In the outside world the sun was shining and the birds were singing but in his own little world, curled up by his girl everything was just perfect. The sun had arisen hours ago. Angelus mused on the fact that after all these years dormant he should be so sleepy, he stretched languidly, hearing the bed creak as he moved. Reaching out across to Cordelia's sleeping space with a lazy smile he realised he couldn't smell her. Her smell had been so poignant last night he could almost taste it, had to control himself, not to bite her, not to take her. The soul's love was strong on her and there was nothing he liked more on a woman than his own scent. Why had he toyed with her last night? It had seemed the thing to do, at the time, she hadn't realised the Angel creature was gone, and he had taken its place.
She must be up already, probably heating him up some blood. Wrapping Conner up warm. He smiled and breathed in the heady scent of her on the pillow next to him. Blood was always best when it came from someone you loved.
Love. It was an interesting concept to him. The soul had claimed that Angelus couldn't love. Yet, what he was feeling now was pretty damn intense, and if this wasn't love, hell had frozen over. Then again, maybe it was just residual affects. His lover and his son, he was sure he loved them; he knew they were his, at any rate. He suddenly felt an intense need to be around them. To feel their warmth, let them know how he felt. Maybe give Conner a little taste of torture, after all didn't the kid want to grow up to be just like his old man? With a smile he slipped into the black jeans he tossed to the floor last night. Angelus scrunched his face up in disgust, there was something moist in the pocket, reaching in he pulled out a half melted crayon, his jeans had been near the heating pipe all night. He looked at the thing in disgust; it was a sickly dull orange colour, definitely not the brightest crayon in the box. Angelus narrowed his eyes as he snapped the crayon between his thumb and forefinger; he tossed it against the wall and smirked at it. Bare-chested he stalked from the room where Cordy's scent lingered and stopped at his son's door, listening for sounds of movement inside. There were none. Frowning slightly he made his way down to the lobby of the Hyperion. "Damn shame, I wanted Cordy alone when I told her."
***
Cordy smiled at Conner wistfully, he was sitting in the small, motel room playing with his only toys, an action man, disguised as a vampire and his 'Buffy bear'. Yesterday Conner had tried to make the 'vampire' more authentic by drawing blood orange around its mouth with a crayon. Angel had reprimanded him and taken the crayon. Explaining later to his young son that they got all the evil vampires before they could get blood on them. Angel, it hurt to think that only a few minutes after the crayon incident took place Angel had been lost. Cordelia sighed deeply. "Hey Conner. You ok?" The little boy nodded yes. "C'mere." Cordy called him over to her and enveloped him in a hug, tears springing to her eyes she mumbled a soft mantra into Conner's hair as she stroked it flat. "We'll get him back, we'll get him back…"
***
"Honey…" Angelus growled slightly, deep in his throat when he received no answer. "Come out, come out where ever you are." He pulled in unneeded air through his nose, smelling for Cordelia. Where she was the child would be too. Nothing, not even a lingering scent of the vanilla soap she had smelt of last night. This wasn't right. Angelus' glanced at the wall clock, 11am. Surely the rest of his little teammates should be here by now. He spun round, his keen senses listening for any movement, smelling and looking for any thing that would indicate the presence of human or demon. Nothing. "Okay, Getting severely pissed off now!" His voice rose in decibels as he finished the sentence. "Damn it!" How, could she have know, he'd acted perfectly normal, Nicole bloody Kidman couldn't have done any better.
He stormed into his office, slamming the door so hard behind him that the glass plane shattered, the glass chinked and tingled as it crashed to the ground, Angelus closed his eyes for a moment, savouring the sound his destruction caused. He walked to his desk and picked up a framed photo of Cordelia and Conner. He removed the picture and tossed the frame aside before tucking the photo in his back pocket, where the crayon had previously lived. He stood contemplating for a while before bringing his fist forcefully down on the desk with a vicious snarl. He excited his office and made his way down to the basement and the sewage tunnels, maybe his dear friend Wesley would know where they were.
