CHAPTER THREE
"I didn't even know you could..." Lindsey gestured to Darla with his chopsticks. "Eat."
She poked at the sushi with the tip of her chopsticks, wondering why she had said yes to this. She was just giving him false hope. "We can. We don't taste much so we tend to go for the spicy stuff to off set that. It's more a social thing. It makes us look more...human. It's a good thing not to call too much attention to yourself so you don't have to resort to living underground. It was one of the things I stressed to Angelus." Seeing Lindsey's eyes going storm-blue, she added. "I taught it to all my children."
"Makes sense," he grunted, poking a piece of Alaskan roll into the blob of wasabi. "This stuff's spicy if that helps."
Darla smiled and pointed to a huge, raw sea scallop covered with a dollop of she didn't know what. It looked mucousy and vile. "I want to see if you're actually going to eat that."
"I love those," he assured her, and expertly picked it up with his chopsticks. He bit it in half, letting the shellfish slither down his throat.
"You really like sushi?" Darla pursed her lips. "Somehow, I don't think it's...you."
"I like sushi." Lindsey shrugged. "Why would you think it isn't me?"
Darla pushed back a lock of golden hair. "I don't know. It fits your lifestyle but somehow I think that's more like one of your Armani suits, something you wear to fit in. What's your favorite food?" Her lips quirked up. "Truthfully."
Lindsey grinned, instantly boyish. He leaned closer conspiratorially. "It's a toss up between a nice thick rare steak or a slab of babyback barbequed ribs. Ooo, and fried okra." His grinned broadened and Darla laughed. "I wouldn't say no to a pepperoni, ham, bacon, sausage, beef whatever other meat you can think of, extra cheese pizza and beer."
Darla laughed louder, nearly dropping her chopsticks. "Now see, that's the real Lindsey, the one you keep hidden."
He went somber. "Sometimes it's necessary. Wolfram and Hart doesn't want the real Lindsey. They want the law school wiz they hired."
Darla smiled sweetly at him. "How about we get out of here and the real Lindsey takes me someplace the Wolfram and Hart one wouldn't be caught dead in?"
Lindsey nodded. "Let's not waste this." He swept a hand over the remaining Kentucky roll, baby octopuses and Alaskan roll. "And we'll need to go home and change because we'll stick out like sore thumbs in these clothes."
A little more than an hour later Darla found herself in the Silver Spurs Saloon, dancing to Toby Keith's A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action. It would help if she had a clue how to dance to country music but Lindsey was a good teacher. She knew the song was talking about what she and Lindsey both wanted only they didn't want it from the same people.
She could barely recognize Lindsey in his new get up. She hadn't dreamed he had cowboy boots, let alone black ones with blue flames or a blue shirt with big sequined musical notes on it. The black cowboy hat just topped the whole thing off, but she would willingly admit he looked great in his painted-on jeans. He had a great ass, better than Angel's. Angel had the better shoulders but Lindsey had it all over him in the ass department. Of course, there was no comparison on the matter of height. Lindsey was a short man, but all the more darling for it.
And as much as she wouldn't mind getting a good handful of that ass, Darla knew it would only be for the night, or a handful of nights. Lindsey was a toy that she wanted to play with but it was Angel her heart was crying for. She had sired other children, of course, but none as fine as him. Maybe if she hadn't driven him from her side after everything went wrong with those damn gypsies; if only Spike hadn't eaten her leverage to get the leader to lift the curse, if she hadn't put that girl in Angelus' path in the first place, maybe Angelus wouldn't have turned into such a pathetic, whimpering creature. Still, she was immortal again. There was time to woo him back, change him to suit her tastes.
The music changed, slowing as Bryan White's 'I'm Not Supposed to Love You Anymore' came on. Lindsey pulled her close, no longer shy about holding her with his prosthetic arm. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he didn't panic about her lips touching his neck. He smelled good. It felt wonderful just to be held. Now if only she had the right man holding her. Darla moved with Lindsey in the slow dance, and when he shifted her to look into her face she went with him. She was the one to kiss him first, feeling lost and needy.
She pressed her tongue into him, and he sucked her in hungrily. Vampires were supposed to leave a wake of destruction behind them, so why did she feel so bad about what she knew she'd eventually do to this man? Maybe it was that hidden sweetness inside him. She broke the kiss and Lindsey sensed the change in mood. He loosened his hold on her. She smiled and took his living hand, leading him off the dance floor.
"Shouldn't our order be ready?" she asked. She thought that might be sufficient cover for her changing mood, hoping not to crush him tonight. She still needed him, his strength, his safe harbor at least until her plan worked.
"Probably."
They swung by the bar and he picked up two huge baskets, one of hot wings and the other of jalapeno poppers. Darla got the pitcher and glasses and they found their own table out on the bar's large porch. It was a mild evening, too mild to be late autumn, Darla thought. Certainly there was a gorgeous harvest moon hanging in the sky but where was the nip of the wind, the soft hiss of dry leaves blowing in that wind? This was definitely not the autumn of her childhood memories, a time of year she had always treasured.
