Cordelia turned on the Hyperion's industrial-sized gas stove and put a
saucepan over the blue flame. Then she opened the 'fridge and scanned for
milk. She'd gotten quite a lot of sleep during the day after her
particularly wild-and-crazy vision, and now her internal clock was off.
She was plenty tired, but she could barely even close her eyes, let alone
sleep. She was also worried about Angel; worried enough that she had
called her answering machine to let Dennis know that she was staying the
night at the Hyperion. So now she was going to find out whether or not the
sleep-inducing effects of warm milk were just an old wives' tale.
There was a noise from the lobby. Cordelia, almost unconsciously, slid open the knife drawer. She shut it again when she recognized Gunn's and Fred's distinctive voices drifting in from the lobby.
". . .really sorry about the ride," Fred was saying. "I haven't had much practice driving since I got back, and I never even drove a wagon in Pylea. Though they did make me pull one a bunch of times." She giggled nervously.
"Well, it was either you drive, or I shift gears with my teeth," Gunn said. He gently patted his forearm, which was hanging from a sling, as they walked into the kitchen. "Oh, hey, Cordy. How you feeling?"
"A little bit like somebody made me crack nuts with my head."
Fred put a hand to her own forehead. "Ooh. More Pylea memories. I think I'll go to bed." She turned and headed out the swinging kitchen doors.
"'Night, Fred," Cordelia said.
"Sweet dreams," added Gunn as Fred walked out.
"So," Gunn said, "anything happen while I was gone?"
"Yeah," Cordelia said, sighing, "a few things."
Cordelia spent the next ten minutes telling Gunn what had happened, occasionally pausing for sips of warm milk. Gunn's jaw dropped a little lower with every detail.
"Damn," Gunn said when Cordelia had finished. "And you don't know how it happened?"
"Not a clue," Cordelia replied. "We're pretty light on clues all around, right now."
"Kind of interesting, though."
"Interesting? Our resident champion has just turned into a super-size horndog with a side of slacker. How is that interesting?"
"I'm just saying, we don't know a whole lot about what Angel was like back in his breathing days. It must be kind of a trip to meet the old him, you know?"
Just then, the kitchen doors swung open and Liam himself came striding in. He glanced over at Cordelia, and the angle of his glance made her acutely aware of the small amount of cleavage peeking through the opening of her bathrobe.
"'Evening, Cordelia," Liam said. "May I say, you're as lovely in the wee hours as you are at noon."
"You haven't seen me at noon," Cordelia said, grasping the lapels of her bathrobe and pulling the garment fully closed.
"Then I eagerly await the pleasure. Who's the Moor?" Liam looked over at Gunn.
"Who's the what, now?" Gunn said, raising an eyebrow.
"He speaks English," Liam noted, still addressing Cordelia. "Does he work here?"
"Yeah, I work here," Gunn replied defensively.
"Good," Liam replied. "I'll have a whiskey. And do you cook? I've had no supper."
"Um, Angel," Cordelia said as Gunn's expression grew stormier, "Gunn is our partner. He works WITH us."
"Ah. The New World is a strange place." Liam began opening cabinets, looking for food and beverages.
"Not as strange as your room-temperature ass," Gunn mumbled.
Cordelia heard this and spoke up loudly, as if hoping to drown out Gunn's comment retroactively. "Um, Angel-"
Liam laughed. "Everybody keeps calling me that. I guess none of you knows me very well."
"Okay," Cordelia said, taking a deep breath. "Liam, why don't you have a seat and I'll warm something up for you?"
The Irishman grinned lewdly. "And what is it of mine you'll be warming, darlin'?"
Cordelia rolled her eyes and turned to Gunn. "Would it help to whack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper?"
"I think we threw out the newspaper," Gunn said. "But I got a mace you can borrow."
Cordelia looked back at Liam, who had seated himself on one of the kitchen counters and seemed to be admiring Cordelia's calves and ankles. "Tempting," she said, "but I think the real Angel would be upset if we dented his face."
"That's assuming we can get the real Angel back," Gunn said. A shadow of worry crossed over his face. "We can get him back, right?"
"Gee," Cordelia said, biting her lower lip. "I just sort of assumed it. I mean, we've seen Angel wig out six ways from Sunday, and we've always gotten him back."
"Wes'll figure it out," Gunn said, as much to himself as to Cordelia.
"Right," Cordelia said, nodding slowly. "And we've got Giles and Willow, too. Plenty of brains to go around. And Liam may be a great big bag of wild oats, but at least he's not Angelus."
"Well now," Liam said. He had been ignoring Cordelia and Gunn's conversation in favor of opening and closing every cupboard in the room. "It appears you don't have any whiskey. Is there a tavern nearby?"
"Well, there's- No!" Cordelia shouted. "You can't go out. You don't know anything about the twenty-first century. You could get hit by a bus or something."
"A what?" Liam replied.
"Exactly," Cordelia said.
"You'd better sit tight," Gunn added, "until we figure out how to get the last two hundred years of your life back."
Liam seemed to consider that for a moment, then said, "Fine. I'll just go to bed, then. Where are my rooms?"
They led Liam up the stairs to his door. "This is your place," Cordelia said.
"And where is yours, I wonder?" Liam said suggestively. "A lonely man might care to drop by for a visit."
"What's Irish for 'Not in a million years'?" Cordelia replied, then shut the door before Angel could respond.
Cordelia walked down the hall with Gunn. "I think the warm milk is working," she said with a yawn. "I'm going to bed."
"You want me to stick around?" Gunn asked.
"No, you go home," Cordelia replied. "I've got whole guestrooms full of help if something goes wrong."
"Okay. See you tomorrow."
-----
Liam listened as the two sets of footsteps faded away in opposite directions. He found that his hearing was much sharper now than it used to be. He had heard clearly the Moor's strange comment about the temperature of a donkey, even though Liam had not been meant to hear it. He could also hear the breathing and soft snores of the people sleeping in the rooms next to his.
When he was confident that there was no one else about on the second floor, Liam quietly searched the room for some new clothes, as the ones he had on smelled like dust. Once changed, he carefully opened the door of his room and crept out into the hallway.
Here was another ability he didn't know he had - he was unnaturally stealthy. He moved down the hall with the grace of a slender cat, stopping at each door and listening, then moving along as soon as he heard breathing or snoring.
He still wanted a whiskey, but he didn't feel like going out by himself. It was clear that none of the future-people in the hotel would so much as let him step across the threshold. That left only one potential drinking companion, however poor a prospect he might be.
Liam stopped and listened at another door. This time, he heard no breathing at all, just a sort of scratching. He turned the doorknob and let himself in.
"Aah!" the occupant screeched, sitting bolt upright in his bed. He hadn't been sleeping. Rather, he was writing something on a pad of paper that he had borrowed from Wesley.
"Shh," Liam said. "Eh, William, d'ya want to go get a whiskey?" he whispered.
"I certainly do not," William replied. "It's the middle of the night. And.and I don't enjoy whiskey."
Probably can't hold his liquor, Liam thought. Nonetheless, he tried to think of something that would lure the oddly-coiffed Englishman out for a drink with him.
"Come on, man," Liam said. "We've traveled to the future. Don't you want to see what it's like?"
"I imagine it must be at least somewhat dangerous," William said. "Have you looked out your window? Horseless carriages whizzing about, the lights of a million bonfires as far as the eye can see.I can see why they would forbid us to go out."
