Clayton stands on the steps outside a church, talking to the reverend and various regular attendees, when his phone rings. He excuses himself and walks away to take the call. "Rex! A little early, aren't we?" He gets a kick out of the fact that he's talking with a vampire just after attending services. If Clay cherishes one thing more than nuance, it's contradiction. "You lost two of your men last night. These things happen. Thinning the herd. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Like I always say, anything that can be summed up in a cliche can't be that bad."
"They were careful."
"Evidently not careful enough. Didn't you tell them to stay away from the enemy?"
"They were in Gardena."
"Near Compton? That is quite out of the way. Maybe it wasn't a Slayer. Teenage girl, middle-aged man." Clay mulls this over. "Then it's definitely not a Slayer," he concludes with a chuckle.
"That's not funny."
"Wasn't meant to be. News flash, Rexy: the Watcher's my age! And your description of this Slayer' matches none of the known quantities."
"Then she's new. We all know more are out there."
"And we at Wolfram & Hart are the only ones at this moment who can find them. Let me assure you that if a new Slayer was in Los Angeles, I would know about it, and she certainly wouldn't be killing people our firm is freaking sponsoring. You don't need super powers to kill a vampire." He glances at his still-bruised knuckles. "If you're worried, work the suburbs. Equalize the crime rate. It'll keep you safe, and stop the affluent from fleeing downtown. Now if you will excuse me, I have an important meeting to get to. God can afford to rest on Sunday. I can't."
Dawn wakes up as the light floods in through an open window. She sees Connor emerge from the bathroom with a towel around his waist. He takes the towel off and opens the top dresser drawer. Dawn sits up and appreciates the view. Connor notices the keys Clayton gave him lying amongst his underwear. He picks them up, not knowing Dawn is up. "Morning handsome." A startled Connor closes his fist around the keys and shoves them back into the drawer before closing it and turning around.
"You're awake."
"You're naked."
Connor looks down. "I am." He quickly puts on his boxer shorts.
"It wasn't a criticism." Connor smiles and climbs on the bed. "Lock the door." Connor looks confused.
"Why? We're safe." Connor can be so adorably clueless sometime.
"So no one accidentally sees us."
"I don't care." He'd actually get a perverse kick out of Buffy or Angel catching them in the act, because of all the anguish it would cause them.
"I think they would." Dawn likes to occasionally provoke Buffy with their displays of affection, she doesn't want to traumatize her sister. Connor agrees, and rushes over to turn the dead bolt. He then leaps across the room back to the bed. Halfway there, he realizes this was a bad idea because of her shattered right knee. Connor turns away from Dawn to avoid falling on her and lands to her left, bouncing off the bed and hitting the floor to Dawn's right, his head bouncing off the radiator. She winces. "Connor, are you okay?"
"Okay?," he asks as he stands up, insulted by the question. "I could jump out that window and be okay."
"Let's not test that theory for now. Especially while you're naked."
"But I'm - " She reaches her right hand out and pulls down his boxer shorts. He had no idea she was such a morning person.
Kreon sits on a park bench, staring up at a gigantic mural celebrating Spike on the back wall of a temple. In the center is Spike receiving his soul, a sort of transfiguration scene that dominates the painting. On the left is Spike enduring the torments required to gain the soul. On the right is the Golden God slaying what appears to be a dragon. At the four corners are Spike's and Buffy's naked bodies entwined in various positions. These much smaller scenes surround the central representations, establishing a direct connection between one set of events and the other, almost giving the viewer the impression that the sex itself gave Spike back his soul. The Angel worshippers vigorously object to this implication, pointing out the central importance of the attempted rape, an incident Spike worshippers choose not to dwell on, or represent in their artwork. Myrina sits down to Kreon's right, their infant son William in her arms.
"I wonder what he's doing right now," Kreon explains. "Do you think he's saved the world yet?"
"The question isn't Has he saved the world?,' but How many times?'" They both laugh.
"You think they're together, and she's finally happy?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because of Angel. They can't be together as long as he's around because it will hurt his feelings." Angel devotees give the same excuse about Spike.
"Did you hear about Penny?"
"Mating with that Groo guy. I suppose it's the next best thing." Myrina giggles. "She was probably thinking about Spike when they did it."
