Angel the series was created and is owned by Joss Whedon. Me? I'm just one of your run of the mill hack writers. Enjoy.
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
(part two)
by Lamech
"So, let me get this straight. Because the vampire screamed like a little sissy baby, you let him escape? PATHETIC!"
Cordelia was pacing around the office in her pajamas. Charming blue sheep decorated the fabric. Angel wanted to make a comment on them but decided best not to. He had called the girl in the middle of the night and asked her to come back to work. She wasn't happy about that. So much so that she didn't even put on her make-up or get properly dressed. Angel never realized how young Cordelia really was standing there without her make-up while decked in kiddy night gear. She looked kinda cute in a little sister sort of way.
But as cute as she looked she was laying it on thick on the young British man. He sat on the couch with Cordelia leaning over him and giving him the third degree. Wesley looked like he had gone through war and back. His hands were grabbing at his sleeves and his eyes refused to look up from the floor. The very posture of a man drowning with guilt. He had failed Cordelia, Angel, Anna and most of all he had failed himself. So when Cordelia was slapping him with insults he didn't protest. He deserved it, every one of them.
Sitting next to him was Anna. She seemed very calm despite the fact that her fingers were fidgeting with her hair and she was ignoring the whipping boy show next to her. Instead she was focused on Angel.
"He's here, Angel. I saw him with my own two eyes. He's here and now I can do what I must do so that Peter can be at peace." She took Cordelia's hand, which instantly made the girl silent. Gently rubbing Wesley's forearm with her free hand, Anna hummed, "Don't be mad at him, Cordelia."
The girl looked at how her hand just dwarfed Anna's tiny, fragile hand and then glanced up at the woman. Anna continued, "I didn't want Wesley to kill that monster. I have to do it. And if we found him once, we can find him again."
Cordelia slipped free from the woman's grasp. She leaned against the banister and sighed. She wanted Anna to be just as mad as she was just so she could have someone to share her crankiness with. But, no, Anna had to act rational. She looked at Wesley who was still scanning the floor. He really is pathetic. But he means well. She bit her lip. Wonderful. His guilt was rubbing off on her. "Sorry, Wes."
The young man looked up and nodded.
Suddenly Angel cleared his throat in order to get everyone's attention. "Anna, we should go now and find him while the trail is still fresh."
"What!?" Cordelia sputtered as she threw her hands in the air, "You expect me to go out into Los Angeles to chase some vampire while dressed like this?" She tugged at her pajamas. "Oh, I don't think so."
"It's very becoming," said the vampire.
"Hell no."
"She has a point," started Wesley as he climbed to his feet. "I doubt that Cordelia could strike fear in even a small child while parading around in teddy bear pajamas."
"Sheep pajamas," the girl corrected.
"Excuse me?"
The girl once again tugged on her outfit in order to give Wesley a closer look. "They're tiny blue sheep. See?"
The young man took off his glasses and nodded. "So, they are. Very cute."
"I know. I saw them at Gadzooks and they were on sale. Such a steal at-"
Angel cleared his throat again. Wesley and Cordelia realized what they were doing and both of them blushed at the same time. Now was not the time to be discussing adorable night gear. There was a vampire out there in the city and a client here that wanted him dead. Quickly they turned their attention to Angel.
It was Anna who interrupted this time. "We shouldn't go out."
Angel answered this with a confused scowl.
The woman stood up and folded her arms. "Right now that vampire thinks there is a vampire hunter roaming his grounds. And if he's smart, he's hiding. If we go out with our swords drawn and he sees us, he's going to know that there is someone after him. And I know he will flee the city. He is a coward. Tonight showed me this. I do not want him to flee. However if he waits tonight and nothing else happens, he will probably think that Wesley was a fluke. He will let his guard down and then and only then is when we will strike."
The vampire opened his mouth as if to protest but Anna quickly raised her hand to counter act his silent argument. "Angel, I have waited years for this. You can wait one night."
With a heavy sigh Angel agreed. Cordelia smiled as she clapped her hands. Now that was the end of that she could go back to her apartment and to her comfy, comfy, oh, so, comfy bed. She headed towards the phone in order to call herself a taxi when Angel said something that made her shout out another, "What?!"
