Title: Thursday's Child

Author: Milliecake

Rating: PG-13 for violence

Spoilers: Consider everything up to Ground State spoiled

Season: Season Four, set after Ground State

Disclaimer: I'm just playing with them for a while and I promise to put them back in their box when I'm done.

Author's Notes: While this story isn't exactly hot off the press, it is un-beta'd, so be warned.

Main summary: When Connor is abducted, Angel and the Fang Gang but must set aside their differences to reclaim him.

*****

Through the keen eyes of a vampire, it took several interminable seconds for the broken, bleeding body of the demon to crash to the ground, landing with a clatter of scales and snapped bones in the middle of the filthy back alley.

In reality, Angel knew it had taken less than two for Connor to fell the creature with inhuman strength and a well placed blow, and found himself inordinately proud of his son's prowess.

Chip off the old block, Angel told himself, aware he was sporting a dopey grin, but unable to hide it from the eyes of the night. As it was, two humans had been saved by Connor since the sun had gone down. Two of the homeless people that the boy had found a safe haven of a sort with.

Crouched on the ledge of the building above, Angel watched as his son approached the wounded creature with too little caution, and tensed, grin fading. If the thing should rise up, if Connor were taken unawares…

The snap of the demon's neck silenced the panicked thoughts and Angel allowed himself to relax his guard. He should know better by now, he chided himself. There were few creatures, alive or dead, that could take his son by surprise…daddy being one of them.

But Angel also knew he was the only one who held benevolent feelings towards the boy. Any other enemy would simply kill without remorse and so he found himself maintaining regular, nighttime vigils over his charge. Keeping a close watch on Connor assuaged any feelings of guilt at having thrown the boy out and also allowed Angel share in a little of his son's life.

So much of Connor's childhood had he missed. His first step, his first word, his first kill. Those precious times belonged to Holtz, a man whose grief and rage, born of Angelus' dark deeds, had led him to kidnap an innocent baby and take it to a place so horrifying there was no portal of escape.

Except Connor, the cunning imp, had found a way out, riding on the tail of a demon that had punched a hole between dimensions in a vain effort to flee the Destroyer. Yet the happy reunion Angel had envisaged never came to pass. Instead, Connor's reappearance had set in motion a train of tragic events that had led to Holtz's suicide and Angel's incarceration in the cold depths of the sea.

Angel broke from his thoughts long enough to observe Connor as he exited the alley, and rose from his own position to track the boy. He was quick, his vampire strength lending him speed, but Connor was agile and adept within the concrete jungle that homed him. And if he wasn't careful, Angel knew the boy would scent his presence.

There was a part of him that longed for that, longed for a reconciliation, but knew it was unlikely while Connor refused to accept Angel's authority over him and Angel still harboured disappointment over the boy's misdeeds. He recalled the look his son had given him when they had come face to face after Angel's release. Oh, the kid had learned to school his features, to lie with a straight face, the blue eyes, inherited from the mistress of deceit herself, void. But Angel had learned too and he could read his son as easily as a book now.

Fear, resentment, anger, all vying for a prime position in the boy's heart. Even now, Angel regretted using violence against Connor after the kid had tried to run, but he'd been angry too. Coldly furious, in fact. Still weak from hunger and the madness of the hallucinations, he'd seen Gunn and Fred on the floor, evidence of his son's betrayal of his family, of their kindness and had been determined to get through Connor's thick skull.

Angel could have shouted, ranted, and if he'd had the energy, he might have done so, but instead he'd kept his voice calm, even, matter of fact. He saw the flickering fear in Connor's eyes a moment before the boy had tried to bolt, and so was given enough time to prevent him, to slam him against the wall…

Crossing the roof top, footsteps crunching lightly on uneven gravel, Angel watched the figure below racing through the maze of LA's back alleys, and made an inhuman leap over to the next the building with little effort, allowing his thoughts to continue their troubled path.

