Disclaimers in Chapter 1
Send feedback please to slayerbelle@go.com
Destinies
by Slayerbelle
Chapter 3
"Reunion"
"What do you mean she's not here?"
"Please, not so loud, you'll split the *new cut on my head*," Cordelia said pointedly. Jeez, it figured. Angel returns from a day's work and the first thing he mouths off on... well, it was never about the little things, like her being hurt and stuff.
He faltered a little, and finally saw the strip of gauze on her forehead. "I'm sorry... what happened? Are you OK?"
She sighed. "Yeah, I'm fine. Hit my head on a table getting a vision, but what can you do? And don't go postal, OK? Aurora's going to be fine. I think."
"I can't believe Wesley just let her --"
"I said no going postal! Now stop pacing like a... postman. Angel, she had a vision. She had to go with Wesley. She has to do these things, she can't help it. She was chosen for this gig, you know."
For some reason, what she said had been enough. Angel stopped pacing. "What did you say?"
"She can't help it. She was picked for this gig. She's born for it. She's not like me, who got it by default because I happen to be the nearest pair of girl lips."
It was out of her mouth before she realized it. (As usually was the case with her manner of speech.) The air shifted, she felt it. And Angel crossed the room and touched her shoulder.
"Cordelia, Doyle loved you. He wanted you to have his gift because he loved you."
She knew that. If not in her heart, because Aurora said so several times already. It was still hard to make light of it.
So she didn't. "I know," she said softly. "What were we talking about a while ago?"
"Aurora."
"Oh yeah. You get off her case. You realize how much she's had to take to even agree to stay here with you? She's lost everything in the past few hours, don't you go all Mom with the telling her where to go and what to do."
But he wasn't postal anymore. Bringing up Doyle had sobered him somewhat. What he did, though, was begin eyeing her suspiciously. "Cordelia... how well do you know Aurora, exactly?"
Busted. "Um, well. More than you do, I guess."
He gave her a look. One of those furrowed brow things.
"OK! Lunch several times! She's a friend now! Why? Because she's a girlie girl, she's not a vampire or a British guy and she can talk about guys and hair and she knows almost everyone I know and she thinks Harmony's a flake too!" Cordelia paused, a little surprised at her own outburst. "You know what I mean. It's hard having no one to talk to. Not that I have no one, it's just that..."
"Yeah, I know." Angel said, nodding. He really did seem to understand. "And I'm sure she appreciates it as well."
"Oh sure. You know she's never been on a shopping spree *ever*, until I put her through Rodeo Drive? Well, we both couldn't afford much anyway, so we just annoyed the salespeople and capped off the day with frappuccinos. Close enough."
"She needs a friend."
"Yes she does." OK, so Angel really did care for Aurora. It may have been primarily out of guilt, but still. The guy really did have a heart, he was just preoccupied with being all Superman all the time. But Cordelia wanted to know something. "Why did you kiss her?"
He swallowed, silent for a second. "I wanted to thank her."
"There are less incriminating ways to thank people, you know. Like saying 'Thank You'."
"I can't explain it... I just... She's given me so much. But it doesn't matter now."
"Oh, don't you be taking that guilt trip over this too." Cordelia exclaimed, already foreshadowing the brooding to come. "She got caught because Lindsey the Lawyer From Hell pulled one on the two of you, and don't blame yourself."
She might as well have been moving her lips soundlessly because she knew. When Angel chose to brood, it was for the rest of his life, which was an eternity. He didn't need this.
He didn't say anything. Great, now she felt doubly bad. First Doyle, and then Aurora. That was where the paranoid Superman was coming from -- Angel felt responsible for Aurora's fate.
*I'd better fix this,* Cordelia thought regretfully. "Angel, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... you know how my mouth just gets possessed--"
"Cordelia, don't worry about it."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
He was lying. He wanted her to shut up now. "OK."
====
When Aurora opened her eyes the blond girl was standing in front of her. Wearing the same dress, but in a different color.
"How embarrassing." The blond girl said.
"I've had this dress for years." Aurora said.
"Me too."
There was a slight breeze in the red room. Just enough to lightly play with their hair. Aurora realized that they were wearing their hair almost the same way, almost the same length. The girl smiled at her, and they just looked at each other.
Aurora was waiting for her to speak.
"What's your name?" the girl finally said.
"Aurora."
"It's pretty."
"Thank you."
The girl looked like she wanted to say something again. Aurora waited.
The girl held out her hand. "I want to introduce myself."
"I already know you."
