--Two Weeks Later--
The incessant ringing of the cell phone sitting on the night stand next to her ear pulled Slayer out of her restless slumber. She cracked one eye open to see that the clock read 9:00 a.m., groaned, and pulled a pillow over her head. When the phone continued to ring after several minutes, she threw the pillow off and, sitting up, grabbed the phone.
Fuck! Goddamn Harris—I'm going to kill that little prick.
"What?" she snapped into the phone.
"Good morning," Harris chirped back, overlooking the fact that she had ignored the ringing for a full 5 minutes. He generally hated it when any of his subordinates wasted his time by making him wait, but hers was a special case. Plus, he'd known when he'd called this early that she wouldn't be happy—which is precisely why he did it.
"I just got to sleep 2 hours ago after 3 days of no shut-eye. You do realize that people go crazy when they don't get enough sleep, right? Let me assure you that you are at the top of my "to kill" list when I go off the deep-end," she threatened.
"You have an assignment," he said crisply, ignoring her outburst. "Code name?"
"Fuck you and your code name," she bit back, refusing to give him her ridiculous alias.
Her reply was met with a temporary silence, and she smiled when she heard Harris' harsh breathing on the other end. She was rarely able to piss him off like this. When he spoke, there was a hard edge to his voice. "Fine. You'll have to get the details from your pick-up then. Your deadline is two weeks from today."
Slayer flipped the phone shut without saying anything else and threw it hard against the concrete wall, watching dispassionately as the shattered pieces ricocheted across the floor.
Slayer moved through the dark streets stealthily, keeping to the shadows as much as she could. She was going into this assignment nearly blind—she knew that her target was a vampire and she had an address, but Harris hadn't bothered to give her any more information than that. Slayer knew it was his way of punishing her for her insolence, his way of making her job a little bit more difficult, his way of making her work a little harder. Frankly, she welcomed the challenge, and it wasn't like she could kill the wrong vamp by mistake—they were all marked for death by Slayer.
As she neared the address from the file, Slayer looked around for the best place to hide and begin her surveillance. She chose a spot in the shadow of a doorway directly across the street from the entrance to the building where the target lived. It was an impressive structure, but a strange choice for a vampire. The old hotel didn't appear to be completely abandoned, as evidenced by the light emanating from the lobby and there were way too many windows that faced in every direction to be safe for a vampire. In Slayer's experience, vampires usually nested in old abandoned buildings with a minimum of sun exposure.
Her attention was drawn away from the building by the approach of a man and a woman. They were walking with their arms entangled, he looking down at her with a beautiful smile, she looking up at him with wide eyes and a giggle. Slayer watched with interest as they turned into the entrance to the hotel. It was obvious from their behavior that they were a couple and that they lived there. What wasn't completely obvious was whether either were her target. They didn't exactly act like vampires, but Slayer didn't know too many humans who willingly lived with their predators. Unfortunately, she couldn't sense whether they were human or demon, particularly not from this distance.
It figures I got the nightmares but not the cool spidey senses out of this deal.
Leaning back against the door frame, she settled in to wait. It was early in the night and if they were demons, they would be back out for a hunt at some point. Slayer sighed and rubbed one hand gently over her face, massaging her temples. She hadn't been sleeping well for a while, even for an insomniac. Most of the time she hadn't been able to fall asleep at all, but when she did, the nightmares brought her out of it. Worry wrinkled her brow as she thought about those dreams. She knew that they had been terrifying and she felt like they may have been prophetic, but she could never remember them when she woke up. It was as though her inability to feel strong emotions was tied to her consciousness, as though her ability to act as the slayer most efficiently was tied to something that she couldn't experience any longer. The nightmares woke her up, heart racing and sweat dripping from her body, but when she tried to remember, the terror faded away and the serenity returned without the memories of that which woke her.
Now, standing here in this shadowed doorway, Slayer felt as though the lack of sleep must be catching up with her. She felt . . . off. Her muscles were tight with tension and her nerve endings were humming as though she were high. She felt almost . . . anxious.
Yep, lack of sleep makes me of the crazy.
Slayer dropped her hand and shook her head in frustration. Now was not the time for ruminating about sleep, or nightmares, or feelings that she shouldn't be having. She forced her mind to go blank and her body to go still as she had been trained.
Several hours later, she saw the shadows over the entry to the hotel shift, and she heard the sound of voices floating out over the night air, reaching her ears in sharp staccato bursts of banter and laughter. She winced—those were not sounds that were familiar to her unless they were surrounded with irony or bitterness.
