Part Four
AN: This is roughly set at the season 2 finale as far as chronology goes.
In the proceeding twenty four hours from their meeting Mister Clark, the Scooby Gang learned just how far that their possibly former friend, Alexander Harris, was willing to go to get information from the demon population of Sunnydale – he and Mr. Clark had left a pile of broken bodies at Willy's bar, several lairs had been rousted and even a particularly cowardly demon had come running TO the Slayer for protection from 'two lunatic humans with guns and no sense of humor'. All of the information gathered, though, led to only one piece of information that explained the copious and often inventive swearing heard from Xander the next day – Angelus had skipped town to parts unknown.
For a week afterwards, even after Clark had left town, Xander turned Sunnydale upside down and shook it vigorously until something was shaken loose, even a small tidbit about the whereabouts of Angelus, and it effected him both at school and 'in the field'. At school, he had little time for anyone save Kendra, Jenny and Giles, and wasn't afraid to step on toes when people began to push him – he'd dropped Larry and three of his cronies for harassing Kendra about her accent, putting two of them in the hospital, glared down Snyder when the troll had tried to expel him for said 'fight' (it wasn't really a fight because fights are two-sided), and even the local school psycho Jack O'Toole steered very clear of Xander when, after O'Toole tried to push him around in wood shop, Xander buried a chisel into the wall next to Jack's head, missing it only by several scant millimeters. All of these and more should have gotten him expelled, but he merely smiled and told Snyder to 'bring it' when the troll timidly threatened it, but nothing ever came of it at all for some odd reason.
It was one day at lunch, though, that Willow had decided that the whole thing had gone on long enough and physically drug Xander, via his ear in the 'female ear lock', to the Library, "Alright, Xander, what's going on?"
"Aside from you trying to rip my ear off?" He rubbed the offended part of his anatomy briskly before looking at them, "What are you talking about?"
"She wants to know about your sudden ... turn ... of attitude, Xander." Giles took off his glasses and polished them, "One could say that said attitude could be attributed to puberty, but due to recent events, I think that such an easy explanation is folly."
"You want to know why I've turned Sunnydale upside down for info on where Angelus is, right?" They all nodded their heads and he went on, "If I can't find him, I can't dust him."
Like clockwork, Buffy shouted, "But we're going to give him his soul back! You can't!" Buffy's attitude and opinion about the subject was, admittedly, getting somewhat tired.
Xander merely crossed his arms, "What I do or do not do is none of your business to begin with, nor does your opinion of those ideas mean jack shit to me, Buffy. He's going to dust, and I'm going to be there when it happens." That said, he turned on heel and walked out of the Library with a deliberate sort of set about his posture and for several minutes nobody said a word. Finally, though, it came down to Oz, whom had shown up several minutes before Xander's arrival, who spoke.
"Intense."
"Xander, are you sure you want to do this?" Jenny asked him for the third time in the past two hours as he loaded the last magazine for his M4 and stashed it away into his equipment bag, "He knows that you're coming after him, and he will be waiting."
"I hope so, Jenny, because that means that he's going to be overconfident in his forces and their abilities to take me out, and they will get sloppy." He picked up the M4, now with the Rail Interface System on the forward mount and the IR/UV designator/illumination unit underslung while the ACOG scope was affixed to the top rail and the suppressor was firmly attached to the barrel, and began to check it out for readiness, "Sloppy is good in this case."
"Buffy is trying to find out where he is and will do so, eventually. If you do somehow manage to kill Angelus, she may never forgive you."
He stashed the carbine into the rifle case and looked up at the dark-haired gypsy woman, "Jenny, believe me, I've run every possible scenario through my mind and there is nothing that you can argue that I haven't already thought of. Yes, there is a good possibility that she may never speak to me again or may even try to kill me, but I'm doing this because it needs to be done and not for any other reason." Lowering his gaze, he stashed away the AN/PVS-14 night vision monocular into his bag and followed it up with a medical pack for those 'just in case everything goes to hell in a hand basket' scenarios that kept cropping up in his mind.
"Would you kill her?" The bluntness of the question startled him, but not as much as the person it came from; Joyce Summers, flanked by both of her daughters, stood in the doorway of his condo and looked somewhat perturbed, "If Buffy tried to stop you, would you kill her?"
"I'd avoid it if possible, Joyce, but if she tried to kill me ... I'd make it quick, that's all I could tell you." Forcibly closing the bag, the turned and looked at the trio of women, grimacing at the looks he was getting – Joyce looked ashen, Buffy looked outraged and Dawn looked sorrowful, "Why are you here?"
"To stop you from making a huge mistake," Buffy snapped out. "Angel is a good person!"
"Angel, possibly, but in case it hasn't seeped into your brain yet, ANGELUS ISN'T ANGEL!" All three Summers women hopped back and he went on, "You fucked Angel, he lost his soul and now we have Angelus to deal with – cut and dried, he is dust and there is nothing you or anyone short of the Powers That Be can do to stop it." That said, he walked back to his bags and began to finish packing.
There was silence for a moment before Dawn broke it, "You slept with Angel? And now he's the one killing all those people? Sick!"
"Buffy, is that true?" The shock and horror in Joyce's voice was comparable to Dawn's but on a greater scale as Buffy blushed, looked down at her feet and hemmed and hawed for several minutes.
"Xan?" He looked over and saw Dawn, his little Dawn Patrol, standing next to him even as he packed away a Kevlar vest and some BDUs, "You're really going to do this, aren't you." He only nodded yes, and she went on, "Come back, alive, that's all I ask. I ... I won't judge you over this, namely because I never liked the putz to begin with, but I want to know that you're coming back."
"Dawnie," he stated, sitting on the bed and patting a place next to him for her to sit, which she did, "I can't promise you that I am going to be coming back. I'm going to go and try to kill a Master Vampire who is the worst of the worst, who is waiting on me and has forces between him and myself – I know that I am good, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that I'm so good that I'll breeze through this. All I can tell you is that I'll try to come back alive, in one piece, and that's all." He reached out and stroked her hair back from her forehead to her neck even as Joyce and Buffy began to argue very loudly, "Just keep those two from killing each other, munchkin."
"MUNCHKIN?" She looked more than a little affronted at his term for her, but in the back of his head, Xander knew that the term is something that John had used for Patsy when she was little and he had to go off on a mission of some kind.
"Only until you outgrow Buffy vertically, Dawn." He pulled her close and hugged her even as Buffy pleaded with her mother to understand why she had done what she had done ... and not done, then let her go and got off the bed, "Stay out of trouble, Dawn."