"I want to introduce myself. My name is Buffy Summers."
"What?" Aurora felt something on her face, and she realized it was the wind. She was in the backseat of Angel's convertible. He was driving with the top down, Cordelia on the passenger seat next to him with a scarf protecting her hair. "How long was I out?" she asked.
Cordelia turned to face her. "You fell asleep? We aren't five minutes away from the Hyperion."
"Oh." That happened sometimes. She'd doze off in a bus, get a complete vision, and be up before the next stop. It was an insane kind of narcolepsy. She fumbled for a pen and piece of paper -- she had some in her bag -- and wrote something.
====
Angel was transfixed.
He brought Aurora to the Host so he could read her. He didn't realize she'd put on a great show.
She held the microphone and sang like she was the only one in the room. The lights were right on her and she probably didn't see the roomful of people stunned silent.
"At last/The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover/The night I looked at you"
Lorne was ecstatic. "Angelcakes, she's terrific! Etta James by way of Diana Krall. Definitely not the Christina Aguilera chick." The Host turned away for a second to applaud. "My heart! She's taking with her my heart!"
"Do you need to know anything else about her?" Angel asked.
"Well even if I did need more, I wouldn't ask from you. I know this girl."
Great. Everyone seemed to know her more than he did.
"She was in here when you were putting Manilow to shame. Cloaked, which I told her was very rude. 'No cloaking in my establishment!' I said. Sweet girl, though. Very polite."
"Well, what do you see?"
"Well aren't we in a big rush tonight?"
Angel accepted the drink from the bartender and held the glass for some time, not drinking.
The Host stepped back. "Ho-kay. I forgot. You brood therefore you are. Well, let's see what's in the cards for your gypsy."
He sat silent and they watched her sing.
"Big things," The Host said.
"What?"
"Big things for this girl. Very big. Huge."
"So she doesn't die?"
"No." The Host's green nose twitched. "And yes. Let's just say there are several ways she can go here."
"I'm only interested in the ways where she doesn't die."
"And unless I've totally misread you, trust me when I tell you you won't want that. She's hot mystical stuff right now. You, my friend, are right in the middle of major tension around this girl. She has big things ahead of her."
"That's good." He honestly couldn't tell.
"Let's just say she's been approached by the Dark Side and the offer's mighty tempting." The Host laughed all of a sudden. "I just saw that movie recently -- Star Wars. It just made me very happy."
The reference, however, was all but lost on Angel. "Wolfram and Hart," he muttered. They sold her out so they could bail her out. Put her between a rock and a hard place. His fist clenched around the glass and it shook, in danger of breaking.
"What if she goes against them? She could stay here with me."
"You're a good guy, but you're not an army." The Host said, serious now. He plucked the glass from Angel's hand. "Of all her possible destinies, the most bleak is if she stays here with you. You can't do a thing about that. Best if you lay down your sword and leave her alone."
That wasn't right. He had to be able to do something. Anything. She wouldn't have been sent to him like this if he would be incapable of helping her.
Aurora's song ended, and the bar filled with enthusiastic applause. The Host stood up, approached her, and kissed her hand. "She's a jazz queen, a jazz queen! Honey, my stage is yours. Please do another! Luciano! How about some Billie Holiday?"
Angel found himself alone at the bar as the Host made his rounds and mingled. In the second that the lights dimmed a little, he caught Aurora's eye. She faltered for a second.
*I know what you're deliberating.*
OK, so he wasn't telepathic. But he knew she understood him.
What did Lindsey offer her, protection? Wealth? Fame? He could be "authorized" to give her anything.
"She sounds amazing," Wesley said, just arriving, sliding into the bar stool next to him. He had his notebook with him now, opened to a page with fresh new scribbles.
"Anything interesting?"
"As a matter of fact..." Wesley flipped through his notes. "I first would like to know why, after weeks of persuading me to drop my decoding of the Scroll of Aberjian, you now ask me to produce results."
"I just got concerned."
"You think it has anything to do with Aurora?"
"I think..." He dared not say it, and was hoping Wesley wasn't going to make him.
No such luck.
"You said my soul was one with a woman's."
"Yes."
"A woman who is chosen."
"Yes." Seeing Angel pause, it then dawned on Wesley was the fuss was about. "You're thinking it could be Aurora."
*And not Buffy.* It was the other part of the sentence. As much as it pained Angel to admit it, the thought *had* crossed his mind. Ever since Cordelia had brought up Aurora's birthright.
