Part Fifteen
"Hope dangles on a string
Like slow-spinning redemption.
Winding in and winding out,
The shine of it has caught my eye."
-Dashboard Confessional, "Vindicated"
Angel didn't like silent opponents. Silent meant plotting, meant attempts at blindsiding him later on, meant Angel breaking bones, both his and theirs. It was better when they ran their mouths. That was something that Angel could at least get a fix on, swords and battlefields and invective spit out from between clenched teeth. It was better when they were smart-asses; it was better when their long-standing patterns of behavior didn't all but beg Angel to seize their necks and give that fast, satisfying (even now, God help him) twist.
Angel glanced over at Lindsey, hunched into the passenger seat and white-faced with pain and something else. He had not spoken a word since the car had started moving. Forget opponents in general who did not run their mouths, Angel was not used to Lindseys that did not run their mouths. It did little to dissuade the idea solidifying into certainty in the back of Angel's mind, no matter how many times he tried to push it away.
"Does it hurt?"
Lindsey's eyes flicked towards him as the question was asked, but the other man didn't turn his head. "Unfortunate side effect of being kicked in the ribs, yeah."
"Not that." The seats creaked as Lindsey's spine stiffened. "Why do I get the feeling that you're not as onboard with Flagg's little utopia as you would like him to believe? Or me, for that matter?"
Lindsey issued a laugh that was more kin to a bark and, from the look on his face, regretted it immediately. He turned his head to look Angel in the face at long last. Even in the dim light reflected back from the road, his eyes gleamed blue enough to stun. Lindsey smelled of alcohol and more than a touch of purely human fear, all overlaid with a fine, sweet rage. Right at the moment, Angel was mostly picking up on the rage. "Oh, now you care?" Lindsey snarled, and-there! The shake disappeared before Angel could convince himself that he wasn't hearing things. "How very convenient for you." He shifted, throwing light upon the angry wound that ended his wrist. Even now, with the scar tissue slowly beginning to fade from red into pearly pink, it was a difficult sight to look upon directly. Angel made sure to give it a long, slow stare before he turned his eyes back to Lindsey's face.
"You might want to remember how you got that injury," Angel said, and it Iwas/I anger that put the quiver into his voice. "I'm just trying to decide if there's anything human left in you at all, or if I should give up now and take you into Flagg's headquarters in pieces. I gotta tell you, I'm in a good place with either option."
Lindsey drew his lips back from his teeth and Angel swore that he could still see a tint of blood there. "Fuck you," he snarled.
Angel turned his lips up into a smile rather than throwing a punch. "Where's that razor with of yours?" Lindsey turned away, sullen, and Angel let a few moments glide by before he asked, "I'm guessing that you've been having the dreams?"
Ah, now there was a reaction worth watching. Lindsey went as rigid as if his veins had been pumped full of steel, hissing and putting his hand to his side as he moved too fast. He threw a black look Angel's way, and the vampire fully expected to get another hearty fuck-you for his trouble. The tight, brittle "Yes," that Lindsey finally replied with may as well have been dragged from his throat with fishhooks.
Another minute went by, and when Lindsey said nothing further Angel asked, "Which one called to you the loudest?" He was watching the road and didn't see Lindsey looking at him, his normally vibrant eyes clouded with doubt.
"Both." Lindsey fell silent for long enough to make Angel think that he had said all that he intended to on the matter, before he added in a whisper so low as to be inaudible to human ears, "Equally loudly." Lindsey made a face suggesting that he was regretting saying so much.
Angel was amazed that he had even gone that far. He waited a beat, then, deciding that one confidence deserved another, added, "Same here."
The shocked glance that Lindsey threw Angel's way seemed sincere. His voice, however, was as caustic as ever. "And yet, here you are. I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning, don't you?"
"I'm here to do whatever I can to stop him," Angel snapped. "In case you hadn't noticed, Lindsey, the world has undergone some significant changes lately, few of which are for the better and none of which leave a lot of room for standing on the fence. Do us all a favor, knock off the self-pitying crap, and chose a side already. You might want to do it quickly."
Lindsey gave him a slit-eyed, measuring look and turned back towards the window, saying nothing. Angel sighed and put his eyes back on the road. When Lindsey finally replied, it was in a voice so low that even Angel had to strain to hear it.