She nodded and then looked at the dozen or so blocks of OD green Mylar he had stacked on the sheet, "What're those, Xan?"
"C-4, Dawnie, Block Demolition Charges, technically," he answered, loaded them into a shoe box before stuffing the box into the bag with the Kevlar and then going for the next times, "and these are M18A1 mines, often called Claymores – please note the 'This Side Towards Enemy' motif on the front in hopes to make them a little more idiot-proof."
"Very nice," she said with a slight tremor in her voice as he stashed the last one away. "And that one?"
He smiled, "A last resort weapon against humans, Dawnie." He picked up the trio of syringes of pale yellow liquid and stashed them into a shock-proof case before tucking them into the bag with the rest of the ordinance, "Well, that's it." He hugged her one last time and then moved over and hugged Jenny, who had gotten out of the way of the War Of The Summers Women, "Take care, you two."
One Week Later
He had been in LA for a little over a week and had begun to squeeze several human gangs, not to mention several demons, for information about any odd disappearances of people at night – while many of the demons had been more than willing to pass along the information, the human gangs were less than cooperative and ended up being very dead afterwards. As such, the 'Gangland Killer' was accredited their deaths, raising his total number of bodies to nearly two dozen and was also under close scrutiny of the LAPD.
One shred of information from the demons, though, had led him to the quaint building he currently stood in front of – even from the street he could hear someone inside butchering Cher's 'If I Could Turn Back Time' and seriously debated whether or not to go inside ... a debate that was short- lived when he decided to finally end his trip to LA. Steeling his resolve, he walked inside.
It wasn't all that bad once he got past some of the singing, actually, and he wasn't the oddest-looking individual in the obviously demon-oriented bar; he noticed several vampires, the odd Polgara demon and even a Brachen (spelling?) demon, but the winner was a green-skinned, red-eyed and horned demon in a bright red suit with a yellow shirt and matching cravat, sipping on what appeared to be a Sea Breeze, "I think I could like this place."
Walking to the bar, he ordered a beer and looked around the bar even as a Fungus demon got up and started trying to croon 'Fly Me To The Moon'. It took a great deal of resolve, but Alexander was able to keep himself from shooting the Fungus demon even as the brightly colored demon with the Sea Breeze came over, "Hello, my good man, and welcome to Caritas. I am The Host, but please, call me Lorne."
"Lorne?" He looked the demon up and down, "Let me guess, Lorne Greene?"
Lorne laughed, "You guess it."
Alexander shrugged, "Hey, fifteen years on television needs to account for something, even these days. Nice place."
"Thanks; this little gin joint isn't much, but I like to think it's cozy enough to read auras and determine destinies." Alexander threw him an inquiring look and Lorne went on, "They sing, I read their auras and point them in the right direction as far as their destiny is concerned. I don't suppose that you'd get up there for a quick reading, would you, kiddo?"
Alexander winced as the Fungus demon hit a particularly sour note towards the end of the song and shrugged, "If you want, but I need to warn you that my voice has been classified by the Department of Defense as a weapon of mass torture and terror."
Lorne winced, "That bad, huh? Well, if you want, you could hum a little and I'd get a general reading on you."
Looking around a little, Alexander took a breath and began to hum the Jeopardy Theme, which was actually on-key for once, but it was enough for Lorne to get a read, apparently, as the green demon's eyes went wide and he looked over his shoulder, "Ramon? Give me the strongest thing you have under there and make it a double ... I'm going to need it."
Alexander sighed and slipped into his Xander self, "Well, this can't be good."
Lorne slugged back the drink that Ramon gave him and then shuddered, "It's not that – you're destiny has been put through the Cuisenart on high speed, sweets. Think of it like this – you're on one road, driving along like you're supposed to, then the edges and shoulders vanish, the road splits into an infinite number of possibilities, your accelerator is stuck to the floor, your breaks are out, no reverse and you have to make a decision ... fast. Best thing I can tell you is that you're in uncharted waters, kid, because you've not only obliterated your own original destiny, but also those of several others."
"Abso-fucking-lutely perfect." That pretty much summed up his entire way of feeling at that point, but apparently Lorne wasn't done.
"What I can tell you, though, is that what you seek is in an abandoned hotel called the Hyperion. When and how, I can't say, but it's not going to end in a way that you are going to like."
Alexander came back to the forefront, "Never an easy op." He took a slug off of the beer that had been placed in front of him and then put down a five, "Well, let's get this over with. See you around, Lorne."
"Via con Dios, kid," The Host called out even as he went to tell the Fungus Demon the good/bad news and another creature, a vampire, took the stage to the opening strains of Barry Manilow's 'Mandy'.
The trip back to his room was quick and uneventful, as was his disrobing and preparation for his work, but just as he began to reach for his black BDU suit, there was a knock on his door, so he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist, walked to the door and opened it with the safety chain, "Yes?"
There was a woman on the other side of the door, a blonde, wearing a denim coat, jeans, a nice shirt and a badge, "Are you Alexander Harris?"
"Possibly, ma'am."
She held up the badge, "Detective Kate Lockley, LAPD, and I have a few questions for you about some recent homicides in the area." She didn't seem to mind as he shut the door, nor when he released the safety chair, nor even when he opened the door again, but she did seem to be caught off- guard when it was made apparent that he was in very little other than a towel, "Oh, sorry."
"No problem, Detective; it's note very day that I get questioned in a towel by a blonde woman with a gun and handcuffs. The questions?"
She shook her head as if to clear it and then looked down at some notes in a booklet she had on her person, "Um, ahem, the registry says that you're not from here."
"Sunnydale, California."
"That you're only 17?"
"Emancipated Minor."
"Business or pleasure?"
He arched an eyebrow, "A bit of both, but mostly business."
"And that would be?"
"Private, but relatively legal ... unless you're an extreme Right-Wing Government type."
"Anybody else in your life ... I mean, your room?"
He chuckled even as she blushed lightly, "No ... on both counts, unless you count the eleven year old who has chosen me to be her first crush. Detective, can this wait for two seconds while I pull on some pants? People may get the wrong impression if they walked by to see us conversing as such." At her nod, he walked back into the room and quickly pulled on the black fatigue bottoms, then walked back to the door with a shirt in hand, "Anything else?"
She seemed to pause for a second, taking in his clothing, and then went on, "Have you seen or heard anything odd within the past twenty four hours?"