The man from before emerged first from the foliage that surrounded the entry and hid it from her eyes, and he looked around warily before stepping fully out onto the sidewalk. Slayer recognized the fighter in him at that moment, and she studied him more carefully than before. He was tall and well-built, his shoulders broad under his long-sleeved t-shirt, his skin a beautiful chocolate hue. If he was the target, he would put up a good fight, and Slayer smiled in anticipation.
Then the woman walked out, her head turned to look back over her shoulder, laughing. She was tiny, almost frail-looking, and Slayer dismissed her as a threat. No, the real threat with her would be the other one, the man who put a possessive hand around her waist and kissed the top of her head.
"I don't think he's coming, Charles," the woman said, looking up at the man who held her, and then back into the shadows of the entrance.
"Oh yeah he is," the man replied, before yelling toward the entrance. "Believe me man, nobody wants to hear you butcher Manilow, but you've been acting weird all night and Lorne might be able to give us the 411."
Slayer couldn't hear the muttered response, but the sound of the voice made her body tense even more. Her stomach clenched and she watched as the source of the voice materialized into the light provided by the street lamps.
Time seemed to slow down to a syrupy trickle as she watched him step out onto the sidewalk, his long black duster fanning out behind him. The nerve endings that had been tingling all night went into overdrive and she had to fight to keep from doubling over from the almost cramping sensation in her stomach.
When he stopped in mid-step and spun until he was facing her hiding spot, a look of confused recognition playing over his face, it took her a second to realize that a low, wounded moan was coming unbidden from deep within her and she froze, cutting off the sound and willing herself not to move a muscle.
He took a step into the street as the man and woman looked at him in confusion.
"Buffy?" he questioned, his eyes searching the shadows for the woman hidden inside.
Anguished panic rose up inside her and she felt like she might lose what little dinner she had eaten on the sidewalk in front of her.
Then he started moving quickly across the street, calling out the name that wasn't hers.
"Buffy!"
For the first time in over 2 years, Slayer turned and ran, a single word pounding through her head with each stride.
No no no no no no no no no no no. . .
Wesley rapped sharply on the door, and when she didn't answer, pulled out his key and let himself into her loft. He hadn't seen her in two days—he'd been away, chasing yet another lead on his years-long quest to find a way into Quar-Toth. He knew, intellectually, that it was too late to save Angel's son, but he couldn't stop searching for information anyway. In his life, he'd seen a few miracles and there was a part of him that hoped they'd be graced with another one. He didn't share this hope with anyone—it was private and fragile and fleeting. When he disappeared for a few days at a time, Diana never asked questions. It was one of the things he appreciated about their relationship.
He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. This most recent trip had been worthless, as always. The lead had led to yet another dead-end and Wesley was getting tired of beating demons within an inch of their lives for information that never led to the elusive Hell dimension. He downed the drink quickly and as he moved to set the empty highball glass on the table, he noticed the assignment envelope.
Reaching over, he placed his fingertips on the envelope and slid it toward him. This must be where she is, then, he thought idly as he opened the large envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside. A frown started with a wrinkle in his brow and quickly spread across his face as he pulled the sheet forward. When he read the address, he froze, caught in a moment of sheer panic and an almost blinding anger.
Buffy wouldn't kill Angel, he thought, and he let the feeling of relief wash over him. It took him a few seconds to form his next thought, and when he did, he dropped the paper and rushed toward the door. But Slayer might. . .
He was running down the stairs, not wanting to waste a single second on waiting for the lift, when he literally ran into her. As their bodies collided, he reached out his hand and roughly grabbed her upper arm to steady her. She was breathing heavily and her long hair was tangled around her in a wind-whipped mess, as though she had been running for hours.
"Did you do it?" he asked desperately, his eyes searching her face for any sign of the truth but only seeing a strange, vacant, slightly panicked look on her face. It terrified him. He had never, in the time since he had become reacquainted with her, known her to look so . . . affected . . . so . . . out of control.
At the sound of her harsh, humorless laugh, he felt his own control snap. Every dim, barren hope that he could gain Angel's forgiveness, his trust, was dashed in the shrill sound emanating from her throat and the wild look in her eyes. All of his fury, all of his impotent aspirations of absolution, rose to the surface and he snarled as ferociously as a man could and tightened his grip on her arm.
"What did you do?" he clipped out, and it wasn't a question as much as an accusation. Turning swiftly, he pulled her behind him as he made his way back up the steps to the privacy of her loft. Wesley's rage didn't allow for him to consider that she wasn't fighting him, that she was allowing him to drag her behind him as though she weren't the most powerful creature he had ever encountered.
Slayer barely felt Wes's fingers biting into her upper arm as he led her through her door. Her body felt almost completely numb, as though the nerve endings had shut down to give her mind the energy it needed to feel. And feel she did. The unfamiliar emotions were hitting her, wave after wave of panic and gut-wrenching anguish and grief and . . . . love?
