Part Five
"Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste.
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith."
-Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"
Cool fingers shivered across Wesley's cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He grunted and turned over, whining as the small demon that seemed to have taken up residence in his head realized that its victim was awake and ready for more punishment. Wesley swatted at the intruder, only opening his eyes when his hand encountered cool, empty air. The light seized his eyes, gleefully grinding broken glass into his retinas. Wesley hissed and tried to roll back over. An invisible force stopped him from one side; something cool and solid bumped against his shoulder blade from the other. Wesley gave in to the force, whatever it was, and sat up, swearing and shielding his eyes. Cordelia's curtains hadn't seemed nearly so thin when he had lain down for a nap earlier, or her apartment so hot. The light coming through the windows was muted with the blush of twilight, and still it stung him. Wesley dragged his hand across his streaming brow as the cold object bumped against his wrist. He opened his eyes.
"Dennis." The ghost floated a glass of water inches before Wesley's face. Hovering behind it like a docile dog was a large bottle of aspirin. "Thank you." The glass dipped in welcome as Wesley took it. The water felt like heaven's ice as it slid down his scorched throat. Wesley had to stop and remind himself to take the aspirin before he drank it all down. Gel-coated though the capsules were, they still felt like swallowing golf balls. Wesley experienced a dizzying moment of panic in which he wondered if he would be able to get them down at all. It would cause quite a chuckle back at the Council when the news broke that it was not a demon or a sorcerer that killed him, but an over-the-counter analgesic. He forced the pills past his swollen glands with a supreme effort and sank back into the couch cushions, gasping. Cool fingers trailed across his cheeks like tears. "Just a cold." Wesley wondered if he was hallucinating, or if Dennis had found a way to make the very molecules of the air seem reproachful. "I promise."
Whatever reassurance he might have given Dennis was spoiled by an attack of coughing that came on without a breath of warning and drove knives up into his ribcage. Wesley gripped the edge of Cordelia's sofa for support, flinching back from the black spots that danced before his eyes. As the fit wore on, Wesley's lungs began to tighten and burn. His throat was filled with cotton batting, and the panic made its swift reentry back into the room. The rasping noises that worked their way from his throat became more urgent as the dark fairies cavorting before his eyes multiplied instead of abating. "I can't breathe," Wesley realized, and with realization came terror.
The fairies joined forces, becoming an all-encompassing shroud, and Wesley's body was just beginning to go slack when there came a thump to his shoulder blades far stronger than anything a human being could have delivered. Wesley was knocked off the couch and onto his knees by the force of it, and the wad of Jell-O lodged in his throat was jarred loose. Wesley gagged as it entered his mouth, spitting a shocking amount of bright yellow phlegm onto the floor. He could breathe again, in a whistling, painful fashion. How much it had cost Dennis to become that corporeal Wesley did not know, but he was grateful for it.
"Thank you," he rasped.
The empty water glass dipped in acknowledgement, then floated with the aspirin back into the kitchen. A moment later a dampened dishtowel made its way out along the same path. Wesley tried to take the towel away from Dennis and clean up his own mess but was pushed, not unkindly, back among the cushions. The telephone rose from its receiver and stood at attention by his shoulder.
"I don't need to call a doctor." The dishtowel made an abrupt gesture towards the phlegm on the floor. If Dennis had been possessed of eyebrows, Wesley was sure they would have been touching the ceiling. "It's a cold." Wesley scratched at the stubble on his cheeks, winced away as his fingers brushed against the hard lumps that his glands had swollen into. "All right, perhaps something more, but we have larger issues to attend to.
The jerky rise and fall of the telephone could have been intended as either admonishment or assent; Wesley could not tell. "I'll call in the morning," he promised. "Angel will be back with Cordelia soon. One invalid at a time is quite enough."
Dennis' attitude-what Wesley could detect of it-was brightened by several shades at the mention of Cordelia's return, but he bobbed the phone once more before place it back into its cradle. Wesley shook his head, rubbed at his eyes, and reached for another book.