"You've never thought about Spike?"
"When I'm with you? Absolutely not."
"Really? Cause if you did once or twice, I'd understand."
"Kreon, you have nothing to worry about."
"I'm not worried."
"Spike's like a father to me."
"He's like a father to me, too. Okay, that's weird."
"Forget the simile."
"Isn't that a metaphor?"
"No. I said he was like something."
"That's a metaphor." She laughs at her husband's lack of education. Little William's trying to break free. Myrina puts the baby down on the grass so he can practice crawling.
"I don't second-guess your battle plans. You shouldn't second-guess my grammar. By the way, how's your shoulder healing?"
"Good. See." He lifts his left arm straight up, then spins his arm all the way around, though this causes him to wince.
"You need to slow down. I want you to be around for William."
"I am slowing down. No more campaigns this year. And nothing big set for next year. Or even for the next five years."
"Unless there's another revolt."
"I can always have Demetrius handle it." Myrina smiles. She's been urging him to delegate more, like his sister Penelope. (Of course, her two pregnancies had a lot to do with her taking a break from commando operations.) Kreon puts his right around around Myrina's shoulders and kisses her. William crawls over and grabs his father's left foot, trying to yank his sandal off.
"Do you ever fantasize about Buffy?"
"Of course not! We've never even met. I don't know what she looks like."
"The pictures. The statues. The mosaics."
"Those are just guesses. The people making them have never seen her in the flesh."
"So you've thought about her flesh?" William finally pulls daddy's sandal off his foot.
"How could I?"
"How could you not? She's everywhere!" Myrina points at the mural. "Usually in very revealing outfits that strike me as completely impractical for fighting."
"Buffy's unattainable. It's ludicrous to even fantasize about her."
"You look up to Spike. You seek to emulate him. It's entirely natural for his desires to become your desires."
"As natural as me becoming a vampire," he scoffs. "We have very different desires." He pulls Myrina closer.
"Oh, look at William!" He's using daddy's sandal to squash bugs.
"His first weapon," Kreon proudly notes.
"What about Fred?"
"What about her?"
"People always say I'm a lot like her."
"How do they know? They've never even bloody met her."
"Come on, Kreon. I'm smart and I like books. I was freed from slavery by a vampire."
"A lot of people around here were freed from slavery by vampires. I'm sure it's also quite common in the Higher Realm."
"Wolfram & Hart owns all the Vengeance Demons?," Angel asks Anya.
"Employs. They practically were owned under DeHofryn. Which is why the girls are so ecstatic: better pay, more flexible hours, and the benefits! They're treated like royalty."
"Does this mean they can wish disaster upon us and make it so?," Angel worries.
"Not unless one of you wronged or scorned one of their lawyers." Wesley looks nervous.
"What about dead ones?"
"Vampires?" Lilah as a vampire - there was a frightening yet alluring idea.
"Course not," Fred insists. "Wesley cut her head off."
Anya gives him a dirty look. "Talk about a brutal breakup."
"After she had been killed by Cordelia."
"Because she was evil?," Buffy asks.
"Cordy or Lilah?," Gunn responds.
"Enough," Wesley interjects. "Why do the Vengeance Demons no longer work for DeHofryn?"
"He's dead."
"How? I figured a demon of his caliber was well nigh invincible."
"A group of witches trapped him in a bottle when he tried to kill me in Scyra. You know, the world Angel irrevocably changed with his religious revolution."
"I had to pretend I was a God. I had no choice!" A woman walking by in the lobby gives him a very funny look. "We need to meet somewhere more private. And where's Dawn?" He anxious to find out what she's learned about Clayton.
"You know where she is," Anya states. "Which is why you're afraid to check on them." She peruses the previous night's receipts. "That's the problem with the hotel business – everything's charged. I miss retail, and the feel of money in my hands. So much money you could roll around naked in it. Not that I ever did. But it's nice to imagine you can."
"Every day should start like this," a blissful Connor declares as he rolls onto his back. Dawn reaches out her left arm and puts her hand on his chest.
"Glad I'm not alone in that opinion."
"Did I hurt you - your, your leg?"
"Not at all."