It had to explain things. Why he dreamed about her in the first place, which was how he had come to know she existed. How he broke through her cloaking spells and saw her. And how she was now in his care.
Coincidences in his life were rare and far between.
"I can't give you an answer to that," Wesley said. "But I did come up with more. Here... again, I warn you, this is from whatever context I could derive... The vampire's soul is one with the soul of the woman that is chosen. Liware will come to this woman, and she will receive a gift. That's what we know so far. This afternoon I was able to translate a word: harginda."
"It sounds familiar."
"Well, I'm sure it wasn't in regular usage by the time you were born, but it's in a lot of sacred texts from Central Asia. One of the synonyms for 'harginda' is reunion. In the end, the vampire with a soul shall be reunited with the woman who is chosen."
Wesley let the words fall between them. In the silence they both could hear Aurora, still singing Billie Holiday. The Host was chatting it up with Cordelia, who, from the looks of it, was refusing to perform a number for him.
Angel cleared his throat. "The Host just told me that Aurora and I would have to be apart for her to live through this."
Wesley stopped reading his notes, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. "Oh." Though he had steeled Angel into not hoping he it would be Buffy, it hadn't occurred to him that it might actually be someone else.
"Yeah." And Angel almost asked him to drop it right there, he looked exhausted. Barely recovered from an encounter with a Gvifer demon, and Angel was asking him to hit the books.
"Well, do you think it is? Her, I mean."
"I don't know. But it explains a lot of things."
"I don't understand."
"Why she's a part of my life at all, now. I never knew her. I would have gone on with my immortality and not known her. But I do."
"You think there's a reason."
"I know there's--"
Angel turned to the stage because Aurora had stopped singing.
She was looking straight at him, and he knew something was up.
With a loud, musical crash, every glass object in the bar exploded. Glasses, liquor bottles, windows. Angel and Wesley immediately hit the ground.
The room was plunged into darkness. For two seconds.
And by the time the lights came back on the stage was empty, and Aurora was gone.
====
"Oh my God," Cordelia moaned, picking herself up yet again from the floor. She was becoming an expert at this now. Duck, hit the ground face down, and wait.
Of course the ground was now soaking wet with various alcoholic beverages that had been liberated from their bottles. Several concoctions had seeped into her hair. And the cashmere blouse she'd bought just two weeks ago.
The bar was quiet for a second, and then everyone started to curse and shout. It was a mess, shattered glass all over like really wrong snow. As Cordelia stood up she caught a glimpse of the stage, and Aurora wasn't in it. She wasn't on the floor with the rest of the patrons either. This wasn't good.
"Angel!" she cried. She bumped into a man with a huge shard of glass wedged in his arm, and she gasped, checking her extremeties. She was cut near her elbow, and boy that was going to match the gauze on her forehead, but she seemed to be OK.
She caught up with Angel and Wesley by the bar. "Are you guys OK?" she exclaimed. It was near chaos now, people running out, wounded, bleeding. A fire had started in one corner of the room.
They looked at each other and realized they were standing on a pool of alcohol. Angel grabbed them both and started running for the door.
"Did you guys see Aurora?" she said, once outside, as she caught her breath. "She's gone."
"They took her," Angel was incensed. "She knew it. She looked at me, she knew they were coming... damn it!"
Wesley brushed something off his hair. "Well, this definitely would not be the work of amateurs."
"Where would they take her?" Angel demanded.
Wesley shook his head. "I... I don't know."
"Damn it! Wesley, she must have told you something. Anything."
"Wait!" Cordelia held up her hand, and fished for something in her purse. A slip of paper Aurora had handed to her just before they went into the bar. "I should have known. Damn it!"
"What? What is it?"
"Just a second. Ow!" She retriever her hand from her bag and realized she had cut herself on something. "God, my mirror's broken."
Wesley snorted. "Cordelia, I hardly think --"
"Hold that condescension one moment, British guy. I meant my mirror exploded from inside my bag. This mojo trick they pulled on us... this is serious. Oh, here it is."
It was a small piece of paper that Cordelia managed to retrieve from her purse. "She told me to say this if anything ever happens to her... I think, I think it's a spell." Cordelia squinted a little, and cleared her throat. "Here goes.
"Daughter of Alana, genesis yours,
blessing is mine.
Find my heart, find my soul,
complete my eyes.'"
OK, nothing. She saw Willow performing spells all the time and sometimes her eyes would go a different color. She felt nothing.
"Maybe you need to, you know, *enunciate*," Wesley said helpfully, squinting at the paper. "Oh, I can't read this..."
