Part Two
Cordelia and Doyle were still trapped inside the grocery store, having to give witness statements to the police. 'So - how was it you came across her?' the officer asked, taking out his little notebook. They glanced at each other. 'We were - you know - in the store…' Cordy said. She hoped they never checked the cctv - which would show them running in well after this had all started going down. 'We saw what she did to that stock guy, breaking his wrist - and went to you know … stop her.'
'The two of you?' the police officer raked them with a suspicious glance. 'Why didn't you just alert security?'
'Well - look what happened when security tried to intervene,' Doyle pointed out. 'See - uh - her name's Dana, we know her - a bit. Thought we might be able to talk to her.'
The officer looked around at the smashed up aisle, 'doesn't look like there was a whole lot of talking.' Cordelia fidgeted and looked sheepish. 'You say you know her? The suspect?' the officer clarified. They both nodded. 'But she's been inside a mental hospital for the past 15 years.'
'So we knew how dangerous she was,' Cordelia said, improvising. 'We knew not just anybody could go round approaching her - especially not a guy with a gun. So I tried to talk her round, she attacked me and we were … discussing our differences when the security guy showed up.'
'I tried to get him to back off,' Doyle said, 'but …' he shook his head sadly. The sentence didn't really need finishing.
The cop sighed, and rubbed his forehead under the band of their police cap. 'Man - this is one of those weird ones,' he said. 'I wish we still had Detective Lockley, she always knew what to do with the freakazoid cases.'
'Oh - you knew Kate?' Cordelia asked. The cop looked surprised. 'We knew her too, we actually worked with her on quite a few occasions. We're private investigators - we cover the weird cases too … listen, I know if she were here she would understand that there was nothing more that we can tell you - and that there's not much you can do to stop this lady. But we can - stop her, I mean. Kate would let us go so we can get on with our job.'
The police officer gave her a speculative look, as if deciding whether she was telling the truth or not. Then he sighed - and decided to do what Kate Lockley would tell him to do. 'Well - my report isn't going to make a whole lot of sense anyway,' he said, 'you sure you've told me everything you know?'
'We've told you everythin' we can,' Doyle told him, not exactly answering the question.
'OK - I've got your details, we'll be in touch if we need anything more - you're free to go.'
They thanked him and headed out of the store, back to the Plymouth. 'So what now?' Doyle asked, getting into the driving seat. 'That girl's long gone - and the big, bad demon inside o' her has gone with her.'
'I'm not so sure she was a demon,' Cordelia said. He looked at her in surprise, 'well - how else do y' explain the way she just fought? She whaled on y' darlin' - I mean, you held your own - but it was a pretty even match.'
'Exactly…' Cordy nodded her head at his words. 'That's what I mean.' She twisted in the passenger seat so she was facing him. 'Doyle, I've faced off against vampires, demons and the legions of doom in my time. I've got a pretty good gauge on what their strength is. But I've only ever been hit that hard once before.'
'And when was that?'
'You remember that time - back in the old days - when Faith had just woken up from her coma and she was waiting for us in my apartment? She knocked me out.'
'You're saying this Dana girl hits as hard as Faith?' Doyle asked, sounding surprised.
'I'm saying she hits as hard as me,' Cordelia corrected.
'Oh - you mean …?'
'Yeah - I mean.'
Spike saw her smile from under the dishevelled wreck of her hair. 'What are you grinning at?'
She didn't answer - instead she just launched herself at him, screaming and swinging her bone saw. He dodged the blow. 'Oh yeah, look at the big, bad demon hiding inside the helpless little girl.' He kicked out, and knocked the saw from her hand, it clattered away to the floor. Then he pushed her - throwing her into a pile of debris. 'Why don't you come out of there and we can have a proper go, mate?'
Dana pushed herself up from out of the debris, and grabbed a fragment of splintered wood as she got back to her feet. Spike glanced at the makeshift stake, 'or you could just do that.'
