A/N: Thanks, everyone, for the reviews (especially Steffi for the exceptionally sweet note – it warmed my heart so much). I'm glad you all liked the last chapter. IMO it's probably one of my favorites. I'll have to read through the rest of my stuff to tell you which one's best, but that last one was fun. Anyways, enjoy this next part… let me know if you don't! And if you do, of course:)

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x

"So, who's who in the whole soul-swap circus?" Cordelia asked, sitting down next to Wes. The ex-Watcher let out a sigh.

"I'm not completely sure as to what the specifics are. It calls for two dark souls and two light souls. That small distinguishing characteristic between you four could end up being very important," he said, sitting back in his chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Well… two dark, duh. Angel and Spike. Angelus and William the Bloody. They're both vampires – or in Spike's case, was a vampire. Two light… again, duh. I used to be a Seer and Buffy's the Slayer…" she said.

"I don't think it's going to be that simple. Each of you could go either way, really. Angel and Spike are certainly candidates for the 'dark soul' being who they were in the past. But Angel is also a warrior for the Powers and Spike willingly searched out a soul. You, in turn, had a brush with the dark side in both carrying demon progeny and being taken over by a dark being. Buffy herself was brought back by dark magic after she'd died and gone to heaven. It's not as cut and dry as you might think," he said. Cordelia put her head in her hand dejectedly.

"Nothing's ever easy. Let me guess… more research?" she asked. Wes nodded. Cordelia picked up a book. "And thanks, by the way, for bringing up the long-repressed and nearly forgotten past. My therapist is going to thank you…" Wes smiled slightly.

"You don't have a therapist," he said. Cordelia rolled her eyes.

"Fine. Angel is going to thank you because I'm going to have to bitch about it to him," she said. This time Wes chuckled.

"You could always just repress it again," he said. She leveled him with her 'look'.

"If we're not careful, we're all going to become a bunch of brooders with all the repressing that's taken place over the years," she said.

"Yes, well, we've spent almost five years in Angel's employ or something like it. It's only natural that we have adopted some of his tendencies," he commented. Cordelia smiled but remained quiet for a moment.

"So… how 'bout the situation with Conner? What do you think is going on, really? What do you think's going to happen?" she asked finally. Wes was silent as he thought over his words.

"This situation is graver that we could possibly imagine I'm afraid. The fate of the world rests on the soul spell that I still know next to nothing about. All I know is that one of the words I can translate in conjunction to 'soul' is 'sacrifice'…" he said. Cordelia looked at the words on the page in front of her but she didn't read them.

"So… what you're saying but not really saying is that you think that in order to save the world, there must be the sacrifice of a soul… or maybe all of our souls," she said. Wes shook his head.

"I didn't say that," he said. Cordelia let out a breath.

"But it was what you were thinking," she said. The two fell silent. Wes shifted in his seat and closed the book that sat in front of him.

"There is a lot more that I need to read up on, Cordelia. I don't suspect this ritual to be a suicide mission. And if that is what it calls for, then we shall find a way around it if I have to read through every book on this planet," the Englishman said seriously. Cordelia smiled gratefully at him.

"I know that Wes," she reassured him. Sacrifice… she thought. Maybe this is what the Powers intended for me all along... "Do you think they'll find Conner?" Wes shrugged his shoulders at her question.

"I'd like to say they will. Angel was smart to take both Lorne and Lindsey with him," he said.

"Can we trust Lindsey?" she asked. Again, Wes shrugged.

"He seems genuine. So far, everything he's told us and warned us about is true. We have yet to ascertain whether… Lilah… is truly back, but if Lindsey's lied to us Lorne would be the one to know," the ex-Watcher said, stumbling only slightly at the name of the woman he'd tried to save from herself. Just as he'd failed with Conner, he'd failed to save her as well… If she were back, she'd be instrumental in coercing young Conner back to his ways of emotional destruction. He wouldn't be surprised if Lilah had helped to orchestrate all of this from the beginning, playing everyone at Angel Investigations – himself mostly – for fools.