"Hmm," Liam said non-commitally. Then he suddenly snatched the pad from William's hands.
"What're ye writing here, William? 'Your golden hair, like dust motes in the sun / Effulgent, you are pure as any nun-'"
"Give that back!" William hissed, trying to grab the pad back from Liam. The Irishman danced backwards, holding the pad up out of William's reach.
"Come for a drink with me," Liam said, grinning wickedly, "or there'll be a public poetry reading in the hall tomorrow morning."
"But, but I don't have any proper clothes," William protested feebly.
"Did it occur to yeh that fashions might have changed since your time?" Liam replied. "Leather seems popular these days. Look at these trousers I found in my wardrobe."
"Oh, dear," William said, looking at Liam's pants as if they had crawled into the room and up Liam's legs on their own. Then he looked at his own clothing. He was still wearing the red t-shirt and black jeans he had awakened in, and a long, black, leather coat - presumably his - was hanging over the back of a chair. He sighed. "Well, when in Rome, I suppose." William stood up and pulled on the black duster.
"That's the spirit," Liam said. He handed William his pad. "We'll just slip out for a couple of hours. No one will even notice we're gone."
-----
"They're gone!"
Giles lifted his head up from his pillow to see a blurry orange shape standing in the doorway of his room. He reached for his glasses and put them on, causing the orange blob to resolve into Xander in some truly frightful orange pajamas.
"Who is gone?" Giles asked, shaking his head as if to knock the slumber from it.
"Spike and Angel. I got up to go to the bathroom, and on the way back I took a peek into Spike's room, you know, just to check up on him. Apparently that was a good idea."
"And Angel is gone, as well?"
"I checked his room after I found Spike's empty. I looked around downstairs, too. As far as I know, all the walking dead people in the building have walked right out."
"All right, um.wake the others," Giles said. "We'll split up and look for them. They're creatures of the night, after all, and they may have just gone for a stroll."
"Or they went out to eat.people," Xander replied.
"Spike's chip should still be functioning," Giles pointed out. "And Angel still has his soul."
"So do the Mansons," Xander countered. "Charles AND Marilyn." Before Giles could respond, Xander ran off and began pounding on more doors.
-----
The bar was smoky, but Liam wasn't familiar with the flavor of the smoke. It was bitter, not like the sweet pipe smoke that always hung in the air at the pub back home. There were quite a few people here. Many of them were dressed in garb similar to what he and William were wearing - plenty of leather and denim. A lot of the patrons had colorful tattoos or earrings, some in places quite far from the ear. Very loud music was playing from somewhere, but Liam couldn't see a band or even recognize the sound of the instruments.
He glanced over at William, who seemed quite nervous. "Easy, William," he said. "I'm sure these are typical folk of the age. They're just here for a bit of fun, like us. Look, there's the bar."
They walked up to the counter and planted themselves on stools. Liam waved to get the bartender's attention. The bartender was a burly, bald fellow with several tattoos and a t-shirt that read, "Better Your Sister in a Whorehouse than Your Brother on a Honda."
"I'll have an ale," Liam said when the man approached.
"We don't sell that fruity stuff here," the bartender said gruffly.
"If I wanted something fruity, I'd have ordered cider," Liam said. "I want an ale, or something like it."
"One light beer," the bartender said. He looked at William. "You?"
"Ah, I don't suppose you'd have a nice Bordeaux?"
"Two light beers," said the bartender flatly. Liam watched as the man took a hose from under the bar and squirted some fizzy, light-brown stuff into two glasses of only moderate cleanliness. He slammed these down in front of Liam and William and said, "Four bucks."
Liam assumed he was talking about money, and realized that he wasn't certain that he had any. In fact, he was certain that he _didn't_ have any, since whatever money he might have had was almost certainly in the pair of trousers he had left in his room.
"Ah, William, my friend, do you have any money with you?"
"Oh, how marvelous," William said, rolling his eyes. "You invite me for a drink and then expect me to pay. Typical Irish manners."
"Watch it, boyo, or I'll-"
"Oh, to hell with this," the bartender said. "Sammy! Kurt! Get 'em out of here!" He pointed at Liam and William.
Two large men emerged from a back room and advanced on the two vampires. William practically fell backwards off his stool, such was his hurry to get up. "No need, good sir, we were just leaving," William said, grasping Liam by the arm.
"No, we weren't," Liam said, pulling his arm away and turning to William. "I've fought tougher men than these and come out the better. We can take them."
"WE?" William practically squeaked. "I most emphatically will not participate in a public house brawl! And certainly not over this foul- smelling swill," he said, pointing at his glass of beer. "I'm sure we can find something equally vile elsewhere."
"Yer missing the point," Liam said as he raised his fists. "It's not the drinks, it's just the principle of the thing."
William looked around behind him and saw that the exit was blocked by a couple of burly fellows in tank tops who seemed to be scowling at him. When he turned back, one of the two bouncers - Kurt, he thought - was nearly upon him.
"Now look here," William said, raising his fists in an awkward imitation of Liam, "I assure you that when it comes to fisticuffs, I can handle myself perfectly well. Now, I assume we are all familiar with the Queensbury rules?"
Apparently short on listening skills, Kurt walked up and smashed his elbow across William's face hard enough to send the bleached-blonde vampire sprawling.
Sammy was more cautious. As he advanced, he reached behind him and pulled out a long, heavy flashlight, which he held up in front of Liam. "We're not allowed to carry weapons," he said with a vicious half-smile.
The comment made no sense to Liam, but the threat behind it certainly did. This was a bad situation - William was out, leaving an enemy behind Liam as well as the club-wielding one in front.
Sammy swung his flashlight at Liam's head. Liam only just managed to backpedal far enough to avoid it. His relief was momentary, however; a fist slammed into his back directly over his right kidney. The Irishman grunted and buckled.
Through a haze of pain, Liam felt Kurt grab his arms from behind as Sammy wound up for another swing. Liam's mind went blank. He was a good enough brawler, but he hadn't been in many situations as bad as this.
Suddenly, Liam snapped his right leg upwards and kicked Sammy in the chin. The burly man half-fell, half-flew backwards. His unconscious body smashed a small table by the side wall and collapsed onto the wreckage.
Liam reached his left foot around behind Kurt and tipped both of them over backwards. The vampire slammed his elbow into Kurt's chest just as the man's back hit the floor.
Kurt lay wheezing, the wind knocked out of him. Liam, for his part, was so stunned at his own unexpected display of martial prowess that he was still on the ground when the two large men from the doorway approached and began whacking at him with pool cues. Liam rolled to and fro, trying to dodge the sticks while covering his face with his arms.
William also lay on the floor, wiggling his jaw experimentally. Surely, as hard as he'd been hit, it ought to be broken, yet he felt almost no pain. Cautiously, he pulled himself to his feet. When he saw the bouncers beating Liam with sticks, he cried, "Stop that!"
The two bouncers turned and raised their cues.
"I mean...that is to say...just let him up and we'll happily be on our way," William stammered, suddenly realizing the danger inherent in threatening two large, armed men.
The bouncers were unimpressed. One of them approached William and swung his pool cue at him.
There was surprise all around as William reflexively stepped forward, grabbed the cue in mid-swing, and wrenched it right out of the bouncer's hands. Before the bouncer could take any other action, William drove the butt end of the cue up into the man's groin. There were two screams, one baritone and one tenor, as the bouncer fell in a ball to the floor while William grabbed at his head, blinded by pain.