She made a note to herself. Learn a new "I am shocked" phrase. Dropping the receiver she spun around and stormed over to the vampire. She poked him in the chest. "Repeat that, please."
Angel looked at the finger that was poking him. He took one pace back. "I want Anna to spend the night with you at your place. I feel it's safer this way rather than having her return to her hotel. Just in case the vampire does come back."
Wesley agreed. He stood by Angel's side and gave the girl a pleading look worthy of a puppy dog. "For one night only. Then tomorrow we can find different lodgings for her. But in the pinch we are at the moment, we need you, Cordelia."
With a scowl that could rival Angel's the girl groaned through clenched teeth. She then sighed; remembering how she hung out at Doyle's when she was having trouble. One good turn deserves another. Or was that no good deed goes unpunished? Whatever cliché it was she felt she was living it. I hope she's not a snorer or else Dennis is going to be ticked. "Fine. Fine. Fine." She repeated, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. Throwing her hands in the air in disgust she sputtered, "Now can we all get some sleep?"
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
The skin of a vampire has some amazing properties to it. One of which is the ability to rapidly heal itself. Scars and other disfigurements rarely occur even if guns, blades and/or chemicals did the severe damage.
All of this would be fascinating to the common observer but in Joshua's case he could not care less. His skin was burnt now and at this moment. Sure, in a few hours he would be right as rain with his skin looking like as if it had never been splashed with Holy Water.
But right now, right at this moment, he was in pain and his skin was sloughing in huge pieces.
The vampire had never been attacked with Holy Water before. It was an experience he would not tell his grandchildren that is if he had grandchildren.
His body was shaking as if it was going into shock. Which really puzzled him. He was dead. At least his body was. Why would it be going into shock? Or for that matter why was he feeling any pain at all? Shouldn't his nerve cells be dead? His head was hurting him. He hated the rules and the exceptions that came along with his undead body. He wondered if Dracula ever had these problems. But then he realized that Dracula wasn't real.
"Joshua!" the girl in front of him screamed. She looked around eleven but was dressed like a hooker. Everything was skin tight and exposing what little cleavage she had. She brushed the black hair of her pageboy hair cut away from her blue eyes. Her voice betrayed a slight Scottish accent that once was strong but had faded with age. In her tiny hands she had a bottle of iodine in one and a slightly iodine soaked washcloth in the other. She slapped the cloth against Joshua's face.
The vampire screamed and fell off the crate that he was using as a chair. The floor was cold and cement hard. He hated living in an abandon warehouse but at least it was a roof over his head. And as long she was there. Without her, his sire, he knew he would be long dead.
"That hurt," he still hissed. It hurt even more when his face changed from human to demon. His skin was still too frail to switch. He moaned when he went back to human. "Cully," he said to the girl in a faded Scottish accent of his own, "Give me a slice of sympathy here. I didn't ask to be attacked by some raving lunatic with a stake. What is the city coming to nowadays? It's just not safe anymore." He climbed back onto the crate. "I lost the hundred you gave me."
Suddenly the girl's soft face twisted to reveal the demon inside of her. Joshua tensed up; "It wasn't my fault! I ran before I was able to steal the money back from the hooker." With a sigh he began to mutter under his voice, "Not that she was worth it. Her blood may have had heroin in it but it was the cheap kind. I'm not even buzzing, just numb."
The girl shoved the bottle and the wash cloth into his hands. "Serves you right. You were out in public-"
The vampire put the objects away in his backpack. "I was in an alley way!"
"Still too public for us." She wondered over to the two mattresses that lay bare on the floor. "I, on the other hand, have been working all night. I got us enough money to tie us over for the week. Who knew that there were so many sick perverts in this city? Too bad as soon as I got them in the dark, off went their heads." A twisted giggle escaped from her lips as she sat down on one of the makeshift beds and stretched her skinny frame out. Her eyes glazed over in a hungry dream; "There was this one man. Well, man-cub, really." With a smile she licked her lips. "He was so tasty but he died too soon. Had a heart attack in my arms. Ohhh, I wanted him to last forever. A Spaniard from Madrid with blood that tasted of saffron he was. I love Spanish men, especially for dinner."