She came at him again, stake raised and thrust it at his chest, grunting. He dodged - once more, and she tried again and again, though every time he managed to move quickly enough that she missed his heart. She came in for one more attempt, but he ducked and rolled out of the way. He got back to his feet but she was already waiting for him. She struck him in the head and then pinned him against the wall - plunging her stake towards his chest.
He caught it in his hands before it could penetrate. She growled at him - in a foreign language. He caught the words, recognising them but not understanding - and he grinned. 'Sorry love, I don't speak Chinese.' He punched her in the face and kicked her away from him.
She hit back - and they went round and round, punching and kicking, dodging and weaving - until, eventually, Dana just grabbed hold of him and launched him across the room, throwing him through the window.
The glass shattered on impact and then he was freefalling through the air. It felt - for a moment - like everything had slowed down. He could hear the wind whistling in his ears and see the fragments of glass sparkle in the air beside him, like fallen stars. And then it was like time sped up again - running double time - as he hurtled towards the ground and smashed into the floor, face first; his whole body slamming against the tarmac amidst a shower of broken glass.
He heard the squeal of brakes and a car pull up beside him, as he slowly got to his feet, shaking the shattered glass from his hair and clothes. 'What happened?' Angel demanded, getting out of the car.
'Oh, I just thought I'd see what it's like to bounce off the pavement. Pretty much what I expected.'
Angel shook his head in annoyance - and moved towards the building Spike had just fallen from, looking up at the broken window. 'Stay out of it - tactical's on the way.'
'Oh right - sure. She'll hang around until they show up.'
'You should've waited,' Angel said angrily, getting in the other vampire's face.
'Hey - keep your knickers on. At least now I know what we're dealing with. It's a Chinese demon,' he told Angel, matter of factly, 'maybe a water dragon or one of those elemental thingies.' Angel just sighed and rolled his eyes, walking away. 'What?' Spike yelled after him.
The elevator bell rang and they both stepped out into the lobby of Wolfram and Hart. 'a psychotic vampire slayer,' Spike said - like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.
'And you let her get away,' Angel said, from between his teeth.
'At least I was trying to stop her.'
'Yeah - how'd that work out for you?'
'At least I know the game now, don't I?' He pulled Angel to a stop. 'I killed two slayers with my own hands - think I can handle one that's gone daft in the melon.'
'You're not handling anything, Spike, OK?' Angel disagreed, 'Wes contacted Rupert Giles - he's sending his top guy to retrieve her.'
They headed into the conference room - where the whole team were assembled waiting for them. There was another figure in there, with their back to the door, who swivelled their chair around when they heard the two vampires enter. He was wearing a tweed suit and holding a pipe. Spike stared at the newcomer. The newcomer stared back. 'Spike?' he put the pipe down.
'Oh for the love of…'
'Spike?' Andrew got to his feet - his voice was frantic. He rushed over and began to touch Spike, feeling his shoulders. 'It's you! It's really you!' he wrapped his arms around the vampire and began to sob. 'My therapist said I was holding onto false hope - but I knew you'd be back.' He pulled back to stare into Spike's eyes. 'You're like, you're like Gandalf the white - resurrected from the pit of the Balrog.' He began to touch Spike's face, 'more beautiful than ever.' He went back to hugging Spike tightly around the neck and weeping gently. 'He's alive, Frodo, he's alive…'
Angel could not keep the evil smirk of delight off his face. 'You two know each other?' Spike cast him a very dirty look. Andrew stepped away from Spike, sniffled, and straightened his lapels. 'Um yeah - um - we saved the world together. I mean, Buffy helped - but it was mostly us.'
Wesley got to his feet and coughed pointedly, 'we were just bringing everybody up to speed on slayer mythology,' he said. He looked around the table at the team - the ones who had never been to Sunnydale - and opened his mouth as if to start talking.
'I'll take it from here, Pryce,' Andrew interrupted him, 'best they hear it from an expert.'
'Oh right, let the top man have a go,' Spike scoffed.