"I'll help you to save Cordelia," he said, "because she deserves better than what I gave her. But that's it, that's all. As far as I'm concerned, redemption is nothing more than a word."
It could very well be that Angel was mistaken in what he thought he had seen. He had been wrong on larger levels before. "What are you planning on doing about Flagg when he finds out that you're betraying him?" Angel asked. "I don't really see him as the forgive and forget type of boss, do you?"
For that, Lindsey had no answer.
---
The distance was eaten up beneath the car's wheels faster than Lindsey could hope to prepare himself for, as Lindsey had known it would be. He rode in silence for as long as he was able, swatting away Angel's few annoying attempts at…what? At saving him? Right when he needed him, too. How very convenient. Lindsey snorted, ignoring the stare that he could feel lying heavy and warm against the back of his neck.
The Nova glided to a stop, the purr of its engine the only sound breaking up the night's stillness. Lindsey wished for at least a radio station's chatter to disturb the morbid train of his thoughts, and he realized with a jolt that even if by some miracle he did make it out of Las Vegas, it was going to be beyond his lifetime before there was another radio station. On the plus side, at least-
"No Howard Stern," Lindsey murmured. Angel stared at him, and Lindsey shook his head. "Nothing. Let's just do this." He got out of the car, wincing. If he wasn't a lot of good in a fight before, he certainly wasn't going to be now. Angel could always make a human shield out of him, Lindsey supposed, and had the disturbing feeling that Angel's thoughts were traveling along the same path.
"For what it's worth," Angel said as he exited the vehicle, moving with the ease of someone who had not been kicked in the side over the past hour, "I'm impressed that you're doing this."
Lindsey shot him a black look. "For what it's worth, I really don't give a damn. Do you even have a plan?"
"Something like that." Angel's smile was tight and glittering in the moonlight.
"So you don't have a clue." What was it about this particular vampire that always disengaged his sense of self-preservation, Lindsey wondered.
If anything, Angel's smile became even more razor-sharp. He stepped close, making sure that there wasn't an inch of Lindsey's personal space that he wasn't filling up. Without body heat, it was like standing in front of a hologram rather than a man. Lindsey watched with slitted eyes, refusing to pull away, as Angel said, "Losing your sense of adventure?"
"Consider it my lack of a death wish talking." Lindsey touched at the cut on his head and came away with dried blood on his fingertips. He rubbed them together, feeling the grit. Could be a lot more where that came from before the night was over.
Angel flicked that probing, speculative look over him again. Whatever he was thinking of saying, he swallowed it, ticking his head to indicate that Angel should follow him.
The whole fearless leader gig. "Right," Lindsey muttered, willing himself to sound convinced. A full decade of fighting, spitting, clawing his way up from nothing, and here he was ready to go straight back to it. If he hadn't believed that fate was a wheel before, he did now.
But that could wait. At the moment, he had a damsel in distress complex to indulge.
---
The first time that Lindsey had come to Angel's office, he had worn every thought flickering through his mind on his face. Baiting him had been so easy that it was painful and Angel, still reeling from Lindsey's earlier courtroom victory, had not been able to stop himself from throwing out the hook. That man had been smug, arrogant, confident that there wasn't a person in the world that he couldn't either threaten or charm over to his way of thinking. He had deserved everything that he had gotten, and so much more besides.
Now that Angel actually wanted to see what Lindsey was thinking he found it impossible. In the months since he had stood in Angel's office, Lindsey had perfected the mask of professional boredom to the point of resembling a mannequin more than he did a living man. He walked by Angel's side without glancing either right or left, with only the stiffness in his movements betraying that he was in any kind of pain. The smell of the corpses still waiting like dark Christmas gifts to be found in many of the buildings overwhelmed any scent of fear that Angel might otherwise have picked up. The impassiveness was an annoyance, as there were many questions that Angel would have liked to ask Lindsey, chief among them being, "What do you hope to gain from this?"