Nonononononononono.
The single word continued to run through her mind as it had from the moment she'd heard him call out that name. Now Wesley had her by the arm and she couldn't think and her senses were jumbled and she was feeling and it was wrong. She had to stop this, she had to divert her body's resources away from her mind, back to her nerve endings.
For the first time in two years, Slayer was going to fight and she was going to fuck and she was going to do both so that she could stop feeling.
The sound of Wesley's voice pulled her out of her inner turmoil and she looked at him to see his eyes narrowed in something close to frenzied hate, his mouth pulled in a grim line when he wasn't speaking.
"What kind of monster have you become, that you would do such a thing?" he hissed, grabbing her other upper arm and shaking her limp, numb body until her teeth chattered.
She forced a smile onto her lips and knocked his hands off her with one swift movement.
"Yeah, like stealing his kid was the act of a saint," she returned, the only hint of her state of mind the slight hitch in her breath.
Wesley visibly flinched at her words, and before he considered what he was doing, he curled his hand into a fist and then it was connecting with her jaw.
Slayer saw his fist flying at her face, had plenty of time with her preternatural reflexes to avoid it, but she let it come, welcomed it as it connected, nearly laughed in triumph when it sent the pain shooting through her face into her neck as her head snapped back.
He paused, breathing heavily, and staring down at his fist while he fought for control. He hadn't lashed out at her in anger since the night they fought over Lilah and although his technique had improved, he couldn't hope to last 2 minutes with her and he knew it. But he didn't really care.
When she hit him back, Wes could tell she was pulling her punch, as evidenced by the fact that his body only flew back enough to land on the coffee table and not all the way into the far wall. He felt pain radiating from where her fist had connected with his chest, and from where his back was lacerated by the broken pieces of the table that lay shattered beneath him. And then she was on top of him, ripping his shirt open, her mouth biting and sucking on his neck and chest, tongue tasting and teasing his nipples.
Wes wanted to hate her, wanted to push her away and leave and never see her murdering self again, but when it came down to it, this is what they were about—what they had always been about and he couldn't stop himself from wanting her now. Pain and pleasure, hate and affection—they were feelings that were braided together for them, inseparable. So instead of pushing her away, he groaned and pulled her shirt over her head before cruelly crushing one of her sinfully perfect breasts in the same hand that had been clenched in a fist just moments before.
Angel stood completely still and concentrated on finding her smell again. He didn't know if it was because he was finding it difficult to clear his mind to track her, or if it was because she was purposely trying to cover her trail, but he kept losing her. He wanted to roar in frustration and fear . . . frustration that he couldn't keep her scent, that time was ticking by each time he had to stop and search . . . fear that he wouldn't find her, wouldn't be able to verify with his eyes, and his nose, and his touch that she was alive.
He'd felt her presence in every cell of his dead body before he'd seen her standing there in the shadows, but it had taken that sighting for him to recognize what his soul had been trying to tell him all night. It was impossible that she was alive . . . she had died and been buried for well over 2 years now and he had dealt and learned to exist in a world without her. But he had found out long ago that the impossible was always possible and that the dead didn't always stay dead. Still, he hadn't been sure, hadn't trusted his senses until he called out her name and she had turned and run.
That's when he had seen her briefly in the light and he knew for certain it was her. If he lived another thousand years he would never forget the exact shape of her body or the texture of her hair, even from a distance. Her smell was a little different, but still the same—she didn't use the same scented soaps and shampoos that she used to, but underneath the new, austere scents of her body products her signature, personal scent was the same. He knew it was her, and he knew that he had to find her before she faded into the night and was lost to him once again.
Angel forced himself to clear his mind and tap into the hunter inside him. He allowed the demon to come closer to the surface, let it sniff the air for any trace of its mate, and his eyes glowed golden as he finally caught her scent. He moved swiftly now, surely, and this time he didn't lose her scent. It led him to an old warehouse, and as he stepped inside, he realized it had been converted to living space. Angel ignored the elevator as he tracked her up the stairs, pausing as he caught traces of another scent that was familiar. Pushing it away, he concentrated on her, and soon he was in the shadows outside her door—a door that was cracked open, letting a sliver of light splash across the stairwell, letting the sounds from inside float out into the space in which he stood.
He raised his hand to knock. It dropped, just as quickly and as if by its own volition, when he heard the noises that were coming from inside and realized who the other scent belonged to.
Two Missing NC-17 scene that are important to the story deleted for FFnet. For unfiltered version of story, visit it at my website www. consummatelove. com