A Union of Souls, Chapter Twenty-One
Megabyte Damon had spent the last twenty-four hours alternating between wearing a path in the carpet of his bedroom and the floor of the Spaceship. Several times he had been tempted to teleport over to LA, never mind what Adam said, but each time he had not done so because he knew that he had to trust Adam on this one. The eldest of the Tomorrow People wasn't one hundred percent clear on what was happening in Los Angeles, but he was one hundred percent clear on the fact that he didn't completely trust Ami's new 'allies.'
He hadn't truly gotten fed up and annoyed with the situation until Adam revealed that Ami was missing. Their fellow Tomorrow Person had been under a hypnotic spell of some sort and simply teleported away. Even a mind-merge with all of the Tomorrow People at the Ship had not revealed her whereabouts. None of them liked it, not one little bit. So, they kept trying, even though they had all begun to expect that it was a lost cause.
A sudden flash of shock and surprise from Adam, followed by his lapse into unconsciousness was the last straw. Megabyte ordered Kevin and Jade to stay away from LA -- and was pleasantly surprised when they put up very little fuss -- and headed to the last place where he had sensed Adam awake and well.
He materialized in a dark and somber apartment occupied by five people. Four of them were awake; the fifth was Adam, who was reclined on the couch. They each stared at him, although he peripherally noticed that their surprise faded rather quickly. He didn't really care at that moment -- even as he realized he could have just placed himself and the Tomorrow People in greater danger -- he was concerned about Adam.
"Wakes up," said the man with glasses, who spoke with a clipped and precise British accent. He picked up the duffel bag at his feet and was carrying a crossbow on his back.
Crossbow? Megabyte filed the thought for later examination.
"How many of you are there?" The question came from a short, dark-haired man with an Irish accent.
Megabyte approached the couch and Adam. He'd try to figure out later why these people not only lacked surprise at his sudden appearance, but why they appeared not to care to question him at all.
"What happened to him?" He asked sharply.
"Time," said the Englishman.
"Cordelia, explain. We have to leave now."
"Who are you people?" Megabyte demanded, waving a hand around the room. "And what happened to Adam?"
"Right hook," explained the last of the quartet, a brunette that Megabyte probably would have found attractive under any other circumstances.
"What?"
The sound of a grate in the floor slamming closed with a loud click caused him to jump and look around. His brain quickly supplied the details that he had only observed in the periphery. The three well-armed men had disappeared down that grate.
"Right hook," the brunette repeated, turning towards the small kitchenette. "Giles decked him a good one so that he would stop trying to play all macho hero when he can't even kill a deer. You want some coffee or something?"
"No, I don't want any coffee," Megabyte snapped. "I want to know who you are, why my friend was 'decked a good one' and what the hell is going on!"
The brunette turned from reaching into an overhead cupboard, bringing a tin of coffee with her. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and began preparing a pot of coffee despite his refusal, "Will you relax all ready? He'll be perfectly fine when he wakes up. Well, he'll probably have an ugly bruise, but at least he'll be alive. Which he so would not have been if he'd gone to Cordovan's with Angel."
Angel. That name again. The man that Ami had been dreaming about; the man that she and Adam had come to see. The private investigator. "Where is he?"
"Cordovan?" The girl added water to the coffeepot. "He's got this great mansion over in Hollywood Hills -- well, at least that's what I hear. I've never been there myself."
"Angel."
She looked up at him, the look on her face implying that she thought he was the biggest moron to ever walk the planet. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've said? Angel and Giles and Doyle went to Cordovan's to rescue your friend Ami before she gets her soul swallowed by some evil voodoo-magic-witch-craft-spell-thingy. Giles had to go all Van Dame on your cute Australian friend there because he actually wanted to go with them when a vampire would have probably taken him out in ten seconds tops."
"A vam--" Megabyte shook his head, trying to make sense of the girl's words and failing miserably. He wondered if she even spoke English at all or if maybe *he* had also been unconscious and missed part of the conversation.