Lindsey poured the beers then dived into the poppers. "Have you ever tried these? They might be spicy enough for you."
Darla obliged him by tasting one. She could almost get a sense of the appetizer. "They're good. When I said show me the real Lindsey, this was definitely not what I was expecting."
He laughed. "I'm afraid to ask what you thought I'd be like."
"I don't know exactly but not this." She ran a finger along the back of his hand. His skin was softer than she expected. "You're not really LA at heart, are you?"
His blue eyes went wistful. "I can be but I grew up in a place worlds away from here in attitude, in morals, in just about every way. I miss it sometimes, and other times I'm so glad to be away from there. I'm never sure if I don't come out to places like this honky tonk often because it makes me home sick, or if it just makes me think of home and I get sick."
"Did you grow up sad, Lindsey?" Darla asked, liking the way he looked in moonlight. The color of his hair, the unruliness of it, reminded her of Angelus. She listened to him telling her about how he grew up, the sheer tragedy of it and she felt pity for him. She knew that kind of pain. She knew what poor was like. She had used her womanhood to escape it. He had used his brains.
In return, he asked to share her pain, her mortal life. She told him about her fears when she had been married off when she was twelve years old; her pain over three miscarriages; fears for her future when her husband died before she was even fifteen; of being remarried to another old man who didn't die fast enough; of burying four children, none of which lived longer than three years; the ugliness of a whore's life and how she compensated with spending all her money pretending to be a lady of refinement before she caught the disease that would have killed her if the Master hadn't beat it to her. She even told him her real name, the one she had once told him she didn't remember, and by the end of it she wasn't even thinking of Angel any more, even knowing that by now he had found her latest present.
Angel had almost gone into Caritas to see if the Host could help him twig onto what Darla was up to. However, he saw Cordelia on stage with Wes and Gunn at a nearby table. And people said he was the bad singer. They should hear Cordelia.
He went to some of the flashier clubs. Those were places he knew Darla would like but he found no clues. Deep down, Angel knew he could find her if he just did some work around Wolfram and Hart, maybe follow Lindsey. He didn't know what was stopping him; a true desire to go dark or a secret one to not to have to kill Darla.
It was his fault she was a demon. He failed to save her. He should have been able to make her see what a gift her humanity was but he couldn't do it. Now she was a demon again as a direct result of his shortcomings. Did he have the right to kill her?
To Angel's surprise, upon returning home, the Hyperion's front doors were open, the lock stressed beyond its capacity. His face morphed, expecting Darla - or other trouble - inside. He cautiously stepped into the lobby. Nothing leapt out at him but he caught Darla's scent lingering like a sheeting of memory. Angel stood stock-still, listening. If it wasn't Darla, he might be able to hear breathing, or hear someone moving. A very muffled sound came from upstairs.
He restrained himself from charging up the stairs. He took a more careful approach. Angel opened the door to his room then froze. Tied to his bed, moaning around a gag, lay a naked young woman. Her blonde hair haloed her head where it wasn't matted with blood. Tears streamed from her blue eyes. Her naked body was covered in writing. Seeing him, she wriggled as much as she could, bound as she was, trying to scream behind the gag.
"Just relax. I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "Is there anyone hiding in here?"
Angel couldn't interpret her sobs so he looked in the closet but no vampires were hiding out. He went over to untie her but couldn't help reading what had been scrawled all over her body. 'Fell on the upturn'd faces of those rose; that gave out, in return for the lovelight; their odorous souls in an ecstatic death' was written on her right thigh. Her belly read, 'By each spot the most unholy; in each nook most melancholy; there the traveller meets aghast, sheeted memories of the past,' and over her chest, 'She tenderly kissed me; she fondly caressed and then I fell gently to sleep on her breast; deeply to sleep from the heaven of her breast.
It was all poetry by Edgar Allen Poe. To Helen, Dreamland and For Annie, respectively. It hit Angel finally what 'remember Meath' meant. He knew what Darla was up to. Angel tore through the ropes binding the girl. He tried to remove her gag but she batted him, ripping at the offensive thing herself. He took care of the ropes tying down her feet. She tried to say something but it came out as a sob. Angel went to his closet and frantically dug around until he came up with a robe.
He draped it around her. "Are you badly hurt?"
She shook her head, dragging the robe around her like armor. "She...she kept saying I was a gift for Angel. I don't know...is that you?"
"It's me, but I'm not going to hurt you. What did this woman look like? Did she have people helping her?" Angel wondered for a moment about whether or not Lindsey would have thrown in on something this heinous. He'd like to think not. Angel wanted to believe he was reaching Lindsey.
"Aren't you going to call the police?" she asked through chattering teeth.
Angel got off the bed, pulled out his cell phone and went into the hall because he wasn't exactly calling 911 and didn't want to panic the girl. It took a only a few moments to convince Kate to come. He and she had been doing a weird dance around each other since they first met. She hated what he was but couldn't deny he had tried to help time and again. Even if she still thought he was somewhat evil, telling her there was a kidnaped girl left tied to his bed was enough to motivate her. "A detective is coming," he said. "Can I...I don't know, get you some of my clothes or..."