"Well, my dinner was horrible and I'm in pain. Is there any powder left?" Joshua asked as he rolled his right sleeve up. Cully was right ahead of him as she pulled out from under mattress a bag of heroin, a syringe, spoon and a lighter that had a Crumb drawing painted on the side of it. The drawing was of a man walking with an absurd stride with the caption, "Keep on truckin'!" written over his head. Cully liked Crumb. She liked anyone who had a life more miserable than her.
Joshua removed the belt around his waist. The leather was cracked in certain places. It had seen better days but it was still useful. At least for the use the vampire wanted the belt for. The whole ordeal of cooking and shooting the heroin seemed to take forever. But when the high kicked in with the rush of the drug screaming through his veins like a bullet, leaving a cold kiss in it's wake, Joshua felt like it had been worth the wait. He stumbled onto the mattress as Cully cleaned up. She didn't care for drugs except for alcohol. And right now seemed the ideal time to dive into her vice. From the same space where she stashed Joshua's heroin she took out an old bottle of absinthe. Now this wasn't the same absinthe that one could get in quaint little glasses along the outdoor cafes of Prague. Where the poison, the kick that made it truly wonderful to drink, was left out, replaced by a safer more stable herb. No, wormwood crawled in this bottle, always ready to bring madness to those who dared to drink it.
She took a swig of it. While others would have choked and died on the bitterness of the drink she took its embrace to her tiny chest and still beating heart with the hungry of the monster she was. Another swig went down and burned her throat. She wondered why crack and heroin was easy to find on the street corners of any rundown ghetto but absinthe, the good kind, was next to impossible to get in America. If they only knew. The liquid poison swirled around her brain and spoke to her in whispers of paranoid revenge.
"Joshua," she whispered to the vampire that lied across her flat belly. "This hunter-"
The male vampire's eyes fluttered open to reveal milky white nothingness. He blinked again to show hazel. Reality was fighting hard to grab him. "Yes, sire."
"This hunter may be a problem."
"Of course he's a problem," hissed Joshua. The drug had made him brave. But he still swallowed the spit in his mouth and lowered the tone in his voice. "If he came after me once, he may do it again." His fingers brushed the new skin that was meshing across his face. "And this time he may be able to finish the job." A new thought raced through his head like wild fire. He rolled over on his belly and looked the small girl in the eyes. "He knew what he was doing, Cully. He was prepared. And-and-"
He was stammering. Cully hated when he did that. "Spit it out," she hissed and took another swig of green poison.
"What if he gets you?" The vampire buried his head in her belly. And for a second he wished she were alive so he could feel her warmth against his cold skin. But in reality it was ice touching ice. "We're not fighters, Cully. We're the crows of the undead. We eat the leftovers of humanity. We, Cully, WE! Not just me. I need you, Cully. If something were to happened to you-. We should leave. We should take our bags now and run. Run while we still have life in us." He paused and added, "Well, you know what I mean." He dropped his head onto her belly once more.
He felt her tiny hand go through his blonde hair. "Don't worry, child. There is no need to runaway." She said child with a soothing numbness that made him calm. He was her child. Every inch of him. She cupped his face with her hands. "We'll find him before he finds us."
"But-but what will we do? Hand to hand, we'll be slaughtered."
The tiny vampire giggled softly. She arose to her feet and walked over to her bag that rested at the foot of her mattress. It contained all that she needed in the world, including her salvation. "Joshua, you're right. Hand to hand, we would be slaughtered. But that is Old World fighting." She took out a revolver. It looked like a huge monster in her hands. But her very stance told that she could handled it. "We're in America. And we'll do what Americans do when they want to get rid of someone." She slipped a single bullet in the chamber, closed it, pulled back the hammer and fired at the empty wall in front of her. Joshua flinched as the terrifying roar echoed off the metal walls of the warehouse. He turned to the tiny vampire. She was smiling as smoked climbed out of the barrel. It was all so simple. "We'll blow his fucking brains out."
END OF PART TWO