a mysterious mark on his hand and suddenly the visions won't stop.'
Cordelia sniffed again, 'what do we do ?'
'I'm calling Angel.'
The vampire had just reached the post office when his cell rang, 'hello?'
'It's me...Angel, did you see the mark on Doyle's hand?'
'What mark?'
'I don't recognise it … it's black, has a circle at the bottom and it's attached to something else...maybe a scythe?'
'It looks a bit like a unicycle,' Angel heard Cordelia cut into the conversation. The watcher sighed a bit. 'It's clearly an ancient and mystical symbol ...but she's not wrong.'
'And you think this symbol is what's causing the visions?' Angel asked.
'I should say so...what do we do?'
'I'm going to visit some old friends,' the vampire told him and clicked his phone shut.
Inside the antechamber, before the gateway to lost souls, Angel prepared the ritual. He remembered the first time he had seen this done, the day he had become human and Doyle had brought him here to seek answers. Well he wanted answers now. He placed some herbs into the urn that stood there, and then used a zippo to light them. 'I beseech access to the knowing ones,' he said. There was a flash of bright, white light and the doorway opened. Angel stepped into the chamber of the oracles.
He stared around in disbelief. The oracles lay on the floor, slaughtered. A scythe was buried into the body of the sister oracle. He realised, as he looked at the bodies of the immortal beings, that this was an all out attack on him and his link to the powers. It was no coincidence that Doyle was incapacitated the same day that the oracles were killed. Someone had declared war on The Powers that Be.
The ghostly image of the golden woman appeared beside him. 'It is unfortunate,' the spectre said. 'Things are unravelling. The dark ones broach our temple now.'
'Can you help me?' Angel asked.
'I cannot stay long. I've been dead a while. So far I don't care for it.'
'My friend who gets the visions…'
'Is in trouble. He bears the mark of the one who did this.'
'Who did this?'
'A demon. Named Voca. A warrior of the underworld. He wanted you weak, so he severed your link to the powers and opened the messenger's mind to all the suffering in the world. I'm afraid the half breed does not have long now.'
'How can I save him?'
'You need the scroll, the scroll of Aberjian. Voca has taken it. Only the words of Anatole can remove the mark and save your friend.'
She began to fade out of existence.
'Wait! How can I find this Voca?'
'He is here for the raising,' she said, her voice echoing as if she was a long way off now. 'As with so many of them, he hides behind man's law.' She vanished away, dissolving like mist. Angel was left alone; he pulled the scythe from out of the sister oracle's body and left the chamber, a gleam of furious determination in his eyes.
Wesley's cell rang. 'I can save him,' the vampire barked down the line. 'I need to get the scroll you were reading about, the scroll of Aberjian.'
'You need to go back into Wolfram and Hart?'
'It isn't there any more, but I know how to track it. There's a demon, name of Voca. it's his mark on Doyle's hand and he killed the oracles.'
'He killed the ….? Angel if this demon is capable of killing the immortal conduits to the powers then he is more powerful than anything you've faced.'
'I know … I might not win. If I don't ...the sister oracle said that the words of Anatole are the only thing that will remove the mark and save Doyle… start looking them up?'
'Right away.'
The two men hung up. Wesley relayed the information to Cordelia and they both picked up one of the books that Wesley had brought to the hospital with him. Angel headed into the D.A's office.
Inside a crypt, five vampires were chained to a large box. They were frightened, twisting around trying to get free, but their chains were strong and they were bound in place. The box sat in the middle of a five pointed star, and the star was encased in a circle. Torches illuminated the room from around the sides. Chanting started up and the vampires tried more desperately to free themselves, but there was nothing they could do. The two monks entered the crypt followed by Voca. It was the monks that were chanting: 'We have prepared a holy place in the darkness and anointed it with oil. We have taken of the blood of the living and gathered together the living dead.'
Then Voca began to chant: 'As it was written they shall prepare the way, and the very gates of Hell shall open. That which is above shall tremble …'
The earth beneath them trembled and the vampires twisted in their chains, looking around, terrified.
'For that which is below shall arise. And the world shall know the beast - and the beast shall know the world.'
Outside Wolfram and Hart, Lilah and Holland stood waiting for their Limo. 'Aren't we going to be late?' the younger lawyer wanted to know.
'You never want to be on time for a ritual,' her boss told her, 'the chanting, the blood rites, they go on for hours.' He turned to look at some removal men stood by a van, 'you fine gentlemen will follow us,' he informed them. The Limo pulled up. 'You did cover all the bases, didn't you?' Holland asked Lilah, as they got in.
'Naturally.'
'The senior partners are keeping a close eye on proceedings. I would hate for us to disappoint them.'
'Believe me, sir, they will not be disappointed.'
'Nghuh!' Cordelia grunted in frustration. 'This is the book you had last night,' she told the watcher, 'Aberjian for Dummies? It mentions the words of Anatole, but it doesn't tell us what they are. What's the point of telling us these words exist if you don't bother to write them down?'
'I'm not having that much luck, either,' Wesley admitted. 'I think we're going to have to have that scroll.'
Cordelia put her book down and pulled her chair closer to where Doyle was still lying on the bed. He wasn't moving anymore but he was still groaning quietly; his eyes were glassy and unfocused, and she noticed that tears were tracking their way down his face, in between his spikes. She reached out her hand and stroked his hair. 'I just hope Angel gets it and brings it here soon.'
As Lindsey left his new office, he felt someone collar him and slam him against the wall. 'Hey!' he looked up, it was the vampire. 'What gives?'
'Wolfram and Hart, where would they go to do a raising?'
Lindsey rubbed his chest where Angel had grabbed him, 'a raising has to be done on holy ground, they'd use a crypt. What's this about?'
'Any crypt they're most likely to use?'
'Yeah .. there's one they use for all their darkest rituals.'
Angel grabbed the born again Lawyer once more and pushed him forward, 'You're going to show me.'