***
Fred felt numb, completely, all over. Things between Cordy and Angel were so great she'd forgotten that Angel even could loose his soul. They'd found a loophole in the curse; Angel was so worried about loosing his soul in whatever he did that he could never experience that moment of perfect happiness. Fred had never seen Angel evil; sure she'd seen him loose control a bit. But never was he soulless. It staggered her, that one minute he could be good and kind and the next, a thing, evil and unfeeling. But that wasn't true; vampires could feel things, couldn't they? Charles snapped her out of her reverie by leaning over the back of the sofa she was seated on and kissing the flesh near her temple. "I come, bearing sandwiches." She smiled at him and looked back to the assortment of books and papers scattered around their coffee table.
"How did this happen Charles?" It was more of a statement than a question but he answered anyway.
"I guess we all got a little cocky. Deep down though I guess we were all prepared for this day, in some way."
"Yeah." She agreed with him as she looked at the books that had been gathering in her and Gunn's shared apartment over the last few years, books on Angelus, and soul restoration and curses. Wesley was out hunting for a few magical items they could maybe use, hunting the black-market and demon hideouts, even a few brick-or-brack stores. It was all down to them and so far they had found nothing of use, nor had they heard any more from Cordy, or seen any sign of Angelus. Gunn perched himself on the sofa next to her and peered at the book she was reading. A knock on the door startled them both. Fred rose and went to the door, opening it a crack, enough for her to peek out. It was Angel, standing there with a small anxious smile. Confusion flickered across Fred's face as she opened the door wider, he certainly didn't look evil. By now Gunn had joined her at the door, he clenched his teeth when he saw Angel standing there.
"Angel." One word filled with such emotion, and uncertainty.
"Gunn… and Fred! Well, what do you know, we all know each others names, isn't that jolly nice." The vampire graced them with a broad grin. The smile was hollow it didn't reach his eyes.
"So I seem to have misplaced a few members of my household, you wouldn't by any chance be hiding them in there would you." Angelus pushed the door open further, surprised when his arm was able to enter Fred and Gunn's apartment, he was even more surprised when he found a spike jammed into the hand holding the door.
"Shit!" He withdrew his hand and tore out the stake.
"Now boy, that was rude." He addressed Gunn as he stepped through the threshold, the couple stepped back, anxious, but with crossbows at the ready none the less.
"Man you come any further and friend or no friend you're only gonna be so much dust to sweep under the rug."
Angelus glanced around him, the floor was littered with Fred's vamp dusting contraptions, some of them voice activated, some with tranquillisers, who knew what the rest did. Facing him off was an angry Gunn and a confused Winifred. The odds were definitely stacked against him.
"Ok," A short pause to grace them with a smile "Let me 'level' with you Gunn, I just want my 'bitch' back you 'dig' 'dog'. So tell me where Cordelia is and we can forget any of this ever happened."
"Oh, no you did not just mock my speech, get out. Now." Charles Gunn launched his crossbow; the arrow hit its mark just above the vampire's heart. Immediately Angelus morphed into game face. Being punctured whilst visiting chums was not what he'd had in mind. He advanced towards them but stopped as Fred positioned her foot on the trigger of one of her favourite toys, a pellet shooter, each wooden 'bullet' soaked with holy water. That would hurt, that would hurt a lot. Angelus slipped out of game face and turned a pleading look toward Fred. She had always been so trusting.
"Fred, come on, please, you know me, and I wont hurt them. I… just want to know their… safe."
He saw her tough demeanour start to crack. She opened her mouth to speak but Gunn, always the action hero shot another cross bow, this one dangerously close to his groin area.
"Out!" Angelus cocked his head thoughtfully to the side before backing up out of the apartment; he kept his pleading gaze on Fred the whole time. At last she called out, only it wasn't quite what he wanted to hear.
"Don't go to far Angel, you don't want to be stuck in some strange town when we get your soul back." Angelus growled as the door was slammed in his face.