He arched an eyebrow, "Detective, my first night here I saw a man dressed in a pink tafetta and leotard prancing up and down the halls of this establishment and quoting Shakespeare ver batem from Hamlet ... and that's been the mildest of what I've seen since. Care to whittle down that question a little more?"
She snapped her book shut, "Have you witnessed anything illegal, like the murders of no less than twelve gang members within ten blocks any direction of this location?"
He felt his humor, not to mention his smile, vanish, "No, ma'am, I have not, but if you wish to make an accusation, then make it. I have some business to get to shortly."
"Why are you really in town, Mr. Harris? Those are military issue fatigue bottoms and I am sure that if I got a search warrant, I'd find more in your room."
He opened the door, "No need for a warrant, Detective. Look to your heart's content – these were the first things I could get to cover my ass that didn't involve the name 'Speedo', so I put them on."
"That won't be necessary," she blurted out, putting away her notebook. "Mister Harris, stay out of trouble." That said, she walked off, but Xander fancied that she had a little extra sway in her his even as she did, grinning as he shut the door.
As soon as the door was shut, though, he lost the grin, "That was too close."
From the relative safety of his Blazer, Alexander takes one last picture of the Hyperion Hotel, taking special care to photograph the numerous blacked- out windows, ways of entrance and egress, not to mention the sheer size of the building, before sighing, "Never an easy op." Putting the camera away, he dropped the Blazer into gear and drove off to have the pictures developed – his plan was to strike before sundown, but not too soon to it, and make sure that as many ways in and our were taken care of ... even in the sewers.
Within two hours he was looking at the pictures and then correlating them to a set of blue prints that he had gotten for the old hotel, noting only minor changes and several other ways in and out that he had not seen before. Thanking his lucky stars that he'd brought the demolition charges, he knew that if he wanted to get the op done that night, he'd have to start PDQ. That in mind, he set off to a sewer entrance and began to work on several traps that would seal off any way of getting in or out of th Hyperion via the sewers – the one way in or out via the sewers were covered with the three Claymore mines he had brought with him, set to blow off a person's legs, face and chest. Coming into the Hyperion via the sewers, though, was more challenging, so he set up several of the block demolition charges to blow out the incoming electricity, water, gas and other utilities; it was risky, especially with the gas lines, but with the fewer numbers of vampires that got away, that was fewer he had to worry about later.
It was two hours later, after all the charges were set and he had returned to his room to get ready, that the full implications of what he was about to attempt to do hit him; he was about to raid a hostile-held semi-fortress to hunt and kill a 250 year-old master vampire and that there was a good chance that he wasn't going to come back alive, so why even do it?
"Because it needs to be done." He took a breath and finished putting on his weaponry, stashing his ammunition for the M4 and his suppressed Government Issue within easy reach and going over his supplies one last time before he slipped on a large overcoat to hide everything, stepping out of his rented room for possibly the last time even as he muttered, "I'm getting too old for this shit."
In five minutes he was in his Blazer and outside of the target, waiting for the sun to drop just a little more when the passenger-side door opened and Buffy slipped in, "Hey, Xand."
"Buffy."
"What're you doing?"
"Waiting for the right time to kill Angelus."
She sighed, "I won't let you do that, Xander. We're going to restore his soul and he'll be Angel again."
He snorted, "I bet that'll be a real comfort to all the families of the loved ones that he killed after you let him out." He looked her in the eyes even as his hand drifted into the pocket of his overcoat, having planned for such an intervention, "If you're going to stop me, you'll have to kill me to do it, Slayer."
Her face paled slightly even as he worked the protective cap off of the needle that held in the yellow liquid in the syringe, "I don't want to kill you, Xander, but to get Angel back I will."
He laughed humorlessly, "No, you won't kill me for two reason, Buff. First off, you can't kill humans, you're just not wired in the brain to do it – you see the world in black and white, no ifs ands or buts about it, and that will keep you from seeing the truth."
"And the second reason?"
Before she finished speaking, he was already in motion and stuck the syringe full of Ketemin (horse tranquilizer) into her carotid artery, "You'll be too busy being unconscious." She floundered for a second before the drugs took effect and she slumped forwards in her seat. He felt like a real rat bastard doing that to her, but she was an obstacle in the execution of his op that needed to be removed.
He left her in the Blazer even as the sun sank lower in the sky, dialing a number from memory; the call was picked up immediately, "Mr. Ryan's office."
"Tell Ryan to get ahold of John Clark and pass along the message that Junior's last dance just started." He terminated the call and continued his walk towards the Hyperion Hotel even as he triggered a single remote detonator in his pocket; in an instant he felt the street beneath his feet shudder as the buildings around him went dark from a lack of electricity, the phones went out, the water shut off and the gas was shut off via emergency shut off valves in case of pressure loss. That done, he shrugged out of the overcoat to reveal his black BDUs, tactical vest, weapons and brought the suppressed M4 to bear, working the action mechanism to chamber a round as he did.
The Mission was on, and there was no turning back.
After the preliminary explosion that disabled the utilities that fed the hotel, within two minutes there were three other explosions from the Claymore mines that lined the one way into the hotel from underground, along with several other minor explosions that led away from the hotel as well as several somethings made quick escapes out of the hotel ... several somethings that did not include Angels, of that Alexander was sure of because from the second he came into the lobby, he caught sight of the Master Vampire and opened fire into the small crowd around him, dusting three with four shots of tracer rounds. The whole afraid deteriorated quickly from there as several vampires opened fire from lofted positions with pistols and the odd bow / crossbow, which caused Alexander to find cover behind a column and go from place to place, taking shots where he could and not pausing when he was eventually grazed by a pistol round in the left upper arm.
By the five minute mark from the opening shots fired, he had gone through nearly two magazines of tracer ammunition on semi-automatic and had confirmed no less than three dozen vampire kills by sight, but there were more than enough to go around even as Angelus began to taunt him from one of the lofted positions.
"Hello, Xander, welcome to my humble abode."
Of course, Alexander didn't answer as he reached into a pocket for something to staunch or even seal the blood that was still trickling down his left arm.
"Tell me, boy, does Buffy know you are here with that pea shooter of yours? It would be a real shame for you to actually dust me and her to have to kill you for that."
Pulling out a bottle of clear superglue, he opened the top and poured it on the jagged flesh wound, the searing pain from the chemical drying process hitting him immediately and protracting his first word, "FUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK you, Angelus! I'll kill her before she kills me."
"Big words from such a little coward."