And then he realized that his glasses, still in his hand, were totally broken, and he was holding on to them only by the frames. "Well look at that."
"OK, fine. Enunciate. I'm an actress, I can do this." Cordelia took a deep breath and read the spell like she was channeling Willow. "Daughter of Alana, genesis yours, blessing is mine. Find my heart, find my soul, complete my eyes!"
Still nothing.
"It doesn't work," Cordelia moaned. "Should I be doing something with my hands?"
"What exactly did Aurora tell you?" Angel said, and Cordelia thought for a second he might reach out and shake her. "Try to remember what she said."
"I can't... I mean, she just said to read this aloud if I found out that anything happened to her, and then she folded it like so..." In her reenactment Cordelia caught something. Another verse. "Hey! Wait. There's something else here.
"Alana, genesis of the path,
I seek your blessing.
Look into my heart, take my cause,
know my intentions. Lend me your essence.'"
She felt it hit her. An invisible force like a push right at her chest. She took a step back, and sucked in her breath.
"What?" Angel said. He instinctively reached for her, getting used now to her stumbling when she got hit with visions.
She leaned against him now. "I feel all... tingly." There was a breeze against her chest. And not just against it, but inside it. Something cool was traveling inside her, from her chest to the tips of her fingers. It didn't feel like creepy crawlies inside her skin -- it was something much more pleasant, but just as strange.
Cordelia didn't know if her eyes started glowing, but one look at her and Wesley figured it out.
"It's a spell, a borrowing spell." He quickly took the slip of paper in her hand and squinted at it. "Aurora's given you the spell to locate her if she's abducted. But you're not a witch, the incantation would mean nothing to you, so she gave you a spell to borrow the essence of a witch..."
"So you could perform the spell," Angel finished for him. "Cordelia, quick, finish it."
"Daughter of Alana, genesis yours,
blessing is mine.
Find my heart, find my soul,
complete my eyes."
The breeze hit her in the chest and she fell back into Angel again. The cool crawly feeling radiated up into her face, her eyes. Cordelia half expected the pain of her visions but it wasn't like that at all. She felt, well, like she was high on sugar. Or cough medicine. There was a cloud around her head but then there was...
Her eyes flew open. "I see her!" she gasped. "She's, she's in a car. With a guy. They're turning left at Juno. Heading into Terra." She could see it when she closed her eyes, superimposed on the darkness, like she was a third person there.
Next thing she knew Angel had them all in the car.
Cordelia liked this brand of vision seeing. They were much clearer. She could control how she saw them -- she would just close her eyes and it'd be there. And it was positively pain-free. Plus, they were not jump cuts straight out of an indie flick -- they were fluid, continuous, as if she was right there with Aurora. She could only see, though, and didn't know if Aurora was hurt or scared. But Cordelia assumed she must be. Aurora must have had some idea what they were going to do to her -- she was resolved about her fate before, but now she wanted to be rescued.
Well, she came to the right brooding vampire.
Cordelia closed her eyes again to see where Aurora and her abductor were now.
"What the hell?" she suddenly said.
"What?" Angel yelled, just as he turned the corner she last told him to take.
She closed her eyes again, just to be sure. Aurora was inside a room that Cordelia found strangely familiar. There was a lamp on one table... a red velvet chair near the door...
"She's at the Hyperion." Cordelia announced, her brow furrowed in confusion. "In one of the rooms upstairs. I think on the second floor, I used that room before."
"At the Hyperion?" Wesley echoed. "She was abducted right in our presence only to be... wait, Angel, stop."
"I'm not stopping the car, Wesley." He growled, turning into their street.
"No, wait, he's right!" Cordelia said, grabbing Angel's shoulder from the backseat. "We've got to plan this. She's live bait. We can't just barge in there, that's exactly what they want!"
The hotel was in sight now, and Angel screeched to a stop right in front of it. "Well, they're going to get what they want just this once. She's in trouble." At that, he flew out of the car and started running.
Great, now he was being all paranoid Superman. Cordelia jumped out of the car, as did Wesley, and ran after him. She tried to remember where the weapons were -- (Oh yeah, *inside* the freaking hotel) -- but if Aurora was on the second floor they might have enough time to get stuff from the weapons closet.
Angel was at the door in less than a heartbeat. He pulled the huge double doors open, but was halted. A man was standing at the doorway.
"Just in time," he said.
He raised his hand, and burst of energy lifted Cordelia and Wesley off their feet and threw them up and onto the ground.
"What do you want?" Angel demanded.
The man grinned. "Just twenty minutes of your time."