****
A low rumbling growl could be heard emanating from the man keeping to the shadows on the empty streets. It was such an unpleasant day, clouds had appeared in the sky. One would assume a vampire would be happy, walking the streets at noon and all, but alas, this was not the case.
He'd lingered for a while outside Fred and Gunn's apartment, listened to their heated conversation. The fact that he'd caused conflict between them gave him some small satisfaction but he couldn't help but wonder where it had all gone wrong. A vagrant sitting on a street corner stopped to ask him to spare some change. The change he received wasn't exactly what the dirty looking young man had in mind. Angelus grabbed the man by the neck and hoisted him to his feet, he glared at the man for a while, long and intense, amber eyes meeting dull grey ones. The man was so doped up he didn't even realise the danger he was in. As Angelus' teeth closed in on the vagrants jugular the scent of filth over whelmed him. The man had just enough sense to begin squirming as a sharp pair of fangs ripped his throat out. Angelus' didn't even bother to drink from him, the taste of drugs was vile in his mouth and instead of flowers to mark his passing the man who died on the streets memoriam was to have his own unclean blood spat back on him.
A small smile reached his lips as he saw the blood bubble from the man's open wound. Angelus' found himself tutting at his own hastiness; it looked like the work of an amateur, too lazy to feed with dignity, class. "You really should watch what you eat" he remarked to a dieting poster on the wall above the new corpse, "You never will know who wants a taste."
****
Contemplating was not something Angelus found pleasurable. Sitting in the lobby of his hotel for the past hour or so planning his next move had not been on his agenda for the day. Funny thing with humans, no matter how dim witted they were they could still manage to surprise you. But then, he could recall one or two that suffered from the run-up-the-stairs-when-the-front-door-is-right-there syndrome, like some cheesy horror movie. He laid his head back and breathed in deep, it was nice to give his tired lungs an airing now and then. He was getting hungry. A few more moments lying there and he'd be up, heck maybe he'd just order a pizza boy. After all he needed time to recuperate from being shot repeatedly. What was that scent he was getting on the air? The smell of dust and age was about, the strong stench of death from his leather coat, something, musky a perfume perhaps. Was it combined with the smell of human? He glanced around searching for an air freshener or other such device he hadn't seen earlier. His gaze took his attention to the courtyard entrance. A small figure ducked its head out of sight, eyes just peering, spying on him. Fred.
With a casual appearance he stood, stretched and strode casually around the lobby. Fred gathered confidence that he hadn't seen her and moved better into his view, it was raining lightly now and her long hair was turning into tangled clumps. For good measure he inhaled the scent of a plant on a coffee table he had just come to. Turning towards the courtyard to gaze up at the sky he allowed himself a theatrical step back as he pretended to be shocked at Fred's presence there.
Fred' s eyes widened in shock as the vampire's gaze fell on to her. She was even more shocked when he gave her a small shy smile. Her eyes met his unsure, searching for something there, some sign of her friend. She wasn't sure what she saw. When she imagined this moment there were no complexities. All she could see in her dreams were vacant gold eyes, a vicious killing machine. The man she found herself confronting now had emotion in his eyes, he was still Angel, he looked no differently, maybe, maybe Angel was being held inside there still. Trapped inside his demon's hellish mind, just like her when she got trapped in Pylea.
It seemed as though something wasn't quite right. Why were her eyes aching? Why had it suddenly become so hard to blink, to glance away from Angel's eyes? Panic started to rise in her, it filled her, starting somewhere low down in her stomach until she could taste bile in her mouth. He was advancing towards her; soon he had thrust the glass door open. There was nothing protecting her from him except for the small wooden cross she gripped in her sweaty hand.
She swallowed the colour draining from her face as he approached never removing his eyes from hers, holding her trapped, like a deer caught in the strangling hold of headlights. A small sound escaped her throat, it could have been the start of a plea but she would never know. Angelus blinked, releasing her from his hold, she gasped as his hand was raised and the next thing she experienced, was blackness.
…………………………………………………………………………….