Grabbing the M4 again, Alexander popped around the column he was using for cover and popped off four more rounds, tagging three vampire minions that were approaching his position and got to his feet, ready to move again even as the pain began to dull to a throbbing ache in his arm, "You'd know about cowardice, wouldn't you, Deadboy." That said, he dashed to a more defensible position, a small office area that had a better view of the upper floors that were being used to fire on him ... and visa versa as they had a better shot at him, "Oh yeah, you would, especially with how you're sacrificing all of these peons to take care of one little, insignificant human who you know can kill you without losing any sleep whatsoever." Reaching into his fanny pouch, he grabbed a smoke grenade that he had modified and pulled the pin before hurling it through the air to the second story landing, where it landed and began to spew forth a cloud of white smoke.
"Tear gas won't hurt us, Xander. Gods, even BUFFY knows that."
"Who said it was tear gas, Angelus. Don't you ever watch Monty Python?" Even as he finished speaking, the first vampire minions began to scream in agony as the aerosolized holy water began to come in contact with the vampire's skin, which gave him a general direction to fire in, lighting three of them up in five shots before ducking back under to change out for a fresh magazine.
"You clever son of a bitch," he heard Angelus mutter even as he chambered a round and pulled out the AN/PVS-14 monocular, clipping it to the ACOG scope where the rail was supposed to be on the M4 and used it to scan the darkened, mist-filled second floor for readable targets, but found that while it was JUST dark enough in the building to see with the nightvision monocular / scope combination, it was still a little too bright to make out anything solid, so he spent a few rounds and only got one bloodsucker even as Angelus spoke up again, "This mist must be throwing off your aim, boy."
"Maybe it is, but I bet you are running a little thin on help up there, Deadboy." He felt himself grin even as several more shots from a pistol and a stream of rounds from a micro-UZI chewed up the desk/counter he was hiding behind, "How about we make a deal, Angelus? You come down here and we fight it out, man to vampire."
"HA! I have reinforcements on their way, boy. You'd never last a second even if you somehow managed to stake me."
"Hope you have a way of making your vampires fire proof, Angelus, because your sewer access was cut off by those loud explosions you heard and felt earlier." That got several snarled comments in Gaelic tossed back at him, to which he threw back, "Hey, that's my mother you're talking about," and even sent a prolonged volley of nearly a magazine of tracer rounds to boot that tagged two more vampires.
"Well, Harris, I have to hand it to you," Angelus said after a few minutes of silence, the smoke grenade no longer putting out it's lethal-to-vampires- only smoke as the sound of a door opening was heard, "that you really know how to plan out a raid. Tell me, is there any way that I can convince you to let me turn you?"
"Sure, just come on down here and I'll let ya bite me, Deadboy ... right after I put a few stakes into your sorry, undead ass." He popped back over the counter and managed to get off two rounds before a lone pair of pistols sounded off and chewed up the top of the desk, driving a few splinters into his cheek and forehead before he had the chance to duck back down, "How does it feel to be alone up there, Angelus? I can't hear any more of you minions and I know that al of those rooms over there are facing west and are without window shades."
"You know nothing, boy." The voice of Angelus was no longer from a lofted position, but rather from ground level, which caused Alexander to come up, carbine ready, to see the form of Angelus walking down the last few steps of the stairs, locked-open pistols in hand, "You are alone, injured, in my lair and obviously low on ammunition. You can't win."
Pushing his luck, Alexander pulled the trigger of carbine and heard a sound that he hoped not to hear – CLICK, "You're right, but then again, you're also out of ammo." Putting down the carbine, "So, let's see who the better man is here."
Angelus chuckled and tossed aside the empty pistols while moving forwards, "It must kill you that I got to her first."
Alexander snorted, "You can have her, bloodsucker." He too also started forwards, but his hand never strayed too far from his concealed Government Issue, "I'm not really into sloppy seconds."
Angelus chuckled again, "So I see. As I said before, she will kill you if you destroy me."
Alexander smiled and pulled the Government Issue, sans suppressor, "She's not bullet proof, Deadboy, and neither are you."
"Don't do it, Harris." Out of the shadows stepped a fedora-wearing pimp circa 1975 even as the hotel doors burst open to admit the Scooby Gang, along with Kendra, who was dragging a half-drugged Buffy, "You said that nobody short of the Powers themselves could keep Angel-boy over there dust- free, well, this is coming straight from them that you can't kill him, kid. He's important."
There were eight explosions that set everyone's ears on fire as the Government Issue bucked eight times, flinging out hollow point manglers and said manglers impacting into the body of Angelus, who shrieked in agony as the hollow points splintered into his shoulders, hips, torso and legs. When the echoes stopped, Alexander spoke again, glaring at Whistler, "He steps out of line by half of a hair, do yourself a favor and dust him and then make sure I never find you because you're next on the list, Powers That Be or no Powers That Be." Holstering the pistol, he grabbed up the carbine and stormed out of the door even as the cell phone in his pocket began to buzz.
It was once he was in his Blazer that he answered his phone, "Yes?"
{Kid, it's John. Mission status?}
"Objective partially complete – he's getting his soul back on orders from the 2IC's around here."
{Get to LAX and you'll find a ticket under Harrison Alexander, and show them that piece of paper I gave you last time. You're coming East to meet the family.}
(AN: Now, for what's happening in the Hotel)
Whistler looked at Slayer Buffy Summers as she shrugged off the last of the tranquilizer the kid hit her with and helped her newly-re-souled vampire sit up, "You're lucky, Summers, and yet you've screwed the pooch something fierce this time. You two've made a dangerous enemy in Harris, and I won't be saving your asses again if you cross him, kids."
She looked up at him, her eyes still slightly dull, "There won't be a next time, Whistler – we know about the curse and what it takes to break it. Besides, Angelus is gone, right?"
"No, Buffy," Rupert Giles said as Kendra toyed nervously with the stake in her hands, "Angelus isn't gone. He is still within Angel."
"But he'll never get out – Angel's free of him."
"Not quite." Whistler moved his hand and Buffy was tossed to one side, "You see, Angelus has tipped the balance a little too much this time, so now Angel has to make up for it with a little stay over in a warmer climate." A portal opened up and began to suck Angel towards it, "To hell with you, Angel, literally, for a century."
Buffy's screams echoed through out the entire lobby even as Detective Kate Lockley came through the door, having seen the entire past few minutes, "What the hell?"
AN: Alright, here's part four – next chapter will take a little while longer, but it will be a lot longer, too. R&R, please.