The inner lobby of the grand building itself blazed with light-a generator, Angel was willing to bet. Silhouettes of people moved to and from in front of the doors, too many for Angel to get a definite number. Enough for him to cut through without much trouble, but, injured as he was, Lindsey was going to be worse than useless if something ugly did break out. Angel would still far rather have Lindsey where he could see him than have to divide his attention between his surroundings and wondering what kind of chaos Lindsey was causing behind the scenes. A soft, nearly triumphant smile moved over Lindsey's face as he looked over the same scene, and Angel felt the urge to hit the lawyer come back to life after having lain dormant for a record amount of time, shocking in its intensity. Other things to deal with for now.
A guard stood by the front entrance, looking particularly rattled for someone standing at the home of a near god. Angel whistled softly to get his attention and then, when the man's head turned towards him, punched him hard enough to put him unconscious for several hours. Lindsey watched with an expression caught somewhere between reluctant amusement and resignation as Angel caught the body. "We might have gotten in, anyway," he pointed out.
Angel moved the man into the shadows, where he would neither be a source of danger nor a victim of it. "And now we definitely will."
"Hell of a plan."
"It's a classic for a reason, all right? Come on." Angel straightened and moved towards the door, indicating that Lindsey should follow.
"It doesn't' bother you that Flagg's feeling confident enough to use only one guard?" Lindsey asked in a voice pitched low enough for only Angel to hear. Beneath the lights his injuries were even more obvious. Angel only hoped that he would be able to come up with an excuse convincing enough to deflect the inevitable stares and questions.
"I'm more concerned by the fact that he posted one at all." Angel raised his voice above a murmur only for a moment. "Generally speaking, invincible leaders don't need guards. Something's happened." He would have known it even if a wave of fear so strong that it was nearly a physical mass hadn't crashed into him from the moment he walked through the doors. Angel took a small, involuntary step back, and Lindsey looked at him with his eyebrows lifted. Angel shook his head. "Keep going."
Lindsey shrugged and didn't answer, moving through the sparse crowd as though he had found his natural element. The cut above his eye drew the curious, semi-alarmed looks that Angel had known it would, but one glance at the stone around his neck quickly turned the stares into expressions of mingled awe and envy. If Lindsey noticed the looks, he gave no sign. Angel, though, could not help but make note of the fact that few of the people in the crowd seemed to be wearing similar talismans. He wondered if Flagg was going to release the hooks that he had placed in Lindsey as easily as the other man seemed to think.
Lindsey paused and touched a woman as she passed. His entire face changed when she turned to face him, going from impassivity to an expression of charm that would have made a movie star proud. "I'm sorry," Lindsey said, showing all of his teeth, "but I've only arrived today and I have no idea what's going on. Would you mind helping me out?"
"Oh." The woman's gaze moved from the cut on Lindsey's head to the stone around his neck, her expression growing doubtful.
"Had to deal with a belligerent animal." Lindsey only glanced towards Angel for a second. "I'm afraid that it delayed me more than I would have liked." The gritty twang was bleeding back into his voice, turning him into the consummate good old boy.
At long last, the woman smiled back. "You picked a hell of a day for it," she said. "There was this woman, really high up with the other one across the mountains, you know? And she was crossing through Vegas to go to her, so Mr. Flagg figures he'll clear the air with her, head off any ugliness before it gets too far off the ground. You know?" she asked again, and Lindsey nodded as if he did. "But then she goes and shoots him, right out of nowhere."
'She what?' Angel nearly blurted it aloud before he was able to stop himself. A conspiratorial smile, he noticed, played with the edges of Lindsey's mouth whenever the woman was not looking.
The woman wasn't yet finished. "Completely out of nowhere," she said, "and then she took off. Shot and killed the one guy who tried to stop her, and she took his weapon, too." She shook her head. "I guess we know what kind of form Abigail's hospitality takes, don't we?"
Angel could have pointed out that the presence of a gun on the other man would suggest that Flagg's hospitality as not radically different from Mother Abigail's, but his mind was too busy trying to process the fact that Cordelia-Ihis/I Cordelia-had shot someone. Lindsey had a persistent smile playing around the edges of his mouth, one that did not create a pleasant expression.
"You're kidding me," Lindsey said, sounding shocked and outraged in equal measure. "What are they going to do to her when they catch her?"
