Part 6


Somewhere near the town of Oxford

The phone rang in the library at Wesley's house. Lauren came out, holding the phone and looking confused. "It's a young woman, she'd like to speak with you."

"Darla?" Cordy asked into the reciever. She could hear the sound of wind rushing by, a faint static noise, as if the vampire were riding really fast in a car.

"We had a little problem, some vamps apparently thought we were coming back to reclaim territory, then this Watcher showed up - Smith I think his name was."

"Little fat guy - with a crossbow?"

"Yes."

"He thinks Angel is evil. We had to jump out the window to get away. Our road trip is not turning out the way we hoped. Angel and I thought we might come and visit you in Merry Olde England?"

"Please, please come. "She lowered her voice. "These are the least fun people I have ever met."

Lauren was staring at Cordelia suspiciously. Cordy turned her back and covered half her face with a hand.

"Just be careful of the whole *bloodsucker* thing."

Wesley and his father came back from their meeting, you could cut the tension with a knife.

"See you later." Cordy said to Darla.

"Bye bye."

"Wes - We need to talk." Said Cordelia.

(A few days later)

"I've never met a Watcher before." said Darla as Angel pulled into the Wyndham-Pryce drive. "I mean, who's not Wes - or that other guy - you know - the old one. Buffy's Watcher. I vaguely remember sitting on him once."

"You've sat on so many people." Angel joked. "No one expects you to remember them all."

"That's not funny." Darla snapped. Angel was instantly contrite.

"Hey, I didn't mean it."

"I know." Her Childe didn't know the truth, and if she had her way, he never would. Funny how she was more ashamed of her human life than of anything she had done during her 400 years of soulessness. What did Angel think her life had been like? Who did he think she had been? "So this is Wesley's family home, hmm ?"

"Little Toff." Angel grumbled.

A small, grey haired man came out of the house and offered to park the car for them. A maid answered the door and took their suitcases upstairs.

"You made it!!" Cordy sounded relieved to see them.

"Who are these people?" Wesley's dad demanded.

"Dad - These are my friends - coworkers -"

"William." Angel said quickly.

"And Mary." said Darla.

If Wesley's file on them was any indication, if his father knew their real names he was bound to put the names with the drawings and daguerotypes of them scattered throughout the Watcher archives. Mr. Wyndham-Pryce raised an eyebrow.

Durning dinner, Angel and Darla poked unenthusiatically at their food, trying not to seem impolite about the fact that they really couldn't taste it.

"Are you also a private detective?" Lauren asked Darla.

"I'm fairly new to the firm, but yes, I go out on cases." The meat had gravy on it - Darla hoped no one would notice that she seemed to concentrate on it.

"What part of America are you from?"

"Virginia. Spent a lot of time in Europe until my father moved us to Sunnydale. That's where I met Cordelia, and The Slayer." It wasn't a lie, exactly.

"I've heard some interesting things about the Slayer." Said Wesley's Dad.

"Buffy is -" Darla saw Angel giving her A Look and changed her mind. "Buffy."

"Buffy." Cordelia agreed.

"Wesley certainly bungled that assignment." Mr. Wyndam Pryce said. They all found somewhere else to look.

"Excuse me," said Wesley.

"Wesley dear," said Lauren, completely ignoring what he'd just said. "The Vicar called and asked if you'd like to help some of the other boys set up chairs for the church picinic on Saturday?"

Wesley stood up, throwing his fork down on the plate with a clatter.

"Don't leave the room while your mother is speaking to you." Mr. Wyndham-Pryce said a low, dangerous voice.

"She's not my mother!" Wesley snapped. He stormed out.

Cordelia found him leaning against the railing on the stairs.

"I don't know why I came here." he said.

"Because you're a good son, even if he's a terrible father."

"But he isn't! He fed me, clothed me, educated me, never lost my pram at Harrod's - I feel so guilty for letting him down."

"He also locked you in the closet, constantly insults your intellingence and raised you not to have a mind of your own!"

"He wanted to make me the best. My brother died because he wasn't good enough!"

"My father wanted me to be the best too - He broke the law to make me happy. Let me tell you - I feel kinda guilty about that. But that man in the dining room treats you like something he scraped off the bottom of his shoe, and you don't deserve it."

******

Darla and Angel walked along the garden path. It was late in the evening, and the two creatures of the night were restless. "I've never been on a vacation before." Angel confessed. "Since I got my soul back, anyway."