"Good. I tried to be careful."
"And yet still gloriously uninhibited. Come here, lover." Connor rolls over and nuzzles up next to Dawn, who puts her arms around him. This was the first time they had sex since Dawn moved in. Actually it was the first time since Connor moved out of Sunnydale a month earlier. Connor feels in a good enough mood to reveal an important secret.
"The world was harsh and cruel, until you came along. Then I realized life didn't have to be like that."
"I also remember harshness and cruelty. Pre-you. And, sadly, after."
"But it's easier to get through together."
"I used to feel all alone. So lonely."
"It's good not to be lonely. But it would be better if we were alone. Away from all these people. All these demons. Just you and me."
"Is this your little cabin in the woods fantasy again?"
"It's not a fantasy." Dawn looks worried.
"Is there something you're hiding?"
"Not hiding. Just waiting for the right moment." She lets go of him and inches further to the right end of the bed.
"Waiting for the right moment to tell me what?"
"That Clayton guy gave me something."
"You made a deal with him?"
"No. No deal. He just gave me these keys." Connor gets up, which makes Dawn happy. If it wasn't for her injury, she'd get up out of bed. But she can't, and it wouldn't have been a proper argument if they were both still lying in bed side-by-side under the covers.
"Keys to a cabin in the woods?"
"No. In the mountains. I think."
"And this just happened to be what you were dreaming about getting. Actually, that sounds like Clayton Jenkins. He always seems to know just what everyone wants."
"You make it sound like a bad thing."
"He's your enemy!"
"He's my dad's enemy."
"Connor, I thought you were past this stage. Angel and you are on the same side."
"I know."
"Which makes Clayton your enemy, too. Especially since his company has a history of trying to do bad things to you."
"I know. He apologized for that."
"And you believed him?"
"Does it matter?"
"It should."
"He gave me something. I think. I gave him nothing. That I know. So where's the problem?"
"Connor, he didn't do this out of the goodness of his heart. There's an ulterior motive."
"You think I made a mistake?"
"Didn't anyone ever teach you not to take houses from strangers?"
"Why? Cause there might me a bomb that goes off when we walk in?"
"I hadn't thought of that." She gets up, putting on a pair of shorts and a long-sleeve shirt.
"You going somewhere?"
"Not to mountains, if that's what you're hoping for."
"Actually, I thought we could go in August. It's a slow month for demon-hunting."
She sighs. "Can I see those?" He hands her the keys. "Is this the address?"
"Yeah."
"Here's what we do . . . "
Connor gets dressed and carries her laptop, while Dawn hops and follows him to Elijah's room. Connor offers to carry her and save her the effort, but she sees this as demeaning. Connor, meanwhile, thinks she is being condescending and treating him like a child. Connor knocks. Elijah's stepdad answers.
"Is Eli here?," Dawn asks politely. "It's important." He head to Eli's bedroom. About thirty seconds later, Eli shows up at the door, his hair sticking up.
"Do you know what time it is? Some of us have lives."
"Since when did you have a life?," Dawn asks. Eli laughs.
"Okay, but let's say I did. It's nice when your friends keep open that possibility, instead of assuming I didn't need any more sleep on account of my eventless evening."
"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important," Dawn insists.
"My bad. I'm neurotic when I first get up in the morning." Connor looks grossed-out, steps away from Eli and shields Dawn.
"No Connor, he said - forget it. Can I borrow a hat?"
"You woke me up for that?"
"No. For your computer skills. I need you to research something."
Christopher Holburn opens the door. Outside stands Elijah, with spikey hair and noticeable stubble. "Can Kit come out and play?" He closes the door. Eli puts his hand out. "Kidding aside, Dawn says it's important. She needs us to investigate real estate."
"Cursed real estate?'
"Hopefully not."
"Will you excuse me for a moment?"
"Don't see how I have a choice." Christopher is inherently suspicious of Elijah on account of him being his daughter's boyfriend, but the flippant attitude doesn't help matters.
"How old is Elijah Campbell?"
"Seventeen, daddy."
"And yet he's graduating."
"He skipped a grade."
"He looks older."
"He's younger than some other guys I've dated. Okay, I shouldn't have said that."