Onlookers scarcely noticed when Liam, still on the floor, spun around on one hip and used his feet to sweep the other cue-wielding bouncer's legs out from under him. The man fell flat on his back; Liam rolled over and knocked him out with a punch to the jaw.
Liam got up and saw William holding his head and moaning with pain. The Irish vampire grabbed his English cohort by the shoulders and started walking him to the exit. "We'd best be off," Liam said. "No doubt, someone's gone to fetch the constable."
They went outside, and Liam walked them rapidly around a corner. They walked a few more blocks and around behind a 7-11, where they stopped.
"What happened in there?" Liam asked.
"I don't know," William said, grimacing from the lingering pain behind his eyes. "That large man struck me in the chin, and I fell down. When I got back up, you had felled two of them and the others were beating you."
"That's what I don't understand," Liam said. "I kicked one of those men in the face like I'd been doing it all my life. I've heard that some Frenchmen fight like that - boxe savate, they call it - but I certainly never have."
"And the way I took the stick away from that bald fellow," William added. "I certainly don't know how I did that. Though it didn't stop him from hitting me in the head, or whatever he did to make my cranium ache so. It was all quite agonizing, and yet.exhilarating."
"Perhaps," Liam mused, "these are things we learned since we died. Or undied, or however you put it."
"An interesting notion," William said. "I rather wonder what other knowledge we might have that we aren't aware of."
"Well, we won't know until we try, will we?" said Liam with a mischievous glint in his eye. He looked behind him at the great glass windows of the 7- 11. "You think this place sells whiskey?" he wondered aloud.
"Or headache powder, perhaps?" William said, putting a hand to the side of his head.
"Mmm.too brightly lit for whiskey," Liam said to himself. He turned to William. "A stiff drink will fix you right up. Look, there's more people down that street," Liam said, pointing.
"Yes," William agreed, letting go of his skull and peering curiously at a row of people in front of a large building. "People seem to be lining up for something along those velvet ropes. A play, perhaps? It would be fascinating to see how future generations interpret the Bard."
"I didn't come two hundred years into the future to be bored," Liam said. "But it could be something worth a look."
"Boor," William said under his breath.
"I heard that," Liam replied.
"Let's just go and see," William said testily.
They stood on the line as it inched forward towards the front doors of a large building awash with colorful light. The people around them were young, noisy, and, in William's opinion, less than tastefully clad. What was worse, Liam was ogling every female in sight, drawing angry stares from both the women and their male companions. William wondered if his ill- mannered companion would get them into another brawl, and found that his feelings about that prospect were rather more mixed than he would have expected.
As the line inched forward, William also noticed that the people in front were handing money to a man standing in the doorway. William dug into his pockets, pulled out four green bills, and looked at them. "Well," he said, "At least the Americans are still using the dollar. But I seem to have eighty of them, so either I am a very rich man, or the value of their currency has dropped rather sharply since my time."
They reached the front of the line, where the man working the door asked William and Liam for ten dollars each. William handed him one of his bills and they entered.
The sight that awaited them was almost surreal. There was an enormous room, perhaps forty feet high, lit by moving red and blue lights. Hundreds of people were dancing on the large, open floor. Countless tables and chairs littered the periphery. Music unlike anything either of them had heard before boomed from all around them, making their bodies vibrate with every pulse. In various places around the room, there were platforms on which scantily-clad women and men danced to entertain the crowd.
"It's a dance hall!" Liam shouted over the loud music.
"It's.magnificent!" William cried. "A stately pleasure dome."
They gawked for several seconds, until Liam came to himself and yanked on William's sleeve. "Come on," he yelled, "let's find some drinks." William followed Liam, whose nose for spirits quickly led them to a bar, tended by a curly-haired young woman in a collared shirt.
"Have you any whiskey?" Liam said loudly.
The woman nodded and poured a small glass of brown liquor, then turned to William. "How about you?" she shouted.
William didn't want to risk asking for Bordeaux again. "Ah, what do you recommend?"
"I make a mean margarita," the woman called back.
"Then I shall have that."
Soon, William had surrendered another ten dollars for Liam's whiskey and his own beverage, a foul-smelling golden liquid in a glass ringed with salt and decorated with a wedge of lime. It was a most peculiar libation.
They took their drinks to an empty table by the side of the room and looked around. "Have ye noticed that no one here seems to know how to dance?" Liam said after a few moments. "They're mostly just jumping around without touching."
"Yes, yes, that's so," William replied. "Perhaps morals here are not so loose as in your time."
Liam ignored the jab. "Not judging by the clothing," he replied, looking salaciously at a bikini-clad dancer on one of the platforms.
"There could be an outbreak of cholera, or some other contagious disease," William mused. "If germ theory has proven correct, then perhaps they're afraid to touch one another for fear that tiny creatures will migrate between their hands."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Liam replied. "Tiny creatures. Where did you learn such rubbish?"
William's only reply was a snort. They looked around in silence for several moments.
"Eh, William," Liam said suddenly. "Have you noticed that those girls near the bar are looking at us?"
"Oh, God, it's my hair, isn't it?" William said nervously. "I look like an albino."
"No, yeh great clucking hen, I mean they look interested in us. Let's go and introduce ourselves."
William looked over at the women near the bar. They did, indeed, seem to be looking his and Liam's way. One of them caught his eye and smiled, causing William to stiffen and make a rapid 180-degree turn.
"Ah, I, ah, believe I need to, um, find the facilities," William said.
"Come on, now, William, no need to be nervous. They just want a bit o' conversation."
"Exactly!" William cried. "What if they want to talk about.I don't know.current events?"
"We can claim ignorance for being foreigners," Liam replied. "Girls love foreigners."
"Yes, but.well.I'll be back directly," William said, and before Liam could speak another word, he had hurried off towards a doorway on the far wall.
"Pansy," Liam said to no one in particular, and headed towards the two women alone.
-----
Cordelia looked around the dive bar, her expression an odd mix of dismay and optimism. A paramedic was examining a half-conscious man lying on the broken remnants of a table, and two more paramedics were lifting a man with a large ice pack over his groin onto a gurney. A couple of badly bruised fellows were gruffly responding to questions from a pair of police officers.
"Okay," Cordelia said to Xander and Anya, who had been assigned by Buffy to accompany Cordelia when the group split up to search the area. "Anybody think this might _not_ have been the work of our amnesia poster boys?"
"This definitely looks like Spike's kind of place," Xander said. "Ask if they have buffalo wings. Then we'll know for sure."
"He's not Spike, remember?" Anya said. "He's William. He'd looking for steak and kidney pie, or blood pudding, or something." She stopped and thought for a moment. "You know, now that I think about it, demons and English people have pretty similar tastes in food."
"Can we focus, please?" Cordelia said. She turned and looked out the door of the bar. "So, where would they go from here?"
"Okay," Anya said. "I'm in a century I'm totally unfamiliar with. So, naturally, I want to learn the ropes fast, find out what people are like and how they act, but without having to interact with them much myself."
"An, honey, we need to look for Angel and Spike right now," Xander said. "We can talk about your issues later."
"I AM talking about Angel and Spike," Anya said, exasperated. "I'm just saying, speaking from my own experience, that they would want to go where there are lots of people."
Cordelia pointed at a colorfully-lit building a few blocks down the street. "Club Indigo," she said. "Plenty of people in there."
