Gwen puts the moves on Gunn. Wes puts the moves on Fred. Anya thinks she knows what Nina is. And Connor returns to his nihilistic roots.
This was Connor's first time behind the wheel. He had played a number of driving video games at the arcade, which he believed gave him some sense of what driving was like. Actual driving felt somewhat easier, especially since he was staying off the freeways. Also, it was around eleven at night, so there were fewer cars on the road than during the daytime. Connor headed up to North Hollywood, where there was a crowded and rowdy vampire bar he had passed by earlier in the evening. First, Connor lights up a small Snapple bottle filled with newspapers and gasoline and tosses it through the window. This causes a mild panic. Then, Connor lifts a thirty gallon drum of gasoline over his head and hurls it high in the air. The barrel crashes down through the roof of the one-story dive. Connor had expected an explosion. But the force of the impact caused the drum to burst, spilling fuel all over the floor. So instead of a loud explosion, the flames quickly and quietly spread throughout the building. This does not give Connor the visceral thrill of a big blast, but it does provide some satisfaction. Especially when he hears the screams of the burning vampires. Connor smiles, gets back in the car and drives away. He has a much bigger target in mind.
Cordy and Fred passed by the burnt-out wreck of Wesley's car and the spot where Mal killed the woman just before encountering Wes. Police were around both sights, and the car was too damaged for either of them to recognize that it had been Wesley's. Clearly Mal had been in the area rather recently. The rest of downtown seemed quiet, so Cordy turned south towards USC. When they stop at a light between the campus and Exposition Park, someone smashes the front passenger-side window and pulls Fred out of the car. She screams. Cordy grabs her crossbow and gets out. Fortunately, the vampire attacking Fred is not Mal. He holds her from behind and leans in to bite the right side of her neck. Winifred gives him a right elbow to the nose, a left elbow to the groin, pulls a stake out of her pocket with her right hand, then turns and stabs the vamp in the heart with a quick backhand motion. His stunned yellow and black eyes bug out, and he turns to dust. Another vampire rushes at Fred.
"Fred — Duck!," Cordelia blurts out. She's fifteen feet behind Fred and on the other side of the car. Fred crouches down, giving Cordy a clear shot at the advancing vampire's chest. She hits his heart and dusts him. Cordy runs over to Fred's side of the car. Two more vampires come at them. The two women stand back-to-back. A third vampire leaps down to the sidewalk from the top of an adjacent building.
"Don't bother with them," he tells the other two. "Remember what Mal said: No meal is worth dying for." The three vampires run off.
"Hey! Get back here!," Cordy yells. "What about my window? You think I'm just going to let you undead jerks get away with that?" She looks at Fred. "Get in the car. We're chasing them down."
Fred is still catching her breath and recovering from the near-death scare. "Let's go home. They're vampires. I doubt you'd get any money out of 'em. Besides, they could lead us to Mal."
"You think he'd pay?"
"I think he'd bite." Cordy comes to her senses and puts things in perspective.
"You're right. We did good. And did you see how afraid they were of the two of us?"
"Almost as much as we were were of them."
"No. More afraid. They ran. Do you know what this means? We have the power to intimidate. By our champion-less selves."
"You're right," Fred says with a smile as they climb back into the car. "We kick ass. And the demons know it."
"I don't remember any vampires running away from Buffy."
Fred sighs. "I only wish Charles and Wesley had been here to see it."
"As if those two didn't have the hots for you already. Forget about the vampires. If Gunn and Wes saw your little Slayer moment, right now you'd be fighting them off with a stick."
"Better than worryin' if they're dead."
"They're fine, Fred. I'm sure they'll be home real soon. Maybe they're already back. Probably didn't even find Mal."
Wesley wakes up in the alley behind the church he flew into. His shotgun and his two pistols were in his lap. Mal had dropped him off (with weapons) a half-block south of the blast, so the police wouldn't disturb him. Wesley grabs the top of his head. Mal's blow left him with a splitting headache. Then he remembers what happened to his friends and employees. Wesley feels devastated. Then he tries to figure out what to do next. He's without a car, more than five miles from home, and heavily armed. (Though he has no ammo and Mal took all the cartridges out of the shotgun.) This makes it difficult for him to find a ride without attracting attention. He stuffs the pistols in his jacket pockets and slings the shotgun over his shoulder and underneath his jacket. Wesley heads a few blocks east, away from the street where he ran over Mal. Then he hails a cab, gets in and tells the driver to take him to the Hyperion. He wants to check in with the others before heading home. The driver keeps looking at Wes through his rear-view mirror, making Wesley nervous.