She shook her head. "I'm okay. She didn't hurt me much but my head's splitting. I think she hit me once." Her pale brow furrowed, as she tried to gel the details in her mind. "Something hit me and I woke up tied here. She was writing all over me. Why did she do this? What are you going to do to me?"
Angel could see the fear in her blue eyes. She didn't trust him not to rape and kill her despite the fact he had untied her. "Nothing, I promise you...uh, I don't know your name."
"Rachel," she mumbled.
"What did she look like, Rachel?" Angel asked again even though he knew the answer. "Was she short, blonde, brown-eyed with a funny, wispy, high-pitched voice?"
She bobbed her head, her blonde hair flopping like a blood-stained mop. "You know her. Why did she do this? What do you want from me?"
"Nothing. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you. I think it was my ex, and I'm not sure what she's up to," he lied. He knew exactly what Darla was doing.
"I'm so terrified." She wrapped the robe even tighter around her.
Angel sat down, put his arms around her and held her until Kate arrived. He left the room until Kate and the two uniformed female cops she brought with her took photographs of the crime scene and the girl's body with all its handwritten evidence. Then other police with CSU written on their jackets arrived to go over his bedroom more thoroughly, grumbling how his well meaning attempts to comfort Rachel had trampled evidence.
Angel ignored them. If they were so unlucky as to catch up with Darla, she'd eat them. It wasn't the first time his bedroom had been a crime scene but it was one of the few times he wasn't the one who had made it so. The ambulance arrived and took Rachael to have her battered head examined. When the flurry of police activity ended and it was just him and Kate, Angel took her down to his office. "Can I get you something to drink? I think Cordy has some hot chocolate. I'm no good with the coffee maker. Wes surely has tea somewhere." He was babbling as bad as Wesley, trying to find a way to avoid the inevitable; telling Kate everything.
"How about beer? Do you have any beer?" Kate sank wearily into a chair.
"I'll check."
Angel returned with two beers. "Boddingtons. Must be Wesley's." He pried the cap off with one strong finger and handed it to her. He helped himself to the other one.
"So what the hell's going on here?" Kate's voice bore no signs of friendship. Angel wasn't perturbed by it. He was used to Kate blowing hot then cold where he was concerned. "The vic said you told her that it was your ex who did this."
"Darla," he said, simply.
"So why didn't she kill this woman?" Kate asked pragmatically then swigged down some beer.
"I was supposed to do it."
"So you know what's going on," Kate said, giving him an expectant look.
Angel folded his large hands around the beer bottle, considering what to tell her. He decided on honesty. "In the mid-eighteen hundreds, when I was still Angelus and Darla and I were a couple, I managed to piss her off. I wanted her back so I devised a plan."
Kate cocked an eyebrow. "To win her undead heart?"
"Exactly. I think Darla's recreating my grand plan to romance her."
Kate's eyes hardened. "Go on."
"I got a note from her telling me to remember Meath and...some blood." He decided to not tell Kate about the heart Darla had given him. "Meath is where we were when I was romancing her. The first night I gave her the heart of a handsome young barkeep and some portraits I drew of myself to entice her."
"Portraits of yourself?" Kate's lips twitched, amused. "So you have an ego bigger than this hotel."
"She gave me photographs of herself," he grumbled.
"That's less egotistical than drawing self portraits."
"We didn't have cameras back then...and these photos were of her." Angel swigged his beer. "naked."
"Oh, I can imagine why." Kate shuddered.
Angel ignored that. "The next night I gave her a carafe of blood, covered the walls and ceiling of her room in flowers and gave her an expensive music box."
"She gave you a music box?" Kate's amused look grew.
Angel gave her the hairy eyeball. "No. That's why I didn't put it together right away. It took me a little too long to figure out what she was up to. She gave me another IV bag of blood, a sports car knickknack instead of a music box and a book of poetry." He decided leaving out the bit about the panties and definitely telling her about his bout of self-love was out of the question. "The following night I gave her a young man inked with the verses of Edgar Allen Poe so she had a little something to read with her meal."
"And she returned the favor, right down to Poe's poetry," Kate said in disbelief.
Angel nodded. "She should have known I'd let the girl go."
"So what came next?" Kate asked, dread in her voice.
"That's what I'm going to need your help with. It was my final gesture of love. Meath is famous for having an abundance of Celtic high crosses. I tied up several young priests to the crosses, some nuns, too. We slaughtered them there and desanctified the nearby church. It left nearly a dozen dead and we made up as a couple," Angel admitted, quelling at the disgust in Kate's eyes.
"So you're telling me she's going to do something big in a church," she grated out.
Angel hung his head. "Probably."
Kate drummed her fingers on the table. "So the question is which one so we can stop her."
"I don't know." Angel ran a hand through his thick hair. "I'd start checking with the Irish Catholic churches in town."
Kate shot him another look of loathing. "Remind me again why I haven't staked you?"
Angel shrugged. "Some days I have no clue."