ANGEL The Series was created and is own by that son of gun, Joss Whedon. Me? I'm off trying to find the Holy Grail. Wish me luck! That or e-mail me and tell me what you think of this series so far. exit_12_@hotmail.com
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
(Part Five)
by Lamech
"He isn't coming," Joshua said as he knotted one of Wesley's ties around his neck. The vampire was standing in front of the makeshift bedroom mirror. He didn't know why he was doing such a thing seeing how he lacked a reflection. Still, the act was an old habit that refused to die. "We've been waiting for over two hours and Grandma Booker is beginning to smell." He smoothed a hand over the tie and smiled. "My tie now."
He dove back into Wesley's closet in search for other goodies.
Cully was sitting in front of the opened entrance door in one of the kitchen chairs. Rubbing the gun in her hands over and over again she hissed in response to Joshua's whine. "Shut up. That's the matter with you, pup. No patience. I could wait here for weeks without even twitching." And she would wait for weeks if it came down to it. She glared out into the hallway. Lifting the gun she pretended that Wesley had just walked in. She aimed the pistol at the non-existent Wesley's head and mocked firing at him straight between the eyes.
"Besides it's not like we are itching to go anywhere. Not anymore. Mexico never interested me to tell the truth. Filthy. Lousy water. Like here but with an accent," she grinned at her own humor.
Joshua poked his head from behind one of Wesley's silk panels that separated the entire flat apart. "Sorry, Cully, did you say something?" He was wearing Wesley's leather jacket. It fitted him two sizes too big but he still wore it with an oversized, lame smile on his face.
"I made a joke," the girl sighed as she waved her gun as if to dismiss the boy. "And it was rather a funny one. Am I not right, Grandma?"
With her right boot, the girl vampire nudged the body at her feet. The corpse wiggled back and forth like a wreathing maggot. The head was still attached to the body by the back of the neck. But if the girl gave the body one more shove it would snap off. Flies were already making a feast out of the body's flesh. The bloody puddle that once pooled around the body had dried twice over. And now the corpse's hair was sticking to the floor because of it.
Cully looked up, "See, she agrees with me." The girl turned to the boy vampire only to give him a disgusted look. "What the hell are you wearing?"
Joshua stretched his arms out giving the girl the full view. He was rather proud of his new prize. "I found it in this bastard's closet. The rest of the stuff is tweed and Gap. However, this baby was buried way in the back. I think this guy is a leather daddy."
"Get out of that. You look like a reject from 'The Village People'."
The vampire wanted to protest but when Cully cocked the gun at him he knew it was best to follow her orders. Sure bullets wouldn't kill him but they'd still hurt like hell. And also the jacket would probably become ruined in Cully's little spat. All hole laced and bloody. Either way Joshua knew he was going to lose. So he opted for the less painful approach.
He slipped out of the jacket. Cully returned to pointing the gun at the front door. A moment later Joshua returned with a small box in his hands. "Look here," he said as he carefully lifted the lid. A small twinge of pain fell over him as he stared at the object.
Cully looked inside with much curiosity. A second later she nearly fell off her chair trying to get away from it. "What are you mad?"
Joshua looked down into the box until his eyes could stand it no longer. He shut the lid. "It's just a rosary. This guy is Catholic. How do you think that came about? I thought English Catholics were extinct."
Cully wasn't listening. She waved the gun at the boy vampire again. "Put that away before you spill it onto your skin and burn yourself again. This bastard isn't going to burn you twice in one night."
The boy vampire shrugged. He swung his arm back and sent the box flying across the room. It smashed with a satisfying crash of broken wood and spilled beads. Joshua fingered the tie that was still around his neck. "Are we going to wait until sunup? I don't think Ingles can cover us for this one if the cops find us in here. Cully?"
"FUCK!" the girl finally screamed as she stomped her feet and pounded the air around her with her tiny fists. She leaped up and kicked the chair out into the hallway. The piece of furniture sailed across the floor and hit the back wall with a glorious, messy sound. With a heavy steel-toed boot she kicked Granny's corpse. The head broke off like the cap of mushroom off its stem. The head rolled until it hit the miniature couch in the living room. The face was looking up at the ceiling with mouth and eyes still frozen in the shocked expression that had been painted there the moment Cully took her life. "He isn't coming is he?" Her voice was low and almost thick, like that of a woman rather than the child's body she was trapped in. "WHERE THE HELL IS HE?!"
Joshua was not sure how to reply to this. "Like I said, he's isn't coming. Look, there's always tomorrow. Cully, sire, we're playing on thin ice. I can feel in it. We should leave before we are exposed." He nudged the headless corpse with a dirty boot. "He'll know now that we're looking for him."
"I don't want to wait," the girl hissed as she pointed at the door with her gun. Her trigger finger was turning white knuckled as she fought the urge to unload all her bullets right then and there. Her body began to tremble with a rage. She had murdered before, thousands of times over. But she never wanted a death so badly before in her endless life. Her nerves pulsed with an energy that wanted to explode out of every pore in her body. "I want him now. I want to kill."
"Grandma?" a voice called out from the hallway. The voice was weak but became stronger and stronger with ever plea. Whoever it was, was coming near.
Suddenly a stubby fingered hand curled around the entrance of the doorframe. "Granny, are you with Wesley again? Come to bed, please." A little girl followed the hand. She was the spitting image of the corpse on the floor. Down to the same pale, pink freckled covered skin.
The sight of the apartment instantly rushed towards the girl as her mind tried to make sense of what was going on. She wasn't sure if the corpse was real or not. But it didn't matter. Her body tensed up as it geared to scream.
Cully smiled and fired.
The bullet pierced the girl between the eyes. A blush of red spattered against the wall behind her. The girl's body dropped to her knees as her eyes stared up at the ceiling. Looking like she was saying her prayers at Mass, the frail body rocked for a moment before finally collapsing to the floor with a hollow sound. Blood began to pool.