Send feedback please to slayerbelle@go.com
Destinies
by Slayerbelle
Chapter 3
"Reunion"
"What do you mean she's not here?"
"Please, not so loud, you'll split the *new cut on my head*," Cordelia said pointedly. Jeez, it figured. Angel returns from a day's work and the first thing he mouths off on... well, it was never about the little things, like her being hurt and stuff.
He faltered a little, and finally saw the strip of gauze on her forehead. "I'm sorry... what happened? Are you OK?"
She sighed. "Yeah, I'm fine. Hit my head on a table getting a vision, but what can you do? And don't go postal, OK? Aurora's going to be fine. I think."
"I can't believe Wesley just let her --"
"I said no going postal! Now stop pacing like a... postman. Angel, she had a vision. She had to go with Wesley. She has to do these things, she can't help it. She was chosen for this gig, you know."
For some reason, what she said had been enough. Angel stopped pacing. "What did you say?"
"She can't help it. She was picked for this gig. She's born for it. She's not like me, who got it by default because I happen to be the nearest pair of girl lips."
It was out of her mouth before she realized it. (As usually was the case with her manner of speech.) The air shifted, she felt it. And Angel crossed the room and touched her shoulder.
"Cordelia, Doyle loved you. He wanted you to have his gift because he loved you."
She knew that. If not in her heart, because Aurora said so several times already. It was still hard to make light of it.
So she didn't. "I know," she said softly. "What were we talking about a while ago?"
"Aurora."
"Oh yeah. You get off her case. You realize how much she's had to take to even agree to stay here with you? She's lost everything in the past few hours, don't you go all Mom with the telling her where to go and what to do."
But he wasn't postal anymore. Bringing up Doyle had sobered him somewhat. What he did, though, was begin eyeing her suspiciously. "Cordelia... how well do you know Aurora, exactly?"
Busted. "Um, well. More than you do, I guess."
He gave her a look. One of those furrowed brow things.
"OK! Lunch several times! She's a friend now! Why? Because she's a girlie girl, she's not a vampire or a British guy and she can talk about guys and hair and she knows almost everyone I know and she thinks Harmony's a flake too!" Cordelia paused, a little surprised at her own outburst. "You know what I mean. It's hard having no one to talk to. Not that I have no one, it's just that..."
"Yeah, I know." Angel said, nodding. He really did seem to understand. "And I'm sure she appreciates it as well."
"Oh sure. You know she's never been on a shopping spree *ever*, until I put her through Rodeo Drive? Well, we both couldn't afford much anyway, so we just annoyed the salespeople and capped off the day with frappuccinos. Close enough."
"She needs a friend."
"Yes she does." OK, so Angel really did care for Aurora. It may have been primarily out of guilt, but still. The guy really did have a heart, he was just preoccupied with being all Superman all the time. But Cordelia wanted to know something. "Why did you kiss her?"
He swallowed, silent for a second. "I wanted to thank her."
"There are less incriminating ways to thank people, you know. Like saying 'Thank You'."
"I can't explain it... I just... She's given me so much. But it doesn't matter now."
"Oh, don't you be taking that guilt trip over this too." Cordelia exclaimed, already foreshadowing the brooding to come. "She got caught because Lindsey the Lawyer From Hell pulled one on the two of you, and don't blame yourself."
She might as well have been moving her lips soundlessly because she knew. When Angel chose to brood, it was for the rest of his life, which was an eternity. He didn't need this.
He didn't say anything. Great, now she felt doubly bad. First Doyle, and then Aurora. That was where the paranoid Superman was coming from -- Angel felt responsible for Aurora's fate.
*I'd better fix this,* Cordelia thought regretfully. "Angel, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... you know how my mouth just gets possessed--"
"Cordelia, don't worry about it."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
He was lying. He wanted her to shut up now. "OK."
====
When Aurora opened her eyes the blond girl was standing in front of her. Wearing the same dress, but in a different color.
"How embarrassing." The blond girl said.
"I've had this dress for years." Aurora said.
"Me too."
There was a slight breeze in the red room. Just enough to lightly play with their hair. Aurora realized that they were wearing their hair almost the same way, almost the same length. The girl smiled at her, and they just looked at each other.
Aurora was waiting for her to speak.
"What's your name?" the girl finally said.
"Aurora."
"It's pretty."
"Thank you."
The girl looked like she wanted to say something again. Aurora waited.
The girl held out her hand. "I want to introduce myself."
"I already know you."
"I want to introduce myself. My name is Buffy Summers."