"We could shop for sounvenirs - If anything were open. Although everytime I come to England, I leave with a kid."

"Those British kids are so damn cute, one simply has to have them."

"When Wesley and I were -" Darla heard her Childe snort. "I kept thinking how much I'd love to turn him."

"Wes is wound so tight - his demon would be an unholy terror."

"Hello there." Said a male voice. It was Rogers, the butler. "Out for an evening stroll, are we?"

"You have such lovely grounds here. We were just admiring them." Said Darla.

"Please be careful, there may be Things That Go Bump lurking about."

"We'll be careful." Darla assured him. They said their cheerful goodnights and kept walking.

"When you and Wesley - er - was he - good ?" Angel asked his Sire.

"Very sweet, and fumbly in the beginning, but once he got going he was fine. Why do you ask?"

"Was he - uh - better than me?"

"No one's better than you." Darla assured him. "Except maybe for Spike."

"WHAT?"

"Relax, I'm just pulling your chain." She laughed.

Rogers hurried across the darkened grounds, back to His Lordship's study to inform him of the true nature of his weekend guests.

******

Wesley lay in his old bed trying to get some sleep. Familiar shapes loomed in the blackness, bringing back childhood nightmares. Knowing that demons and monsters really existed had never helped with the fears. Wesley resisted the temptation to hide underneath the covers.

Tick, tick, tick, tick. The numbers on his clock radio glowed red. 11:30 p.m. How many more hours before he had to get up and face his parents again?

No matter what Cordelia said, he knew that coming here had been a bad idea.

Wesley felt it in his bones.

And with Emma in Los Angeles, and two vampires stopping under his father's roof, if anything bad were to happen.

******

Richard Wyndham-Pryce paced the floor of his study.

Something about the boy's friends wasn't sitting right. There was something slightly *off* about them. He never paid much attention to his son's trivial conversations but he couldn't recall any mention of a William, or a Mary. And no record of them among Mr. Giles' Watcher diaries - surely they would have been listed among the aquaintences of Miss Summers? Mary, the small blonde lass, looked oddly familiar. Something about her that tugged at the corners of his memory.

He thumbed absently through a volume of the Diaries.

Today, the Slayer encountered two vampires while attempting a rescue. The first, Luke, she described as a large man with sandy hair. The second, she describes as a small blonde female, whom Luke reffered to as *Darla*. The Slayer engaged them both in combat, winning the fight with Darla, although not succeeding in staking her. Her fight with Luke was somewhat less successful, however the Slayer and one victim escaped unharmed.

The Slayer has made aquaintence with a certain vampire named Angel. She describes him as tall and dark haired.

Also known as Angelus, The Scourge of Europe. Angel claims to have been cursed by gypsies and given a soul. I fear that the Slayer has begun to trust him too much.

The Slayer once again engaged Darla in combat. The vampire Darla had two pistols, which she fired repeatedly at the Slayer. The vampire Angel approached Darla from behind, driving the crossbow bolt through her back and dusting her.

He moved over to his box of newspaper clippings - picking up a certain article that he hadn't looked at in years.

AUGUST 18, 1982.

The victim was seen, according to friends, leaving the disco with a small blonde woman in a red jacket.

He thought about the dinner, and the lack of food consumed by William and Mary. Their strange way of speaking, and the fact that they had arrived after sundown.

Perhaps his mind was jumping to conlusions. According to the Watcher diaries, Darla had been dusted in 1996. There was a ritual, but who would be desperate or fool enough to resurrect a Master Vampire?

A knock sounded at the door.

"Yes?"

"It's Rogers, Sir. I have some information which you may want to hear."

******

"Hey." Cordy murrmurred sleepily as Darla entered the guest bedroom they shared. "You were out all night."

"It's what vampires do. " Darla started to change into her pink silk pajamas.

"Wes' parents are so old fashioned. They've got us in a completely separate wing of the house away from the guys. I mean, really. It's not like Wes and I are sleeping together. Heck, I've never even seen him in his underwear."

"Not bad."

"Huh?"

"Wesley's not half bad in his underwear."

"When did you see Wesley in his underwear?" Cordelia demanded.

"When we had sex." Darla said absently, pulling her hair back into an elastic. After 400 years, she could do her hair and put on makeup without a mirror.

"You slept with Wesley?" Cordelia's eyes flashed.

Darla blinked at her.