---
Cordelia sat up in her hospital bed, wide-eyed, and listened as chaos reigned outside of the door. In the forty-eight hours since she had been admitted, the noise had gone from a dull roar to a nearly constant freight train. 'I saw this,' Cordelia thought. 'I saw all of it.' She wrapped her arms around herself.
Angel's dark, comforting bulked some of the light from the hallway as he entered the room. "Hey," he said, putting a smile onto his face even as he cast a worried look over his shoulder. Down the hallway, a woman screamed in grief. "How are you feeling?"
"Strangely like I've been in a car wreck." Cordelia forewent Angel's attempt at smiling, fingering her swollen lip. "Where's Wesley?"
"Feeling a little under the weather. He thought he would be more useful organizing the welcome home party with Dennis." Angel was good at a lot of things. Hiding his emotions wasn't one of them.
A dreadful sense of cold stole over Cordelia's body. "Is he going to be all right?"
"He says it's just a cold." Angel kept his tone light for Cordelia's benefit, but she could see the worry in his eyes and knew the same must be reflected in her own. "Are you ready to go?"
The change in subject came too quickly to serve as any kind of comfort. Arguing, however, would only delay her getting home, where she could assess Wesley's condition with her own eyes. "I'm ready." Cordelia swung her legs over the side of the bed, having plucked out her IV and changed back into civilian clothes some hours before. A nurse had stuck his head through the door to scold her, but the others were too busy to bother.
Another shriek erupted from the hallway, followed by a metallic clatter as a gurney tipped over. Cordelia's eyes widened. "It sounds like the end of the world out there."
Face grim, Angel replied, "Wait until you see it."
"I've been sneaking peeks. It's like a bad disaster movie." Angel took her bag from her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as he led her to the doorway. The view took Cordelia's breath away.
Fro the past two days, Cordelia had allowed morphine to be dripped into her arm and had clung to her bed, emerging only for quick, torturous trips to the bathroom. Under those circumstances it had been easy to tell herself that it was the drugs, it was paranoia, it was the vision and maybe even encroaching insanity ping-ponging around the inside of her skull. It was not as bad as the glimpses that Cordelia had allowed herself; it could not possibly be.
Cordelia was right. It was worse.
Chaos was too kind a word. Gurneys lined the walls and stood in the center of the hallways, people having long since begun to skirt around them rather than move them to the increasingly scarce patches of empty space. Cordelia's stomach lurched as she took in the sheer number of the sick. Some of them appeared to have only the hacking, sniffling symptoms of a nasty flu bug, while others-Cordelia's heart made a committed attempt to crawl down into her ankles-were obviously ringing the bell at death's door. They struggled for breath around black swellings that puffed up their necks like spare tires. Failure, Cordelia discovered, tasted a lot like rising vomit.
"It wasn't like this when I came in," Cordelia managed at last. "It wasn't even like this a few hours ago."
"It's called Captain Trips," Angel said. His voice held a grimness that Cordelia had never heard before. "The whole city is coming down with it, but this…I was shocked when I came in. The rest of Los Angeles still looks almost normal."
"Angel, I saw this." Cordelia pointed to a man moaning on a gurney a few feet away. The black ring around his neck had risen so high that every breath was a marathon. "These swellings. They were a part of my vision."
Angel's eyes could have belonged to a shark. "I know." He gave her elbow a tug gentle enough to belie the expression on his face. "Come on. No sense in exposing you any more than you have been already."
Cordelia, numbed by the sheer mass of the dying, allowed herself to be led. "But I feel fine," she said, her voice only a few octaves above a whisper. "Not even a sniffle."
Angel wasn't paying attention. He pulled Cordelia close to him, as if he would protect her from the virus with the weight of his body. The look in his eyes as he gazed over the sick was distant, and Cordelia knew that in all likelihood he was visiting other places of death from his past, in which his presence had not been nearly so benevolent. She slid her hand into his. The answering pressure that he gave her squeeze was more comforting than any number of words.
"I think we have to sign out," Cordelia said to interrupt Angel's train of thought.
Angel's arm around her shoulders tightened. "I don't think today is a day for following protocol." A threat had entered his voice. Cordelia looked up.
