Lilah paced the length of the room and back again.  She did not like to be kept waiting, and the morgue made her slightly uncomfortable.  Odd, that.  She'd been surrounded by death ever since she joined Special Projects, had watched people die before her eyes.  Yet the place that all those bodies went, all the skeletons in Wolfram & Hart's closet, made her feel slightly nauseous.  She shouldn't have agreed to meet here, she should have chosen a place that didn't put her so far off her guard.  But the morgue was the most logical place for a dead body, with all the preservation spells and a necromancer on call 24 hours a day.  She would get at least part of what she and the firm wanted from Wesley.

            It was the whiteness of the room that made her uneasy, she thought.  She preferred dark colors, deep reds and violets.  Nothing natural was as sterile as this, and the smell…it made her queasy.  Chemically preserved body parts gave off the smell of formaldehyde; slightly decayed flesh that smelled even worse.  Even being down here for a few minutes was enough to affect her.  She couldn't let Morpheus see it whenever he decided to show up.

            They had never decided upon a particular time, and so she had waited in her office until she'd received a phone call from the vampire.  It had been well after normal business hours, and the building was nearly deserted except for a few attorneys working late and the night janitors.  So she'd made her way unnoticed into this room on the first sub-basement.  Nobody without proper clearance could come down here normally, but she had rigged the elevator to let Morpheus come down.  And disabled the firm's vampire-alarms.

            I should have been more patient.  I should not have used Morpheus, he is too volatile.  She berated herself for allowing this to happen.  She hadn't wanted Wesley dead, and the firm certainly hadn't wanted such a great asset gone to waste.  Damn.  She'd screwed up big here, and she just hoped she could salvage something and keep her job.  It wasn't just that she didn't want to die, she liked working at Wolfram & Hart.  She liked the rush of power she got when she realized she was above the law…even while working inside it.

            She heard a noise from behind her, and whirled to face Morpheus entering the morgue with a lifeless body in his arms.  It still looked fresh, and Lilah could still see the puncture wounds in the corpse's scarred neck.

            "Set it on the table here," Lilah said, indicating one of the stainless steel autopsy tables.

            "'It,' Lilah?  How positively rude.  Wesley is dead of course, but I hardly think he'd like hearing himself referred to as an 'it,'" replied Morpheus, carrying the body to the table.

            "Wesley's soul isn't here to care what I call him.  You took care of that."

            "So I did.  What are you going to do about it?" he inquired.

            Lilah was silent.  She wouldn't admit that she was powerless to do anything to him.  She couldn't make an idle threat when she didn't know how he'd respond to it.  Oh, how she wished she'd chosen a more controllable vampire.  But then Wesley would have been stunted.  Lilah nearly sighed.  Stunted was better than dead, in retrospect.

            "Have you realized yet how ineffectual you really are yet?" asked Morpheus in a conversational tone, as if he was commenting on the weather.

            Lilah glared at him.  She couldn't help herself.  "Leave.  Now."  It came out in an angry growl that surprised even herself.  She wasn't used to being so undiplomatic.

            Morpheus gave an exaggerated shrug.  "Suit yourself," he said, walking for the door.  He'd just reached it when he turned around and said, "Hope you and the dead guy enjoy yourselves."  The door closed behind him.

            The brunette lawyer released a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.  He was gone at last, and hopefully, if she had her way, would never deal with Wolfram & Hart again.  Lilah made a cursory examination of Wesley's body.  He was wearing only a pair of rumpled slacks, and she could see marks of a struggle on his chest and arms.  Slight bruising around the puncture wounds…odd.  The draining of his blood had not killed him, or else those wounds would be clean and bloodless, not bruised.  She began to wonder what had killed him, if not that.  She found no other marks, besides the scar around his neck.

            Her little Judas, she remembered calling him that night.  He'd glared at her angrily, and she knew that she'd hurt him.  It made her feel good…powerful.  Of course, he'd hurt her far worse that that when he told her how much she hadn't mattered to him.  Her nails drew blood from her palm as she remembered the words.

            "Is that…blood I smell, Ms. Morgan?" asked a calm, cold voice that sent a chill of fear down her spine.  So Morpheus had lied.  Wesley had been changed successfully, and that damn vampire bastard had loosed him on her.  It explained the bruises, at least.  "I hadn't realized your blood would smell so sweet, Lilah.  It's much nicer than the rest of you," he said.  Lilah was still paralyzed, she could only stare as the face of the Wesley she had known was transformed.  Terrible yellow eyes stared at her with hunger, but not the kind she remembered.  A far more terrible hunger that would leave her as dead as Wesley was supposed to be.

            "Aren't you going to say anything, Lilah?  Come now, you aren't scared of me are you?  Afraid of little old Wesley…you must be ashamed of yourself.  I can smell your fear, you know.  It's spicy.  I can only imagine how it will make your blood taste."  Wes smiled at her, showing teeth that were white and impossibly sharp.

            She tried to make her voice calm, even as she backed away toward the door.  "What do you want?"

            "Ah, proud Lilah.  Even to the end.  Haven't you figured it out yet?  You must be more dense than I thought."  He got up from the table and moved impossibly fast toward her.  "Revenge, Lilah," he whispered in her ear.  She unsuccessfully tried to stifle the gasp.  He was too close.  Why wasn't he doing anything?  She could—should, by all sense—be dead by now.  Why was he waiting?  Lilah didn't kid herself, she knew it couldn't be anything good.

            Wes ran a hand across her body, and she tried to flinch away, but he just grabbed her more tightly.  "I had a dream the other night.  I dreamed of killing you, strangling the life out of you with both hands about your fragile little neck.  I was surprised by how right it felt.  And that was back when I still had a soul.

            "And do you know what, Lilah?  I had a thought in that dream, that perhaps I should rape you, make you feel how helpless you truly are.  I decided then that I simply wanted you dead.  Of course now things are different.  I still want you dead, of course, but now after you've tried—successfully, at that—to have me killed, I want to hurt you before you die."

            Lilah went stiff.  She couldn't stop him.  She'd prided herself all her life on being strong and capable, able to deal with any situation…and here came something inescapable.  There was nothing she could do to Wesley now.  There was no wood in the morgue, and she'd disabled the vampire-alarms.  No one even knew she was here.  She was more frightened than she'd ever been in her life, and God help her, it was starting to show.  Sweat was dripping down her face, and her elegant cream silk blouse was ruined by perspiration.  She was on the verge of tears, but she knew that nothing would help her.  Wesley had no sympathy left, if he'd ever possessed any for her at all.

            And that was when she felt his grip on her change.

            "I know something I'll enjoy more than your body, and I hope it will hurt you the same way.  Actually, I know it will.  I wish you could tell me when all this is done, how it feels to be violated."  And his fangs bit into the soft flesh of her neck.  She screamed, but that just made it hurt worse.  She fought, clawed at his exposed flesh, but it didn't faze him.  Lilah could not break out of his terrible grip.

            Finally, she stopped trying.  She realized the blackness that was creeping up on her was not her enemy, but her escape.  And she rushed toward it with open arms.  The last thing that registered was a voice.

            "Goodbye, Lilah, it's been fun."