(Next time… What will Angelus do with Fred, a phone call from Cordy reveals her location and the race is on to escape before he gets to Santa Barbara and Buffy gets involved, though she may wish she hadn't.)
Authors note: Hello, please let me know what you think, I'm worried about my Fred characterisation (from what I've wrote of the next chapter) so any tips or help with characterisation, writing style, even grammar, would be hugely helpful. Thanks for getting this far.
She must be up already, probably heating him up some blood. Wrapping Conner up warm. He smiled and breathed in the heady scent of her on the pillow next to him. Blood was always best when it came from someone you loved.
Love. It was an interesting concept to him. The soul had claimed that Angelus couldn't love. Yet, what he was feeling now was pretty damn intense, and if this wasn't love, hell had frozen over. Then again, maybe it was just residual affects. His lover and his son, he was sure he loved them; he knew they were his, at any rate. He suddenly felt an intense need to be around them. To feel their warmth, let them know how he felt. Maybe give Conner a little taste of torture, after all didn't the kid want to grow up to be just like his old man? With a smile he slipped into the black jeans he tossed to the floor last night. Angelus scrunched his face up in disgust, there was something moist in the pocket, reaching in he pulled out a half melted crayon, his jeans had been near the heating pipe all night. He looked at the thing in disgust; it was a sickly dull orange colour, definitely not the brightest crayon in the box. Angelus narrowed his eyes as he snapped the crayon between his thumb and forefinger; he tossed it against the wall and smirked at it. Bare-chested he stalked from the room where Cordy's scent lingered and stopped at his son's door, listening for sounds of movement inside. There were none. Frowning slightly he made his way down to the lobby of the Hyperion. "Damn shame, I wanted Cordy alone when I told her."
***
Cordy smiled at Conner wistfully, he was sitting in the small, motel room playing with his only toys, an action man, disguised as a vampire and his 'Buffy bear'. Yesterday Conner had tried to make the 'vampire' more authentic by drawing blood orange around its mouth with a crayon. Angel had reprimanded him and taken the crayon. Explaining later to his young son that they got all the evil vampires before they could get blood on them. Angel, it hurt to think that only a few minutes after the crayon incident took place Angel had been lost. Cordelia sighed deeply. "Hey Conner. You ok?" The little boy nodded yes. "C'mere." Cordy called him over to her and enveloped him in a hug, tears springing to her eyes she mumbled a soft mantra into Conner's hair as she stroked it flat. "We'll get him back, we'll get him back…"
***
"Honey…" Angelus growled slightly, deep in his throat when he received no answer. "Come out, come out where ever you are." He pulled in unneeded air through his nose, smelling for Cordelia. Where she was the child would be too. Nothing, not even a lingering scent of the vanilla soap she had smelt of last night. This wasn't right. Angelus' glanced at the wall clock, 11am. Surely the rest of his little teammates should be here by now. He spun round, his keen senses listening for any movement, smelling and looking for any thing that would indicate the presence of human or demon. Nothing. "Okay, Getting severely pissed off now!" His voice rose in decibels as he finished the sentence. "Damn it!" How, could she have know, he'd acted perfectly normal, Nicole bloody Kidman couldn't have done any better.
He stormed into his office, slamming the door so hard behind him that the glass plane shattered, the glass chinked and tingled as it crashed to the ground, Angelus closed his eyes for a moment, savouring the sound his destruction caused. He walked to his desk and picked up a framed photo of Cordelia and Conner. He removed the picture and tossed the frame aside before tucking the photo in his back pocket, where the crayon had previously lived. He stood contemplating for a while before bringing his fist forcefully down on the desk with a vicious snarl. He excited his office and made his way down to the basement and the sewage tunnels, maybe his dear friend Wesley would know where they were.
