Part Fourteen
"You thought I was a little girl.
You thought I was a little mouse.
You thought you'd take me by surprise.
Now I'm here burning down your house."
-Garbage, "Not My Idea"
The desert surrendered its blistering heat as soon as the sun went down, dropping at least fifteen degrees in a matter of only a few hours. Lindsey's jacket was transformed from sweltering but necessary hindrance into a valuable barrier against the chill, and Cordelia shivered faintly as she pulled it closer around her. Her hand hovered continually over the pocket where she was keeping the weapons, trying to return to her talismans against the Dark Man's eyes. It was a superstitious, automatic response that Cordelia laughed at even as she couldn't stop herself from doing it, like the caveman clinging continually to his flint as he peered into the shadows. Nine hours and counting since she had escaped from Flagg, and Cordelia was under no illusion that she was avoiding his third eye on luck alone. Seemed that the Powers That Be, Mother Abigail, or some combination of the two were taking a renewed interest in their Gal Friday turned star of the show. Cordelia pulled the jacket a little closer around her, not from cold, and felt her lips pressing into a line. So kind of them to realize that she was still there. Not to mention that the people that the Powers That Be took an extra special interest in tended not to fare so well in the long run.
Cordelia could almost hear Mother Abigail clucking her tongue in disapproval. "Not the thing that you got to be worried about right now, child. You just get on with what you need to do."
"Nope," Cordelia muttered. "It sure isn't." There would be time later, if she was cunning and careful, for all of the metaphysical ponderings that she wanted. She placed hand on the gun, coiling her fingers around it like an old pro, and stepped forth from the shroud of shadows. Her shoes made faint crunching noises on the pavement, but the blonde head didn't turn around until Cordelia cleared her throat. Stephanie-Ann startled so badly that she nearly fell down, and Cordelia felt bad for frightening her. That was, until she saw the gleaming black stone swinging from a chain about Stephanie-Ann's neck. It had not been there that afternoon, and it killed any embryonic reluctance that Cordelia might have felt.
"Well, hello there," she said in a faint voice that carried nonetheless. She gestured towards the stone with the gun in her hand. Stephanie-Ann stiffened as if her spine had been flash-frozen. "And here I thought you might be innocent. Whoops."
"Cordelia! How did you-" Stephanie-Ann's face had gone the color of whey. She swallowed, making a visible effort to pull together the aura of scattered harmlessness that had worked so well earlier. "Cordy, what are you doing? Don't you know that people are worried about you?"
Cordelia's finger spasmed before she could stop herself. The bullet went wild by several feet, tearing a gouge out of the sidewalk. Stephanie-Ann ducked and raised her hands to protect her eyes from any shrapnel that came her way. Her squeal was drowned out by the gun's report. Cordelia winced at how loud and attention-grabbing the sound was in the otherwise hushed air. Working against the clock now. "Rather you didn't call me that," Cordelia said in a voice that she scarcely recognized as her own, low and cold and brittle. "So Flagg's put the word out, huh? I figured him to be more the type to lick his wounds for a while. I guess I should be flattered." Confusion bled through Stephanie-Ann's fear and Cordelia added, "Oh, he didn't tell you about that? Figures. This all-powerful bad guy that you people are climbing all over each other to kiss the ass of? Turns out he isn't nearly as god-like as he wants you to believe. Couple of bullets put him down like a rabid dog."
For the briefest of moments, a deeper sort of uncertainty flickered through the animal fear on Stephanie-Ann's face. Then she sneered, and it was like watching a theater mask fall away. "But he didn't stay down, did he? Can the other one say the same?"
"Don't know," Cordelia said. "Haven't tried to shoot her yet." She held out her free hand, palm up, and waggled her fingers. "The keys to the Hummer, please."
"You don't actually think that you're going to get out of the city," Stephanie-Ann breathed, her jaw dropping.
"Maybe I will and maybe I won't," Cordelia replied, "but if the answer is 'no', then I am going to make sure that you bastards remember me for a long time." She gestured with the gun. "Keys. Now, in case you were thinking that was a request."
"Whitney has them," Stephanie-Ann said, her voice low and sullen, like a child being ordered to clean her room.
"So Whitney left you to watch the valuable vehicle all by your lonesome and didn't even give you a means to move it if you had to? Even though it was your brother's in the first place?" Cordelia cocked her head to the side. "Sweetie, 'actress' is not immediately synonymous with 'stupid'. Try again."
