CHAPTER FIVE
"Explain again why you need to come with us?" Spike groaned as he and Faith patrolled another campus. He shot a dirty look at Lorne who was tagging along.
"You're trying to help Angel-cakes and it's the least I can do," Lorne said.
"We're not..." Faith trailed off. She shot an accusatory look at Spike. "Who said we're out here getting in Angel's business when he so obviously doesn't want us to?"
"If you have secrets to keep, don't be singing around an empath like me." Lorne grinned at her.
"Spike was singing?" Faith's face lit up. "And I missed it."
"It was a passable verison of the Sex Pistol's 'Lonely Boy." Lorne glanced over at Spike. "Oddly not appropriate from what I've heard around the water cooler. That aside, I want to help make sure no more kids die."
"Guess I can't argue with that," Spike grumbled.
Faith wondered what his problem was. He was acting like a jealous boyfriend then thought maybe that could be it. The night in Buffy's house she and he had almost gotten down to it. She knew he didn't love her or she him but that wasn't going to stop them. Maybe he wanted to give it another try and was pissed Lorne was there getting in the way of his moves. Faith had to admit she was curious. She and B had had a good talk when they were in Dublin looking for a newly made Slayer and B had confessed to the advantages of having a lover as strong as she was, not having to worry about hurting him. Faith got that. She wanted to know what it felt like not having to hold back.
She and Spike ranged out across the campus. It was lonelier than she expected. All the murdered teens had been making the news. The kids were probably scared. It was keeping some of them in but not all of them. Teenagers always did feel invincible. Faith understood that. Lorne was dogging her. She didn't know much about his ability to fight. She hadn't seen much of any real skill from Lorne back when she helped with Angelus. So long as he kept out of the way, she had no problems with him being around.
"You think something weird is going on with Angel?" She decided to test the waters. Maybe Lorne had some kind of insight.
"He seems a little more closed mouth than normal," Lorne said then frowned. "Which is harder than you might imagine."
"I'm guessing you haven't read him then."
Lorne shook his head. "Angel-hair doesn't like to sing and let me tell you, we're all grateful for that."
"He told me about the torturing of having to sing Mandy for you once." Faith grinned.
Lorne returned it. "You have no idea how torturous it was for the rest of us. So, what are we looking for exactly?"
"General signs of trouble," Faith said. "And the pair from Simeon's sketches. They should be easy to spot."
A shriek cut the night. Faith and Lorne froze.
"Or that's a good sign," she said, seeing Spike already taking off. "Don't wait for us, Spike. You're closer." Faith screamed that last bit.
She was surprised when Lorne seemed able to keep up with her as they raced across the complex. She went past an alleyway and almost didn't see the movement out of the corner of her eye. Something barreled out of the alley behind her. Lorne didn't even have time to cry out. The next thing she knew, Lorne's head went spinning through the air, hit ground and rolled into the rose bushes.
Faith whirled, mentally cursing she hadn't brought a sword of her own since it was hard to be inconspicious with one. Behind her, standing over Lorne's body, his chest heaving, eyes wild, was the kid from the other night. He had a short curved sword and he was about to carve Lorne like a Thanksgiving turkey. The kid looked over at her, his lip curled.
"Demon!" He brought the sword back and Faith didn't know if he was going to use it on her or on what was left of Lorne.
"He was a good demon," she said, aiming a kick at his knee, hoping to cripple him quickly.
He danced back and Faith twisted, catching his sword arm. She smashed it several times into the building. The metal broke but his bones didn't. She didn't have time to contemplate that before his foot slammed into her groin. She might not have testicles to crush but it hurt none the less. She staggered back.
"Demon lover."
"You have a limited vocabulary, you know that, kid?" Faith punched him in the face. "And for the record, I've never loved a demon yet."
He fell back, wiping at his bloodied lip. He charged her bare handed and knocked her back into the alley. Faith slipped in the fetid slick around the dumpster but caught herself before she landed on her butt in the filth. She caught his incoming fist and spun him into the wall. She pressed him there with one hand, working his gut with the other.