The woman's eyes took on an avaricious glitter. "Have you been downtown yet?" she asked. Lindsey nodded. "Then my guess is that she'll be riding a crosstree with the rest of them before too much longer."
Some of the blood drained from Lindsey's face, but otherwise his expression remained the same. Angel was perversely proud of him for that. "Does Flagg have any idea where she is now?" Lindsey asked.
Doubt crawled across the woman's face for only a second. "Soon," she said. "How long does she think she can hide in a city where everyone wants her head on a platter?"
Angel was wondering the same thing. "So this mystery woman shot Flagg and took off without a single person being able to stop her, huh?" he asked, letting out a mock whistle. "And the word I've been hearing is that Flagg is nearly a god. Can't say that that sounds very god-like to me."
The woman tilted her head up to look at him, exposing Angel, just for a moment, to the person that lurked beneath the surface. "I said she shot him," she replied, tone frigid. "I never said that she killed him." The woman gave Lindsey a pointed look. "You might want to tell your friend to watch his mouth."
Lindsey glared at Angel as the woman walked away. "Yeah, I just might." Angel stared back, his face impassive. "The entire point of subtlety flies right by you, doesn't it?"
"You know what occurs to me, Lindsey?" Angel asked, lowering his voice to avoid eavesdroppers. "You didn't seem all that shocked to discover that Cordelia had a gun."
The violence-inducing smile was lighting up Lindsey's face again. "That would be because I gave it to her." The edges fell off Lindsey's expression, turning it into something soft and proud. "And she did what she had to. Atta girl."
The affectionate, nearly reverent tone in Lindsey's voice made the hair on the back of Angel's neck stand on end. "I wouldn't call turning her into you any kind of accomplishment. Though killing someone is just another day at the office to you, right?"
The smile fell off Lindsey's face, leaving behind the icy sneer that Angel was far more familiar with. "If it saved her life, yes," he answered. "Like it or not, Angel, this is one instance where the ends justifies the means. Or do you hate me so much that you can't even admit that much?"
"The martyr complex is really getting old, Lindsey." Angel didn't lower his voice enough. A few quick, startled looks were thrown their way before people decided it would be a good idea to take themselves elsewhere. "Don't go thinking that you're the innocent victim here."
"Haven't forgotten. Really doubt that Cordelia has, either." Lindsey's expression would have gotten him punched under less crowded circumstances. "But I doubt that she would have been able to handle herself if she was still your girl."
'Your girl' made Angel curl his hand into a fist. "She's not here. Let's go," he said, hoping that somehow all the previous patterns of the universe would find a way to reverse themselves and Lindsey would choose to stay quiet until they were far, far away.
Lindsey didn't appear to have heard him. He was staring past Angel's shoulder, his face gone a dirty, ashen color that even the talk of crucifixion had not been able to put there. "Oh, fuck." His voice barely rose over a hiss. Angel turned.
Randall Flagg strode across the lobby towards them, his grin stretched into a jovial death's head rictus. Flagg's bright Everyman face shone with a mingled glee and fury that made everyone in his path scatter. "Lindsey!" he boomed. "How good it is to see you again! How very, very delightful." As he drew closer, Angel realized that Flagg threw off heat like an open grill.
Flagg ticked his gaze over to Angel, and his grin broadened into something out of a comic book. "And you brought a friend, how very nice of you." Flagg lowered his voice. "We're going to have a nice long palaver, Lindsey, just the two of us. And, oh, we're going to talk of many things, cabbages and kings…and what the fuck I do to people who betray me." His teeth were sharp and very white. "A happy ending all around, wouldn't you say?"
Angel risked a glance towards Lindsey and saw that the stone about the other man's neck had begun to glow as Flagg spoke, twisting and gleaming beneath a light that was nearly sentient. Lindsey's face had grown tight, and there were cords standing out from his neck.
"And you!" Flagg turned his gaze back towards Angel. "I've heard so much about you. The Powers' golden boy together with the person I thought to make one of my lieutenants. How…enlightening." Flagg made a peculiar twisting motion with his hand and the stone flared into even greater brilliance. Lindsey gasped and would have fallen if Angel had not made a quick grab for him. Lindsey's skin felt as if it were tingling with electricity. Angel winced, but did not let go.
Outside the lobby doors, someone shrieked.