"Then come, native guide," Xander said. "Let us hunt the great white bloodsucker."
-----
William, of course, didn't need to pee. In fact, if it was true that he was a vampire, he wasn't certain that he would ever have to pee again. That seemed very convenient.
He walked up a staircase lit all in purple and stopped at a landing with a doorway, through which he saw another dance floor. "Caverns measureless to man," he murmured to himself.
The ceiling here was lower than in the first room, and the style of the music seemed very different, with a bit more melody and less oppressive, throbbing percussion. What was more, the piece that was currently playing had words, unlike the all-instrumental stuff downstairs. He stopped and listened to the lyrics for a moment; the male vocalist was singing about not being a stepping stone.
William wasn't certain if it was the content of the lyrics or simply the beat, but he found his feet moving almost involuntarily. He had always been a poor dancer, so nervous about making mistakes in front of other people that he would end up making them anyway. But perhaps he had learned something in the intervening years.
Before he fully realized it, William had moved out onto the dance floor and started bobbing and gyrating with the others. The thoughts that always whirled around in his mind were drowned out by the loudness of the music, the feel of the beat, the flashing lights, the smell of a hundred bodies around him. He let his mind go and allowed his body to move of its own.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the tiny sliver of consciousness that still remained to him said, Perhaps this is what it is to be free.
-----
Buffy, Wesley, and Gunn had been close by, checking the alleyways, when they got the call from Cordelia that she had a lead on Angel and Spike. The Slayer and the two L.A.-dwellers quickly made their way to Club Indigo.
When they arrived, they found Cordelia and Anya sitting around a small table, their glum expressions a stark contrast with the party atmosphere of the club. The three newcomers grabbed chairs from an empty table nearby and sat down.
"What's up?" Gunn said.
"We found Angel," Cordelia said. "But we can't get him to leave."
"He's having too much fun," Anya said. "Look."
Anya pointed across the room at Angel. He was sitting in the far corner, surrounded by a large group of young people which included a disproportionate number of attractive women. They seemed to be listening raptly to Angel as he told a story that seemed to require many large gestures.
"Well just let's go get him and get out of here," Buffy said. "We don't have time to waste." The Slayer got up and started towards Angel, but was stopped by Wesley's hand on her shoulder.
"Don't piss me off more than you have to, Wesley," she said crossly. "We have to get Angel under wraps so we can go back to looking for Dawn."
"Yes," Wesley said. "But what precisely are you going to do? Drag him back to the Hyperion?"
"If I have to."
"At best, you'll make a scene, which we do not need. Or didn't you notice that two policemen have just arrived?"
Buffy looked behind her. Two men in suits, obviously well above the average age of the club's clientele, had just walked in the door. They began pulling people aside to ask questions.
"Oh, God," Cordelia said. "This could really make things messy. But.I have an idea."
She grabbed Wesley and yanked him down next to her so he could hear her over the music. Gunn was just close enough to catch what was said. He was grinning widely.
"No!" Wesley shouted after hearing Cordelia's plan. "I certainly will not."
Cordelia pointed discreetly at the two detectives, who seemed to be working their way closer to the dance floor. "Can you come up with a better plan in the next five seconds?"
"Well, I. . .I could. . .there is always. . .No. No, I can't."
Gunn solemnly clapped Wesley on the shoulder. "Go with God, my friend."
Dejectedly, Wesley started walking across the room.
"What's going on?" Buffy asked.
"Wesley's taking one for the team," Gunn replied.
Wesley arrived at Liam's table and began making arm gestures of even greater magnitude than Liam's own. Liam looked incredibly puzzled, then angry as the crowd around him began to disperse.
"What is he doing?" Anya asked.
"I told him to go pretend to be Angel's very upset and insecure lover," Cordelia responded. "Oh, and I suggested that he mention something about a burning sensation and a recent visit to the clinic."
Buffy couldn't help it; upset as she was, she barked one loud laugh before she recovered her state of worried determination.
"Hey," she said to Cordelia, "wasn't Xander with you?"
"Yeah. He went upstairs to look for Spike."
Liam and Wesley now seemed to be yelling at each other, though the loud music prevented the sound from carrying very far. Finally, Liam complied, if sullenly, with Wesley's instruction to come along. The whole group quickly crowded around Liam and hurried him out of the club save for Anya, who went to find Xander and/or William.
"I don't understand any of ye," Liam said when they got outside. "I'm not harming anyone. I'm just doing what men do when they've some free time and a few coins in their pockets."
"You don't know this world, An- Liam," Wesley said. "You have many enemies here, enemies who would like nothing more than the opportunity to-"
"Guys," Cordelia interrupted, pointing at a police car that was cruising up the street, "less talk, more walk."
They hurried back to the Hyperion.
-----
Xander had had a feeling that it wouldn't take long to find William. And he was right.
William was in the middle of the dance floor, bouncing and whirling around in his long coat like some kind of acid-rock ballet dancer. The expression on his face was somewhere between dreamy and maniacal. It was a look Xander had seen a few times on the face of his cousin Craig - Uncle Rory's boy - causing Xander to wonder if William was high.
Xander nudged and weaved his way around the dance floor and grabbed William by the sleeve, shaking the vampire out of his energetic reverie. "Yo, Spike, time to go home!" he shouted over the music.
The vampire turned and looked at Xander like he was a big, crunchy piece of eggshell hidden in an otherwise delicious omelet.
"My name," he replied as he snatched his sleeve from Xander's grip, "is William. And I- I will not go home! I am having one of the best evenings of my life, thank you very much, and I shan't interrupt it for anything!"
"Spike, I'd love to stand here and discuss this whole thing with you rationally," Xander said. "But the fact that you've gone insane kind of rules that out. Now let's go." He grabbed Spike's wrist and began trying to drag him off the dance floor.
"No!" William shouted. He pulled his arm away from Xander with such force that the young carpenter was hurled into the crowd, cracking heads with one of the onlookers. As Xander and the man he had hit stumbled away from each other, William screamed and grabbed the sides of his head.
"Bloody hell!" William cried. "What IS that? It's as if someone were driving a three-penny nail into my head!"
Xander staggered towards William, saying, "It's your just desserts, you big freak."
William looked up at Xander. "You're bleeding," he said.
Xander put a hand to his forehead. Blood was, indeed, trickling down from somewhere behind his hairline. "Great," he said. "Like everybody isn't already looking at us."
William stepped closer. "Yes." he said abstractedly, never taking his eyes from Xander's forehead. "It's.oddly compelling."
"Okaaaaay," Xander said. "Backing away slowly now."
William followed Xander's every move. "Yeeeess, follow Xander and his yummy blood," Xander said hypnotically, trying to hide his anxiety at William's sudden ardor. William looked more like a zombie than a vampire, taking one step forward for every step Xander took back.
Xander lured William all the way to the stairwell before the vampire snapped out of his trance, blinking hard and shaking his head. Xander quickly wiped the blood from his forehead.
"That.that was.I'm terribly confused," William said. "First, I had unexplained headaches, and now this.obsession, with.blood. When I saw it on your forehead, I couldn't think of anything else."
"Okay, let me re-explain the part where YOU'RE A VAMPIRE," Xander said. "You drink blood. It's disgusting, but apparently it's all part of the circle of unlife. Now can we please go back to the hotel?"
"Yes, yes, fine," William said distractedly.