"You feel better now?" asked Joshua.
"Immensely."
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Cully walked out of the apartment building licking the blood off of her fingers. She didn't think that leaving just the bodies behind was a strong enough statement for the vampire hunter. But she corrected that with a little effort.
Joshua was right behind her, still wearing Wesley's tie and now his biker boots. Cully would not allow the vampire to keep the jacket but the boots were okay. Especially since they were steel toed and were ideal for kicking in shins. Violence in fashion always appealed to her nature. The male vampire was pleased that he had convinced Cully to go home. He was tired and yearned for another fix. The cigarette that was dangling between his pink lips was not cutting it. Throwing the cigarette down he grabbed the hand Cully was not cleaning up. The left one which was still bloody. Slowly he ran his tongue over her palm. The blood washed over his tongue and awoke his senses. A copper taste in the fluid was strong but there was a hint of sweetness to it. The vampire smiled as the flavor ran down his throat and raced through his system. Better then any fag. He licked Cully's hand again.
The girl smiled and offered her other hand. "I think I missed a spot. Can you get it?"
Joshua hungrily obeyed. His tongue darted between her fingers picking up the stray red mess.
The two of them continued with their flirting game as they walked further down the street. They were too busy with each other to notice the young drunk, who was just a block away, staggering up behind them.
"Ohhhhhh, my head," moaned Wesley as he dragged himself up the stairs to the front entrance of the apartment building. "Christ, I will never drink again for as long as I live."
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Angel parked the Plymouth right in front of the apartment complex. Gathering all the items that laid in the passenger's side, he made sure he had everything. Spring water? Check. Amethysts? Check. Scroll of Dionysius? Check. The ancient Greeks believed that if one had an amethyst on his person that one could not become drunk despite the amount of alcohol consumed. The Greeks were right and wrong. Amethysts do prevent drunkenness as well as wipe it clean from a contaminated body. But you needed the right spell to activate the power within the stone. Otherwise no matter how many purple colored rocks you had you were still going to become smashed face if you dared to drink one too many beers.
But Angel had the spell.
He sighed and prepared himself to meet the drunk Wesley faced to face. The vampire hoped that the young man was not the hugging type drunk. And still yet another part of his psyche cursed that he did not bring a camera. This was great material for blackmail. Fun and games blackmail, like old naked baby pictures to a hipper than thou teenager, but blackmail none the less.
With things in tow, the vampire walked across the thresh hold of the building. The place was quiet. But he expected to be as much, after all it was way past three a.m. The elevator was out but that was much to be expected. The place was not the Ritz. Still it wasn't a dump either. But troubles such as that were always happening. He knew about these things through Wesley's constant sighs about his, "bloody awful flat."
At least the stairs were in one piece and it was only two flights up to the apartment. Angel began up them as he went over the spell in his head. Halfway up the stairwell he froze as a smell hit him. It was a harsh, stale, coppery smell like old filthy pennies. He knew that stench well. Blood. Dried blood. And the smell was thick.
A shiver ran through him and a horrible thought exploded in his mind.
"Wesley."
He dropped the items in his arms and ran as fast as he could. His voice bounced off the walls in a scared wail, "WESLEY! WES!"
He ran into the second floor hallway with such speed he slammed against the wall. Pain rushed to his system. But his brain told him there was no time to wince. He raced down the hall almost tripping on his own feet. He came to the end were Wesley's flat was around the corner. "WESLEY! ANSWER ME, PLEASE!" Slowing down just a few feet before the corner almost afraid to go around it, he shook his head, "Don't be…just don't be."
With fear pulsating through him like a drug he went around the corner.
A chair lied in the hallway on its side like a dead body. There was a splatter painting of crimson on the wall behind it. And there next to the piece of furniture, on his knees in a catatonic heap of flesh and bones was Wesley.
He was still alive. Angel could see this by the slowly rising and falling of the young man's chest. And yet when Angel called out to him in a gentle manner then in a concerned manner and then in disgusted manner Wesley refused to answer. The young man just sat and stared into his flat.
Angel stepped forward to see what the young man was staring at. The sight caused a knee jerk reaction in the vampire. He bent over as if to throw up but there was nothing in his belly to do so. A chain reaction of dry heaves followed instead. Not because of the sheer unspeakable blasphemy of the sight, but because the vulgarity was something recognizable. He had seen this before. He had done this before. He had created such things when he was Angeleus.
Angel pulled himself together and looked again. He wanted to make sure what he had seen had not been an illusion. It was not.
There like a nightmare ripped from an insane surrealist's mind were two corpses. A mature headless adult and small girl. The girl was sitting in the larger corpse's lap with the adult's rigid arms holding her in place. The girl's tiny right hand had been propped up. Three fingers, her thumb, forefinger and index, were outstretched in the familiar representation of the Trinity. Her face had been forced into taking an almost serene expression like that of a holy figure in a painting. She looked content where she was despite the small jagged hole in her forehead. Her other hand held the broken remains of a rosary that had lost its power to give the vampire pain.
There was something in the girl's lap. The object was barely visible because of the position the child was sitting in. Angel took a step into the room fearing the worse. He closed his eyes when the worse came.
It was the woman's head.
Another thick wave of nausea swept the vampire. He looked away only to see the rest of nightmare. Across the Wesley's cream colored walls were hand smeared threats written in blood. All of them echoed with the same message over and over.
"YOU ARE DEAD."
Angel felt his body go numb. He turned to the young man behind him who was still on the floor and looked for a response from him.
But instead of yelling or whimpering like a frighten pup all Wesley could muster up was a weak, broken whisper.
"They're going to kill me."
END OF PART FIVE