"Rough night to be out," the driver says, making small-talk.
"I suppose so."
"There's been a lot of rough nights lately. Used to be you only had to worry about other drivers shooting you. Now they yank you right outta your car. Pretty scary stuff."
"I imagine it would be," Wesley responds, obviously not eager to talk.
"Strange thing is, whoever these freaks are, they don't go after public transportation. No cabs. No buses. No subways. So you should be safe in here."
"Good to know." This hadn't occurred to Wesley. The lack of subway killings was especially note-worthy, since the underground offered vampires live victims during the day, and because it was very hard for people to escape if they were attacked on a moving train. There had to be a reason for this. Wesley zoned-out and thought it over as the cabbie droned on.
"You in a hurry? I said, are you in a hurry? Hello?" Wesley's train of thought is broken.
"Sorry. What was that?," he asks the driver.
"I said I figured you was in a hurry. On account of not finishing shaving." Wesley assumes this is a comment on his normal, stubbled appearance. Then he turns to his right, looks out the window, and sees his reflection. While he was unconscious, Mal had shaven the left side of Wesley's face and neck. Half his face was smooth. The other half rough. And the dividing line was right down the middle. Wesley puts his left hand to his face. A few seconds later, Wesley feels something unusual in his front right pants pocket. He puts his right hand in and pulls out an old-fashioned straight razor with a six inch-long blade. Mal had this to his throat. That was certainly a horrifying thought. Even more unsettling was the idea that this vicious mass-killing vampire took the time to give him a clean, dry shave that didn't miss a whisker or leave a single nick. That certainly set new standards for gratuitously toying with victims. But it did confirm Wesley's belief that Mal was an obsessive perfectionist. Perhaps there was a way to exploit that trait. There had to be something about Mal they could exploit.
Gunn grits his teeth as he pulls the arrow out of his left foot, takes off his bloody shoe and sock and wraps a bandage around the wound. "You sure you don't want my help?," Gwen asks.
"You're already helping. Just by being here." Gunn finishes with his foot, puts it up on an ottoman, sits back in a leather chair in Gwen's study and puts an icebag on his head.
"It is my home," Gwen jokes.
"You know what I mean. Well, no you don't. Not the whole story."
"You mean the part about you trying to fill the hero void while Angel's gone, and doing a damn good job at it?"
"Good job?," Gunn asks with a rueful chuckle. "I've been a disaster."
"My head — the one that's still attacked to my body — says different."
"Saving you is the good news. The only good news. Bad news is there's a lot of other people I couldn't save."
"No one can save them all. Not even Angel. Not even close."
"But these were my men. And I led 'em to their deaths."
"I think I'm missing the paragraph before that sentence."
"Mal's targeting demon fighters. I brought 'em all together. Two dozen strong. We rode out a couple hours ago. Right, now me and two others are the only ones left breathing. He just took them out, one-by-one, all round me. Couldn't kill him. Couldn't stop him. Couldn't even hurt him."
"And what if they weren't with you? What would have happened then?"
"He'd take 'em out. But it would take longer. They'd be more spread out. Maybe most of 'em coulda lived to see tomorrow."
"And then what? Wouldn't it only be a matter of time?"
"They'd have a chance. A chance someone could kill him before it was their turn. A chance Mal would get bored and decide they ain't worth the trouble."
"You make it sound like Mal's unstoppable."
"He is."
"Wrong. You stopped him. You hurt him, and he ran away. He didn't try to make you pay. He just bolted. And I'm guessing this guy doesn't do that too often."
"I got lucky. It was an ambush. He wasn't expecting me."
"I thought I was the one who got lucky?," Gwen asks
"I'm pretty sure we both did." Gwen leans in and kisses Gunn for a few seconds before cautiously pulling back. This time, Gunn doesn't object.
Wesley's attack had worried Mal. Maybe there were still pockets of resistance. Perhaps the army of demon fighters was just from the south side of town. Mal decided to hit of few of the suspected demon hunter hideouts the local vampires had told him about. Nothing in Sherman Oaks. Ditto for Encino. So he headed in from the periphery, towards Westwood. That was where he got lucky. Mal leaps through the window of an abandoned loft in all his fanged-out glory. Two men in their late teens, a woman in her late teens, and a boy who couldn't be much more than fourteen grab their weapons and tell a dozen other people to get out. They rise off the floor, where they had been sleeping, and rush in fear for the exit.