"Dead just isn't dead these days, is it?" Cordelia asked, breaking Wes' reverie. "They must be running a special… die once, get your second death free…" The Englishman smiled at her attempt at a joke.

"Yes, well… after everything we've been through and seen, I think that it's been proven time and time again that death never really is the end," he said. Cordelia let her arm give a dismissing wave.

"Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Sunnyhell, for your numerous life lessons…" she said, feeling only a small pang at the fact that Sunnydale now didn't exist except for a crater in the ground. Shaking the thought away, Cordelia picked up a book.

"Okay, more research. You'd think I didn't just spend hours upon hours doing just that already," she said with a sigh.

"Welcome to my world," Wes said, already hunched over a book and writing down possible theories. Cordelia watched as he worked.

"Yes, but books are your life. You are 'one' with the books. I, on the other hand, would like to be 'one' with those magazines over there. Has it occurred to you that, due to the latest of my many mystical comas, I have fallen behind on who's wearing what and who's doing what?" she asked. Wes gave a non-committal sound as he continued to write.

"Are you listening to me, or have you gone off to your Neverland of words and prophecies?" Cordelia asked. Again, Wes gave a non-committal sound.

"Fine… don't talk to me…" she huffed before turning back to her book, eyeing a magazine out of the corner of her eye.

Two hours later…

"I think I've got it…" Wes said after a long couple of hours, a weary smile coming over his face. Cordelia sat up straight in her chair, throwing the magazine she'd succumbed to aside, as she watched him make his final notes. With a look of triumph, Wes held the piece of paper up.

"The spell?" Cordelia asked. He nodded.

"We've got the spell and most of the specifics. Now, all we need are the people of which it speaks," he said. "I will, of course, have to re-check everything just to make sure. But I'm pretty sure I've got it…" Cordelia let out a small squeal as she jumped up from her chair and went to hug the man.

"In the ever-so-poetic words of Fred… AI, a gazillion and one. Apocalypse… well… one, since it's gotten its claws into Conner," she said with a shrug of a shoulder.

"Well, with this spell, the Senior Partners won't have Conner for long… in fact…" Wes stopped talking suddenly. Something didn't feel right. Carefully, he folded his notes and put them into his pocket. Cordelia gave him a look.

"Are you alright, Wes? You look like you've seen a ghost – and not of the annoying Spike type…" she said.

"Cordelia," Wes said, his eyes scanning the lobby. "… get to the basement… the sewers…"

"What are…" Cordelia asked him just as the front door of the hotel burst open. She and Wes shared a look before turning back to the doors. "Talk about timing…" The two of them stood quickly about to make for the weapons cabinet. The two of them made it only a step before each of them was hit with whatever the intruders had shot them with.

"Wesley," Cordelia said weakly as her vision became blurry and she wavered where she stood.

"Conner… trap…" Wes muttered as he reached out to steady both himself and Cordelia, but he missed falling into a heap on the floor. Everything went dark and he didn't even hear Cordelia's body hit the floor.

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x

"This looks like what Spike described from his vision…" Lorne said from behind the three others.

"Are you sure this is the place that Spike saw?" Gunn asked. "Don't get me wrong, but how do we know that he's reliable in the vision department?" Angel looked down the dark stairway with a little bit of trepidation. This was the sixth place they'd been in two hours. They couldn't afford to be wrong any more after this. Each minute that passed took Conner deeper into the clutches of Wolfram Hart.

"Well, let's ask one tool of the Powers if the other tool of the Powers is real…" the vampire said, looking to Lindsey. The ex-lawyer smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"If you're looking for validity to the visions, you're asking the wrong guy," he said. Angel, Gunn and Lindsey all looked to Lorne.

"Hey… you know that my 'follow the pied piper' record hasn't exactly been stellar. We've been bamboozled before, kiddies, and I was none the wiser. So, don't go looking to me for affirmation," the demon said. Gunn grunted.