They walked down the stairs and out the front doors in silence, Xander steering William through the thickest parts of the crowd to avoid notice. They were almost at the Hyperion's front door when William suddenly said, "I really drink blood?"
"Yes, you do," Xander said. "It's very, very gross."
William pondered that for a moment.
"Fascinating," he said at last.
-----
There was a noise from the lobby. Cordelia, almost unconsciously, slid open the knife drawer. She shut it again when she recognized Gunn's and Fred's distinctive voices drifting in from the lobby.
". . .really sorry about the ride," Fred was saying. "I haven't had much practice driving since I got back, and I never even drove a wagon in Pylea. Though they did make me pull one a bunch of times." She giggled nervously.
"Well, it was either you drive, or I shift gears with my teeth," Gunn said. He gently patted his forearm, which was hanging from a sling, as they walked into the kitchen. "Oh, hey, Cordy. How you feeling?"
"A little bit like somebody made me crack nuts with my head."
Fred put a hand to her own forehead. "Ooh. More Pylea memories. I think I'll go to bed." She turned and headed out the swinging kitchen doors.
"'Night, Fred," Cordelia said.
"Sweet dreams," added Gunn as Fred walked out.
"So," Gunn said, "anything happen while I was gone?"
"Yeah," Cordelia said, sighing, "a few things."
Cordelia spent the next ten minutes telling Gunn what had happened, occasionally pausing for sips of warm milk. Gunn's jaw dropped a little lower with every detail.
"Damn," Gunn said when Cordelia had finished. "And you don't know how it happened?"
"Not a clue," Cordelia replied. "We're pretty light on clues all around, right now."
"Kind of interesting, though."
"Interesting? Our resident champion has just turned into a super-size horndog with a side of slacker. How is that interesting?"
"I'm just saying, we don't know a whole lot about what Angel was like back in his breathing days. It must be kind of a trip to meet the old him, you know?"
Just then, the kitchen doors swung open and Liam himself came striding in. He glanced over at Cordelia, and the angle of his glance made her acutely aware of the small amount of cleavage peeking through the opening of her bathrobe.
"'Evening, Cordelia," Liam said. "May I say, you're as lovely in the wee hours as you are at noon."
"You haven't seen me at noon," Cordelia said, grasping the lapels of her bathrobe and pulling the garment fully closed.
"Then I eagerly await the pleasure. Who's the Moor?" Liam looked over at Gunn.
"Who's the what, now?" Gunn said, raising an eyebrow.
"He speaks English," Liam noted, still addressing Cordelia. "Does he work here?"
"Yeah, I work here," Gunn replied defensively.
"Good," Liam replied. "I'll have a whiskey. And do you cook? I've had no supper."
"Um, Angel," Cordelia said as Gunn's expression grew stormier, "Gunn is our partner. He works WITH us."
"Ah. The New World is a strange place." Liam began opening cabinets, looking for food and beverages.
"Not as strange as your room-temperature ass," Gunn mumbled.
Cordelia heard this and spoke up loudly, as if hoping to drown out Gunn's comment retroactively. "Um, Angel-"
Liam laughed. "Everybody keeps calling me that. I guess none of you knows me very well."
"Okay," Cordelia said, taking a deep breath. "Liam, why don't you have a seat and I'll warm something up for you?"
The Irishman grinned lewdly. "And what is it of mine you'll be warming, darlin'?"
Cordelia rolled her eyes and turned to Gunn. "Would it help to whack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper?"
"I think we threw out the newspaper," Gunn said. "But I got a mace you can borrow."
Cordelia looked back at Liam, who had seated himself on one of the kitchen counters and seemed to be admiring Cordelia's calves and ankles. "Tempting," she said, "but I think the real Angel would be upset if we dented his face."
"That's assuming we can get the real Angel back," Gunn said. A shadow of worry crossed over his face. "We can get him back, right?"
"Gee," Cordelia said, biting her lower lip. "I just sort of assumed it. I mean, we've seen Angel wig out six ways from Sunday, and we've always gotten him back."
"Wes'll figure it out," Gunn said, as much to himself as to Cordelia.
"Right," Cordelia said, nodding slowly. "And we've got Giles and Willow, too. Plenty of brains to go around. And Liam may be a great big bag of wild oats, but at least he's not Angelus."
"Well now," Liam said. He had been ignoring Cordelia and Gunn's conversation in favor of opening and closing every cupboard in the room. "It appears you don't have any whiskey. Is there a tavern nearby?"
"Well, there's- No!" Cordelia shouted. "You can't go out. You don't know anything about the twenty-first century. You could get hit by a bus or something."
"A what?" Liam replied.
"Exactly," Cordelia said.
"You'd better sit tight," Gunn added, "until we figure out how to get the last two hundred years of your life back."
Liam seemed to consider that for a moment, then said, "Fine. I'll just go to bed, then. Where are my rooms?"
They led Liam up the stairs to his door. "This is your place," Cordelia said.
"And where is yours, I wonder?" Liam said suggestively. "A lonely man might care to drop by for a visit."
"What's Irish for 'Not in a million years'?" Cordelia replied, then shut the door before Angel could respond.
Cordelia walked down the hall with Gunn. "I think the warm milk is working," she said with a yawn. "I'm going to bed."
"You want me to stick around?" Gunn asked.
"No, you go home," Cordelia replied. "I've got whole guestrooms full of help if something goes wrong."
"Okay. See you tomorrow."
-----
Liam listened as the two sets of footsteps faded away in opposite directions. He found that his hearing was much sharper now than it used to be. He had heard clearly the Moor's strange comment about the temperature of a donkey, even though Liam had not been meant to hear it. He could also hear the breathing and soft snores of the people sleeping in the rooms next to his.
When he was confident that there was no one else about on the second floor, Liam quietly searched the room for some new clothes, as the ones he had on smelled like dust. Once changed, he carefully opened the door of his room and crept out into the hallway.
Here was another ability he didn't know he had - he was unnaturally stealthy. He moved down the hall with the grace of a slender cat, stopping at each door and listening, then moving along as soon as he heard breathing or snoring.
He still wanted a whiskey, but he didn't feel like going out by himself. It was clear that none of the future-people in the hotel would so much as let him step across the threshold. That left only one potential drinking companion, however poor a prospect he might be.
Liam stopped and listened at another door. This time, he heard no breathing at all, just a sort of scratching. He turned the doorknob and let himself in.
"Aah!" the occupant screeched, sitting bolt upright in his bed. He hadn't been sleeping. Rather, he was writing something on a pad of paper that he had borrowed from Wesley.
"Shh," Liam said. "Eh, William, d'ya want to go get a whiskey?" he whispered.
"I certainly do not," William replied. "It's the middle of the night. And.and I don't enjoy whiskey."
Probably can't hold his liquor, Liam thought. Nonetheless, he tried to think of something that would lure the oddly-coiffed Englishman out for a drink with him.
"Come on, man," Liam said. "We've traveled to the future. Don't you want to see what it's like?"
"I imagine it must be at least somewhat dangerous," William said. "Have you looked out your window? Horseless carriages whizzing about, the lights of a million bonfires as far as the eye can see.I can see why they would forbid us to go out."
"Hmm," Liam said non-commitally. Then he suddenly snatched the pad from William's hands.
"What're ye writing here, William? 'Your golden hair, like dust motes in the sun / Effulgent, you are pure as any nun-'"
"Give that back!" William hissed, trying to grab the pad back from Liam. The Irishman danced backwards, holding the pad up out of William's reach.