"The people I don't want to kill run, and the people I want to kill stay behind. Curious," Mal muses. The four demon fighters did want to run, but they knew better than to turn their backs on a vampire. They backtrack and sidestep their way to the door. Mal rushes at them, leaps over them and lands in front of the door. The windows Mal entered through, the only other means of escape, are fifty feet to Mal's left.
"It's him," one of the older boys says to the older girl.
"Then you know what happens next," Mal responds. One young man swings his ax for Mal's neck. Mal ducks. The ax goes into the wall. Mal puts his right hand around the man's throat and snaps his neck. The young woman shrieks and swings her machete for Mal's left arm. He pulls that arm back, grabs her right wrist with his right hand, squeezes the wrist, causing her to drop the machete, and puts his left arm across her chest, holding her from behind. "Was he your man?," he asks the frightened woman in her right ear. "I'm sorry for your loss. Let me end your grief." Mal bites her neck. The woman cries out as she is drained. The other two rush towards the window. They're on the third floor, but not jumping would mean certain death. When they get to the window, Mal rushes up from behind, grabs them both, pulls them away from the window and hurls them to the ground. They get up and move away from Mal. He stays still for now. When they're twenty feet from him, the older guy takes out a Chinese throwing star that's four inches across. He flings it at Mal's neck. Mal grabs the star between his left thumb and index finger. He tosses it back, decapitating the young man. The boy runs as fast as he can to the door. Predictably, Mal cuts him off. The teenager holds a sharpened broom stick to defend himself. His eyes are tearing up. He knees shake, and he starts to wet his pants. Mal goes back to his human face.
"Did you live here?," Mal asks the child, who doesn't quite understand why the monster is talking to him. It takes him a few seconds to respond.
"Yeah. I did." He's so certain of death that he's talking in the past tense.
"Why?," Mal innocently asks, before going bumpy for a few seconds while he drains the young man with the broken neck. When he finishes, he returns to his human face and continues with his question as if he had just drunk a cup of coffee or done something else completely normal. "Don't you have a home? Don't you have parents?" The boy starts to worry the vampire is going to take him hostage or kill him slowly.
"No."
"Are they dead?"
"My dad is. My mom's in prison." This was getting terrifyingly surreal for the young man. Mal didn't seem to notice. He thought he was just having a nice, polite conversation. Meanwhile, he walks over to the decapitated body and sucks the man's blood out through the opening in the neck where his head had been. After he's drunk most of the blood, Mal turns the body upwards to get the rest out. The poor kid, his stomach already in knots, vomits at this disgusting and revolting sight. Mal drops the drained body, turns around and sees the vomit on the floor.
"Are you ill?" The boy doesn't answer. He feels like fainting. This is all just too much. "You're scared. Do I scare you? I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you. I only came here to hurt warriors. You are too young to be a warrior. Put down the stick. I said, put down the stick." The boy does as he is told. Like he could stop Mal with it anyway. "You should have a home. A real home." Mal reaches into his right pants pocket, pulls out a set of keys with a driver's license attached, and tosses it the boy. "I think the card tells you where the house is located. The keys will let you in. Go. It's empty." He reaches back into his right pocket, pulls out a half-dozen more sets of key and throws them towards the kid. They land on the floor around him. "Your friends, the ones who ran, they can use these ones, too. Tell them. Have a good night." Mal leaps back out the window, leaving the bewildered and overwhelmed kid all alone with the keys and the corpses.
After getting lost a few times, Connor found his way to El Monte, a private airport near the San Gabriel Valley that was about ten miles east of downtown and a few miles south of Wolfram & Hart. This was where the hangar was that Mal had displayed all his demon kills in. Connor assumed that meant it was a vampire hangout, and he was correct. More than fifty vampires were inside. The speakers blare out Ministry's "Just One Fix." Strobe lights caught the faces of the slayed and flayed demons. The shed was two hundred feet long, eighty feet wide and sixty feet high. Since no one in their right mind would attack so many vampires, they didn't have any guards outside. Connor parks about fifty yards from the hangar and gets out. His takes out a barrel and douses the passenger-side doors with gasoline. Then he fills up a small gas can, carries it over towards the south side of the hangar, and pours it out in a thirty foot-wide semicircle around the exit. Connor puts the barrel in the back of the station wagon with the other two, gets in the car, circles away from the building, then turns around and guns the engine. He pulls down the driver's-side window. When he gets close to the door, Connor flicks his lighter and tosses it to his left. Just after the car crashes through the door, the lighter hits the ground and ignites the semicircle outside.
