Part Nineteen
"I don't know how I got this way.
I'll never be all right.
So I'm breaking the habit,
Breaking the habit
Tonight."
-Linkin Park, "Breaking The Habit"
The Nova came to a purring stop in front of the liquor store. Angel paused with his hand on the key, unwilling to turn the car off and commit himself to staying in one place for too long. Neither, however, was he eager to watch Cordelia slip away from him again. The various ways that the plan could go wrong hung sick and heavy in the back of Angel's mind.
Cordelia stared out at the hulk for a moment before she turned back to Angel. "Here's my stop." In the waning moonlight, the shadows beneath her eyes were very dark.
Angel reached out, his hand hovering over Cordelia's shoulder for a moment before he changed course and dragged his fingers through the silky-rough texture of her ponytail. Her posture tightened like the drawing of a bowstring. "Be careful."
The smile that Cordelia flicked towards him was sharper than a sword and fit far too easily on her face. Angel thought it aged her ten years. Realizing that the woman he had left behind was as dead as the corpses of the plague victims didn't stop him from wishing for her return, or make the wanting itself any less painful. "I'll be more than careful," Cordelia said. "I'll be perfect." She twitched her head and tugged her hair out of Angel's grasp; the ends stung his hand as they were pulled away.
Angel returned his hand to the steering wheel and watched as Cordelia gathered her weapons. She pulled the two guns out of Lindsey's jacket and unloaded them, her lips moving without sound as she counted the bullets. Angel wanted to knock the guns from her hands, tear the jacket from her back. Reverse time, if that's what it took to get his Cordelia back.
"It'll have to be enough," Cordelia said, reloading the guns and tucking them out of sight again. She jingled the Hummer keys in her fist. "Wish me luck."
"How about I wish you weren't doing this, instead?" Angel asked.
Whatever warmth had been trying to find its way back into Cordelia's eyes disappeared behind a curtain of ice, dangerous and easy to misstep on. "I'm not leaving Vegas without him," Cordelia said. Her tone was tight and clipped.
"And I'm not leaving without you." The 'Not again' lay unspoken and unacknowledged in the air between them.
The ice thawed by a few degrees, enough to make Angel aware of how much of it there was and might always be. "Then we have an agreement." Cordelia regarded Angel for a moment, her eyes dark and grave, before she leaned across the seat and pressed her lips to his. Though their mouths never parted, the charge that passed from one patch of skin to the other was not of the platonic variety. Angel stared at Cordelia as she pulled away.
"Thought I'd return the favor," Cordelia said solemnly. She had bounded out of the car and was disappearing around the side of the building before Angel could answer. By the time the sound of the slamming car door had ceased echoing, she was gone.
Angel stared after her. "Returning the favor," he said as the put the Nova into gear and pulled away from the curb. "You picked a hell of a time to start practicing irony, Cordy."
---
Cordelia paused by the side of the building, leaning her shoulder against the brick and taking a moment to settle herself as the sound of Angel's car rumbled off into the distance. Her mouth tingled from even the momentary contact with Angel's and her heart insisted that, no, really, now was an excellent time to learn the tango. It was almost enough to make Cordelia wish for the return of that cold, steely focus that alternately terrified and comforted her. Barring that, she would settle for getting good and pissed off.
"Angst later," Cordelia muttered as she approached the Hummer. The door gave a wince-inducing screech as she yanked it open. "Save idiot now." And on the drive over she could decide what she was going to scream at him for first: being a pragmatic imbecile, or trying to make up for it by being a passive-aggressively noble imbecile.
"You're coming to the rescue of Judas Iscariot," Cordelia murmured, running her hand across the warped metal that made up the hood before she hauled herself into the cab. She paused a moment to consider. "To both sides. Welcome to Bizarro World, population: your life." The engine made a choked noise as she started it and Cordelia held her breath, praying that the entire thing would not explode in her face.
Cordelia waited until she was pushing at the timeline that she and Angel had set up, but the Hummer showed no sign of imminent pyrotechnics or increase in angry noises. She popped the clutch and ever-so-slowly eased the vehicle around the side of the liquor store. Even at the inhumanly early hour there were people on the streets, and they threw the Hummer alarmed looks before skittering for the safety of the indoors. Word of her had spread, and it would not be long before reinforcements were on the way. It was easy to place her free hand to the pocket of her jacket and feel the weapons there, hear the answering thump-thud of her heart as her pulse quickened. Let them come.