"Come for a drink with me," Liam said, grinning wickedly, "or there'll be a public poetry reading in the hall tomorrow morning."
"But, but I don't have any proper clothes," William protested feebly.
"Did it occur to yeh that fashions might have changed since your time?" Liam replied. "Leather seems popular these days. Look at these trousers I found in my wardrobe."
"Oh, dear," William said, looking at Liam's pants as if they had crawled into the room and up Liam's legs on their own. Then he looked at his own clothing. He was still wearing the red t-shirt and black jeans he had awakened in, and a long, black, leather coat - presumably his - was hanging over the back of a chair. He sighed. "Well, when in Rome, I suppose." William stood up and pulled on the black duster.
"That's the spirit," Liam said. He handed William his pad. "We'll just slip out for a couple of hours. No one will even notice we're gone."
-----
"They're gone!"
Giles lifted his head up from his pillow to see a blurry orange shape standing in the doorway of his room. He reached for his glasses and put them on, causing the orange blob to resolve into Xander in some truly frightful orange pajamas.
"Who is gone?" Giles asked, shaking his head as if to knock the slumber from it.
"Spike and Angel. I got up to go to the bathroom, and on the way back I took a peek into Spike's room, you know, just to check up on him. Apparently that was a good idea."
"And Angel is gone, as well?"
"I checked his room after I found Spike's empty. I looked around downstairs, too. As far as I know, all the walking dead people in the building have walked right out."
"All right, um.wake the others," Giles said. "We'll split up and look for them. They're creatures of the night, after all, and they may have just gone for a stroll."
"Or they went out to eat.people," Xander replied.
"Spike's chip should still be functioning," Giles pointed out. "And Angel still has his soul."
"So do the Mansons," Xander countered. "Charles AND Marilyn." Before Giles could respond, Xander ran off and began pounding on more doors.
-----
The bar was smoky, but Liam wasn't familiar with the flavor of the smoke. It was bitter, not like the sweet pipe smoke that always hung in the air at the pub back home. There were quite a few people here. Many of them were dressed in garb similar to what he and William were wearing - plenty of leather and denim. A lot of the patrons had colorful tattoos or earrings, some in places quite far from the ear. Very loud music was playing from somewhere, but Liam couldn't see a band or even recognize the sound of the instruments.
He glanced over at William, who seemed quite nervous. "Easy, William," he said. "I'm sure these are typical folk of the age. They're just here for a bit of fun, like us. Look, there's the bar."
They walked up to the counter and planted themselves on stools. Liam waved to get the bartender's attention. The bartender was a burly, bald fellow with several tattoos and a t-shirt that read, "Better Your Sister in a Whorehouse than Your Brother on a Honda."
"I'll have an ale," Liam said when the man approached.
"We don't sell that fruity stuff here," the bartender said gruffly.
"If I wanted something fruity, I'd have ordered cider," Liam said. "I want an ale, or something like it."
"One light beer," the bartender said. He looked at William. "You?"
"Ah, I don't suppose you'd have a nice Bordeaux?"
"Two light beers," said the bartender flatly. Liam watched as the man took a hose from under the bar and squirted some fizzy, light-brown stuff into two glasses of only moderate cleanliness. He slammed these down in front of Liam and William and said, "Four bucks."
Liam assumed he was talking about money, and realized that he wasn't certain that he had any. In fact, he was certain that he _didn't_ have any, since whatever money he might have had was almost certainly in the pair of trousers he had left in his room.
"Ah, William, my friend, do you have any money with you?"
"Oh, how marvelous," William said, rolling his eyes. "You invite me for a drink and then expect me to pay. Typical Irish manners."
"Watch it, boyo, or I'll-"
"Oh, to hell with this," the bartender said. "Sammy! Kurt! Get 'em out of here!" He pointed at Liam and William.
Two large men emerged from a back room and advanced on the two vampires. William practically fell backwards off his stool, such was his hurry to get up. "No need, good sir, we were just leaving," William said, grasping Liam by the arm.
"No, we weren't," Liam said, pulling his arm away and turning to William. "I've fought tougher men than these and come out the better. We can take them."
"WE?" William practically squeaked. "I most emphatically will not participate in a public house brawl! And certainly not over this foul- smelling swill," he said, pointing at his glass of beer. "I'm sure we can find something equally vile elsewhere."
"Yer missing the point," Liam said as he raised his fists. "It's not the drinks, it's just the principle of the thing."
William looked around behind him and saw that the exit was blocked by a couple of burly fellows in tank tops who seemed to be scowling at him. When he turned back, one of the two bouncers - Kurt, he thought - was nearly upon him.
"Now look here," William said, raising his fists in an awkward imitation of Liam, "I assure you that when it comes to fisticuffs, I can handle myself perfectly well. Now, I assume we are all familiar with the Queensbury rules?"
Apparently short on listening skills, Kurt walked up and smashed his elbow across William's face hard enough to send the bleached-blonde vampire sprawling.
Sammy was more cautious. As he advanced, he reached behind him and pulled out a long, heavy flashlight, which he held up in front of Liam. "We're not allowed to carry weapons," he said with a vicious half-smile.
The comment made no sense to Liam, but the threat behind it certainly did. This was a bad situation - William was out, leaving an enemy behind Liam as well as the club-wielding one in front.
Sammy swung his flashlight at Liam's head. Liam only just managed to backpedal far enough to avoid it. His relief was momentary, however; a fist slammed into his back directly over his right kidney. The Irishman grunted and buckled.
Through a haze of pain, Liam felt Kurt grab his arms from behind as Sammy wound up for another swing. Liam's mind went blank. He was a good enough brawler, but he hadn't been in many situations as bad as this.
Suddenly, Liam snapped his right leg upwards and kicked Sammy in the chin. The burly man half-fell, half-flew backwards. His unconscious body smashed a small table by the side wall and collapsed onto the wreckage.
Liam reached his left foot around behind Kurt and tipped both of them over backwards. The vampire slammed his elbow into Kurt's chest just as the man's back hit the floor.
Kurt lay wheezing, the wind knocked out of him. Liam, for his part, was so stunned at his own unexpected display of martial prowess that he was still on the ground when the two large men from the doorway approached and began whacking at him with pool cues. Liam rolled to and fro, trying to dodge the sticks while covering his face with his arms.
William also lay on the floor, wiggling his jaw experimentally. Surely, as hard as he'd been hit, it ought to be broken, yet he felt almost no pain. Cautiously, he pulled himself to his feet. When he saw the bouncers beating Liam with sticks, he cried, "Stop that!"
The two bouncers turned and raised their cues.
"I mean...that is to say...just let him up and we'll happily be on our way," William stammered, suddenly realizing the danger inherent in threatening two large, armed men.
The bouncers were unimpressed. One of them approached William and swung his pool cue at him.
There was surprise all around as William reflexively stepped forward, grabbed the cue in mid-swing, and wrenched it right out of the bouncer's hands. Before the bouncer could take any other action, William drove the butt end of the cue up into the man's groin. There were two screams, one baritone and one tenor, as the bouncer fell in a ball to the floor while William grabbed at his head, blinded by pain.
Onlookers scarcely noticed when Liam, still on the floor, spun around on one hip and used his feet to sweep the other cue-wielding bouncer's legs out from under him. The man fell flat on his back; Liam rolled over and knocked him out with a punch to the jaw.