"What?" Aurora felt something on her face, and she realized it was the wind. She was in the backseat of Angel's convertible. He was driving with the top down, Cordelia on the passenger seat next to him with a scarf protecting her hair. "How long was I out?" she asked.
Cordelia turned to face her. "You fell asleep? We aren't five minutes away from the Hyperion."
"Oh." That happened sometimes. She'd doze off in a bus, get a complete vision, and be up before the next stop. It was an insane kind of narcolepsy. She fumbled for a pen and piece of paper -- she had some in her bag -- and wrote something.
====
Angel was transfixed.
He brought Aurora to the Host so he could read her. He didn't realize she'd put on a great show.
She held the microphone and sang like she was the only one in the room. The lights were right on her and she probably didn't see the roomful of people stunned silent.
"At last/The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover/The night I looked at you"
Lorne was ecstatic. "Angelcakes, she's terrific! Etta James by way of Diana Krall. Definitely not the Christina Aguilera chick." The Host turned away for a second to applaud. "My heart! She's taking with her my heart!"
"Do you need to know anything else about her?" Angel asked.
"Well even if I did need more, I wouldn't ask from you. I know this girl."
Great. Everyone seemed to know her more than he did.
"She was in here when you were putting Manilow to shame. Cloaked, which I told her was very rude. 'No cloaking in my establishment!' I said. Sweet girl, though. Very polite."
"Well, what do you see?"
"Well aren't we in a big rush tonight?"
Angel accepted the drink from the bartender and held the glass for some time, not drinking.
The Host stepped back. "Ho-kay. I forgot. You brood therefore you are. Well, let's see what's in the cards for your gypsy."
He sat silent and they watched her sing.
"Big things," The Host said.
"What?"
"Big things for this girl. Very big. Huge."
"So she doesn't die?"
"No." The Host's green nose twitched. "And yes. Let's just say there are several ways she can go here."
"I'm only interested in the ways where she doesn't die."
"And unless I've totally misread you, trust me when I tell you you won't want that. She's hot mystical stuff right now. You, my friend, are right in the middle of major tension around this girl. She has big things ahead of her."
"That's good." He honestly couldn't tell.
"Let's just say she's been approached by the Dark Side and the offer's mighty tempting." The Host laughed all of a sudden. "I just saw that movie recently -- Star Wars. It just made me very happy."
The reference, however, was all but lost on Angel. "Wolfram and Hart," he muttered. They sold her out so they could bail her out. Put her between a rock and a hard place. His fist clenched around the glass and it shook, in danger of breaking.
"What if she goes against them? She could stay here with me."
"You're a good guy, but you're not an army." The Host said, serious now. He plucked the glass from Angel's hand. "Of all her possible destinies, the most bleak is if she stays here with you. You can't do a thing about that. Best if you lay down your sword and leave her alone."
That wasn't right. He had to be able to do something. Anything. She wouldn't have been sent to him like this if he would be incapable of helping her.
Aurora's song ended, and the bar filled with enthusiastic applause. The Host stood up, approached her, and kissed her hand. "She's a jazz queen, a jazz queen! Honey, my stage is yours. Please do another! Luciano! How about some Billie Holiday?"
Angel found himself alone at the bar as the Host made his rounds and mingled. In the second that the lights dimmed a little, he caught Aurora's eye. She faltered for a second.
*I know what you're deliberating.*
OK, so he wasn't telepathic. But he knew she understood him.
What did Lindsey offer her, protection? Wealth? Fame? He could be "authorized" to give her anything.
"She sounds amazing," Wesley said, just arriving, sliding into the bar stool next to him. He had his notebook with him now, opened to a page with fresh new scribbles.
"Anything interesting?"
"As a matter of fact..." Wesley flipped through his notes. "I first would like to know why, after weeks of persuading me to drop my decoding of the Scroll of Aberjian, you now ask me to produce results."
"I just got concerned."
"You think it has anything to do with Aurora?"
"I think..." He dared not say it, and was hoping Wesley wasn't going to make him.
No such luck.
"You said my soul was one with a woman's."
"Yes."
"A woman who is chosen."
"Yes." Seeing Angel pause, it then dawned on Wesley was the fuss was about. "You're thinking it could be Aurora."
*And not Buffy.* It was the other part of the sentence. As much as it pained Angel to admit it, the thought *had* crossed his mind. Ever since Cordelia had brought up Aurora's birthright.
It had to explain things. Why he dreamed about her in the first place, which was how he had come to know she existed. How he broke through her cloaking spells and saw her. And how she was now in his care.