AN: This is roughly set at the season 2 finale as far as chronology goes.
In the proceeding twenty four hours from their meeting Mister Clark, the Scooby Gang learned just how far that their possibly former friend, Alexander Harris, was willing to go to get information from the demon population of Sunnydale – he and Mr. Clark had left a pile of broken bodies at Willy's bar, several lairs had been rousted and even a particularly cowardly demon had come running TO the Slayer for protection from 'two lunatic humans with guns and no sense of humor'. All of the information gathered, though, led to only one piece of information that explained the copious and often inventive swearing heard from Xander the next day – Angelus had skipped town to parts unknown.
For a week afterwards, even after Clark had left town, Xander turned Sunnydale upside down and shook it vigorously until something was shaken loose, even a small tidbit about the whereabouts of Angelus, and it effected him both at school and 'in the field'. At school, he had little time for anyone save Kendra, Jenny and Giles, and wasn't afraid to step on toes when people began to push him – he'd dropped Larry and three of his cronies for harassing Kendra about her accent, putting two of them in the hospital, glared down Snyder when the troll had tried to expel him for said 'fight' (it wasn't really a fight because fights are two-sided), and even the local school psycho Jack O'Toole steered very clear of Xander when, after O'Toole tried to push him around in wood shop, Xander buried a chisel into the wall next to Jack's head, missing it only by several scant millimeters. All of these and more should have gotten him expelled, but he merely smiled and told Snyder to 'bring it' when the troll timidly threatened it, but nothing ever came of it at all for some odd reason.
It was one day at lunch, though, that Willow had decided that the whole thing had gone on long enough and physically drug Xander, via his ear in the 'female ear lock', to the Library, "Alright, Xander, what's going on?"
"Aside from you trying to rip my ear off?" He rubbed the offended part of his anatomy briskly before looking at them, "What are you talking about?"
"She wants to know about your sudden ... turn ... of attitude, Xander." Giles took off his glasses and polished them, "One could say that said attitude could be attributed to puberty, but due to recent events, I think that such an easy explanation is folly."
"You want to know why I've turned Sunnydale upside down for info on where Angelus is, right?" They all nodded their heads and he went on, "If I can't find him, I can't dust him."
Like clockwork, Buffy shouted, "But we're going to give him his soul back! You can't!" Buffy's attitude and opinion about the subject was, admittedly, getting somewhat tired.
Xander merely crossed his arms, "What I do or do not do is none of your business to begin with, nor does your opinion of those ideas mean jack shit to me, Buffy. He's going to dust, and I'm going to be there when it happens." That said, he turned on heel and walked out of the Library with a deliberate sort of set about his posture and for several minutes nobody said a word. Finally, though, it came down to Oz, whom had shown up several minutes before Xander's arrival, who spoke.
"Intense."
"Xander, are you sure you want to do this?" Jenny asked him for the third time in the past two hours as he loaded the last magazine for his M4 and stashed it away into his equipment bag, "He knows that you're coming after him, and he will be waiting."
"I hope so, Jenny, because that means that he's going to be overconfident in his forces and their abilities to take me out, and they will get sloppy." He picked up the M4, now with the Rail Interface System on the forward mount and the IR/UV designator/illumination unit underslung while the ACOG scope was affixed to the top rail and the suppressor was firmly attached to the barrel, and began to check it out for readiness, "Sloppy is good in this case."
"Buffy is trying to find out where he is and will do so, eventually. If you do somehow manage to kill Angelus, she may never forgive you."
He stashed the carbine into the rifle case and looked up at the dark-haired gypsy woman, "Jenny, believe me, I've run every possible scenario through my mind and there is nothing that you can argue that I haven't already thought of. Yes, there is a good possibility that she may never speak to me again or may even try to kill me, but I'm doing this because it needs to be done and not for any other reason." Lowering his gaze, he stashed away the AN/PVS-14 night vision monocular into his bag and followed it up with a medical pack for those 'just in case everything goes to hell in a hand basket' scenarios that kept cropping up in his mind.
"Would you kill her?" The bluntness of the question startled him, but not as much as the person it came from; Joyce Summers, flanked by both of her daughters, stood in the doorway of his condo and looked somewhat perturbed, "If Buffy tried to stop you, would you kill her?"
"I'd avoid it if possible, Joyce, but if she tried to kill me ... I'd make it quick, that's all I could tell you." Forcibly closing the bag, the turned and looked at the trio of women, grimacing at the looks he was getting – Joyce looked ashen, Buffy looked outraged and Dawn looked sorrowful, "Why are you here?"
"To stop you from making a huge mistake," Buffy snapped out. "Angel is a good person!"
"Angel, possibly, but in case it hasn't seeped into your brain yet, ANGELUS ISN'T ANGEL!" All three Summers women hopped back and he went on, "You fucked Angel, he lost his soul and now we have Angelus to deal with – cut and dried, he is dust and there is nothing you or anyone short of the Powers That Be can do to stop it." That said, he walked back to his bags and began to finish packing.
There was silence for a moment before Dawn broke it, "You slept with Angel? And now he's the one killing all those people? Sick!"
"Buffy, is that true?" The shock and horror in Joyce's voice was comparable to Dawn's but on a greater scale as Buffy blushed, looked down at her feet and hemmed and hawed for several minutes.
"Xan?" He looked over and saw Dawn, his little Dawn Patrol, standing next to him even as he packed away a Kevlar vest and some BDUs, "You're really going to do this, aren't you." He only nodded yes, and she went on, "Come back, alive, that's all I ask. I ... I won't judge you over this, namely because I never liked the putz to begin with, but I want to know that you're coming back."
"Dawnie," he stated, sitting on the bed and patting a place next to him for her to sit, which she did, "I can't promise you that I am going to be coming back. I'm going to go and try to kill a Master Vampire who is the worst of the worst, who is waiting on me and has forces between him and myself – I know that I am good, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that I'm so good that I'll breeze through this. All I can tell you is that I'll try to come back alive, in one piece, and that's all." He reached out and stroked her hair back from her forehead to her neck even as Joyce and Buffy began to argue very loudly, "Just keep those two from killing each other, munchkin."
"MUNCHKIN?" She looked more than a little affronted at his term for her, but in the back of his head, Xander knew that the term is something that John had used for Patsy when she was little and he had to go off on a mission of some kind.
"Only until you outgrow Buffy vertically, Dawn." He pulled her close and hugged her even as Buffy pleaded with her mother to understand why she had done what she had done ... and not done, then let her go and got off the bed, "Stay out of trouble, Dawn."
