"Her?" Giles asked.
Angel ignored the question. "Will you help me?"
"That's quite an interesting tale," Giles said. "What's the word for it? Ah yes, bollocks!"
"Then I'm sorry for wasting your time!" Angel whispered, disgruntled. "You've obviously got better things to do tonight." He made his way out.
"What makes you think I'm doing anything?"
"You're going hunting," Angel sounded confident. "Crossbows are usually for Slayers. What's your plan?"
"I'm going to the morgue to make sure that a girl who was killed here last night doesn't…and suddenly I wonder why I'm telling you all this." Giles said flippantly.
"The girl
won't rise. She was meat," Angel assured. "Marcie Ross just wanted her to
feed her new born vampires."
"Marcie Ross became a vampire…" Giles mused. "If it's all the same, I'd like to check the body."
"Be my guest," Angel shot back tiredly.
Giles went
back to packing his weapons.
Taking one last glance at the Watcher, Angel stormed out of the library. He was asking the man to suspend his disbelief. To him, he was a murderous demon, soulless and evil. He'd asked for too much and yet he had hoped that saving his life would have changed the Watcher's mind. Then again, the guy was English.
Still, it wasn't as if he was going to give up on the man. He would follow him to the morgue; make sure that he didn't get into any trouble. Threatening a lone vampire was one thing but fighting one, fighting one required more than an ability to 'watch.'
A hell of a
lot more…
***
"You're a fool Darla!" Luke said forcefully.
Darla said nothing. She and Luke were once again at stalemate where Angel was concerned. Luke had come up with the same excuses that he'd come up with in London – "he is too young," "he seeks only personal gain," "he is a petulant child."
He would never admit that he was afraid of her offspring.
She had argued with the elder vampire for hours on end but no talk of Angelus' repugnant deeds would sway him despite the Master's personal opinion of him, the plan was "ridiculous."
"You cannot expect Angelus to suddenly turn on a human," Luke had said. "This soul of his has a stronger hold on his heart than mere blood…I doubt even you could change that fact."
"I know Angelus," she had retorted aggressively. "He needs more than a kill…he knows where the real fun lies…."
"What greater pleasure is there?" Luke had almost sounded confused.
"The girl – Drusilla – he became completely infatuated with her," she had told him. "For Angel…there was sport in driving her mad…"
"Why?" Luke had asked.
"She was a pretty, sweet, god faring little wretch…."
Darla had then started to divulge her basic plan with Luke. She would find Angel a girl such as Drusilla had been, a girl for him to remould into whatever twisted creature he desired. It had been what Angel had truly lived for. She only had to remind him of the pleasure in it and he would be free.
Free to feed, free to kill again…
But Luke remained stubborn, not that he'd surprised her. She honestly doubted that he'd been any different five centuries ago when the Master had turned him.
Luke closed his eyes and sighed. "Angelus was a most vicious creature. Perhaps it would indeed please the Master as you say…Talk with him, give him a mortal with which to preoccupy himself."
Darla smirked with satisfaction.
"But Darla," he said. "IF you fail, there will be no second chances. Angelus will join us… or he will die…"
Darla nodded. It was only fair. Angel was in many ways her son. If he persisted in not coming along like a good little boy than it was only correct that he should be punished…
Darla shrugged as she walked back thought the tunnels. She hated the thought of letting her baby go. But it would be for the best, and if she had to, at least she would let him go with a mother's love…
Removing his lock pick from the back pocket of his jeans, Giles set to work about getting into the morgue. It had been awhile since he'd last tried his hand at breaking and entering. But, as his father had been want to say about so many things: it was like riding a bicycle.
"Come on," Giles whispered to himself. "Don't let me down now, Ripper. Don't let me down now!"
The lock clicked. He was in.
Taking the small flashlight from between his teeth, the Watcher crept carefully into the room. Gently placing his bag on the floor, he pulled out a copy of the Sunnydale High yearbook and flicked through the pages until he found Jaclyn McCormick's picture.
Poor girl, he thought sadly. Jaclyn had been quite pretty in her own. The least she'd deserved was a quiet and painless passing. But clearly life had other plans.
Pulling open a storage draw Giles kept a hand on his mouth. As a Watcher he was no stranger to death, yet that aside, the girl's body had been brutally mutilated and a Watcher's stomach was still akin to that of any other man. He examined the tag on the body's foot, before carefully peeling back its sheets…
It wasn't Jaclyn. On to box number two…
Shifting the covers, Giles felt his heart stop. In a sense he'd been lucky to find Jaclyn with such speed, but upon gazing at her cold, dead flesh, he would have gladly settled for another disappointment. Willow's words had been simplistic, born out of shock and yet they seemed to be so poignant and true.
So frighteningly true.