Wesley raised an eyebrow, but smiled pleasantly and sat back down. 'Please … enlighten us.'
Andrew walked back to the table. 'Gather round and attend if you will,' he said in his storyteller voice, 'to a most unusual tale I like to call … the slayer of the vampyrs.' He rested his fist on his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment. There was an awkward silence around the table - and he coughed, lowered his hand and continued talking. 'Aeons ago, on the dark continent,' he walked around the table, 'three wise elders decided to fight evil with a taste of its own sinistro.' He stood behind Fred and put his hands on her shoulders. 'They took a young girl and imbued her with the power of a demon,' he crooked his forefingers next to Fred's temples - making rudimentary horns. 'Thusly, the first slayer of the vampyrs was born.'
He walked further round the table, coming to a stop behind Wesley. 'But alas - the existence of a slayer is often brutal and short lived. And the "primitive" as she was called boasted no exception. But … the elders had foreseen this inevitability and had devised a way for her power to live on.'
'In each generation one is chosen,' Fred said.
Andrew nodded. 'There are many potentials as we experts call them.'
'Hundreds - maybe thousands - per generation,' Wesley clarified for the team.
'Each of them experiencing vivid dreams - some say nightmares - of the heroics of past slayers. But only one may be chosen.'
Angel sighed deeply and then forced a smile. 'That's really great, Andrew, but we already knew all this.'
Andrew picked up his pipe and lit it. 'You think you know, my good man, you think you know.' He inhaled - and began to choke.
Lorne was looking confused - and a little worried. What he was hearing couldn't mean anything good for a girl he'd come to care about just last year. 'So - if there's only one slayer, what is little-miss- whack-your-head-off doing running around?'
But Spike was smiling, 'little Sunnydale surprise,' he said.
Andrew sat back down at the table - and told the tale. 'Six months ago, Buffy, vampyr slayer extraordinaire, had her lesbian witch make with the beaucoup de magie. Facing an unbeatable peril in the incorporeal First Evil - and with nothing but an army of young girls at her back, scared for their lives and untested in battle, Buffy had Willow use the essence of the slayer scythe to call forth the power of the slayer line and imbue it in all those who might possess it. One light show later…'
'And all the potentials become slayers,' Angel nodded, understanding all of a sudden how it was Buffy had managed to defeat the First when, just the night before - the night he'd given her the amulet - she had seemed sure she would lose. After all - that was why she had rejected his help, why Spike had ended up wearing the amulet. Angel had been Buffy's second front for when the First got past Sunnydale. Or that was what she had told him - he refused to believe that she had simply chosen Spike over him to be her champion.
'An army of slayers,' Wesley said thoughtfully - wrapping his head around a concept that flew in the face of everything he had ever been taught. It was so like Buffy - she had always turned her back on tradition, on the council. His father must be fuming with rage, if he knew. But - he had to admit - it did make more sense than just one girl in all the world. It was a brilliant stratagem. But - ever the watcher - he still had questions. 'With the watcher's council destroyed, how will these new slayers receive their necessary…'
'Mr. Giles and a few key Sunnydale alum have been tracking down the recently chosen.' Andrew reached down and brought out his brown-bag lunch. It had a picture of the Union Jack carefully coloured in on it and Andrew's name written underneath. 'Uh - guiding them, training them…' he took out a ziploc bag of goldfish crackers and began to eat them. 'Giving them the full X men minus the crappy third act. But this Dana girl - she's an anomaly that no one could have foreseen; tortured, traumatised - driven insane by Yoda knows who.'
'And then the dreams of demons and superpowers she's always had suddenly become real,' Angel said slowly.
Wesley nodded his head. 'The dreams of slayers are usually just that - dreams. But Dana's mental instability may be making them seem real.'
'My hypothesis, exactly, Pryce,' Andrew said, sounding impressed. He took a little red notebook out of his breast pocket and began to write in it. 'I see Mr. Giles may have been wrong about you.' Wesley looked like he didn't quite know what to say to that.