***
Fred felt numb, completely, all over. Things between Cordy and Angel were so great she'd forgotten that Angel even could loose his soul. They'd found a loophole in the curse; Angel was so worried about loosing his soul in whatever he did that he could never experience that moment of perfect happiness. Fred had never seen Angel evil; sure she'd seen him loose control a bit. But never was he soulless. It staggered her, that one minute he could be good and kind and the next, a thing, evil and unfeeling. But that wasn't true; vampires could feel things, couldn't they? Charles snapped her out of her reverie by leaning over the back of the sofa she was seated on and kissing the flesh near her temple. "I come, bearing sandwiches." She smiled at him and looked back to the assortment of books and papers scattered around their coffee table.
"How did this happen Charles?" It was more of a statement than a question but he answered anyway.
"I guess we all got a little cocky. Deep down though I guess we were all prepared for this day, in some way."
"Yeah." She agreed with him as she looked at the books that had been gathering in her and Gunn's shared apartment over the last few years, books on Angelus, and soul restoration and curses. Wesley was out hunting for a few magical items they could maybe use, hunting the black-market and demon hideouts, even a few brick-or-brack stores. It was all down to them and so far they had found nothing of use, nor had they heard any more from Cordy, or seen any sign of Angelus. Gunn perched himself on the sofa next to her and peered at the book she was reading. A knock on the door startled them both. Fred rose and went to the door, opening it a crack, enough for her to peek out. It was Angel, standing there with a small anxious smile. Confusion flickered across Fred's face as she opened the door wider, he certainly didn't look evil. By now Gunn had joined her at the door, he clenched his teeth when he saw Angel standing there.
"Angel." One word filled with such emotion, and uncertainty.
"Gunn… and Fred! Well, what do you know, we all know each others names, isn't that jolly nice." The vampire graced them with a broad grin. The smile was hollow it didn't reach his eyes.
"So I seem to have misplaced a few members of my household, you wouldn't by any chance be hiding them in there would you." Angelus pushed the door open further, surprised when his arm was able to enter Fred and Gunn's apartment, he was even more surprised when he found a spike jammed into the hand holding the door.
"Shit!" He withdrew his hand and tore out the stake.
"Now boy, that was rude." He addressed Gunn as he stepped through the threshold, the couple stepped back, anxious, but with crossbows at the ready none the less.
"Man you come any further and friend or no friend you're only gonna be so much dust to sweep under the rug."
Angelus glanced around him, the floor was littered with Fred's vamp dusting contraptions, some of them voice activated, some with tranquillisers, who knew what the rest did. Facing him off was an angry Gunn and a confused Winifred. The odds were definitely stacked against him.
"Ok," A short pause to grace them with a smile "Let me 'level' with you Gunn, I just want my 'bitch' back you 'dig' 'dog'. So tell me where Cordelia is and we can forget any of this ever happened."
"Oh, no you did not just mock my speech, get out. Now." Charles Gunn launched his crossbow; the arrow hit its mark just above the vampire's heart. Immediately Angelus morphed into game face. Being punctured whilst visiting chums was not what he'd had in mind. He advanced towards them but stopped as Fred positioned her foot on the trigger of one of her favourite toys, a pellet shooter, each wooden 'bullet' soaked with holy water. That would hurt, that would hurt a lot. Angelus slipped out of game face and turned a pleading look toward Fred. She had always been so trusting.
"Fred, come on, please, you know me, and I wont hurt them. I… just want to know their… safe."
He saw her tough demeanour start to crack. She opened her mouth to speak but Gunn, always the action hero shot another cross bow, this one dangerously close to his groin area.
"Out!" Angelus cocked his head thoughtfully to the side before backing up out of the apartment; he kept his pleading gaze on Fred the whole time. At last she called out, only it wasn't quite what he wanted to hear.
"Don't go to far Angel, you don't want to be stuck in some strange town when we get your soul back." Angelus growled as the door was slammed in his face.
****
A low rumbling growl could be heard emanating from the man keeping to the shadows on the empty streets. It was such an unpleasant day, clouds had appeared in the sky. One would assume a vampire would be happy, walking the streets at noon and all, but alas, this was not the case.