A man in a National Guardsman uniform was conversing with a doctor at the end of the hallway. The soldier's face was blank. The doctor's was furious. Beyond them Cordelia could see several more military personnel standing in a cluster as they awaited orders. Every single one of them was armed.
"Yeah," Cordelia said in a faint voice. "Authority is not our friend."
They made an abrupt U-turn and, moving as swiftly as Cordelia's broken ribs would allow, bolted for the elevators. "Are they setting up a quarantine?" Cordelia whispered.
"Of the hospital? Doubt it. Half of Los Angeles has Captain Trips by now, and the other half knows someone who does. There would be no point." Angel paused to eyeball a passing soldier. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were monitoring the flow of information out of the hospital, though.
Cordelia looked at Angel askance. "You seem to know a lot about this."
Angel's expression was weary. "Seen a lot of plagues."
"Guess so." Cordelia slipped out from under Angel's protective arm as they reached the elevator. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes as disaster swirled around them. Her temples pulsed.
"Are you going to be all right?" Angel's voice.
Cordelia nodded without opening her eyes. "I just want to go home."
Angel found and squeezed her hand as the elevator dinged open. A swarm of nurses piled out, none of them giving the pair a second glance. Several appeared to be infected themselves.
Angel placed his hand against the small of Cordelia's back to guide her into the elevator, but she twisted away when he tried to take her elbow as well. Off Angel's hurt/confused look, Cordelia said, "I don't like to feel like an invalid.
"It's all right to be injured," Angel chided in a gentle tone, pressing the button that would take them to the ground floor and freedom.
"Still."
"Still," Angel agreed. "I know what you mean."
A silence fell over the elevator, born of two people who knew each other well enough that they did not need to feel the air with hollow words. Cordelia let it wash over her for a few minutes before she asked, "Did you and Wesley find out anything about my vision?"
"Not yet." Angel's words were a promise made for both of them. "But we're not going to give up."
"I saw this sickness, Angel. Everything that's happening right now, the Powers That Be told me about it." 'And about crows, and a man who answers to the name of Death,' Cordelia thought but did not say. 'If you worship me.' Her lips shaped the words as maggots crawled up her spine.
"I know." Angel's hand crept up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. There were dark circles under his eyes. Cordelia felt bad for not realizing sooner that he was teetering against exhaustion so great that it was becoming incapacitating. "Wesley and I scoured every book that we have-nothing. Wesley contacted some of his old colleagues, including Giles, but none of them have gotten back to us yet. The world beneath the streets is as terrified as the world above."
"Wesley." Cordelia's body was enveloped in cold. Wrapping her arms around herself, she asked, "He has the sickness, doesn't he? Captain Trips."
There was a long moment of silence before Angel answered heavily, "I think so."
"God."
"We'll figure it out. We'll stop it."
"Yeah. We will." Cordelia's ribs twinged and she winced. "I'm one huge bruise, aren't I?"
"A very stylish bruise." Cordelia's lips twitched, but that was all. The elevator descended into another silence until Angel said, "The police report came back."
Cordelia winced again, this time from pain internal rather than external. "How much hot water am I in?"
"Do you like taking the bus?"
"Fabulous."
The pocket of calm they created between them evaporated as soon as the elevator came to a halt and the doors slid open. The emergency room was filled to the outer limits of its capacity with feverish, gasping people. The constant influx of new people through the doors was overwhelming the doctors and nurses who were struggling to sort it out in spite of having a high rate of illness among their own ranks. Scores of hostile, frightened eyes turned onto Angel and Cordelia as they exited the elevator. Taken together, the stares were nearly enough to constitute a physical blow.
"This is what you saw when you walked in?" Cordelia asked.
"Yes." Angel's eyes were rendered into unreadable pools and his nostrils flared. Cordelia decided that she didn't want to know.
A doctor rushed past them, heading for a gurney that was being wheeled through the ambulance doors. A middle-aged man was lying on it, moaning and covered in blood. As far as Cordelia could see, the man bore all the signs of having been in an accident and none of having been infected with Captain Trips. He could be helped.