Liam got up and saw William holding his head and moaning with pain. The Irish vampire grabbed his English cohort by the shoulders and started walking him to the exit. "We'd best be off," Liam said. "No doubt, someone's gone to fetch the constable."
They went outside, and Liam walked them rapidly around a corner. They walked a few more blocks and around behind a 7-11, where they stopped.
"What happened in there?" Liam asked.
"I don't know," William said, grimacing from the lingering pain behind his eyes. "That large man struck me in the chin, and I fell down. When I got back up, you had felled two of them and the others were beating you."
"That's what I don't understand," Liam said. "I kicked one of those men in the face like I'd been doing it all my life. I've heard that some Frenchmen fight like that - boxe savate, they call it - but I certainly never have."
"And the way I took the stick away from that bald fellow," William added. "I certainly don't know how I did that. Though it didn't stop him from hitting me in the head, or whatever he did to make my cranium ache so. It was all quite agonizing, and yet.exhilarating."
"Perhaps," Liam mused, "these are things we learned since we died. Or undied, or however you put it."
"An interesting notion," William said. "I rather wonder what other knowledge we might have that we aren't aware of."
"Well, we won't know until we try, will we?" said Liam with a mischievous glint in his eye. He looked behind him at the great glass windows of the 7- 11. "You think this place sells whiskey?" he wondered aloud.
"Or headache powder, perhaps?" William said, putting a hand to the side of his head.
"Mmm.too brightly lit for whiskey," Liam said to himself. He turned to William. "A stiff drink will fix you right up. Look, there's more people down that street," Liam said, pointing.
"Yes," William agreed, letting go of his skull and peering curiously at a row of people in front of a large building. "People seem to be lining up for something along those velvet ropes. A play, perhaps? It would be fascinating to see how future generations interpret the Bard."
"I didn't come two hundred years into the future to be bored," Liam said. "But it could be something worth a look."
"Boor," William said under his breath.
"I heard that," Liam replied.
"Let's just go and see," William said testily.
They stood on the line as it inched forward towards the front doors of a large building awash with colorful light. The people around them were young, noisy, and, in William's opinion, less than tastefully clad. What was worse, Liam was ogling every female in sight, drawing angry stares from both the women and their male companions. William wondered if his ill- mannered companion would get them into another brawl, and found that his feelings about that prospect were rather more mixed than he would have expected.
As the line inched forward, William also noticed that the people in front were handing money to a man standing in the doorway. William dug into his pockets, pulled out four green bills, and looked at them. "Well," he said, "At least the Americans are still using the dollar. But I seem to have eighty of them, so either I am a very rich man, or the value of their currency has dropped rather sharply since my time."
They reached the front of the line, where the man working the door asked William and Liam for ten dollars each. William handed him one of his bills and they entered.
The sight that awaited them was almost surreal. There was an enormous room, perhaps forty feet high, lit by moving red and blue lights. Hundreds of people were dancing on the large, open floor. Countless tables and chairs littered the periphery. Music unlike anything either of them had heard before boomed from all around them, making their bodies vibrate with every pulse. In various places around the room, there were platforms on which scantily-clad women and men danced to entertain the crowd.
"It's a dance hall!" Liam shouted over the loud music.
"It's.magnificent!" William cried. "A stately pleasure dome."
They gawked for several seconds, until Liam came to himself and yanked on William's sleeve. "Come on," he yelled, "let's find some drinks." William followed Liam, whose nose for spirits quickly led them to a bar, tended by a curly-haired young woman in a collared shirt.
"Have you any whiskey?" Liam said loudly.
The woman nodded and poured a small glass of brown liquor, then turned to William. "How about you?" she shouted.
William didn't want to risk asking for Bordeaux again. "Ah, what do you recommend?"
"I make a mean margarita," the woman called back.
"Then I shall have that."
Soon, William had surrendered another ten dollars for Liam's whiskey and his own beverage, a foul-smelling golden liquid in a glass ringed with salt and decorated with a wedge of lime. It was a most peculiar libation.
They took their drinks to an empty table by the side of the room and looked around. "Have ye noticed that no one here seems to know how to dance?" Liam said after a few moments. "They're mostly just jumping around without touching."
"Yes, yes, that's so," William replied. "Perhaps morals here are not so loose as in your time."
Liam ignored the jab. "Not judging by the clothing," he replied, looking salaciously at a bikini-clad dancer on one of the platforms.
"There could be an outbreak of cholera, or some other contagious disease," William mused. "If germ theory has proven correct, then perhaps they're afraid to touch one another for fear that tiny creatures will migrate between their hands."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Liam replied. "Tiny creatures. Where did you learn such rubbish?"
William's only reply was a snort. They looked around in silence for several moments.
"Eh, William," Liam said suddenly. "Have you noticed that those girls near the bar are looking at us?"
"Oh, God, it's my hair, isn't it?" William said nervously. "I look like an albino."
"No, yeh great clucking hen, I mean they look interested in us. Let's go and introduce ourselves."
William looked over at the women near the bar. They did, indeed, seem to be looking his and Liam's way. One of them caught his eye and smiled, causing William to stiffen and make a rapid 180-degree turn.
"Ah, I, ah, believe I need to, um, find the facilities," William said.
"Come on, now, William, no need to be nervous. They just want a bit o' conversation."
"Exactly!" William cried. "What if they want to talk about.I don't know.current events?"
"We can claim ignorance for being foreigners," Liam replied. "Girls love foreigners."
"Yes, but.well.I'll be back directly," William said, and before Liam could speak another word, he had hurried off towards a doorway on the far wall.
"Pansy," Liam said to no one in particular, and headed towards the two women alone.
-----
Cordelia looked around the dive bar, her expression an odd mix of dismay and optimism. A paramedic was examining a half-conscious man lying on the broken remnants of a table, and two more paramedics were lifting a man with a large ice pack over his groin onto a gurney. A couple of badly bruised fellows were gruffly responding to questions from a pair of police officers.
"Okay," Cordelia said to Xander and Anya, who had been assigned by Buffy to accompany Cordelia when the group split up to search the area. "Anybody think this might _not_ have been the work of our amnesia poster boys?"
"This definitely looks like Spike's kind of place," Xander said. "Ask if they have buffalo wings. Then we'll know for sure."
"He's not Spike, remember?" Anya said. "He's William. He'd looking for steak and kidney pie, or blood pudding, or something." She stopped and thought for a moment. "You know, now that I think about it, demons and English people have pretty similar tastes in food."
"Can we focus, please?" Cordelia said. She turned and looked out the door of the bar. "So, where would they go from here?"
"Okay," Anya said. "I'm in a century I'm totally unfamiliar with. So, naturally, I want to learn the ropes fast, find out what people are like and how they act, but without having to interact with them much myself."
"An, honey, we need to look for Angel and Spike right now," Xander said. "We can talk about your issues later."
"I AM talking about Angel and Spike," Anya said, exasperated. "I'm just saying, speaking from my own experience, that they would want to go where there are lots of people."
Cordelia pointed at a colorfully-lit building a few blocks down the street. "Club Indigo," she said. "Plenty of people in there."
"Then come, native guide," Xander said. "Let us hunt the great white bloodsucker."
-----
William, of course, didn't need to pee. In fact, if it was true that he was a vampire, he wasn't certain that he would ever have to pee again. That seemed very convenient.