"So I should give thanks because, after all, he could be a lot worse?"
"He's smart. He's clean. He doesn't get into trouble. Isn't that what you want in a boyfriend of mine?"
"Yes. When you're twenty five. But, seriously, he does smoke."
"Tobacco."
"Back to the he could be worse' argument, I see. Also, he's . . . he's impish. He's an imp."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning that he's a smartass."
"Why didn't you just say that to begin with?"
"I was being polite. Smartasses tend to think the rules don't apply to them, that it's okay to do something so long as you can get away with it. Also, as a senior about to graduate, he has nothing to lose."
"So there's a high probability that he'll spray paint the school, or take down the goalposts on the football field. If those things still existed!"
"And now all he has is a giant city to play around with and a super-powered friend of very dark origin to show him around."
"Do you like any of my friends?"
"I like Dawn. I, approve of Carlos."
"Who's got a fricken juvee record! Eli's never even been suspended."
"He's dating you. So I hold him to a higher standard."
"I thought you were against relativism?," she quips.
"If you're going out, tell me first. There are fourteen inter-dimensional portals within five miles of here. Three of which are currently active."
"Cool! Where? Just kidding, dad."
Angel and his friends repair to the downstairs club, which is still cluttered with debris from the previous night. His is joined by Buffy and Anya, as well as Xander, who's mostly there because there's nothing else to do and he doesn't want to be alone. "How many Vengeance Demons?," he asks Anya.
"Two hundred. But maybe only one in ten have put down roots here."
"Remind me to never dump a woman in this town ever again," Gunn comments. Wesley's haunted by the thought of what Lilah could have done to him if Vengeance Demons worked for Wolfram & Hart when he ended their affair.
"Remind me to never wish for anything ever again," Fred adds. The door opens. Connor enters, looking a little sheepish. Dawn follows on crutches. She's wearing a Sub-Pop baseball cap.
"Sorry to, umm, keep you waiting," she offers.
"Don't mention it," Angel responds, meaning it literally. Neither of them showered after, and he can smell what they did all too well.
"How'd you find us?," Fred asks. "Oh. Right. Smell." Dawn sits down, props her right leg on another chair, and powers up her computer, which is on a table right in front of her. She looks around at everyone.
"I'm finally the center of attention. Cool."
"Finally?," Connor asks with a grin, rubbing his right foot against her left. Dawn beams. Buffy starts to think this whole thing with Connor is just a reaction against being marginalized in Sunnydale.
"You guys might want to come around to this side," Dawn suggests. "There are graphics. Let's just say this guy wasn't hard to track down. Do corporate lawyers usually have fan sites?"
"Evil ones, perhaps," Wesley responds.
"From evil fans," Fred notes.
"How many sites?," Angel asks.
"Six. In English. There were others in Russian, French, Chinese and Arabic."
"Yeah, well I have forums," Angel defensively claims.
"So these web pages celebrate his evil?," Buffy asks.
"No. The opposite. If I only knew this guy from what's on the internet, I'd thing he was on his way to sainthood." Angel and his friends gasp. Clayton seemed so slippery, so scummy, so evil. They could tell what side he was on just by looking at him.
"So Wolfram & Hart's spearheading a deliberate campaign of misinformation," Angel theorizes.
"No," Dawn curtly responds. Connor likes how she puts dad in his place. "Unless they made up his entire life and implanted false memories in everyone he's ever known." She takes a deep breath. "I'll be the first to admit it's possible. But my guess is the inspirational life story's the real deal."
"Oh God," Angel grouses, looking up at the ceiling. "Let me guess: he grew up poor, just like Lindsey."
"Morgan County, Kentucky. In the Appalachians. And it gets better. See, in addition to being dirt poor, he came down with Leukemia when he was eight. When he was ten, and in the hospital on his death bed, he made a sudden, miraculous recovery. A bunch of newspapers wrote about it. Here's a picture of him." Angel sees the pale, frail, bald child, and thinks he knows why Clayton has long hair and that unnatural tan.
"A Miracle in Cincinnati," Fred says, reading the headline.
"The weird thing was, the doctors said his organ were so compromised that even if the cancer magically vanished, chances are he still would have died. Or, at the very least, have taken a few months to recover. But he was up and walking the next day. That didn't seem medically possible."