The vampires are caught completely by surprise. Connor runs a few of them over as he veers right. He rubs the car up against the long west wall. As he drives, the sparks created by the car rubbing up against the metal wall ignite the gas Connor poured on that side of the vehicle. He runs over more vampires and crashes through the dj's booth. Connor stops about sixty feet from the north wall. He kicks off the door and gets out the vehicle as the flames spread. The vampires run away. Connor brandishes a small double-bladed hatchet in his left hand and an fifteen inch-long curved dagger in his right. He beheads three vampires as he rushes towards the east wall. He's fifty feet away from the car when it explodes with close to 100 gallons of gasoline inside. The blast hurls Connor into the wall opposite the car. It also knocks down dozens of vampires and immolates a few, as well as blowing a hole in the wall. Connor gets up and rushes to the north exit. The vampires who went to the south exit find the ring of fire and rush across to the opposite side of the building. Meanwhile, the flames rise up the remaining portion of the west wall, engulfing the wooden planks that buttressed the wall's thin metal skin. Within seconds, the fire's reached the roof.
Connor stands outside, fifteen feet in front the north exit, waiting for the vamps to come running. When they do, he lunges left and right, beheading a dozen. Another dozen manage to get by him. Then the west wall begins to buckle. It collapses inward, and the ceiling caves in. The fire spreads, and pretty soon the whole structure comes tumbling down. The rest of the vampires appear to have been burnt, crushed or both. No more make their way out. Connor proudly walks away from the destruction, silhouetted by the flames. He smiles and he speeds up to run down a few of the stragglers.
After talking to Nina, Buffy wanted to leave immediately so she could tell Giles what Nina said about herself. But Rona, Amanda and Madari wanted to spend more time with their boyfriends, and after all they'd been through Buffy wasn't going to object. When the Bronze closed at eleven, they all went home and got down to business. Buffy, Giles, Anya, Dawn, Willow, Xander, Spike and Faith sit around the dining room table.
"Can we get back to the part about her crushing Dracula's pelvis and making him cry?," Spike asks with a smile. "I know it doesn't help us, but it's just bloody hilarious. If I ever see that wanker again, we'll have so much to talk about."
"She says she hates demons," Xander notes. "Does that mean we should assume she isn't one?" For Xander, this would also explain why she wasn't attracted to him.
"Only if we assume she's telling the truth," Giles reminds them.
"She is," Buffy responds.
"How can you be sure?," Giles asks. "She is the enemy."
"Nina thinks there's no chance we can beat her. She's too cocky to lie. Also, she's lonely. Like she wants to hang out with us before she kills us."
"Who would want to socialize with their mortal enemies?," Willow asks. Everyone looks at Spike.
"Oh, cum on! You know bloody well that I only spent time with you sods because my life depended on it. It was either that or get captured and dissected. I may have hated you all, but I didn't hate you that much."
Dawn tries to focus on Nina's biology. "She doesn't eat. She doesn't sleep. She heals instantly."
"She feels like pudding," Spike adds, drawing confused looks. "Ah mean, her insides did, when I bit her. No blood. No fluids. It felt like some sort of gel."
"And she can teleport," Dawn concludes. "Do this add up to anything we know?"
"She could be a Titan," Anya suggests.
"I beg your pardon?," Giles asks.
"You've never heard of them? I thought everyone heard the story. Or, maybe it was just a demon thing."
"I've never heard of the bloody things," Spike tells Anya.
"I meant real demons. Not undead half-breeds. No offense." Then, Anya sighs and launches into her story, as if it's something she's heard dozens of times and is therefore bored with it. "Long, long ago, before the time of demons, there were the Titans. Though few in number, they were incredibly powerful and populated all the dimensions. The Titans were so powerful that they scorned the gods, who got mad and created demons to worship them. The multitudes of demons came in like an avalanche, overpowering and killing the Titans. Except, maybe, for these two."
"It fits with what she said," Buffy points out. "The demon-hating. All that stuff she said about false gods.' Watching her world get destroyed. It's all there." Giles was still not convinced.