Stephanie-Ann's eyes widened and the ice overtaking her spine spread throughout her entire body. "I'm not lying, I swear! Whitney has the keys, you can track him down and ask him-" She was still going when Cordelia lowered the gun and fired. A split-second recalculation put the bullet into Stephanie-Ann's foot rather than her kneecap, and Cordelia would think later that it was a pretty shitty world when that was something that she could be proud of. After a shocked silence, Stephanie-Ann let out a wail and dropped to the pavement.
"Shut up," Cordelia hissed, dropping to one knee. "I don't want to do it again, but so help me, God, if you don't shut up right now I'll put the next one in your head and find the keys myself."
Stephanie-Ann clicked her teeth together so hard that the sound echoed and nodded, staring at Cordelia with a mixture of fear, anger, and smug respect. 'Not so different from us now, are you?' those eyes said. Cordelia fought back the urge to look away. "I'll ask again," Cordelia said, her voice steady. She might vomit across the pavement until her ribs broke the moment she was outside of Vegas, but for now Cordelia was glad of that focus. "Where. Are. The keys?"
"Back jeans pocket," Stephanie-Ann wheezed. Apparently having one's life threatened brought about a tendency to hyperventilate.
"Imagine that. Pull them out-slowly, or I'll end this now and learn to hotwire the damned thing." Cordelia's hands were sweating so badly that she feared she would slip and pull the trigger without intending to.
Stephanie-Ann did as she was told. Her fingers shook and she dropped the keys almost immediately, making a faint noise of terror. The fact that no gunshot blast followed seemed to offer her scant comfort. She glared at Cordelia as the other woman scooped up the keys and stepped back, looking very small and childlike in spite of the pool of blood that spreading beneath her foot and the ugly expression on her face. Though her skin was the color of unbleached linen and her lips were pressed into a line so thin that they appeared to have fallen off, not another sound escaped her.
Cordelia looked off down the deserted street, mind ticking uncertainly. Flagg might not have a lot of people in his hellish paradise (yet, Cordelia's mind whispered, and it rang of sick truth), but there were still enough that the sound of a gunshot was going to draw them. And did she really want to leave Stephanie-Ann sitting there, bloody and madder than hell, to greet them? So she could say, "Sure, guys, she went thataway. Hummer's the color of lemons, there's no way you can miss it. Put in a good word for me with the Dark Man, will you?" No. Cordelia thought not. She tapped the gun against the palm of her opposite hand for a moment, thinking, before she turned it towards Stephanie-Ann's head.
The sullen look turned to terror as Stephanie-Ann came to realize that this time wasn't merely a threat. "Hey!" she cried, starting to raise her voice towards a yell and choking it back down when Cordelia's finger made a short movement towards the trigger, so the words became a squeal. "I gave you what you wanted! You can't kill me!"
"Why?" Cordelia asked, her tone cool. The tremble in her voice was too faint for Stephanie-Ann to hear. "Because I'm one of the good guys?" The trigger felt very good against her finger.
Tears had begun to glisten in Stephanie-Ann's eyes. "Yes! Yes, goddamn you, yes!"
Cordelia paused, thinking of her earlier words to Lloyd. It was the pragmatic thing to do, the smart, sane, ruthless thing to do. Lindsey would have pulled the trigger without a second thought.
When you got right down to it, the exact opposite of anything that Lindsey would do didn't seem like a terrible course to be taking at the moment.
Cordelia reversed the fun in her hands and brought the barrel down on Stephanie-Ann's temple as hard as she could. Stephanie-Ann expelled her breath on a sigh and toppled over without another sound. Cordelia nudged at her with her toe, thinking that she might have killed her, anyway, until she saw the slow rise and fall of her chest. She didn't analyze the emotions rising in her chest too closely, for fear of what she might find. Cordelia had come down from the tower. Didn't mean that she had to become one of them in the process.
Cordelia jingled the keys in her hand as she walked towards her new vehicle, glancing back once at Stephanie-Ann's prone form. She would survive. Somehow, people like her always did. And they showed up on your doorstep and earned your trust for the sole purpose of screwing you over.