The majority that were beyond help were not pleased by the doctor's diverted attentions. A woman with the telltale swellings already rising on her neck lunged to her feet and grabbed at the doctor's arm as he passed. He shook her off; she tried again. Words were exchanged, and the woman's face contorted into an angry, spitting mask. With her face glowing bright from the fever and her face rapidly being eaten up by a tube of darkening flesh, she barely seemed human. The doctor jerked himself out of her grasp again, speaking rapidly enough to spend spittle flying from between his lips, his own face twitching in exhaustion and frustration. His hand rose from his side with the fingers curling into a fist.
"Angel-" Cordelia began, but Angel was already moving.
Angel grabbed the doctor's wrist before he could swing, lowering his head so that he could whisper into the other man's ear. Second by second, the tension eased out of the doctor's arm as Angel spoke. He nodded to Angel as he was released. Angel helped the sick woman back to her seat before returning to Cordelia.
"I want to leave now," Cordelia said in a small voice. Angel nodded and replaced his hand on her back. It was all that Cordelia could do not to break into a run as they headed for the door. The sickness slipped off of Cordelia's arms like a misplaced shroud as they stepped out into the early night. She wrapped her arms around herself, anyway, just to be certain that she was still alive, and whole, and not one of the walking corpses clustered inside. "Is the rest of the city turning into that?"
"Not yet," Angel said, pulling the keys to Wesley's car from his pocket.
Cordelia exhaled. "Good."
They reached Wesley's car and Angel unlocked the passenger door for Cordelia, holding it open so that she could slide inside. He got into the driver's side after he had assured himself that she was secure, but sat for several seconds without putting the keys into the ignition. "I'm worried."
"We've been worried before," Cordelia said, "and we've always beaten it. Besides, the Powers aren't going to let anything happen to you until you become human, remember? I'd say that implies some pretty heavy confidence in your world-saving abilities." Cordelia flinched and tugged at her seatbelt as it dug into the deep scrape on her collarbone that Angel's car had put there two days before.
"Are you in pain?" Angel asked, apparently choosing to exchange the worries that he could not control at the moment for the ones that he could.
"A little. I have some pills to get me through the next few days, but I didn't want to be loopy for my own homecoming."
"Then we'd better get you home." Angel started the car and backed out of the space with care that said he probably wasn't going to be plowing into any sports cars on the way back to the apartment. Cordelia grimaced. Angel's convertible had been really nice, too.
'You know where this is all going to end, little girl.'
Cordelia's spine became the consistency of mercury and she sucked in her breath. Angel threw her a concerned look. Cordelia forced a pained smile onto her face and gritted, "Bump in the road."
"Sorry. I'll try to be more careful." Angel returned to his driving.
'Don't call me "little girl",' Cordelia snapped back.
'My apologies. You certainly aren't, are you?'
'What do you want?'
'What any human wants, of course. Worship. I didn't think an actress would need to be told that.'
'Go to hell.'
'My memories are a little fuzzy on the subject, but I think I may have created it.' The mercury in Cordelia's spine spread throughout her entire body. 'As I was saying. You know how this will end. I would spare a few, though, if they would let me. It's such a small thing, after all. You pay more attention to your television set than you do the heavens, so what's one more idol to throw into the mix? Especially when the reward is so great.'
'You're evil,' Cordelia thought back with a fury that surprised her. 'You're evil, you're sick, get out of my HEAD-'
"Cordelia?"
She gasped, jerked back to the present like a fish being hauled into a boat. Angel was staring at her closely in concern, his face etched with fresh worry even though it already spoke of two many burdens. In fact, he was watching her so closely-
"Angel, look out!" Cordelia screamed.
Angel tore his eyes back to the road. He swore and slammed on the brakes, working the wheel hard to avoid rear-ending the minivan in front of them. The car jerked to a stop half in the lane, half out of it, and partially blocking traffic. Horns blared and hands stuck out of windows.
"Your insurance company must hate us," Cordelia managed when she could unclench her jaw. She pressed her shaking hands into her lap.
"Sorry." Angel seemed more than a little shaken himself. He didn't take his eyes off the road again as he said, "You muttered the word 'head'. I wasn't sure if you were all right."