He'd seen more bodies scarred by the fangs of a vampire than he cared to remember. Some of the victims he had even called 'friend'; Jaclyn McCormick was by far the most chilling. No doubt a pretentious criminal psychologist might have had a mind to consider the motive for the girl's death to be sexual. Her clitoris had been ripped open and, if his knowledge on the subject of scarred tissue was correct, then it was one of the points from which the vampires had first drawn blood. Her breasts had been similarly damaged.
The more he examined the body the worse he felt for Jaclyn – the skin of her legs was stained - even the midst of her agonising death, her body must have experienced some pleasure in it, her nerves must have reacted to the stimulation and…
And…it didn't even warrant thought.
You poor, poor girl. Giles felt his eyes moisten.
Gently, he placed the sheet back over the corpse. Angel had been right about her purpose. The assault on the high school student had been animalistic in its savagery. She would not be violated any further.
Thank the Lord…if there truly was one…
Then Jaclyn's face began to alter…
"Oh no…" Giles froze.
"Alright!" Angel hissed. "Now you're pissing me off!"
The other vampires just laughed at the sight of his face changing to one resembling their own demonic scowls as he got back to his feet.
Tough guys eh?
The gang leader - a tall, lanky weed of a man - signalled for him to come and take his best shot. With a sly smile, Angel gave it to him – right on the jaw. The vampire had given him more hassles than he could stand for one night.
He staked him as he stumbled backwards.
"Nice move pretty boy," a female said flirtatiously. "Wanna show me some more?"
"My pleasure," Angel replied. The bitch had already kicked his ass halfway across town once. He wouldn't miss his opportunity to ruin his white shirt with her blood for anything.
The female
- a flame headed woman, head to toe in tight fitting black leather with
uninspired moniker of "Red" - was the real fighter of the gang. Whoever had
once inhabited her lithe young body had been trained in Tae Qwan Do. And trained
well.
A little too well to believe that she was just a gang member – she could have killed her leader any time she wanted with her skills. She had to be the sire.
Angel lunged at her throwing a haymaker. She dodged and cut open his forehead with the sharp high heel of her right boot, before sending a straight kick into his midriff.
Angel corrected himself just enough as he fell to grab onto the steel mesh of the fencing and aim a sharp kick to his opponent's middle. As she stumbled back, he pushed his palm up into her chest, and then launched into a roundhouse kick. Red shot him a dangerous look as she wiped the blood from her lips.
"Not bad," she told him. "You've been taught."
"What can I say," Angel replied. "I'm more than just a pretty face," Angel smiled inwardly. Red was good but he had been around long enough to learn a few things himself
"I'm taking you down," Red threatened. "Hard."
Angel found it difficult to have a comeback as he locked eyes with his adversary because those eyes remained human in nature. The harder he stared at the vampire, the more remarkable her powers of concentration seemed to him. Outside a fight or emotionally content, a vampire could hide its identity but when things got intense, faces began to shift into inhumanity. His already had. Try as he might, he couldn't ever recall a vampire like Red.
Still, now was not the time for a trip down memory lane.
It was a time for action.
Red moved forward first, spinning into a punch. Angel quickly avoided the strike but she was already setting him up for her follow up - a rising kick to the face. Without any thought, Angel raised a hand and grabbed Red's foot. He twisted it as he would have twisted a neck.
Red grunted in anguish.
The other members of the gang shifted their stance, ready to attack.
"Back off," Red spat angrily. "If we're gonna leave, we leave alive!"
Angel moved back. "Didn't think that you were the type to turn tail?"
Red snapped her foot back into place. As she raised her head, Angel noted her demonic appearance. "This a pretty bad town. New gang don't like us very much – culty freaks. Might as well cut losses."
"You go quietly, stop feeding here tonight and I call it quits," Angel offered. "Deal?"
Red nodded slightly in agreement. "Like I said. Not bad."
"Ditto."
The gang moved on quietly.
Angel gritted his teeth as his injuries started to kick in.
You should've just walked on by pal.
Weatherly Park was another one of Sunnydale's hotspots for feeding. He'd heard the commotion as soon as he'd started to approach the place. They were attacking yet more teenagers. As big as his priorities were he couldn't just stand back and let them get slaughtered. After all, protection of the hapless human race had been his whole reason for coming to California in the first place.
Part of him didn't care though. He needed that Watcher and he needed him badly. Part of him was pissed off about losing time in getting to the morgue and keeping the Englishman out of harm's way.
Willing his face out of its unnatural scowl, Angel climbed up the fence before dropping down onto the pavement. He had some serious time to make up.
Jesse, Xander and Willow sat at their table, slowly sipping their coffees and lamenting the barrenness of their adolescent lives. As Willow put it for the thousandth time, they were on "the joy train."
"We're here for you Will," Xander said softly, observing the blank expression on his friend's face.
"Yeah," Jesse added in agreement.
Willow smiled uncomfortably. "I know. Thanks guys."