"Not that I'm bitter or anything," Cordelia muttered as she climbed into the front seat and shoved the key into the ignition. Glancing into the rearview mirror, Cordelia was pleased to note that Stephanie-Ann and Whitney had yet to unload most of their supplies. "One man's laziness is another woman's treasure." Cordelia found it within herself to smile a little as she pulled away from the curb. The sound of the engine made her wince, but any heads that had gone diving for cover at the sound of the gunshot didn't deem a car engine to be sufficiently novel to stick them back out again. Flagg's return to normalcy might actually work in her favor.
"I can do this," Cordelia said, hardly recognizing the hope in her own voice as the Hummer picked up speed. "I can really make it of here." Cordelia spared herself a moment to wish that Lindsey wasn't Judas Iscariot in a pair of Levis and that the smarmy bastard routine had actually been a façade for the good man underneath rather than the other way around. She hoped, perversely enough, that he could at least be happy in his native habitat and amongst his own kind, though the look in his eyes as he had placed his jacket around her shoulders had not been that of a happy man.
"He didn't have to do it," Cordelia said aloud, unsure of who she was arguing to. "IAny/I of it." And when you had a man who could do good or evil with equal ease and seemingly take no pleasure from either, what did that mean?
Cordelia muttered an oath and forced her foot down on the accelerator. Not her job to figure him out. Still, she hoped that he was happy.
The Hummer was nearly at fifty when the vision hit, and Cordelia had a precious few seconds to think, 'Damnit, not again,' and slam her foot down on the brake before she was hurled back against the seat. Her head seemed to double, triple in size as it struggled to hold all of the images pouring into her brain. Cordelia gasped and bit her lip until she tasted blood, not noticing as the Hummer veered off the street and sliced through a trash can, careening towards a dormant light pole.
'It's him, it's Flagg, oh jesus please don't look at me, oh I can't take it. He's angrier than he was even when I shot him, almost as angry as he will be when his entire house of cards comes falling down around his ears. Lindsey is with him, big shock there, but there's someone else, who is it, and, and-
OH MY GOD.'
Hummer met light pole, making metal shriek and sending a shudder running down the entire length of the vehicle. Cordelia's forehead struck the steering wheel with a crack, chasing the vision away in favor of a pain less familiar but every bit as brilliant. She groaned and slumped back into her seat, hanging onto consciousness through will alone. How long she remained in a hazy half-state Cordelia could not tell, beyond the fact that it was still dark when she came to and there were no pleasant-looking men with soulless eyes knocking on her window to tell her that Mr. Flagg would like a word with her.
Cordelia grunted, tried to straighten in her seat, and made it about halfway before her stomach told her that the old position had been just fine, thanks so much. The grunt became a groan as Cordelia raised her hand to probe at the wounded spot on her forehead. A knot the size of her thumb sent out sunbursts of pain whenever her fingers brushed against it, and she could only imagine the colors that she was going to be in the morning. Still, she could remember that two plus two equaled four and who the president was-had been. The Powers might actually have been looking out for her this time.
Cordelia exited the vehicle on shaky legs, leaned against the side to steady herself, and held her head between her legs until the urge to be sick had passed. Feeling much better, she wiped her hand across her mouth and climbed back into the cab, where she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until she saw stars. The vision was a misfire. Had to be. Otherwise, things were even more rotten in the state of the entire world than Cordelia had previously thought.
Lindsey had been standing next to Flagg, nothing terribly surprising there. But Angel had been with him, and neither one of them had looked unhappy about the arrangement.
So the vision was wrong. Angel wouldn't do something like that. A voice of doubt whispered that a month previously, when her world had still made some kind of sense, there were a lot of things that Cordelia would have said that Angel would not do.
Cordelia swore again, putting all of her frustration, confusion, and terrible hope into a stream of profanity that lasted for nearly a full minute before it abated. She put the Hummer into reverse, back it slowly off the sidewalk and wincing as the full extent of the damage was revealed. The engine made a squalling noise, but nothing caught on fire as Cordelia nursed the vehicle into a parking lot behind a liquor store that had long since been broken into and picked clean. Out of sight, not necessarily out of mind. Off the street, at least, the bright yellow paint would be hidden from casual passers-by. Cordelia was loathe to give up on those supplies just yet.
Though it made her skin crawl to touch them, Cordelia made sure that she had both guns before she exited the cab. If she was, like an idiot, going to march right back into the belly of the beast, she was at least going to do so fully armed and with eyes wide open.