"Oh, let me guess. You have Star Wars force-like powers and then some, but you can't even take a minute to consider that maybe all that weird stuff in horror movies is real?" She rolled her eyes and shook her head, "I swear, some people don't believe in anything unless it hits them right over the head."
Megabyte opened his mouth, ready to attempt to pull answers from the young woman again, when a low moan from Adam drew his attention. Adam's mental awareness tickled some distant corner of his mind, and he knew that his friend was waking up.
"Adam?" Megabyte knelt by the sofa, helping to steady the older Tomorrow Person as he sat up, rubbing his left jaw.
"Megabyte -- what are you doing here?" He paused, wincing as though talking actually hurt and continued rubbing his jaw. "And what's going on? Did we get attacked?"
"Well, you did. Sort of." The brunette descended on them, lowering herself gracefully to the arm of the sofa. She leaned over, all but ignoring Megabyte while pressing an icepack to the side of Adam's face. He jumped, startled, but then accepted the icepack from her with no questions asked. "You were being really stupid-macho-guy and Giles had to go Ripper on you. That is so going to be an ugly bruise."
The look on Adam's face told Megabyte that his friend evidently didn't understand the young brunette that well either. He looked to Megabyte, "Do you want to tell me what's going on and why you're here?"
"He teleported in after Giles decked you," the young woman explained. "You know, it was really weird because I don't really think he surprised any of us. I mean, I guess if you've seen it once, you've seen it a million times and it just loses its novelty. Especially after living on the Hellmouth. And working for a vampire. Of course, that does remind me of Doyle's question." She paused, fixing her eyes totally on Adam and pretending like Megabyte didn't even exist. "How many of you are there?"
"A few," Adam answered guardedly, holding the icepack to his face. "Megabyte I told you to stay -- behind."
"Yeah, like that was going happen. First Ami goes missing and then you're unconscious--"
"Megabyte?" The brunette chirped in. "Is that, like, your name?"
Megabyte had to admit, he was beginning to get annoyed with her. She was pretty and shapely and a real looker, but if she didn't stop talking soon, *he* might just deck *her.* "Yes, that's my name."
"Oh sorry," Adam apologized, and indicated the brunette with a wave of his hand. "Cordelia, Megabyte. Megabyte, Cordelia. Now, will one of you tell me -- coherently please -- what happened while I was -- out of it?"
Megabyte opened his mouth to speak and was less than surprised when Cordelia -- and she laughed about his name being Megabyte? -- spoke up first.
"Giles punched you."
"I got that part."
"It's not his fault you know. You were the one trying to be all superhero," Cordelia folded her arms across her chest. "They had to do something to stop you from going and becoming a vamp soup du jour. Or worse. I think that you're lucky that no one had time to load a tranq gun or you would still be sleeping like a baby. Giles and Angel take protecting the asses of the innocent very seriously."
"How long have they been gone?" Adam held up his hand to forestall any questions that Megabyte had -- and he had a lot of them. [Believe it or not, Megabyte, I actually understand what she's saying.]
[You mean she's always like this?]
[She has been since I met her.]
Cordelia shrugged, her dark eyes darting to the clock on the far wall. "You weren't really out of it that long. Five, maybe ten minutes, tops." Her eyes widened and shot back to Adam, where they narrowed to dangerous slits. "And don't you even think about trying to follow them. They know what they are doing. You probably can't even squish a fly and you would only get in the way."
Then to Megabyte's complete and total surprise, the young woman's demeanor went through a one hundred and eighty-degree change, her face and eyes softening completely as she leaned over and placed her hand on Adam's arm. "I told you, Angel knows what he's doing. This is like his calling in life to make up for all the evil and horrible things he did when he was -- a soulless, evil, bad vampire."
Of course, she was still talking about vampires which was beginning to give him a serious case of the creeps. Either someone here was delusional or he had just stepped into the Twilight Zone(TM) -- or maybe both.
"Vampire?" Megabyte said the word succinctly.
Adam sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his face was resigned. "You're not going to believe this, Megabyte, but Angel is a vampire. And there's a lot more to the world than we thought there was."