Her eyes caught his for a moment and she was lost in the blue of them. There was something unexpectedly familiar about them, as if he and she had been locked into this opposition before and not just from the other night. Momentarily distracted, she didn't have time to move as his hand swept in and caught her in the throat. Faith gagged as her airway was cut off. For a blinding second she thought he had broken her neck. She fell back, struggling to breathe.
She stumbled for the opening of the alley. She needed to get to a place where she could maneuver. Where was Spike? Obviously elsewhere investigating te screams like she had told him to. What felt like fire burst all over Faith's head as the kid caught her long hair and nearly ripped her scalp off, hauling her back. Faith went with it and managed a scissors kick. When he went down she ran, still fighting for air.
He was on her before she knew it. She landed face down in the grass just a few feet from Lorne. She couldn't force words past her swollen throat, couldn't call for help. She tried to get the kid off her back. She managed to shove him aside, into the wall around the rose garden. His fist smashed into the cement border and shattered the blocks. Faith's eyes bulged, remembering being hit that hard before, Buffy, Angelus, the Beast; she didn't want to feel that kind of pain again.
She tried to get to her feet. The kid grabbed her ankle and twisted. Faith gasped, feeling something pop. He was on her like dervish, all fists and feet. He was landing blows so fast and furious she couldn't fend them off. The last thing she heard before darkness claimed her was the engine of a truck and someone shouting for Steven to stop and come. The kid's slight weight lifted off of her and then she felt nothing at all.
* * *
Spike didn't wait for Lorne or Faith. He knew he was closer to the source of the screams. He got there just in time to see a young man running from a group of other young men, a bunch of Goth Wannabe boys if he had to guess. He could see a body hanging from a tree by its feet. It looked like the boy screaming was intended to join the other victim. Higher in the trees was something that Spike wasn't sure but he could see through it like it was a ghost of a demon or something.
He got between the prey and the predators and knocked down the lead boy. The others paused momentarily. The prey teen kept running. Spike beckoned the others to bring it on. It was then that he saw someone getting out of a nearby truck, crossbow in hand. "Surprise, surprise, here's Daniel," Spike muttered as the predator teens scattered and regrouped by the victim hanging from the tree.
"You again," Daniel said, leveling the cross bow at Spike.
"I was thinking the same thing, mate." Spike charged him, hoping to make him shoot without aiming.
It worked. The bolt missed him and he was on the man before he could aim again but not before he loaded the weapon. He hit Daniel just as the man fired. Daniel went down and the arrow struck one of the predator teens in the chest. The boy squealed and fell. Something tore out of him, a match to the ghost-demon in the tree.
"Damn, they're possessed," Spike said at the same time Daniel was saying he hadn't meant to kill the kid.
Daniel twisted in Spike's grasp, trying to get another bolt. Spike swatted the quiver away and cracked the bow.
"Naughty, naughty. Can't have you turning me into ashtray fillings."
"It would be the best use of you, vampire," Daniel shot back.
Spike back handed him, knocking him off his feet but Daniel surprised him by getting hold of his jacket, dragging the slighter man down with him. Spike didn't want to kill the man so he pulled his punch. Daniel spat the blood back in Spike's face and came up with a small crucifix.
"What? You expect me to shy away with a Hollywood vampire hiss?" Spike laughed.
"No, I expect you to burn."
Daniel rammed the cross down Spike's waistband. Spike shrieked, clawing at his zipper. Daniel pulled the taser he had for controlling Steven out of his jacket and hit Spike full in the chest with it. Spike toppled backwards, twitching. Daniel rolled to his feet, retrieved his bolt from the dead teenager and ran back to the truck.
Spike heard him pull away but had no control over his body to stop him. He could feel the cross burning into his tenderest bits and tried to force his hands to move. He managed to get the cross out of his pants and just lay there for a moment panting, trying to focus on something besides the agony he was in.