"Unless someone implanted a demon in the child," Wesley hypothesizes.
"He's not part-demon," Angel assures them.
"That's true," Connor concurs. "He smells totally human." Then Angel gets an idea.
"A Faustian Bargain. He sold his soul for a cure."
"It ain't that easy," Gunn assures them. Anya wonders how he knows.
"They'd have to come to him," Anya points out. "And demons rarely make deals with dying children. Unless they know the kid has serious potential."
"I didn't know Wolfram & Hart started recruiting lawyers before they've even finished grammar school," Wes points out.
"They didn't," Angel remarks. "That's why he's so cavalier. That's why he insults the Senior Partners in his office. He's part of something bigger."
"Something even the Senior Partners have to respect?," Wes asks, looking worried.
"Excuse me," Buffy says, jumping into the conversation. "Who are these Senior Partners, and why haven't you killed them?"
"I did kill one of them," Angel points out. "They live in another dimension and act through surrogates, so they're a little hard to get to."
Xander starts chuckling. "He sold his soul to the Devil?," he asks Angel. "Satan? Lucifer? The biggest of the Big Bads? I'm sorry. It just seems a bit much. There's gotta be a more down to Earth explanation."
"We can't rule it out," Dawn offers, upsetting Xander and shocking Connor, who can't believe she's supporting Angel. "His life is, well, a bit much. He becomes this local celebrity in all the churches. Everyone wants to see and touch little Clayton Jenkins. The call him the Miracle Child."
"Hey!," Connor interjects.
"Okay, much less miraculous than you."
"And also, unlike Connor, evil," Angel adds.
"That goes without saying." Buffy feels like objecting to this assumption, but holds off. "In high school, he gets great grades, captains the basketball team, class president. Big guy on campus. But he doesn't have any friends."
"How do you know that?," Gunn wonders.
"There are posts from all these people who've known him. Teachers, coaches, family members. But no friends. Plus, I made a bunch of random calls to the area, and asked if they knew him. I pissed a lot of people off. But I did get to talk to three people who say they went to high school with him. And they all said the same thing: Clay had a huge chip on his shoulder and was really hard to get along with. One of them also went to kindergarten with him, and said the kids used to make fun of Clay because he was even poorer than most, and wore these ratty hand-me-down clothes. I guess he never got over that. He also used to get into fights with people who made fun of him and his parents.
"In high school?," Buffy asks.
"No. In, like, first and second grade. In high school, he'd threaten people he thought were saying things behind his back."
"Sounds paranoid," Angel observes.
"Maybe. So when he finishes high school, he enlists in the Marines, even though state schools were offering him full scholarships. He serves two years, becomes a Lance Corporal, and fights in the Gulf War. The first one."
"Let me guess," Angel groans. "He's a war hero."
"Pretty much. His squad passes by this destroyed Iraqi tank that still had two people alive inside. They used the tank's machine gun to fire at a platoon of Marines from behind. Clayton draws their fire towards himself and away from the other men, charges the tank, and kills both men, taking two bullets through the chest in the process.
"So he's killed people," Angel notes, trying to spin everything negatively.
"There's more. The bullets went clear through him, and he kept on fighting, leading his squad in the dark for six more miles before passing out from blood loss right when they reached Kuwait City. He won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. And a lot of attention in the papers back home. Local Hero stories and the like. Here's his picture." Angel's shocked to see Clayton with all his hair shorn off. Dawn opens another file she saved. "This was a news clip where you get to hear him talk."
"I don't remember him having an accent," Fred comments.
"Because he's a phony," Angel responds. "He's a complete fraud."
"We already know where you stand on this guy. So what does he do next: rescue children from a burning building?," Xander asks with mild sarcasm.
"He goes to Louisville on the G.I. Bill. Then he works his way through Depaw Law School. He's their most powerful alum since Dan Quayle."
"Does that make the school evil?," Fred asks.
"Dan Quayle is not evil," Anya snaps. "His wife could have been, if she put some time and energy into it."
"Also, when he's at Louisville, he does Army R.O.T.C."
"The army?," Angel asks. "I though he was a Marine."