Coincidences in his life were rare and far between.
"I can't give you an answer to that," Wesley said. "But I did come up with more. Here... again, I warn you, this is from whatever context I could derive... The vampire's soul is one with the soul of the woman that is chosen. Liware will come to this woman, and she will receive a gift. That's what we know so far. This afternoon I was able to translate a word: harginda."
"It sounds familiar."
"Well, I'm sure it wasn't in regular usage by the time you were born, but it's in a lot of sacred texts from Central Asia. One of the synonyms for 'harginda' is reunion. In the end, the vampire with a soul shall be reunited with the woman who is chosen."
Wesley let the words fall between them. In the silence they both could hear Aurora, still singing Billie Holiday. The Host was chatting it up with Cordelia, who, from the looks of it, was refusing to perform a number for him.
Angel cleared his throat. "The Host just told me that Aurora and I would have to be apart for her to live through this."
Wesley stopped reading his notes, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. "Oh." Though he had steeled Angel into not hoping he it would be Buffy, it hadn't occurred to him that it might actually be someone else.
"Yeah." And Angel almost asked him to drop it right there, he looked exhausted. Barely recovered from an encounter with a Gvifer demon, and Angel was asking him to hit the books.
"Well, do you think it is? Her, I mean."
"I don't know. But it explains a lot of things."
"I don't understand."
"Why she's a part of my life at all, now. I never knew her. I would have gone on with my immortality and not known her. But I do."
"You think there's a reason."
"I know there's--"
Angel turned to the stage because Aurora had stopped singing.
She was looking straight at him, and he knew something was up.
With a loud, musical crash, every glass object in the bar exploded. Glasses, liquor bottles, windows. Angel and Wesley immediately hit the ground.
The room was plunged into darkness. For two seconds.
And by the time the lights came back on the stage was empty, and Aurora was gone.
====
"Oh my God," Cordelia moaned, picking herself up yet again from the floor. She was becoming an expert at this now. Duck, hit the ground face down, and wait.
Of course the ground was now soaking wet with various alcoholic beverages that had been liberated from their bottles. Several concoctions had seeped into her hair. And the cashmere blouse she'd bought just two weeks ago.
The bar was quiet for a second, and then everyone started to curse and shout. It was a mess, shattered glass all over like really wrong snow. As Cordelia stood up she caught a glimpse of the stage, and Aurora wasn't in it. She wasn't on the floor with the rest of the patrons either. This wasn't good.
"Angel!" she cried. She bumped into a man with a huge shard of glass wedged in his arm, and she gasped, checking her extremeties. She was cut near her elbow, and boy that was going to match the gauze on her forehead, but she seemed to be OK.
She caught up with Angel and Wesley by the bar. "Are you guys OK?" she exclaimed. It was near chaos now, people running out, wounded, bleeding. A fire had started in one corner of the room.
They looked at each other and realized they were standing on a pool of alcohol. Angel grabbed them both and started running for the door.
"Did you guys see Aurora?" she said, once outside, as she caught her breath. "She's gone."
"They took her," Angel was incensed. "She knew it. She looked at me, she knew they were coming... damn it!"
Wesley brushed something off his hair. "Well, this definitely would not be the work of amateurs."
"Where would they take her?" Angel demanded.
Wesley shook his head. "I... I don't know."
"Damn it! Wesley, she must have told you something. Anything."
"Wait!" Cordelia held up her hand, and fished for something in her purse. A slip of paper Aurora had handed to her just before they went into the bar. "I should have known. Damn it!"
"What? What is it?"
"Just a second. Ow!" She retriever her hand from her bag and realized she had cut herself on something. "God, my mirror's broken."
Wesley snorted. "Cordelia, I hardly think --"
"Hold that condescension one moment, British guy. I meant my mirror exploded from inside my bag. This mojo trick they pulled on us... this is serious. Oh, here it is."
It was a small piece of paper that Cordelia managed to retrieve from her purse. "She told me to say this if anything ever happens to her... I think, I think it's a spell." Cordelia squinted a little, and cleared her throat. "Here goes.
"Daughter of Alana, genesis yours,
blessing is mine.
Find my heart, find my soul,
complete my eyes.'"
OK, nothing. She saw Willow performing spells all the time and sometimes her eyes would go a different color. She felt nothing.
"Maybe you need to, you know, *enunciate*," Wesley said helpfully, squinting at the paper. "Oh, I can't read this..."