She nodded and then looked at the dozen or so blocks of OD green Mylar he had stacked on the sheet, "What're those, Xan?"
"C-4, Dawnie, Block Demolition Charges, technically," he answered, loaded them into a shoe box before stuffing the box into the bag with the Kevlar and then going for the next times, "and these are M18A1 mines, often called Claymores – please note the 'This Side Towards Enemy' motif on the front in hopes to make them a little more idiot-proof."
"Very nice," she said with a slight tremor in her voice as he stashed the last one away. "And that one?"
He smiled, "A last resort weapon against humans, Dawnie." He picked up the trio of syringes of pale yellow liquid and stashed them into a shock-proof case before tucking them into the bag with the rest of the ordinance, "Well, that's it." He hugged her one last time and then moved over and hugged Jenny, who had gotten out of the way of the War Of The Summers Women, "Take care, you two."
One Week Later
He had been in LA for a little over a week and had begun to squeeze several human gangs, not to mention several demons, for information about any odd disappearances of people at night – while many of the demons had been more than willing to pass along the information, the human gangs were less than cooperative and ended up being very dead afterwards. As such, the 'Gangland Killer' was accredited their deaths, raising his total number of bodies to nearly two dozen and was also under close scrutiny of the LAPD.
One shred of information from the demons, though, had led him to the quaint building he currently stood in front of – even from the street he could hear someone inside butchering Cher's 'If I Could Turn Back Time' and seriously debated whether or not to go inside ... a debate that was short- lived when he decided to finally end his trip to LA. Steeling his resolve, he walked inside.
It wasn't all that bad once he got past some of the singing, actually, and he wasn't the oddest-looking individual in the obviously demon-oriented bar; he noticed several vampires, the odd Polgara demon and even a Brachen (spelling?) demon, but the winner was a green-skinned, red-eyed and horned demon in a bright red suit with a yellow shirt and matching cravat, sipping on what appeared to be a Sea Breeze, "I think I could like this place."
Walking to the bar, he ordered a beer and looked around the bar even as a Fungus demon got up and started trying to croon 'Fly Me To The Moon'. It took a great deal of resolve, but Alexander was able to keep himself from shooting the Fungus demon even as the brightly colored demon with the Sea Breeze came over, "Hello, my good man, and welcome to Caritas. I am The Host, but please, call me Lorne."
"Lorne?" He looked the demon up and down, "Let me guess, Lorne Greene?"
Lorne laughed, "You guess it."
Alexander shrugged, "Hey, fifteen years on television needs to account for something, even these days. Nice place."
"Thanks; this little gin joint isn't much, but I like to think it's cozy enough to read auras and determine destinies." Alexander threw him an inquiring look and Lorne went on, "They sing, I read their auras and point them in the right direction as far as their destiny is concerned. I don't suppose that you'd get up there for a quick reading, would you, kiddo?"
Alexander winced as the Fungus demon hit a particularly sour note towards the end of the song and shrugged, "If you want, but I need to warn you that my voice has been classified by the Department of Defense as a weapon of mass torture and terror."
Lorne winced, "That bad, huh? Well, if you want, you could hum a little and I'd get a general reading on you."
Looking around a little, Alexander took a breath and began to hum the Jeopardy Theme, which was actually on-key for once, but it was enough for Lorne to get a read, apparently, as the green demon's eyes went wide and he looked over his shoulder, "Ramon? Give me the strongest thing you have under there and make it a double ... I'm going to need it."
Alexander sighed and slipped into his Xander self, "Well, this can't be good."
Lorne slugged back the drink that Ramon gave him and then shuddered, "It's not that – you're destiny has been put through the Cuisenart on high speed, sweets. Think of it like this – you're on one road, driving along like you're supposed to, then the edges and shoulders vanish, the road splits into an infinite number of possibilities, your accelerator is stuck to the floor, your breaks are out, no reverse and you have to make a decision ... fast. Best thing I can tell you is that you're in uncharted waters, kid, because you've not only obliterated your own original destiny, but also those of several others."
"Abso-fucking-lutely perfect." That pretty much summed up his entire way of feeling at that point, but apparently Lorne wasn't done.
"What I can tell you, though, is that what you seek is in an abandoned hotel called the Hyperion. When and how, I can't say, but it's not going to end in a way that you are going to like."
Alexander came back to the forefront, "Never an easy op." He took a slug off of the beer that had been placed in front of him and then put down a five, "Well, let's get this over with. See you around, Lorne."
"Via con Dios, kid," The Host called out even as he went to tell the Fungus Demon the good/bad news and another creature, a vampire, took the stage to the opening strains of Barry Manilow's 'Mandy'.
The trip back to his room was quick and uneventful, as was his disrobing and preparation for his work, but just as he began to reach for his black BDU suit, there was a knock on his door, so he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist, walked to the door and opened it with the safety chain, "Yes?"
There was a woman on the other side of the door, a blonde, wearing a denim coat, jeans, a nice shirt and a badge, "Are you Alexander Harris?"
"Possibly, ma'am."
She held up the badge, "Detective Kate Lockley, LAPD, and I have a few questions for you about some recent homicides in the area." She didn't seem to mind as he shut the door, nor when he released the safety chair, nor even when he opened the door again, but she did seem to be caught off- guard when it was made apparent that he was in very little other than a towel, "Oh, sorry."
"No problem, Detective; it's note very day that I get questioned in a towel by a blonde woman with a gun and handcuffs. The questions?"
She shook her head as if to clear it and then looked down at some notes in a booklet she had on her person, "Um, ahem, the registry says that you're not from here."
"Sunnydale, California."
"That you're only 17?"
"Emancipated Minor."
"Business or pleasure?"
He arched an eyebrow, "A bit of both, but mostly business."
"And that would be?"
"Private, but relatively legal ... unless you're an extreme Right-Wing Government type."
"Anybody else in your life ... I mean, your room?"
He chuckled even as she blushed lightly, "No ... on both counts, unless you count the eleven year old who has chosen me to be her first crush. Detective, can this wait for two seconds while I pull on some pants? People may get the wrong impression if they walked by to see us conversing as such." At her nod, he walked back into the room and quickly pulled on the black fatigue bottoms, then walked back to the door with a shirt in hand, "Anything else?"
She seemed to pause for a second, taking in his clothing, and then went on, "Have you seen or heard anything odd within the past twenty four hours?"