He walked up a staircase lit all in purple and stopped at a landing with a doorway, through which he saw another dance floor. "Caverns measureless to man," he murmured to himself.
The ceiling here was lower than in the first room, and the style of the music seemed very different, with a bit more melody and less oppressive, throbbing percussion. What was more, the piece that was currently playing had words, unlike the all-instrumental stuff downstairs. He stopped and listened to the lyrics for a moment; the male vocalist was singing about not being a stepping stone.
William wasn't certain if it was the content of the lyrics or simply the beat, but he found his feet moving almost involuntarily. He had always been a poor dancer, so nervous about making mistakes in front of other people that he would end up making them anyway. But perhaps he had learned something in the intervening years.
Before he fully realized it, William had moved out onto the dance floor and started bobbing and gyrating with the others. The thoughts that always whirled around in his mind were drowned out by the loudness of the music, the feel of the beat, the flashing lights, the smell of a hundred bodies around him. He let his mind go and allowed his body to move of its own.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the tiny sliver of consciousness that still remained to him said, Perhaps this is what it is to be free.
-----
Buffy, Wesley, and Gunn had been close by, checking the alleyways, when they got the call from Cordelia that she had a lead on Angel and Spike. The Slayer and the two L.A.-dwellers quickly made their way to Club Indigo.
When they arrived, they found Cordelia and Anya sitting around a small table, their glum expressions a stark contrast with the party atmosphere of the club. The three newcomers grabbed chairs from an empty table nearby and sat down.
"What's up?" Gunn said.
"We found Angel," Cordelia said. "But we can't get him to leave."
"He's having too much fun," Anya said. "Look."
Anya pointed across the room at Angel. He was sitting in the far corner, surrounded by a large group of young people which included a disproportionate number of attractive women. They seemed to be listening raptly to Angel as he told a story that seemed to require many large gestures.
"Well just let's go get him and get out of here," Buffy said. "We don't have time to waste." The Slayer got up and started towards Angel, but was stopped by Wesley's hand on her shoulder.
"Don't piss me off more than you have to, Wesley," she said crossly. "We have to get Angel under wraps so we can go back to looking for Dawn."
"Yes," Wesley said. "But what precisely are you going to do? Drag him back to the Hyperion?"
"If I have to."
"At best, you'll make a scene, which we do not need. Or didn't you notice that two policemen have just arrived?"
Buffy looked behind her. Two men in suits, obviously well above the average age of the club's clientele, had just walked in the door. They began pulling people aside to ask questions.
"Oh, God," Cordelia said. "This could really make things messy. But.I have an idea."
She grabbed Wesley and yanked him down next to her so he could hear her over the music. Gunn was just close enough to catch what was said. He was grinning widely.
"No!" Wesley shouted after hearing Cordelia's plan. "I certainly will not."
Cordelia pointed discreetly at the two detectives, who seemed to be working their way closer to the dance floor. "Can you come up with a better plan in the next five seconds?"
"Well, I. . .I could. . .there is always. . .No. No, I can't."
Gunn solemnly clapped Wesley on the shoulder. "Go with God, my friend."
Dejectedly, Wesley started walking across the room.
"What's going on?" Buffy asked.
"Wesley's taking one for the team," Gunn replied.
Wesley arrived at Liam's table and began making arm gestures of even greater magnitude than Liam's own. Liam looked incredibly puzzled, then angry as the crowd around him began to disperse.
"What is he doing?" Anya asked.
"I told him to go pretend to be Angel's very upset and insecure lover," Cordelia responded. "Oh, and I suggested that he mention something about a burning sensation and a recent visit to the clinic."
Buffy couldn't help it; upset as she was, she barked one loud laugh before she recovered her state of worried determination.
"Hey," she said to Cordelia, "wasn't Xander with you?"
"Yeah. He went upstairs to look for Spike."
Liam and Wesley now seemed to be yelling at each other, though the loud music prevented the sound from carrying very far. Finally, Liam complied, if sullenly, with Wesley's instruction to come along. The whole group quickly crowded around Liam and hurried him out of the club save for Anya, who went to find Xander and/or William.
"I don't understand any of ye," Liam said when they got outside. "I'm not harming anyone. I'm just doing what men do when they've some free time and a few coins in their pockets."
"You don't know this world, An- Liam," Wesley said. "You have many enemies here, enemies who would like nothing more than the opportunity to-"
"Guys," Cordelia interrupted, pointing at a police car that was cruising up the street, "less talk, more walk."
They hurried back to the Hyperion.
-----
Xander had had a feeling that it wouldn't take long to find William. And he was right.
William was in the middle of the dance floor, bouncing and whirling around in his long coat like some kind of acid-rock ballet dancer. The expression on his face was somewhere between dreamy and maniacal. It was a look Xander had seen a few times on the face of his cousin Craig - Uncle Rory's boy - causing Xander to wonder if William was high.
Xander nudged and weaved his way around the dance floor and grabbed William by the sleeve, shaking the vampire out of his energetic reverie. "Yo, Spike, time to go home!" he shouted over the music.
The vampire turned and looked at Xander like he was a big, crunchy piece of eggshell hidden in an otherwise delicious omelet.
"My name," he replied as he snatched his sleeve from Xander's grip, "is William. And I- I will not go home! I am having one of the best evenings of my life, thank you very much, and I shan't interrupt it for anything!"
"Spike, I'd love to stand here and discuss this whole thing with you rationally," Xander said. "But the fact that you've gone insane kind of rules that out. Now let's go." He grabbed Spike's wrist and began trying to drag him off the dance floor.
"No!" William shouted. He pulled his arm away from Xander with such force that the young carpenter was hurled into the crowd, cracking heads with one of the onlookers. As Xander and the man he had hit stumbled away from each other, William screamed and grabbed the sides of his head.
"Bloody hell!" William cried. "What IS that? It's as if someone were driving a three-penny nail into my head!"
Xander staggered towards William, saying, "It's your just desserts, you big freak."
William looked up at Xander. "You're bleeding," he said.
Xander put a hand to his forehead. Blood was, indeed, trickling down from somewhere behind his hairline. "Great," he said. "Like everybody isn't already looking at us."
William stepped closer. "Yes." he said abstractedly, never taking his eyes from Xander's forehead. "It's.oddly compelling."
"Okaaaaay," Xander said. "Backing away slowly now."
William followed Xander's every move. "Yeeeess, follow Xander and his yummy blood," Xander said hypnotically, trying to hide his anxiety at William's sudden ardor. William looked more like a zombie than a vampire, taking one step forward for every step Xander took back.
Xander lured William all the way to the stairwell before the vampire snapped out of his trance, blinking hard and shaking his head. Xander quickly wiped the blood from his forehead.
"That.that was.I'm terribly confused," William said. "First, I had unexplained headaches, and now this.obsession, with.blood. When I saw it on your forehead, I couldn't think of anything else."
"Okay, let me re-explain the part where YOU'RE A VAMPIRE," Xander said. "You drink blood. It's disgusting, but apparently it's all part of the circle of unlife. Now can we please go back to the hotel?"
"Yes, yes, fine," William said distractedly.
They walked down the stairs and out the front doors in silence, Xander steering William through the thickest parts of the crowd to avoid notice. They were almost at the Hyperion's front door when William suddenly said, "I really drink blood?"
"Yes, you do," Xander said. "It's very, very gross."
William pondered that for a moment.
"Fascinating," he said at last.
-----