"I did?" Cordelia asked. "Um, I have a headache." 'Also, the devil might be talking to me.' Angel would want to know about that teensy detail. But, on the other hand, the voices in Cordelia's head weren't normally known to come with a lack of excruciating pain or glorious Technicolor.
'So, either I'm being communicated with by a being or ultimate evil, or I'm-'
---
"-going crazy." Lindsey dragged his hand through his hair and grimaced. He needed a shower. Hell, at this point he needed a lobotomy.
'If you worship me.'
"Get out," Lindsey muttered, raising the beer can to his lips. Too much of the hard stuff-the good stuff-would usher him straight into the arms of a blackout. The horrors that had been painted across the insides of his eyelids over the past two days were more than enough to convince him that sleep would not be the best of ideas when it came to preserving his long-term health or, for that matter, his sanity.
Beer, though. Back home, if you couldn't put away a twelve pack and still drive yourself home at the end of the night by the time you were a junior, well, you just weren't a man. He could buzz on this redneck shit all night long without passing out. Lindsey licked foam off his upper lip as he turned the can over in his hand. Budweiser, his daddy's old brand. The irony of sitting on his couch with nowhere else to be, drinking his daddy's beer at a rate that wouldn't be much longer in sending him over the line from buzzed into drunk, Oklahoma sensibilities or no, was not lost on Lindsey. At least the surroundings were nicer. "Fuck you, Dad," Lindsey whispered.
The phone rang. Lindsey ignored it. His wrist burned, uneasy reminder that it was time to take another dose of pain medication. He ignored that, too.
Another slow sip of the beer. No warmth of whiskey coiling through his body like a well-fed beast, but that was all right. Heat wasn't something he particularly wanted to think about at the moment.
'It's not as if you get any mileage out of that pesky soul of yours.'
Not with the devil whispering in his ear.
The answering machine clicked on and Holland's paternal 'tell me anything' tones filled the apartment. "Lindsey. I hope you're not already sleeping." There was a faint reproach in his voice. It would appear that even injured employees were still expected to be at Wolfram and Hart's beck and call. Lindsey set the beer can down on the coffee table exaggerated concentration, stretched, and lifted his middle finger in the direction of the answering machine and Holland's plummy small talk. In some alternate universe, he was sure, a wiser version of himself was applauding.
After several minutes, Holland got to the point. "We seem to be running into a problem with the Darla project."
Lindsey leaned forward.
"She's become…very ill. Delirious. She's been asking nonstop to see you." Holland didn't sound so well himself. His voice was nasal and phlegmy, and several times he interrupted himself to sneeze.
Lindsey listened, brow furrowed, but made no attempt to rise from the couch. Darla was nothing more than a bottom line to his superiors. Surely they wouldn't waste time indulging her mercurial moods the way that Lilah was forced to. No matter that-and Lindsey's heart gave the kind of pleasurable jump that he hadn't felt in a long time-Darla seemed to have taken a liking to him.
"She says that you're the key to all this." There was no need for Holland to elaborate on what he meant by 'this'. An ambulance wailed on the street beneath Lindsey's living room window.
For several seconds Lindsey knew what it was like to be a vampire, as his heart stopped beating and showed no signs of starting again. When it finally resubmitted to the will of the rest of his body, Lindsey was in no position to be relieved. He lunged off the couch, weaving at first as his alcohol-addled legs had to pause to remember their function. A crazed-clown giggle resonated through his head. Lindsey couldn't tell if it was coming from himself or that…other thing.
Holland was still speaking. "You can see why this would be of interest to people in certain circles, Lindsey. Stockholders are growing nervous. They don't like all this entropy unless they have a way of profiting from it. So why don't you come down to the office and we can talk it over." 'Fuck you.'
Emotional alchemy turned fear into anger in less time than it would have taken most people to flick a light switch. How dare he…he actually expected Lindsey to show up voluntarily to a 'discussion' that they both knew would end with Lindsey on a dissection table…how Idare/I he…
'That's my boy. Give it all you've got.'
"IFuck/I you." Out loud this time, and resulting laughter which echoed through his head was enough to make Lindsey jump.