Spike staggered up and surveyed the scene. There was still a victim hanging in the tree. The teen was still dead and the two ghost-demons were gone. So were the predatory teens. Odder still was Faith and Lorne had never shown up. Realizing that he hadn't seen Daniel's companion, the vampire-killing kid, Spike wondered if the kid had found Faith and Lorne.
Spike stumbled back the way he came. He broke into a hobbling run when he saw Faith lying in the grass. When he got to her side he saw how swollen her face was, the blood pooling around her mouth and heard how labored her breathing was.
"Shit." He scooped her up and she didn't give any signs of coming around. He saw Lorne's headless body lying a few feet away and made a choice. Faith was still alive at least. He carried her to their car and satisfied she wasn't going to die then and there, ran back for Lorne. He hated to think how he was going to explain to Angel why his empath-seer had no head.
"Spike! Over here!" Lorne called.
Spike nearly dropped the body, letting out a string of expletives. Lorne's head was looking at him from the roses. "You aren't dead."
"Decapitation can't kill me. Put my head back where it belongs," Lorne demanded.
Spike set the body down and complied, feeling rather put out by it. He didn't like being startled and he wasn't sure what to make of heads being able to survive without a body. Lorne needed help to move once his head was back on so Spike hustled him back to the car. He didn't pay any mind to Lorne's bitching about the attack or the fire that seemed to be spreading from his groin all the way to his knees and up into his chest from the incredibly painful burn he had sustained. The only thing on Spike's mind was Faith's condition. She was a Slayer. He knew she was tough but she looked bad. He needed to get her some help and he only hoped Wolfram and Hart's infirmary was as good as Fred boasted it was.
* * *
By the time they had returned to their home, Holtz's heart rate had begun to return to normal. The vampire had gotten a hold of him. He was lucky that he still drew breath. If the demon had been paying more attention to what he was doing, Holtz knew he would be dead. Then there was what Steven had been doing. No, he couldn't think of that.
Holtz wished he knew if the vampire had anything to do with the young men who were viciously killing their peers. He had seen vampires do heinous things to amuse themselves but he had never seen them direct others to do violence. Perhaps it was mere coincidence that the vampire had been there but this was the second time he had seen the scrawny washed-out creature. One time too many to be coincidence. Either he was helping the young men or he had been drawn by their violence. It was just one more way this world made no sense to him. He hadn't expected this time to be so crazed, so alien to him when he had made his bargain with Sahjhan. He had come to regret that deal with the devil.
Steven darted inside their home even before Holtz stopped the truck. He had surprised his mentors at Wolfram and Hart with how quickly he had picked up this piece of seemingly prosaic magic, taming a metal monster and make it take you places. They assured him it was simply a machine, a tool like the ox carts and carriages he was familiar with but he wasn't sure he believed it. Light with the flick of a switch, flushable bowls of water that passed as chamber pots, boxes that made music or showed pictures at a push of a button, stoves that didn't require wood and flint, this was all magic and frightening but he did his best never to let that show, to adjust as quickly as he could. It was one of his skills.
Holtz followed his son - which is how he saw the boy - into their shabby dwelling. "Steven, please sit on the couch."
The boy looked at him with the same blank expression as the hound dogs he used to us to help distract vampires so he and his band could kill them. He did was he was told, just like those hounds.
Holtz sat next to him and took Steven's hands, examining the bloody knuckles. There were bruises on the boy's wan face, something he wasn't used to seeing unless his son had gone up against the roughest of demons in the hell he had foolishly sentenced them to. "You are not to ever hurt a human being, son. You know this."
Steven pulled his hands back, tucking them up under his armpits, not looking at Holtz.
"Steven, look at me," Holtz demanded and the boy did out of the corner of his eyes, remaining just a tad defiant. He had always been so headstrong. There was no denying parentage. "You killed her. You had to have done so and it was needless."