He'd lingered for a while outside Fred and Gunn's apartment, listened to their heated conversation. The fact that he'd caused conflict between them gave him some small satisfaction but he couldn't help but wonder where it had all gone wrong. A vagrant sitting on a street corner stopped to ask him to spare some change. The change he received wasn't exactly what the dirty looking young man had in mind. Angelus grabbed the man by the neck and hoisted him to his feet, he glared at the man for a while, long and intense, amber eyes meeting dull grey ones. The man was so doped up he didn't even realise the danger he was in. As Angelus' teeth closed in on the vagrants jugular the scent of filth over whelmed him. The man had just enough sense to begin squirming as a sharp pair of fangs ripped his throat out. Angelus' didn't even bother to drink from him, the taste of drugs was vile in his mouth and instead of flowers to mark his passing the man who died on the streets memoriam was to have his own unclean blood spat back on him.
A small smile reached his lips as he saw the blood bubble from the man's open wound. Angelus' found himself tutting at his own hastiness; it looked like the work of an amateur, too lazy to feed with dignity, class. "You really should watch what you eat" he remarked to a dieting poster on the wall above the new corpse, "You never will know who wants a taste."
****
Contemplating was not something Angelus found pleasurable. Sitting in the lobby of his hotel for the past hour or so planning his next move had not been on his agenda for the day. Funny thing with humans, no matter how dim witted they were they could still manage to surprise you. But then, he could recall one or two that suffered from the run-up-the-stairs-when-the-front-door-is-right-there syndrome, like some cheesy horror movie. He laid his head back and breathed in deep, it was nice to give his tired lungs an airing now and then. He was getting hungry. A few more moments lying there and he'd be up, heck maybe he'd just order a pizza boy. After all he needed time to recuperate from being shot repeatedly. What was that scent he was getting on the air? The smell of dust and age was about, the strong stench of death from his leather coat, something, musky a perfume perhaps. Was it combined with the smell of human? He glanced around searching for an air freshener or other such device he hadn't seen earlier. His gaze took his attention to the courtyard entrance. A small figure ducked its head out of sight, eyes just peering, spying on him. Fred.
With a casual appearance he stood, stretched and strode casually around the lobby. Fred gathered confidence that he hadn't seen her and moved better into his view, it was raining lightly now and her long hair was turning into tangled clumps. For good measure he inhaled the scent of a plant on a coffee table he had just come to. Turning towards the courtyard to gaze up at the sky he allowed himself a theatrical step back as he pretended to be shocked at Fred's presence there.
Fred' s eyes widened in shock as the vampire's gaze fell on to her. She was even more shocked when he gave her a small shy smile. Her eyes met his unsure, searching for something there, some sign of her friend. She wasn't sure what she saw. When she imagined this moment there were no complexities. All she could see in her dreams were vacant gold eyes, a vicious killing machine. The man she found herself confronting now had emotion in his eyes, he was still Angel, he looked no differently, maybe, maybe Angel was being held inside there still. Trapped inside his demon's hellish mind, just like her when she got trapped in Pylea.
It seemed as though something wasn't quite right. Why were her eyes aching? Why had it suddenly become so hard to blink, to glance away from Angel's eyes? Panic started to rise in her, it filled her, starting somewhere low down in her stomach until she could taste bile in her mouth. He was advancing towards her; soon he had thrust the glass door open. There was nothing protecting her from him except for the small wooden cross she gripped in her sweaty hand.
She swallowed the colour draining from her face as he approached never removing his eyes from hers, holding her trapped, like a deer caught in the strangling hold of headlights. A small sound escaped her throat, it could have been the start of a plea but she would never know. Angelus blinked, releasing her from his hold, she gasped as his hand was raised and the next thing she experienced, was blackness.
…………………………………………………………………………….
(Next time… What will Angelus do with Fred, a phone call from Cordy reveals her location and the race is on to escape before he gets to Santa Barbara and Buffy gets involved, though she may wish she hadn't.)
Authors note: Hello, please let me know what you think, I'm worried about my Fred characterisation (from what I've wrote of the next chapter) so any tips or help with characterisation, writing style, even grammar, would be hugely helpful. Thanks for getting this far.