"If Anya knew that story, why couldn't Nina? Perhaps she wants us to falsely believe she's some Titan, which, by the way, I've never come across in any of my books. Couldn't they be a figment of some demon creation myth?"
"The only problem is that Titans are supposed to be twelve feet tall," Anya responds. "Then again, when was the last time a demon saw one? They could have just assumed Titans were giants, on account of their name and their legendary strength. But this Nina woman looked to be Titan-strong with a human-size body."
"So the demons wiped them out," Faith reiterates. "Which means they can be killed. Which means we can kill her."
"It only means demons can kill her," Anya replies. "Hundreds and hundreds of demons."
"I'm almost certain there is nothing in our books about Titans," Giles points out.
"We don't have that many books," Dawn reminds him. "The Council library was blown up. You just grabbed what you could."
This gave Giles an idea. "Angel."
"You think Angel knows something we don't about these Titan things?," Spike asks, certain that if he doesn't know, then Angel doesn't know.
"Claude gave his books to Wesley. The remnants of the Council's library are being stored at Angel's home."
"What?," Xander asks with a certain amount of outrage. "Why does Angel have them? We're the ones fighting the First."
"Claude believed they'd be safer away from the Hellmouth. I'll go and visit Angel first thing tomorrow morning."
Dawn smiles. "So we're having a big research trip to the library. I guess I should come along and help. I'm sure you could use a research assistant."
"You have school," Buffy sternly reminds Dawn.
"Yeah. On top of a Hellmouth that could blow at any minute."
"Whereas, you'd feel much safer on top of Connor," Anya jokes. Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles cringe.
"Graphic as she is, Anya does make a valid point," Giles concedes. "Clearly, you would be . . . distracted. Too distracted to be of much help to me. I'll bring back any texts which might be of some use to us. Hopefully, I won't be getting in Angel's way. They do have a business of their own to run."
"Heaven help us if you kept him from finding some poor girl's lost little puppies," Spike derisively jokes.
Cordy and Fred arrive home and find Wes standing in the lobby.
"Wesley!," Fred exclaims as she runs up to him. "You're hurt." She looks at a big bump just above his right eye.
"Why did you shave half your face?," Cordy inquires, getting to what she considers newsworthy. "Is this an experiment, to see how you look each way?"
"Yeah. How did that happen?," Fred wonders.
"Mal killed my friends, destroyed my car, knocked me unconscious, and then went to work on my face with a razor."
"And all he did was shave you," Cordelia notes with astonishment. "Wouldn't the evil thing be to cut off one of your ears, or at least slash you up a bit?"
"That thought had occurred to me. Mal is nothing if not unpredictable."
Four men in their early thirties sit by the pool, drinking beer and making jokes. The property they are on is perched on a cliff. Ten feet from the far edge of the pool is a wire fence, beyond which is a one hundred foot sheer drop. Mal scales the cliff without much difficulty and jumps into the pool. One of the men thinks he heard something.
"Did you hear a splash?"
"What? You think a bird fell in?," the owner of the house wonders.
"That doesn't make sense," a third friend concludes.
"Look at the ripples," says the friend who heard the noise. "Something fell in there."
"Fine," the owner concedes. "We'll take a look." He turns on the pool light. The four of them gasp in shock when they see a man, face-down and motionless, at the bottom of the pool. "Oh my god."
"I think he's dead."
"Where did he come from?"
"This has got to be Gary," the owner suggests. "He's always pulling practical jokes. He probably hired this guy to freak us out."
Mal leaps out of the pool and towards the owner, who yells out in terror. Mal lands on top of him and knocks him out with a left hook to the face. The other three men run. Mal chases down one who tries to head back into the house. He grabs the man three feet from the sliding glass door and snaps his neck. The observant friend who heard the noise of Mal entering the pool takes off to Mal's right and sprints towards his black Porsche convertible. He presses a button on his key chain to unlock the doors. But when he grabs the door handle, Mal takes hold of him and bites the guy. When he finishes, Mal puts the keys in his own pocket. Then he returns poolside. The one surviving friend gets the owner to wake up. He says something horrible has happened, and one of their friends isn't moving and doesn't have a pulse. They slide the patio door open and begin to carry him inside. The friend is in, but the owner is on the doorstep. Mal grabs the owner's right leg, drags him away screaming and drains him. At this point, Mal doesn't know who the owner is. He knows it's not the guy who ran to his Porsche. Which means there's a two-thirds chance he can enter. Sure enough, Mal walks in uninvited. The final friend is dialing 911. Mal rips the phone out of his hand, smashes it, punches the guy out and carries him outside. He drains this guy, then bites the one whose neck he snapped. His feeding finished, Mal walks back into the house. It's spacious, with high ceilings, a large television and a stereo with big speakers. Looks like a good place to kick back. Mal sits on the couch and begins to struggle with the universal remote.