He arched an eyebrow, "Detective, my first night here I saw a man dressed in a pink tafetta and leotard prancing up and down the halls of this establishment and quoting Shakespeare ver batem from Hamlet ... and that's been the mildest of what I've seen since. Care to whittle down that question a little more?"
She snapped her book shut, "Have you witnessed anything illegal, like the murders of no less than twelve gang members within ten blocks any direction of this location?"
He felt his humor, not to mention his smile, vanish, "No, ma'am, I have not, but if you wish to make an accusation, then make it. I have some business to get to shortly."
"Why are you really in town, Mr. Harris? Those are military issue fatigue bottoms and I am sure that if I got a search warrant, I'd find more in your room."
He opened the door, "No need for a warrant, Detective. Look to your heart's content – these were the first things I could get to cover my ass that didn't involve the name 'Speedo', so I put them on."
"That won't be necessary," she blurted out, putting away her notebook. "Mister Harris, stay out of trouble." That said, she walked off, but Xander fancied that she had a little extra sway in her his even as she did, grinning as he shut the door.
As soon as the door was shut, though, he lost the grin, "That was too close."
From the relative safety of his Blazer, Alexander takes one last picture of the Hyperion Hotel, taking special care to photograph the numerous blacked- out windows, ways of entrance and egress, not to mention the sheer size of the building, before sighing, "Never an easy op." Putting the camera away, he dropped the Blazer into gear and drove off to have the pictures developed – his plan was to strike before sundown, but not too soon to it, and make sure that as many ways in and our were taken care of ... even in the sewers.
Within two hours he was looking at the pictures and then correlating them to a set of blue prints that he had gotten for the old hotel, noting only minor changes and several other ways in and out that he had not seen before. Thanking his lucky stars that he'd brought the demolition charges, he knew that if he wanted to get the op done that night, he'd have to start PDQ. That in mind, he set off to a sewer entrance and began to work on several traps that would seal off any way of getting in or out of th Hyperion via the sewers – the one way in or out via the sewers were covered with the three Claymore mines he had brought with him, set to blow off a person's legs, face and chest. Coming into the Hyperion via the sewers, though, was more challenging, so he set up several of the block demolition charges to blow out the incoming electricity, water, gas and other utilities; it was risky, especially with the gas lines, but with the fewer numbers of vampires that got away, that was fewer he had to worry about later.
It was two hours later, after all the charges were set and he had returned to his room to get ready, that the full implications of what he was about to attempt to do hit him; he was about to raid a hostile-held semi-fortress to hunt and kill a 250 year-old master vampire and that there was a good chance that he wasn't going to come back alive, so why even do it?
"Because it needs to be done." He took a breath and finished putting on his weaponry, stashing his ammunition for the M4 and his suppressed Government Issue within easy reach and going over his supplies one last time before he slipped on a large overcoat to hide everything, stepping out of his rented room for possibly the last time even as he muttered, "I'm getting too old for this shit."
In five minutes he was in his Blazer and outside of the target, waiting for the sun to drop just a little more when the passenger-side door opened and Buffy slipped in, "Hey, Xand."
"Buffy."
"What're you doing?"
"Waiting for the right time to kill Angelus."
She sighed, "I won't let you do that, Xander. We're going to restore his soul and he'll be Angel again."
He snorted, "I bet that'll be a real comfort to all the families of the loved ones that he killed after you let him out." He looked her in the eyes even as his hand drifted into the pocket of his overcoat, having planned for such an intervention, "If you're going to stop me, you'll have to kill me to do it, Slayer."
Her face paled slightly even as he worked the protective cap off of the needle that held in the yellow liquid in the syringe, "I don't want to kill you, Xander, but to get Angel back I will."
He laughed humorlessly, "No, you won't kill me for two reason, Buff. First off, you can't kill humans, you're just not wired in the brain to do it – you see the world in black and white, no ifs ands or buts about it, and that will keep you from seeing the truth."
"And the second reason?"
Before she finished speaking, he was already in motion and stuck the syringe full of Ketemin (horse tranquilizer) into her carotid artery, "You'll be too busy being unconscious." She floundered for a second before the drugs took effect and she slumped forwards in her seat. He felt like a real rat bastard doing that to her, but she was an obstacle in the execution of his op that needed to be removed.
He left her in the Blazer even as the sun sank lower in the sky, dialing a number from memory; the call was picked up immediately, "Mr. Ryan's office."
"Tell Ryan to get ahold of John Clark and pass along the message that Junior's last dance just started." He terminated the call and continued his walk towards the Hyperion Hotel even as he triggered a single remote detonator in his pocket; in an instant he felt the street beneath his feet shudder as the buildings around him went dark from a lack of electricity, the phones went out, the water shut off and the gas was shut off via emergency shut off valves in case of pressure loss. That done, he shrugged out of the overcoat to reveal his black BDUs, tactical vest, weapons and brought the suppressed M4 to bear, working the action mechanism to chamber a round as he did.
The Mission was on, and there was no turning back.
After the preliminary explosion that disabled the utilities that fed the hotel, within two minutes there were three other explosions from the Claymore mines that lined the one way into the hotel from underground, along with several other minor explosions that led away from the hotel as well as several somethings made quick escapes out of the hotel ... several somethings that did not include Angels, of that Alexander was sure of because from the second he came into the lobby, he caught sight of the Master Vampire and opened fire into the small crowd around him, dusting three with four shots of tracer rounds. The whole afraid deteriorated quickly from there as several vampires opened fire from lofted positions with pistols and the odd bow / crossbow, which caused Alexander to find cover behind a column and go from place to place, taking shots where he could and not pausing when he was eventually grazed by a pistol round in the left upper arm.
By the five minute mark from the opening shots fired, he had gone through nearly two magazines of tracer ammunition on semi-automatic and had confirmed no less than three dozen vampire kills by sight, but there were more than enough to go around even as Angelus began to taunt him from one of the lofted positions.
"Hello, Xander, welcome to my humble abode."
Of course, Alexander didn't answer as he reached into a pocket for something to staunch or even seal the blood that was still trickling down his left arm.
"Tell me, boy, does Buffy know you are here with that pea shooter of yours? It would be a real shame for you to actually dust me and her to have to kill you for that."
Pulling out a bottle of clear superglue, he opened the top and poured it on the jagged flesh wound, the searing pain from the chemical drying process hitting him immediately and protracting his first word, "FUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK you, Angelus! I'll kill her before she kills me."
"Big words from such a little coward."