But, across the room, Spike was coming to a realisation. All this bugaboo about shared slayer dreams explained why the girl had been talking Chinese to him back at the warehouse. She was thinking of the slayer he took out during the Boxer Rebellion.
'You mean the slayer you murdered,' Angel said to him. Spike looked over at him, irritated, 'well I didn't have a soul back then, did I?'
''Cause it's making such a difference now.'
But Spike had had enough of the chatter. 'You corporates go ahead with your talky talk,' he told the team, 'anybody needs me, I'll be out doing his job.' He jerked his thumb towards Angel and then stalked out of the conference room.
'So what now?' Doyle asked. 'We've got a slayer out there - lost - criminally dangerous … how are we gonna track her? Where do we even start?'
'Could you - you know - go cactus face and sniff her out?'
But he shook his head. He wasn't that good at tracking - not over long distances - and he didn't know this girl's scent. Sure, he could do it, in a pinch, with someone he was familiar with - but a virtual stranger, who he'd only spent time with in his human form… there was no way he could do that.
'But it could take hours for us to look her up on the net and work out where she might go - we don't even know her last name!'
Doyle shrugged, 'I don't know what to suggest.'
'Well we can't just leave her out there!' Cordelia exclaimed. 'Remember how dangerous Faith was when we first knew her? This girl is a step beyond her - several steps beyond. And think about me last week, how dangerous I was - crazed slayers, they can't be left wandering around. It's not fair on the local populace. We need to capture and contain this girl.'
'How are we gonna do that? Even if, by some miracle, we catch her … how are we gonna stop her from runnin' off again? We can't just keep her tied to the bed for the rest of her life.'
'Yeah - I know,' Cordelia sighed and pushed her hands through her hair. 'I've been thinking - maybe we can't do this one alone? Maybe it's time we go to the rest of the team. 'cause I think it's gonna take the full might of Wolfram and Hart to keep this girl contained.'
Doyle gave her a searching look, 'you sure about this?' She nodded. 'I really think it's for the best.'
'OK,' he shrugged, and switched the engine on - driving away from the grocery store and headed in the direction of the law firm.
Spike walked back towards the elevators. Angel left the conference room and hurried after him. 'Spike, you really think this is a joke?'
'Only if you're the punchline.'
Angel reached out and grabbed hold of his shoulder, pulling him to a stop and making him turn to face him. 'Look, we're the last two people that should be confronting her. She's a slayer - she has every reason to hate us and she's unstable. In her mind there probably aren't any good vampyrs.' He winced as he realised he had said the word like Andrew, Spike grinned in delight. 'Vampires,' he hastily corrected himself. 'She exists for one reason - to destroy creatures like us.'
'Dance of death eternal struggle, right got it.' Spike nodded and turned away, walking off once more. Angel sighed. 'You will,' he called after him, 'when she's staking you through the heart.'
Spike came to a stop and turned back, looking mightily irritated. 'What do you want me to do? Go all boohoo 'cause she got tortured and driven out of her gourd? Not like we haven't done worse back in the day.'
'Yeah - and it's something I'm still paying for.'
'And you should let it go, mate, it's starting to make you look old.' With a final smirk, Spike turned back to the elevators - and Angel watched him leave, knowing there was nothing he could say to get through to him.
...
In the doorway of the conference room, Andrew stood watching them, sucking on a juicebox - and listening in to what they were saying.
Dana walked alone through the docks, her bone saw still dangling from her hand. This place … this place was more right. Not quite right - not yet but … the bad man went to the air vent and took away the grille. He kept the box behind it. Dana knew what was in the box. Yellow makes you weak. Brown makes you sleepy. She began to cry and scream … Dana flinched - hearing the echoes of her own screams inside her head. So much pain, so much fear … not anymore.
'Hey, are you OK?' she turned her head, sharply. A man was approaching her. 'You hurt? Miss? You need some help?' He reached out to touch her shoulder - and she stared down at his hand...