Cordelia had never liked the color, anyway.
---
It was a nice car. Not quite so nice as the GTX, which Angel had been forced to abandon one hundred miles outside of Las Vegas when traffic became too thick to stay in the same vehicle, but worthy all the same. Angel was going to be sorry to see it go. It would be a long time before Detroit rolled another classic Chevy off the assembly line.
Every light in the MGM Grand was blazing, and people milled in front of the windows and doors like legions of ants. The chink in security that he and Lindsey had slipped through earlier was gone as thoroughly as if it had never been. Angel had a dark moment in which to wonder if maybe Flagg had allowed them to slip through. He might have even known all along that they would be coming. There were whispers floating around the city suggesting that Flagg's powers were much greater than those of the average demon or sorcerer. When coupled with Flagg's tendency to know the very things that he shouldn't be able to, the thoughts were enough to make every muscle in Angel's body thrum with tension.
"You had better be hurting right now, Lindsey," Angel muttered as he braked the Nova in the center of the street. He didn't bother to turn the car off, and the headlights cut swaths into the darkness like accusatory fingers. Already people were rushing towards the vehicle; Angel could see the gleam of starlight off gunmetal. "Or you will be when I catch up with you." Angel reached into the backseat and closed his hand around the sword that lay there. Cordelia had her new ways. He had his, and each to their own selves be true. Nothing more could be asked of them than that.
A man who could have been someone's Little League coach sprinted towards the car, skidding to a halt fast enough to throw up flecks of gravel as he recognized Angel. "You!"
"Me," Angel agreed. He twirled the sword in his hand until it caught the scant light and threw it back in motes of pure silver. "Now, this confrontation can end one of two ways."
The kiddie coach turned his gun around on him and began firing.
"Yeah, I didn't think that was going to work, either." Angel threw himself to the side. Bullets struck the Nova in a line where Angel had been standing, punching holes through the metal and coming within inches of piercing the gas tank. Angel tensed. No fireball yet, but if this idiot was allowed to keep shooting…
Angel dropped into a low crouch, spun, and hooked his legs around the other man's in a move that was deceptive in its elegance. The blow to the temple that he delivered with the sword handle was far less graceful. The man crumpled and did not move again. Angel leapt back to his feet and whirled to face the next opponent. If they were smart, one look a the gleam of the sword and the hungry expression on Angel's face would have them seriously reconsidering the wisdom of their entire 'Go, pit of evil!' philosophy.
Several faltered. One or two even turned back. The rest of the soft, stupid children did not even slow down.
Angel swung the sword and opened up a gash longer than his forearm in a man's thigh, slicing through muscle and tendon and exposing the white-pink gleam of bone. Arterial blood sprayed through the air and made wet plopping sounds as it came back down on the pavement. The feel of blood on their faces, hot and real and not about to disappear into the comfortable fantasy world that allowed them to deal with Flagg on a day-to-day basis, seemed to unnerve more people than even the sound of the man's screams. Angel wondered if Flagg had been telling them tales of the Champion who didn't kill humans. He twirled the sword around and felt a warm trickle of blood run down his thumb. If so, Flagg had neglected to inform them that Champions were a useless breed in a world that had moved on.
The first man to feel Angel's sword was going to be lucky if he ever walked again. The second was going to be lucky if he saw the sunrise.
A bullet tore into Angel's shoulder, another into his thigh. The pain was immediate, invigorating, and Angel did not even attempt to halt the change that rippled across his face. His clothing was sodden by the time he staggered behind the cover of the Nova, wincing as he heard more bullets striking the metal. 'It's not time…'
A second pair of headlights lit up the night, connecting with the Nova's and tangling them together until they were one beam. The Hummer was making a squalling noise like a rabbit caught in its death throes. Angel saw the damage done to the front end and wondered how Cordelia was able to drive it at all, let alone at the bat out of hell-or into it, as their particular case might be-clip that she was going. It was a wonder that she hadn't been hurt worse; it would be a miracle if she wasn't killed outright now.