Grabbing the M4 again, Alexander popped around the column he was using for cover and popped off four more rounds, tagging three vampire minions that were approaching his position and got to his feet, ready to move again even as the pain began to dull to a throbbing ache in his arm, "You'd know about cowardice, wouldn't you, Deadboy." That said, he dashed to a more defensible position, a small office area that had a better view of the upper floors that were being used to fire on him ... and visa versa as they had a better shot at him, "Oh yeah, you would, especially with how you're sacrificing all of these peons to take care of one little, insignificant human who you know can kill you without losing any sleep whatsoever." Reaching into his fanny pouch, he grabbed a smoke grenade that he had modified and pulled the pin before hurling it through the air to the second story landing, where it landed and began to spew forth a cloud of white smoke.
"Tear gas won't hurt us, Xander. Gods, even BUFFY knows that."
"Who said it was tear gas, Angelus. Don't you ever watch Monty Python?" Even as he finished speaking, the first vampire minions began to scream in agony as the aerosolized holy water began to come in contact with the vampire's skin, which gave him a general direction to fire in, lighting three of them up in five shots before ducking back under to change out for a fresh magazine.
"You clever son of a bitch," he heard Angelus mutter even as he chambered a round and pulled out the AN/PVS-14 monocular, clipping it to the ACOG scope where the rail was supposed to be on the M4 and used it to scan the darkened, mist-filled second floor for readable targets, but found that while it was JUST dark enough in the building to see with the nightvision monocular / scope combination, it was still a little too bright to make out anything solid, so he spent a few rounds and only got one bloodsucker even as Angelus spoke up again, "This mist must be throwing off your aim, boy."
"Maybe it is, but I bet you are running a little thin on help up there, Deadboy." He felt himself grin even as several more shots from a pistol and a stream of rounds from a micro-UZI chewed up the desk/counter he was hiding behind, "How about we make a deal, Angelus? You come down here and we fight it out, man to vampire."
"HA! I have reinforcements on their way, boy. You'd never last a second even if you somehow managed to stake me."
"Hope you have a way of making your vampires fire proof, Angelus, because your sewer access was cut off by those loud explosions you heard and felt earlier." That got several snarled comments in Gaelic tossed back at him, to which he threw back, "Hey, that's my mother you're talking about," and even sent a prolonged volley of nearly a magazine of tracer rounds to boot that tagged two more vampires.
"Well, Harris, I have to hand it to you," Angelus said after a few minutes of silence, the smoke grenade no longer putting out it's lethal-to-vampires- only smoke as the sound of a door opening was heard, "that you really know how to plan out a raid. Tell me, is there any way that I can convince you to let me turn you?"
"Sure, just come on down here and I'll let ya bite me, Deadboy ... right after I put a few stakes into your sorry, undead ass." He popped back over the counter and managed to get off two rounds before a lone pair of pistols sounded off and chewed up the top of the desk, driving a few splinters into his cheek and forehead before he had the chance to duck back down, "How does it feel to be alone up there, Angelus? I can't hear any more of you minions and I know that al of those rooms over there are facing west and are without window shades."
"You know nothing, boy." The voice of Angelus was no longer from a lofted position, but rather from ground level, which caused Alexander to come up, carbine ready, to see the form of Angelus walking down the last few steps of the stairs, locked-open pistols in hand, "You are alone, injured, in my lair and obviously low on ammunition. You can't win."
Pushing his luck, Alexander pulled the trigger of carbine and heard a sound that he hoped not to hear – CLICK, "You're right, but then again, you're also out of ammo." Putting down the carbine, "So, let's see who the better man is here."
Angelus chuckled and tossed aside the empty pistols while moving forwards, "It must kill you that I got to her first."
Alexander snorted, "You can have her, bloodsucker." He too also started forwards, but his hand never strayed too far from his concealed Government Issue, "I'm not really into sloppy seconds."
Angelus chuckled again, "So I see. As I said before, she will kill you if you destroy me."
Alexander smiled and pulled the Government Issue, sans suppressor, "She's not bullet proof, Deadboy, and neither are you."
"Don't do it, Harris." Out of the shadows stepped a fedora-wearing pimp circa 1975 even as the hotel doors burst open to admit the Scooby Gang, along with Kendra, who was dragging a half-drugged Buffy, "You said that nobody short of the Powers themselves could keep Angel-boy over there dust- free, well, this is coming straight from them that you can't kill him, kid. He's important."
There were eight explosions that set everyone's ears on fire as the Government Issue bucked eight times, flinging out hollow point manglers and said manglers impacting into the body of Angelus, who shrieked in agony as the hollow points splintered into his shoulders, hips, torso and legs. When the echoes stopped, Alexander spoke again, glaring at Whistler, "He steps out of line by half of a hair, do yourself a favor and dust him and then make sure I never find you because you're next on the list, Powers That Be or no Powers That Be." Holstering the pistol, he grabbed up the carbine and stormed out of the door even as the cell phone in his pocket began to buzz.
It was once he was in his Blazer that he answered his phone, "Yes?"
{Kid, it's John. Mission status?}
"Objective partially complete – he's getting his soul back on orders from the 2IC's around here."
{Get to LAX and you'll find a ticket under Harrison Alexander, and show them that piece of paper I gave you last time. You're coming East to meet the family.}
(AN: Now, for what's happening in the Hotel)
Whistler looked at Slayer Buffy Summers as she shrugged off the last of the tranquilizer the kid hit her with and helped her newly-re-souled vampire sit up, "You're lucky, Summers, and yet you've screwed the pooch something fierce this time. You two've made a dangerous enemy in Harris, and I won't be saving your asses again if you cross him, kids."
She looked up at him, her eyes still slightly dull, "There won't be a next time, Whistler – we know about the curse and what it takes to break it. Besides, Angelus is gone, right?"
"No, Buffy," Rupert Giles said as Kendra toyed nervously with the stake in her hands, "Angelus isn't gone. He is still within Angel."
"But he'll never get out – Angel's free of him."
"Not quite." Whistler moved his hand and Buffy was tossed to one side, "You see, Angelus has tipped the balance a little too much this time, so now Angel has to make up for it with a little stay over in a warmer climate." A portal opened up and began to suck Angel towards it, "To hell with you, Angel, literally, for a century."
Buffy's screams echoed through out the entire lobby even as Detective Kate Lockley came through the door, having seen the entire past few minutes, "What the hell?"
AN: Alright, here's part four – next chapter will take a little while longer, but it will be a lot longer, too. R&R, please.