"Is that a problem?"

"Damn skippy, that's a problem! How could you?"

Well, Cordelia. Just because I have a soul doesn't mean I'm some sort of saint."

"Maybe you haven't been human in a long time, so maybe you don't remember the rules - But girls don't do this to each other! You don't sleep with someone else's man!"

Darla feigned a look of surprise.

"Wes is your man? Wow, when did that happen? Because according to what I've obeserved, and I think I'm pretty damn observant - you've been stringing him along for a year and a half. You weren't giving him what he needed, so I did."

"Where I come from, we call people like you Cheap Sluts."

"That's what they call it where I come from too! In fact, I'm a licensed Cheap Slut. Want to see my paper work?" Darla sneered.

"You're supposed to be with Angel!" Cordelia practiacally shouted.

"Angel? ANGEL? Angel isn't interested in me! The thing that Wesley and I had in common was that we were both in love with people who only thought of us as friends!" The hurt in Darla's eyes was obvious. Cordelia actually sort of felt sorry for the vampire. So strong, and tough, and yet she couldn't make Angel love her again.

"I didn't know."

"Of course you wouldn't - Little Miss *I'm The Center Of The Universe.* You don't have four hundred and twenty seven years of crime and sin under your belt. You haven't done so many terrible things that your own friends don't trust you. The man who was your constant companion and consort for half that time never had to kill you. The only man I've ever allowed myself to love, I'll never be married to him, I'll never bear his children, and I'll always share him with the Slayer."

"So you'll settle for meaningless sex with his best friend?"

"Yes." said Darla simply. "For someone who's lived in LA for two years, you're incredibly naive."

"I am not naive. I have morals, that's different."

"Morals?" Darla scoffed. "I started turning tricks at 14. Morals are all well and good, but when one is starving.... Wesley and I were starving for comfort and affection. We knew that I wouldn't experiance *perfect happiness*, get pregnant or make him sick. It was comforting and loving and the closest thing I've felt to warmth in a long, long time."

Cordelia looked at the floor in shame. She'd truly had no idea. Darla turned away, shrugged her small shoulders and climbed underneath the antique quilt with her back to her friend. Quiet sounds of catching breath, little hiccups could be heard so faintly that Darla was clearly trying to hide the fact that she was crying. She went and sat down on the bed, putting a tentative hand on the vampire's back.

******

Wesley stood looking out his window at the line of cars pulling into the drive. At five o'clock in the morning. There were Watchers getting out and being ushered inside.

Wesley found his father in the downstairs sitting room.

"What's going on?"

"Watcher's meeting." His father rounded on him. "Please explain to me how you were stupid enough to invite vampires into my home?"

"There are no vampires here, Sir."

"Don't play innoccent with me, Boy. You brought Angelus and Darla into this house. The vampire that killed Colin and your mother. Consorting with vampires and lying to your own father!"

"It wasn't like that!"

"The plan is to surround the house, while one of us attempts to dispose of the vampires without waking them."

"You can't!"

"The Watchers will demand that you be punished for this infraction, however, I believe that if you were willing to assist us they might forget about your role in the deceit." He handed Wesley a stake.

Wesley stood looking down at it sadly, before climbing the stairs to Angel's room.

******

Angel woke up to find Wesley staring down at him and holding a stake.

He grabbed Wesley's wrist and snarled.

"N-No-Angel. I'm not here to hurt you!" Wesley hissed. Angel dropped his arm. "They've found you out. You and Darla must leave at once!"

A few moments later Wesley and Cordelia and the two vampires were sneaking down the back stairs.

"I must learn to travel lighter." Darla huffed as she struggled with her large suitcase.

"We have a brief window of opportunity, while Dad is briefing them on the situation. I'll go and get the car, you three lay low in the bushes near the front gate. Cordy and I will have to leave our rental here."

They waited, crouching behind the shrubbery, while more cars arrived. There were flashlights waving and people shouting at each other.

"They're not here!"

"Search for them!"

"Close the front gates!"

Wesley drove up in a shower of gravel. The three of them jumped inside and Darla pressed the button for the automatic top. The Watchers heard the sound of the motor and ran towards it.

"EEEAA! They're shooting at us!" Cordy shrieked. Angel pulled her head down onto the seat.

"Get us out, Wes." He said. The front gate was starting to close when Wesley sailed through it with just inches to spare. "Wooden bullets. Clever."


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