Owing to the dangers of being outside, as well as the fact that he lacks transportation, Wesley decides to spent the night in the hotel. For the time being, he's in Fred's room, talking. He already used one of Angel's razors to shave off the other side of his face. Fred and him are sitting on the couch in the office. It's a little after two in the morning.
"It feels strange," he confesses to Winifred. "And somehow unmanly."
"I don't think you look any less manly without your whiskers. Also, it's easier to kiss you. Ah mean it should be. Theoretically. Ah mean, I've heard that kissing a guy with whiskers can feel a bit like kissing sandpaper. So it could be a good thing. For Kelly. If she were here, or came here real soon. Since you two are, together. When you're not apart." Fred takes a deep breath once she's finished stammering.
"I suppose we are. Though she never said anything to that effect. And Kelly did mention that she often becomes briefly involved with men she's working with. The old combination of physical proximity and mortal peril."
"Yeah, we know all about that," Fred responds, still not sure where she's taking this conversation. "The peril. Speaking of which, do you worry about Angel?" Nothing like mentioning Angel to ruin the mood.
"Of course. But I know that taking an adversary to a foreign dimension in order to kill him is not part of Mal's modus operandi. And I know that time moves differently in other dimensions."
"Like Quor Toth, where a day here was a year there." Fred looks alarmed. "You don't think Angel's been alone for years?"
"Quite the contrary. For all we know, Angel's been gone for a matter of minutes. I don't believe the point of this was to hurt Angel. My sense is that Mal wanted Angel out of the picture long enough for him to drive us apart."
"Ya mean like what happened tonight?"
"The thought has crossed my mind. But if that was his intention, Mal failed. I'm back. And I'm sure the others will return shortly. We've learned our lesson."
"We can't beat Mal without Angel?"
"We can't beat Mal without each other. Cordelia had a point earlier."
"When she said Mal was stupid not to cut you up?"
"No. Earlier tonight she said that in order to win, you need to fight by the side of the people you love."
"You're right. That does make a lotta sense." Fred reaches her right hand out and touches Wesley's left cheek. "See. Doesn't feel so bad." Their heads slowly move towards each other. When their lips are about an inch apart, Connor bursts through the front door. Being in the office with the door open, Fred and Wes hear this and stand up to see what the noise is. Of all the times for Connor not to be stealthy.
"Connor!," a startled Fred exclaims as they walk towards him in the lobby.
"Back so soon," Wesley adds absent-mindedly, since he's still thinking about the kiss he almost had with Fred.
"Where are the others?," Connor asks with his usual terse bluntness.
"Cordy's upstairs, and Lorne's back at his place," Fred reports.
"What about Gunn?" There is a pause. Wesley looks a bit pained. As if Connor hadn't ruined the mood already, now he had to bring Charles into this.
"He's, ah, we think he's also at home," Fred stammers.
Connor turns and heads up the stairs without a word on what he's been up to. Wesley tries to think of something to say, now that they're alone again but completely out of the mood.
"I think its fair to say he didn't run into Mal tonight."
"Which probably means he didn't wanna," Fred responds. "Connor can track him, so I assume he could find Mal if that was his intention."
"Perhaps he's not as stubborn as we thought."
Cordy spots Connor in the hallway and talks with him as he enters his room.
"Where were you?"
"Out."
"You know what I mean."
"Look. No more bruises. I'm not hurt. So you should be happy."
"Relieved is more like it. What's that smell?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Is that gasoline?"
"I killed two vamps at a gas station. Maybe some of it got on my clothes."
"It's more than that. What have you been up to?"
"Killing vampires. Not getting hurt. I'm gonna go shower. Now get out. Unless you wanna watch." Cordelia slaps Connor with her right hand. Connor smirks. "After what happened, shouldn't you be a little less comfortable around me?" Cordy decides not to slap him a second time and leaves.
NEXT: Giles pays a visit to war-torn Los Angeles. Nina meets Mal. And Angel finally gets past all the obstacles to returning home. Except, perhaps, for Sah-jhan. Mal loves to disprove prophecies.