Angel staggered away from his car seconds before impact. Flagg's followers, lacking the advantage of foreknowledge, were not so lucky. Two of them were still in front of the Nova as the far larger Hummer barreled into it; a second later they were barely human smears. If Angel squinted just right, he thought that Cordelia might even have sped up.
The Nova never stood a chance. It left streaks of rubber behind as it was shoved across the street, colliding with several more people along the way and dragging them beneath its bulk. Fragments of glass and metal were hurled into the air to fall down again like ran with teeth. 'Dying rabbit' was elevated to 'dear lord, someone has set a cat on fire'. The sound of the brakes screaming was nearly buried beneath the rest of the caterwauling as Cordelia finally put her foot down on them, spinning the tangled hybrid around and bringing the entire mess to a shuddering halt.
The possibility of being shot again wasn't so much as a ripple in Angel's mind as he broke back out of the shadows and sprinted for the driver's door. Impact had warped it beyond any human ability to open. Angel nearly ripped it off its hinges in his haste to get at the cargo inside.
They lived in a world that believed in miracles.
Cordelia moaned and put her hands to her forehead as Angel reached into the cab for her. She had been thrown violently against the seatbelt-already Angel could see the fresh bruise that would join her myriad others by morning-but there was no blood or broken bones that he could see. "Angel. Hi," she greeted him as he undid the seatbelt and lifted her out. Cordelia peeked over his shoulder at the havoc that she had wreaked. "Huh. I did good."
"Yes, you did." Angel kissed her temple. "You're insane, but you did very, very good. Now let's get you out of here."
"Oh. Right." Cordelia wrapped her arms around Angel's neck, making it clear to him that she wasn't fully conscious yet. "There's the gas."
"Gas?" Angel peeked into the Hummer's cargo area and swore. Scooping Cordelia more securely into his arms, he took off across the street as if all the fires of hell were after him. A few short seconds later, they were.
The Nova's gas tank went first, a popping sound that ruffled the hair on the back of Angel's neck. Then Hummer's, louder and more ominous. The extra containers of gasoline went up at nearly the same time. The dual explosions created a sound that rattled teeth in their sockets and sent a pillar of flame skyward that was worthy of a Quentin Tarantino movie.
The force of it lifted Angel off of his feet and nearly upended him on a hand of air hot enough to singe the hair from his arms. He staggered and barely caught his balance in time, clutching Cordelia protectively to him. She swore and clapped her hands over her ears. Though her lips moved, Angel could not make out what she was saying. He considered himself lucky to still be in possession of eardrums at all.
There were people still clustered around the haphazard mangling of metal when its gas tanks exploded. Angel could hear their startled screams even through the ringing in his ears, smell the acrid scent of their hair as it lit on fire. Of all the emotions that Angel could muster for the stupid children of the damned city, pity did not number among them.
Angel carried Cordelia far enough away so that the heat was no longer in danger of blistering her skin before he set her back to the pavement, keeping his hand against the small of her back in case her balance failed her. Cordelia's legs wobbled for a moment before they declared her acceptable and she put a hand to her temple. "Fulfilling my destiny through head trauma. It's like a theme."
"Are you going to be able to do the rest of your part?" Angel grabbed Cordelia's elbow as she began to sway.
"Yeah." Cordelia flapped her hand towards the MGM Grand, where streamers of people were rushing out to see the inferno. "Go. Be a hero. I'll be back to meet you." The corners of her lips lifted, and for a moment it almost looked real. "And thank you."
"We help the helpless," Angel said. "Right now Lindsey qualifies."
"Still. Thanks." Cordelia lifted her hand in farewell. "See you soon?"
"Soon." Angel didn't dare let the words 'I promise' pass his lips, but he made one all the same. Giving himself a mental shake, Angel turned back towards the hotel and slid back into the shadows that were always so eager to claim him. The crowd was obvious and awed, too intent on the flames to notice the monster/man that slunk away from them and headed for the hive that they were so generously leaving unprotected.
He had lost his sword somewhere in the explosion, but that was all right. Angel didn't mind getting a little blood on his fists.