The elevator bell rang - yet again - and this time it was Doyle and Cordy who arrived in the lobby. 'Cordy, Doily, hey!' Harmony greeted them cheerfully from behind the front desk, 'what are you guys doing here?'
'Hey, Harm,' Cordelia said, 'is your boss around?'
Harmony rolled her eyes, 'conference room,' she said, ' all of them. But unless you're a flipped out, cuckoo bird slayer they're not even going to notice you're there - they've been locked in there for hours. It's a whole big thing.'
'Cuckoo bird slayer?' Doyle said, repeating Harmony's words, 'you mean - you guys already know about Dana? Well … that'll save us some time. Thanks, Harmony.' They hurried on through to the conference room and pushed the door open.
...
The team were inside poring over blueprints and maps of the city. Angel paced up and down, 'maybe Spike was right,' he said, doubtfully, 'maybe we should just go after … guys…' he looked surprised as he saw his two friends standing there, 'what are you two…?' Even amidst this madness and uncertainty, he was pleased to see them.
'Actually we kinda came for some help,' Cordy said. Angel gestured the bustle of activity in his conference room, 'you know I'd love to - but we have this case and…'
'Mentally unstable vampire slayer roaming about Los Angeles killin' people?' Doyle asked him, then he nodded his head, 'yeah, Harmony said. That's what we're workin' on too. We actually came across her at a grocery store but … she got away.'
'We weren't really prepared for a psycho slayer with her own bone saw,' Cordy said. 'We just thought it was a run of the mill demon possession.'
Wesley nodded his head and looked thoughtful, 'that was our original hypothesis,' he told them, 'however Rupert Giles has sent ...' he coughed, 'someone from the Watcher's Council who filled us in with more details.'
'Turns out, Buffy - well technically Willow - pulled off this neat little trick,' Angel explained to the newcomers. 'Somehow she channelled all the energy of the slayer line and shared it out between every girl who could potentially have been the chosen one. There's an army of slayers out there now.'
Cordelia and Doyle glanced at each other. 'Yeah - we already knew that,' she said.
'You did?'
'Doyle had a vision - back when it happened. I guess Buffy didn't really give much thought to how her nifty little spell would affect … all the girls that it affected.'
'Well, I think she was just trying to save the world.'
'Uhuh - but the side effect of that is this Dana chick … and who knows if she's the only one out there like her? Plus being made a slayer is way inconvenient for ... all the others.'
'So anyway,' Doyle said, 'we knew we couldn't capture and contain this girl all by ourselves - so we came to you - and I'm glad to see you're already on the case. Because um … she really is quite dangerous, if what happened to that security guard is anythin' to go by. We need to find her - and fast.'
Angel sighed and sat down at the table. That was all very good and all - but they really didn't know where to look. And that wasn't the only problem either, as Fred pointed out, finding her was only half the battle. What did they do with her then? Kill her? 'What's happening to her isn't her fault,' she said.
'She is non compos mentis,' Gunn said, absently, reading through some of the files on Dana. Doyle raised his eyebrows at the legalese - but didn't say anything. He sat down next to Angel and put his feet up on the table, crossing his legs at the ankles. 'The girl's leavin' a trail of bodies in her wake,' he said, 'I think we need to find her, sedate her and then worry about what happens afterwards when afterwards comes. Though I think maybe it's fair to say that maybe the facility she just escaped from is no longer equipped to deal with her … unique circumstances.'
Angel nodded. He pointed to the map pinned to their crime board - and all the tacks stuck into it. These were the places she had been sighted since her escape. Tactical were doing a non engagement sweep - looking to find her - but the radius of sightings meant they would have to cover around 60 blocks. And such a search would take days - if they were lucky. This needed to be narrowed down. 'Witnesses say it was like she was looking for something,' he informed the team, 'we need to find out what.'
'Why not start at the source?' Lorne suggested, 'where this started for her. She was abducted from home, right?'
'That was over 15 years ago,' Angel pointed out.