"Whoa," Xander exclaimed childishly. "I think little Xandur need go pee-pee ruum!"
"Xander man," Jesse mumbled with a subtle smile.
Getting up, Xander took another brief glance at Willow. Man, life sucks, he concluded. Seeing Jaclyn had his friend seriously wigged. No, it was more than 'the wiggins' it was scarier then that. It was also the real reason why he decided to leave the table for a while. Ever since they were in kindergarten together, Xander Harris was always there for Willow Rosenberg. The girl was his best friend. He had to be able to help her out when she needed someone to be there.
And right
now nothing worked to bring Willow out of her head – not the Snoopy Dance,
squat.
Focusing on the three humans, Darla's lips curled up into a vicious grin. All of them would be perfect candidates to be changed. Their young lives were so clearly devoid of excitement, an eternity of endless night would do them the world of good. No doubt she would sire one of the two boys eventually. But ultimately, it was the girl that had caught her eye.
She was clean, pure.
Angel would appreciate that…
***
He had held his small wooden cross with all the conviction he could muster, yet still the stripling vampire within what had once been Jaclyn McCormick continued to advance and forced him to the ground with a backhand.
His books told him to expect as much.
For all the good the musty old volumes were doing him, as he felt his blood trickle down from the back of his head, and as a demon knelt down for what would be its first kill in the mortal world.
In his mind Giles cursed Angel, but the contemplation that appeared to coincide with one's impending death had absolved the vampire of any sort of betrayal. Angelus would have killed him personally if that were indeed his intention. Letting a newborn end the life of a Watcher would probably lack finesse to his corrupt mind.
Not that Rupert Giles intended to go down without a fight.
While Jaclyn was physically his superior, she was for now little better than a wild animal attacking only out of an overwhelming need for sustenance, for blood. Fear aside, he was still in control of himself. Now all he had to do was make it count.
From a Slayer's point of view, newly risen vampires could prove to be more deadly than their elders, thanks mainly to the fact that they were unaware of the existence of such women and so would be more likely to attack them with the utmost ferocity. From Giles' own, this quickly became even more apparent. Slayers were not strictly human – he was.
Wincing, he felt the cold hands of McCormick's corpse gripped firmly on his chest so as to leave him breathless. He tried to reach out and push the vampire's head away.
But that only served to enrage the creature further as it started to bang his head against the floor to subdue him.
"No," Giles let out weakly. The vampire turned his head on one side and caressed his skin excitedly. It was at that moment that he knew.
He knew that it was now far too late for him to survive…
***
Angel stood outside the local morgue. In his time as and before he became a vampire, he'd broken into (and out of) plenty of different places.
But this time was different.
He had to break in cleverly enough to make sure nobody on the outside noticed a thing. Then, he had to make sure that another illegal entrant didn't notice him either. He checked the lock on the main entrance – locked. Must've got in through a window.
Briefly Angel tensed up and scented the air. Time was marching on to dawn. He had only a few hours at best. "So much for subtlety," he growled. Grabbing the door handle, he broke the lock mechanism by hand.
Silently, he moved inside and listened out for the movements of a Watcher. Humans often referred to his species of demon as 'animals' and in most respects they were right. Alive, he'd considered his hearing to be fine but almost as soon as he'd been resurrected that had started to change. He could hear a conversation from hundreds of yards away, see perfectly through shadows without light and pick up the scent of other creatures to track them. Yet he could barely hear the human he was following, the morgue was small. The man barely registered compared to…
"Damn,"
he whispered, frustrated. He picked up his pace.
She was feeding on him. Giles could feel his very life slipping away. All he could do now was accept the fact.
Why didn't they ever really accept me? I did what Dad had asked of me – I joined the Council but why didn't they ever do anything but pick at my papers and scoff at my remarks? I knew more than most. I could have trained the Slayer after Merrick, why did they send her a young upstart? I was good enough. Or was I? Am I really a Watcher? Was Dad really wrong about me? Was he right? He thought painfully.
Softly, softly, the world faded to black. A large blur raced into the room – he couldn't focus on it. Two smaller blurs latched onto the shoulders of what he knew was 'Jacklyn.' He heard the sound of two animals roaring and grunting, but it was too indistinct in his mind, like a kind of distant memory as he drifted away.
"C'mon!"
The voice in his head was harsh and anxious. Someone wanted him to hold on? Giles failed to see the point. He'd lost blood; his body was now too weak for movement. He was too close to death to pull away now. Why waste the energy against what was the inevitable?
"Come on, damn it! You go now and everybody goes with you! Hear me Watcher? If the Master…"
The voice was becoming enraged. Everybody would have his or her time. His was simply now. Why should it be of his concern? The end was unavoidable. He understood that fact. Why on earth would someone try to interfere with it?
"Damn you Watcher! You wanna go ahead and die, fine! But I'm not making it that easy for you! Got it?"
Giles no longer heard the voice…