"You had better be the devil himself," Lindsey muttered as he walked into the bedroom. "Because I have worked to damned hard at staying sane to go crazy now." Lindsey felt strangely calm for someone who was contemplating defying the most powerful law firm on the planet-again. If trapped between one destruction or another, he would at least take the one on his own terms.
Lindsey shoved a duffel bag full of clothes and all the money that he had in the apartment, hurrying as much as he was able with only one hand and a sense of nausea that wasn't just the beer talking. Strictly necessities, all of it, until Lindsey stumbled across his guitar while searching for his boots. He hadn't touched it, had barely brought himself to look at it, since the accident. 'No accident,' Lindsey amended. 'Since Angel fucking crippled you. Call it for what it is.' Since the fight. A fuzz of dust was already gathering on the wood that he had taken such meticulous care of. Slowly, as if he were moving underwater, Lindsey reached for it. It wouldn't hurt to take one more thing.
'Do you want to wait here and die?' the voice crackled through his mind. 'Leave it. It's not worth it.'
Lindsey swore and jerked back before his fingers could touch the instrument. "Do that mean you actually have a plan?"
'Run.'
"I'm hooking up with a brilliant strategist." Lindsey fumbled for his keys, remembered that he could hardly be expected to drive one-handed and drunk at once, and let forth a long stream of obscenities. Most of them concerned Angel and what Lindsey was going to do to him as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
'Feel better?'
"Marginally." Lindsey bolted for the door, not bothering to lock or even fully close it behind him. Let thieves take his things. If Wolfram and Hart had their way, possessions were going to be of little use to him, anyway.
'Take the stairs.'
"What?"
'Unless you want to die right here in this hallway, old hoss, you'll do as I say.'
It was delivered in a psychic shout that belied the deadpan tone of the words themselves, nearly driving Lindsey to his knees and setting his ears to ringing as if head been trapped inside the bells of Notre Dame. Nevertheless, as communication tools went it was very effective. Lindsey turned away from the elevators, opening the door to the stairwell and thanking random deities that he had made at least a passing attempt at keeping in shape before Angel had maimed him. His apartment was on the sixth floor.
'I'd hate to have to explain the definition of "run" to you,' the voice said as Lindsey clattered down the stairs.
"I'm moving as fast as I can," Lindsey grunted. What was left of his wrist flared and he swore, nearly losing his balance. "I forgot my medications."
'Forget about them.'
"Easy for you to say."
'Do you think of me as the best of a bad situation, Lindsey?' The voice did not wait for an answer before it continued. 'I'll bet you've even wondered if you were going crazy." And it…tittered, a sound so devoid of humanity or even basic sanity that the hair on Lindsey's arms and the back of his neck stood up as one motion. 'I'm much more than that, though. Do a few simple things for me, a few little chores, and I'll see that you're well taken care of. It's better than what your current bosses are offering you.'
Indignant shouts echoed from the floor immediately above them, Lindsey's floor. Lindsey had barely identified the voice as that of his neighbor across the hall, a retired businessman who always seemed to have an apartment full of grandchildren, when a shot rang out. The gentleman's shout was cut off; his wife's scream replaced it. Lindsey's blood ran as cold as the beer that he had been drinking moments before.
'You may want to move a little faster,' the voice advised. Lindsey could feel the giggle that lurked beneath its surface, like a crocodile wearing a clown's grin. If he was losing his mind, then he was doing it with style.
"He visited me when I came out of the hospital," Lindsey grunted, redoubling his speed though his lungs were beginning to protest. "He didn't deserve that."
'You still think people get what they deserve. That's almost cute enough to be believable. Save your breath; you'll need it.'
Lindsey obeyed, marveling at how little he was protesting the invasion. Holland should have invested in telepathy years ago. It would have done wonders for employee morale when the threat of execution just wasn't getting through.
Lindsey's legs were turning into pillars of Jell-O barely held in place by the barrier of skin when he reached the street. The sudden influx of night air turned his stomach and he doubled over, balancing himself on his knees and scarcely holding onto the beer. He straightened when he was sure that it wasn't going to come up on him, swiping his hand across his mouth anyway. 'You're not out of the woods yet, my boy.' The way it said 'my boy' made Lindsey feel the way a rabbit must when it saw the shadow of the hawk looming overhead. 'There's a motel ten blocks from here called the Sunset. Go there for tonight.'