"That is strange. The services tend to have a pretty intense rivalry," Xander points out.
"There's a Stars and Stripes story where he's asked about that. He said the army offered certain opportunities the Marines didn't. In civil affairs and stuff."
"Civil affairs. You mean nation building?," Wes asks.
"Nation building's not evil," Angel responds.
"I think we've established he doesn't seek out jobs that are obviously evil," Anya argues.
"What about joining Wolfram & Hart?," Wes asks.
"The exception that proves the rule."
"He went to Bosnia in '97, where he had a conflict with his commanders over strategy. They were sent to protect the Bosnian Muslims from the Bosnian Serbs. But Clayton wanted to invade the Serbian sector because war criminals were hiding there."
"Still are," Wes notes.
"He had this one quote here which I'm sure will totally knock your socks off."
Angel reads. "When wrongdoing is not punished, when evil is tolerated right under our noses, it makes a mockery of our power, emboldens the enemies of civilization, and threatens good, decent people everywhere." Angel needs to take a short walk around the room to recover from Clayton's chutzpah.
"Was he already working for Wolfram & Hart when he said that?," Gunn inquires.
"No. He joined them in '98. But in the Summer of '99 he was recalled for duty in Kosovo."
"Even after publicly criticizing his superior officers?," Xander asks.
"Like I said, someone's looking out for him," Angel explains.
"There was this town in the north, where Serbs and Albanians were at each other's throats, because six months earlier the Serbs kicked out all the Albanians, who came back four months later and were looking for revenge. The NATO forces got between the two groups, but once they left, even for a day, the fighting started again. It seemed like a hopeless situation."
"Until Clayton the Glorious came along," Angel bitterly anticipates.
"Well, yeah. He walked into the town unarmed, sat the leaders down, and worked out a peaceful settlement that's held to this day. He did the same thing in a couple villages. Every place he went, there's peaceful coexistence. In most of the neighboring towns, one side's kicked out the other."
"Do you think he used magic?," Anya asks the others. "Usually when people are way too convincing, it's because they put spells on everyone they encounter."
"Then why would he need a magical girlfriend to protect him?," Connor asks.
"Good point," Dawn responds. Connor smiles.
"I still say Faustian Bargain," Angel maintains.
"Because of this success, Clayton's seen as an expert on a subject that's become very important. He's written pieces in the L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, National Review, New Republic, Chicago Sun-Times."
"If he's so great, why isn't he in Iraq?," Angel asks, trying to puncture this golden boy's bubble.
"Maybe he would be, if he didn't have to deal with you," Anya quips. "If things do fall apart over there, at least we know who to blame."
"That was five years ago. What has he done lately?," Angel wonders.
"A lot of charity work."
"Wolfram & Hart's always done that for their image."
"Do they give the time and do the work themselves?"
"Of course not."
"Well, he does. When he's not at work, he seems to spend most of his time volunteering. He tutors teenage inmates. Teaches adults on welfare so they can enter the job market. Builds homes. Guy's a regular Jimmy Carter."
"He's the Antichrist," Angel declares.
"Jimmy Carter?," Buffy asks.
"Clayton. Look at how easily he tricks people. How good he is at getting people to do what he wants."
"How he's all things to all people," Dawn adds.
"Exactly."
"Wait a second," Xander cautions. "There's a big difference between fighting an apocalypse and fighting THE apocalypse."
"I'm not saying he's the actual Antichrist. He just thinks he is. He had pretensions."
"Oh, and I wasn't agreeing with you," Dawn points out. "No offense. I wasn't disagreeing with you, either. I just wanted to point something out. The guy's popular with rich and the poor, black and white. The Republicans call him one of their rising stars in the state. They're talking about running him for Senate in the future."
"He's a Republican. Maybe he is the anti-Christ," Gunn quips.
"Hey!," Anya objects.
"You're a Republican?," Wes asks, moderately disappointed.
"They're the party of rugged individualism and not taking my money away. And not all politicians who've sold their souls are Republicans."
"Is that all, Dawn?," Fred asks. "Not that it wasn't a lot."
"It was great," Connor raves. "She did all that in just a couple hours."
"Thanks, but, that isn't all." Connor looks nervous. Why is she telling?