And then he realized that his glasses, still in his hand, were totally broken, and he was holding on to them only by the frames. "Well look at that."
"OK, fine. Enunciate. I'm an actress, I can do this." Cordelia took a deep breath and read the spell like she was channeling Willow. "Daughter of Alana, genesis yours, blessing is mine. Find my heart, find my soul, complete my eyes!"
Still nothing.
"It doesn't work," Cordelia moaned. "Should I be doing something with my hands?"
"What exactly did Aurora tell you?" Angel said, and Cordelia thought for a second he might reach out and shake her. "Try to remember what she said."
"I can't... I mean, she just said to read this aloud if I found out that anything happened to her, and then she folded it like so..." In her reenactment Cordelia caught something. Another verse. "Hey! Wait. There's something else here.
"Alana, genesis of the path,
I seek your blessing.
Look into my heart, take my cause,
know my intentions. Lend me your essence.'"
She felt it hit her. An invisible force like a push right at her chest. She took a step back, and sucked in her breath.
"What?" Angel said. He instinctively reached for her, getting used now to her stumbling when she got hit with visions.
She leaned against him now. "I feel all... tingly." There was a breeze against her chest. And not just against it, but inside it. Something cool was traveling inside her, from her chest to the tips of her fingers. It didn't feel like creepy crawlies inside her skin -- it was something much more pleasant, but just as strange.
Cordelia didn't know if her eyes started glowing, but one look at her and Wesley figured it out.
"It's a spell, a borrowing spell." He quickly took the slip of paper in her hand and squinted at it. "Aurora's given you the spell to locate her if she's abducted. But you're not a witch, the incantation would mean nothing to you, so she gave you a spell to borrow the essence of a witch..."
"So you could perform the spell," Angel finished for him. "Cordelia, quick, finish it."
"Daughter of Alana, genesis yours,
blessing is mine.
Find my heart, find my soul,
complete my eyes."
The breeze hit her in the chest and she fell back into Angel again. The cool crawly feeling radiated up into her face, her eyes. Cordelia half expected the pain of her visions but it wasn't like that at all. She felt, well, like she was high on sugar. Or cough medicine. There was a cloud around her head but then there was...
Her eyes flew open. "I see her!" she gasped. "She's, she's in a car. With a guy. They're turning left at Juno. Heading into Terra." She could see it when she closed her eyes, superimposed on the darkness, like she was a third person there.
Next thing she knew Angel had them all in the car.
Cordelia liked this brand of vision seeing. They were much clearer. She could control how she saw them -- she would just close her eyes and it'd be there. And it was positively pain-free. Plus, they were not jump cuts straight out of an indie flick -- they were fluid, continuous, as if she was right there with Aurora. She could only see, though, and didn't know if Aurora was hurt or scared. But Cordelia assumed she must be. Aurora must have had some idea what they were going to do to her -- she was resolved about her fate before, but now she wanted to be rescued.
Well, she came to the right brooding vampire.
Cordelia closed her eyes again to see where Aurora and her abductor were now.
"What the hell?" she suddenly said.
"What?" Angel yelled, just as he turned the corner she last told him to take.
She closed her eyes again, just to be sure. Aurora was inside a room that Cordelia found strangely familiar. There was a lamp on one table... a red velvet chair near the door...
"She's at the Hyperion." Cordelia announced, her brow furrowed in confusion. "In one of the rooms upstairs. I think on the second floor, I used that room before."
"At the Hyperion?" Wesley echoed. "She was abducted right in our presence only to be... wait, Angel, stop."
"I'm not stopping the car, Wesley." He growled, turning into their street.
"No, wait, he's right!" Cordelia said, grabbing Angel's shoulder from the backseat. "We've got to plan this. She's live bait. We can't just barge in there, that's exactly what they want!"
The hotel was in sight now, and Angel screeched to a stop right in front of it. "Well, they're going to get what they want just this once. She's in trouble." At that, he flew out of the car and started running.
Great, now he was being all paranoid Superman. Cordelia jumped out of the car, as did Wesley, and ran after him. She tried to remember where the weapons were -- (Oh yeah, *inside* the freaking hotel) -- but if Aurora was on the second floor they might have enough time to get stuff from the weapons closet.
Angel was at the door in less than a heartbeat. He pulled the huge double doors open, but was halted. A man was standing at the doorway.
"Just in time," he said.
He raised his hand, and burst of energy lifted Cordelia and Wesley off their feet and threw them up and onto the ground.
"What do you want?" Angel demanded.
The man grinned. "Just twenty minutes of your time."