"You think they won't search every motel within a thirty block radius?"
'They won't search this one. Trust me, Lindsey. All you have to do is trust me.'
The hawk swooped down.
---
"I'm home!" Cordelia called to her apartment as she stepped through the door. She did her best to sound as if she was returning home from two-day jaunt in Acapulco rather than vision-induced mayhem. The words were duly swallowed by the silence that the apartment threw back. A frown marked Cordelia's face.
Angel mirrored her expression. "Wesley couldn't have left."
"Couldn't. Not wouldn't, but couldn't. Feeling the big optimism there." Cordelia forced her tone to stay airy in spite of the worry that was reshaping her shoulders into rigid lines.
Angel nudged her out of the doorway so that he could enter. "Wesley?" he called, his voice tinted with the same worry that Cordelia was fighting to keep out of hers.
"In here," a voice called from the bedroom, sounding sleepy, confused, and not well at all. There was a second of silence, followed by a crash and a muffled curse. Cordelia's stomach clenched as she and Angel rushed forward.
"I'm fine," Wesley rasped, meeting them at the bedroom door. "I laid down to rest my eyes for a bit, but I'm afraid I knocked over the lamp when I woke up. I don't think I've broken it."
Cordelia was aware that she had clapped her hand to her mouth, but only dimly. Her eyes burned. "Oh, Wesley," she whispered.
It seemed against the laws of nature that someone in Wesley's condition could even walk, let alone give protests of health. He looked as if he had lost at least twenty pounds since Cordelia had gone into the hospital. His eyes were hollows, his forehead was obscured by a sick sheen that slicked his hair to his skin. Although his neck showed no signs of the death black markings that the ill at the hospital had worn, his glands were still swollen to nearly the size of golf balls. Cordelia could hear his breath rattling in his chest from where she stood.
"You need to be in bed." Cordelia was the one to say it as both she and Angel moved forward to take Wesley's elbows, herding him back into the bedroom. After a few steps it became apparent that Wesley had used up all his strength in getting to the door. By the time he reached the bed, his friends' hands were the only things keeping him on his feet.
Wesley protested, "No, I need to wait until Giles calls back-"
"Cordelia and I can answer the phone and do the research." Angel's voice was a few octaves deeper than normal. Cordelia thought she could hear something close to panic jigging beneath the everything-is-dandy exterior, which set her own interior panic demon to dancing.
"Exactly," Cordelia piped up. "We can read just as well as the next bunch, you know." Wesley arched his eyebrows at her. The effect was more sad than funny, and Cordelia's voice sounded shrill as she said, "And you can shush with the sarcastic eyebrow talking, too. I'll have you know that I practically have my PhD in research by now."
Wesley offered very little resistance as Cordelia and Angel helped him to get settled in the bed and tugged his shoes off. Cordelia ordered her face blank, but her hands trembled independently of her control and she was afraid that she would drop anything that she tried to hold. Wesley's wheezing was the loudest sound in the room.
He broke into a sudden coughing jag, wet and phlegmy, as Cordelia was setting his shoes beside the bed, and something inside of her broke. "I'm sorry-" She fled the room at a near run, knowing that Angel was staring after her and feeling terrible for it, but unable to stop herself. The air in the kitchen was infinitely sweeter than that which circulated in the bedroom, untinged as it was by what Cordelia's mind was insisting was decay rising off Wesley's skin. Cordelia gripped the edges of the sink until her knuckles flared protest, struggling to breathe around her hammering heart and the taste of vomit in her throat. Dennis' disapproving presence compressed the air around her, nudging her back towards the bedroom with an insistence that was nearly paternal.