Seeing his son shiver, hearing the pitiful mew that escapes his lips, Holtz regretted the sharpness of his tone but it was needed. Steven had lost his temper and now a girl was dead. Holtz flogged himself for letting her body lie there in the grass but she had sided with a demon; he had seem the carcass of the green-skinned thing she had been with tonight. She had been with the vampire the night before. The thought of Steven as a murderer made his stomach curdle. Holtz had killed humans in his time, when they stood in the way of Righteousness but he had always lamented the necessity.
"Not human," Steven asserted, surprising Holtz. He had become so accustom to his son saying very little and to hear him say something that he had put some thought into came as a shock, gave him a glimmer of hope that the boy would totally recover his lost senses. "Moved like me."
Holtz tugged the end of his beard, debating that mentally. He had seen the girl fight. Steven had a point. Nothing human could be that fast but she had no other demonic aspect. It could be she was a vampire who just didn't like to wear her true face. Whatever she was, she had been strong, quick and utterly improper with her arms bared and wearing pants. Of course, the last two could describe most of the women he had seen since Sahjhan brought him into this time. It was another of those things that made no sense. "Was she a vampire?"
Steven shook his head. "Breathed...very warm."
Holtz thought back to the scrap of clothing Steven had taken for his souvenir collection and wondered about the comment. His son was a young man now, with all the same urges as any young boy whether he liked it or not. "Then I do not know what she might have been. We must err on the side of caution, Steven. We have a job to do and we can not afford to make mistakes. If she was not a demon then you have taken the life of well, perhaps not an innocent, but none the less it was not your right to end her life." Holtz felt like the worst kind of hypocrite saying that. His son's lips trembled, his eyes welling but then he looked away, getting control over his weaknesses. Holtz stood and patted him on the shoulder. "I know she was attacking you but you had her helpless, Steven. There was no need to kill her."
"Not what you taught me." Steven's chin lifted defiantly.
Holtz's lips thinned. "What I taught you applied to Quor-Toth. There were no innocent bystanders there, son. Here, it is different. I have explained that." And he had, until he thought he would tear out his hair. He had no way of telling how much Steven retained, only that it was far less than he was used to. His son was a bright boy, quick and inventive. He had been dragged back to life and awarded this shell of the young man he had known and nurtured.
"Not dead," Steven said, his eyes getting his patented stubborn gleam. "Alive."
"But probably not for long, not with the beating you gave her," Holtz said, feeling both elated and horrified. He had not summoned help, thinking her dead but it was a busy campus; someone would assist a woman in need. "Try not to let it happen again. Go wash up for bed."
The eye roll Steven gave him was infinitely familiar. Holtz watched Steven go then sat down to tend his weapons once more. He didn't know what he had done to offend God but his sins must be deep and dark to have been expelled from his rest, for Wolfram and Hart to be allowed to do this to him. He was alone among his enemies. Everyone he had ever loved was long dead and gone and he had wanted was to finally join them. When he had Justine take his life, he had never dreamed Steven couldn't survive on his own, that something as terrible as this would befall him. He had trusted Steven could adapt to this world and thrive just as he had in Quor-Toth. Now, deeply saddened by this turn of events, frightened by the implications of his resurrection and alone in this world, except for his son, Holtz tried to find reasons to live.
Even the passion that had driven him had gone cold. Darla was dust. He had watched her stake herself, to his amazement. Angel had somehow lost his son. Holtz didn't believe Eve for a moment about Angel damaging Steven like this. He knew the vampire must be suffering but he didn't thrill to it as he once would have. His hatred had left him hollow. It had driven him across time and place but it had finally burned out. Eve's promise that he and Steven could avenge themselves on the vampire didn't reignite the flames of righteous vengeance. God was dead in this world, or at least inside of him. He would do what Eve asked, if he could, but only if she helped his son.
Steven was the only thing he had left in the world, the only thing that matter. He would be just as happy to have his son back, whole and hale and take him far from this city, to a place where neither of them had to think of vampires again, a place where they could just be still and live a quiet life. Deep down, he knew this for the dream it was but it was all that kept him going. Hearing Steven finishing in the shower, Holtz set aside his weapons and went to take advantage of the warm water himself.