Images of his own father, Liam's father, calling him a drunk, a sinner, a good-for-nothing, striking him when he was small, retreating to mere words as his son grew stronger, too strong to beat with impunity. When Connor had been still a babe, Angel had sworn he wouldn't become like his father, wouldn't treat his son with contempt, no matter how deserving, wouldn't strike him no matter the crime.

But he hadn't counted on Connor's strength, on the boy's deep-seated enmity. Or on the fact that Connor would be brought up in a world that knew only violence and death and hatred.

In the offices of Angel Investigations, perhaps the violence had kept the kid's attention, but Angel guessed it was his words of champions and love that had done more damage to his son's misguided, ingrained conceptions of the world.

"I love you, Connor," Angel murmured, lost in memory, as he watched the boy below nimbly scale a drainpipe and slip through an open window. Apparently, the kid had called it a night, and as a soft, LA rain began to fall, Angel pulled up the collar of his leather jacket and headed home.

*****

Crouched at the side of his mistress' throne, Golgoth's head snapped up from the plate of meat as he heard the approach. Five men in all entered the torch lit cavern, their leader alone approaching the priestess to sweep aside his cloak and fall to one knee. The rune-engraved collar around his neck bit slightly as Golgoth leaned forward to catch the words spoken.

"Baron," his mistress spoke, her voice as cool and clear as a mountain spring. "What news?"

The man that knelt at the bottom of the steps raised his beaded, handsome face, giving the priestess a charming smile. "We have done as you asked, priestess," he replied, somewhat boldly. "The trap is set, the bait readied. All we wait for is your order to lure the prize to us."

Golgoth glanced nervously up towards his mistress and wiped a stained claw across his mouth, smearing blood and drool. His mistress paid him no heed, instead her hands tightened on the arms of her throne, her pale eyes going colder still until they resembled twin chips of blue ice.

She nodded once to the man kneeling before her. "I give the order, Baron. See that it is done, quickly, quietly."

"As you wish, priestess," Baron murmured, then rose, snapping his fingers at the four men that waited, statuesque, towards the rear of the cavern. "Ready yourselves," he ordered.

As one, the men turned and exited the cavern. Golgoth shivered a little at their precise execution, recalling a time, years before, when he had been rat that had fallen into their cheese-laden trap. They had been ruthless in their capture of him, a prize for their priestess who sought out demons like himself to bind to her will.

Were it not for the powerful spell that had eventually enslaved him, embedded deep within the carvings of his collar, Golgoth would have killed the woman mounted on the throne and feasted on her entrails long before. Now, he was her slave, fit only to crawl at her feet.

Only when the foot soldiers had gone and the iron-wrought door resoundingly closed, did his mistress alight from her perch, her pale robes trailing down the stone steps as she moved gracefully into the arms of her lover.

Golgoth turned his attention back to his meal so as not to witness their joining. It hurt, quite literally, to see his mistress touched so, for her purity to be degraded by the bearded charmer, as the collar urged him to action to protect her virtue. But he could not, for his mistress had given no order, so he blocked out the sight, even as his sharp ears unwittingly caught their words.

"Valenza, Valenza," the man spoke as a sigh, and Golgoth could well imagine him running thick fingers through her golden mane. "How much longer must I wait?"

And Golgoth knew his mistress had once again denied the captain of her guards her body. From the corner of his eye, now, he watched the exchange, ignoring the pain as he strove to hear.

"Soon, my love, soon," the priestess promised, silkily. "Once I have the boy, my labours for my sisters will be done and we can be together."

"Once you have the boy," Baron echoed, solemnly and the woman in his arms smiled, the expression stripping away the centuries to reveal the girl who had once been.

She ran a fine, silver nail along his jawline. "He will be a fine champion for our cause, my love. And when I finally have him kneeling at the feet of my sisters, I will be free."

Golgoth shivered involuntarily at those words, feeling the burden of the collar about his neck grow heavier still. He was afraid now. Not for the poor, doomed creature whom his mistress and her sisters had deemed too dangerous to be permitted to run wild, for Golgoth had never been empathic to the plights of others.

But he knew that, should this 'Connor' demon be brought into the fold, his life, small and miserable though it was, might just become forfeit.