'Houses have long memories, Angel cakes, you just have to know how to get them to talk.'
Angel sighed, 'fine, set it up, but get Andrew in on this. See if he knows … anything.'
But Fred only frowned - she didn't think Andrew was still hanging around. Angel looked put out. 'What? Where did he go?'
Spike prowled his way through the docks - trying to catch scent of the girl he was hunting, or of anything that might lead him to her. Instead - he only became aware of someone dogging his steps from behind the fence. 'Right we can play Cat and Mouse all night…' he reached over, grabbed hold of his stalker and hauled Andrew out of his hiding spot. 'Or I can just wedgie you unconscious and be done with it.' he dropped him, and Andrew staggered a little before righting himself.
'Bravo. I see your senses seem to be as well honed as your Vigo Mortensen pectorals.'
'What are you doing out here, Andrew?' he began to walk away down the docks. Andrew hurried after him. 'This is where the action is, bro, on the mean streets. Can you dig it?'
Spike sighed and rolled his eyes, trying to maintain his precarious grip on his wafer thin patience. 'Go back to Wolfram and Hart. Don't have time for games.'
'Well that's good - 'cause Andy aint playing.' He pulled open his trench coat to reveal several handguns stashed in the lining. 'You're not the only one who's changed,' he said, seeing Spike's surprised expression. 'Mr. Giles has been training me. I'm faster, stronger and 82% more manly than the last time we…' he stopped talking as he tripped over something lying in his path, and fell flat on the floor.
He twisted to see what it was that had caused him to fall, and came face to face with Dana's latest victim, lying dead on the ground with his throat cut out. Andrew began to scream.
The front door opened and Angel, Cordy and Lorne stepped inside the suburban house, alongside the realtor and one of Wolfram and Hart's psychics. 'Hardwood floors, central air,' the realtor listed, 'original wainscoting - it's a real charmer of a house.'
The Psychic walked further inside, closed his eyes and raised his hands - as if feeling for the energy in the room. 'The walls scream with the blood of the innocent.'
The realtor looked unnerved. 'Well - I'll just wait in the car. Holler if you have any questions and remember - it's a seller's market.'
Meanwhile, the psychic was stroking the walls, twisting his head this way and that as he felt the many emotions that still existed within them. 'You sure this guy's reliable?' Angel whispered to Lorne, unable to hide the doubt in his voice.
'Oh yeah - Vernon's top drawer. He does all Tom Arnold's readings.'
'And this really works?' Cordelia asked, 'houses really store their histories in their walls?' Lorne nodded at her, as Angel asked the psychic what he was picking up. The psychic inhaled deeply. 'Fear … anguish … pain.'
'That's nice and vague,' Cordy muttered.
'He needed them to suffer,' the psychic said, catching a glimpse of the man who had done this in his mind's eye. He saw the man approach the baby's crib … and when he was done there, go looking for Dana. 'She doesn't know him … she tries to be still … invisible… but he senses her.' He saw the man lift the mattress from the bed and toss it aside, revealing the girl cowering underneath. Dana screamed. 'She's gone.'
'Where? Where did he take her?' Angel demanded.
The psychic inhaled again - deeply - and then breathed out. 'Dark,' he said, quietly, 'the floor is cold, the air is thick with…' he breathed in, 'dust, and the smell - sickly sweet like … molasses.' He gasped and opened his eyes, 'a basement. That's where her pain lives.'
Dana walked down the concrete steps. This place… this was the place - it was right. The air, the dust, the cloying, sickly smell. This was what she had been looking for. She crossed to the air vent and removed the grille, just like she had seen the bad man do a hundred times. She took out the box from inside and opened it up, revealing the hypodermic needles inside.
The bad man took the syringe out if the box and depressed the plunger, sending some of the liquid shooting across the room. 'Let's try the blue one this time.' He crossed to where Little Dana was chained up and knelt down in front of her. Little Dana stared up into the face of her captor … it was the vampire from before, the one with the peroxide blonde hair.