"I know," Cordelia muttered. "It's a shitty thing to do." She dragged her hands through her hair and over her eyes, both mortified and unsurprised to feel them welling up. Unseen hands rubbed at her shoulders, easing the gooseflesh that was rising there, and the threat of tears became the reality. Cordelia sniffled, ducked her head, and swore violently. Dennis' "hands" evaporated in shock. Cordelia swiped at her eyes and swore again. "I am not doing this," she declared. Cordelia turned on the faucet and splashed cold water across her tears until no trace of them remained. "Screw this damsel crap."
"Amen to that."
Cordelia spun. Angel was leaning against the door jam, watching her with hooded eyes. "How long were you there?" Cordelia asked.
"Long enough. I didn't know you had that kind of vocabulary."
Cordelia raised her chin. "Before Daddy decided to unleash his inner creativity on his tax returns, my family had this maid, Louisa. Sweet woman. Foulest mouth you ever heard. I can do it in Spanish, too."
A tight, forced smile played with the edges of Angel's mouth. "That's my girl."
Cordelia flushed and, turning her back to him, raised herself onto her toes to retrieve a glass from one of the upper cabinets. Her hands were trembling so badly that she could scarcely close her fingers around it.
"Here, let me." Angel's voice tickled the back of Cordelia's neck, startling her so badly that she did drop the glass and only Angel's preternatural reflexes saved them both from a mess. His arm brushed against hers as he retreated with glass in hand, sending a frisson of heat through Cordelia's skin.
"Thanks." Cordelia's voice was hoarse; she cleared her throat and tried again. "So, um, Wesley's going to need aspirin, and lots of water, and does that chicken soup thing actually work?"
"Cordelia," Angel said in a low voice.
"You need to move back," Cordelia whispered. "I'm getting smooshed against the counter." She didn't turn around until she felt Angel comply. His eyes were impossible to read. "Soup and stuff. I don't know ho much ice I have, do you think we should run to the store for a few bags? In case we need to fill the tub?"
"Cordy," Angel said. The husky note was gone from his voice. "He's going to be all right."
Cordelia paused, caught midway through opening the freezer door to check on the ice. Her eyes were bright as she looked over her shoulder, but not a tear fell. "Of course he is. Don't be silly." She returned to the freezer, emerging victorious with an ice tray a few moments later. Cordelia accepted the dishtowel that Dennis levitated towards her and marched off towards the bedroom. Angel trailed after her, her silent, protective sentinel. Neither one of them so much as glanced towards the books in the living room.
---
The Sunset was an inspiration of cheesy stucco and aging Southwestern décor that reminded Lindsey, oddly endearingly, of all the worst places that he had stayed at since first setting foot in Los Angeles. It was a fading relic of a bygone era, urging its visitors into forgetting or refusing to acknowledge that most of its guests would be too young to remember Hollywood's golden age and, more importantly, not particularly inclined to care. It was the perfect place to hold negotiations.
The night clerk threw only a cursory glance over Lindsey and his belongings before he accepted payment for the room and slid the key across the counter. If battered men who appeared to be holding muttered conversations with themselves were something to be alarmed about, he didn't show it. Within moments, he had forgotten Lindsey's face altogether.
Lindsey found his room without any undue difficulty, set the duffel bag at his feet so that he could insert the key into the lock. 'Terrible handicap you've got there.' Lindsey's mouth twisted and he said nothing as he stepped into the room. 'I can help you with that, if you ask nicely. Repairing the damage…and giving a little of the same back to the one that did it to you.'
Lindsey went rigid. The throb in his wrist was suddenly far more insistent than it had been even a moment before. "That so?" he queried. "And whatever would I owe you for this generosity? My soul, as I am sure you are aware of, is spoken for." Faintest taste of bitterness on his tongue, too slight and familiar to translate into his voice.
'Nothing so dramatic as that. Just a few small errands, and in return I can give you everything that you've ever dreamed of wanting.'
Lindsey's lips pursed and he stared down at the bandages where his hand had once been, where his hand still Ishould/I be, if it were not for Angel and his boundless hypocrisy. Apparently Slayers who delighted in killing, practically licked the blood from their fingers while it was still warm, were worth putting out an effort for, but heaven have mercy on anyone with a dick or a law degree. Bile rose thick and heavy in the back of Lindsey's throat.
"Okay," he said. "Let's talk."