"So, you're saying that we have to trust that these visions are coming from the right person who hasn't been body-jacked?" he asked, a doubtful look on his face. "What's to say we aren't being led down the dark and downright shitty again? The Partners have manipulated us in the past…" Angel didn't say anything for a moment, but his hand tightened on his weapon.

"We trust Cordy," he said stiffly when he couldn't come up with an opposing argument. Gunn nodded.

"Right. We trust that it is Cordy…" he said with more assurance than he felt. And apparently Angel was aware of that mistrust as he glared over at the young man. Gunn just shrugged. "I'm just sayin'… Let's go get the kid…" Angel didn't reply but started down the stairs. Just before they got to the bottom, Lorne grabbed Angel's arm.

"Conner's not here, Angel," he said. His red eyes looked into the room warily. "But there is some mojo going on here…" Angel nodded as he stepped off the last stair.

"Stay back, Lorne, just in case," he said. The demon stayed where he was bid.

"Gladly," he said. Gunn, Angel and Lindsey made their way into the fire-lit room. There wasn't anything special about it. It was all stone walls and cement floor. There were torches hanging on the walls, but other than that the room was empty.

"It's a bit eerie down here," Angel commented, breaking the silence.

"Only slightly more so now that we're not alone," Lindsey said.

"Well spotted, Lindsey," Lilah said as she appeared from behind Lorne on the stairway. Her heels clicked and echoed as she stepped by the wide-eyed demon and crossed the room to where the other three stood.

"How you didn't go further in Wolfram Hart is beyond me… oh wait… it was because you grew a conscience," she said. Lindsey didn't say anything, but smiled and looked as if he were bored.

"Where's Conner?" Angel demanded. Lilah smiled as well.

"Well out of reach of you and your…" she looked at Lindsey "… friends… He's in the Partners care now."

"He won't be for long," the vampire growled. Lilah just laughed.

"Awful lot of confidence for a group that had been tricked into handing over the vital piece of the coming end," she said.

"We weren't tricked, we were manipulated," Gunn said. Lilah turned to look at him.

"Isn't that the same thing?" she asked. Gunn fell silent. "Looks as if you've been relegated back to goon squad…" The black man rolled his shoulders in disinterest.

"It's where I should have been all along. That way, I get to kick your ass personally," he said. Lilah continued to smile.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. The Partners have been planning this for longer than you've been in L.A, Angel. Conner was the reason why Darla was ever brought back. It was actually just a bonus all that time she drove you nuts and almost lost you everyone at Angel Investigations. It was her purpose to conceive the purported Destroyer," Lilah explained. Lindsey noticeably gritted his teeth at the though of the blond vampiress, his history with her still painfully fresh in his memory.

"Sorry, Lindsey, to bring up such a touchy subject for you… wait… no, I'm not," his former counter-part said.

"You are such a bitch," he gritted out. The woman shrugged.

"There are worse things to be," she said before turning to Angel again. "Well Angel, it looks as if your save the world mission may have failed this time around. By agreeing to Wolfram Hart's proposition, you gave Conner right to us. Remind me to send a thank you card," she said.

"I wasn't trying to save Conner from Wolfram Hart. I was trying to save him from himself," Angel said. Lilah clucked her tongue with a shake of her head.

"Angel, Angel, Angel. Where's your vision gone? What about that 'greater good'? You've spent too much time around humans. You're starting to think like one, rather than thinking like a champion. Conner has always been the means to the end. When you tried to save him, you played right into our hands," she said. Angel pointed his sword at her.

"We haven't played into anything. This isn't over," he said. Lilah smiled, clasping her hands behind her back.

"You think because you've got your little Seer back from the Powers that things are going to come out all hunky-dory. I wouldn't be hard pressed to tell you that you are wrong – very wrong. You may have a first class team, Angel, but what is a first class team when you no longer have them?" she asked, a malicious grin crossing her sharp features. Angel's face went ice cold at the implications and the realization at what Lilah's sudden appearance had accomplished.

"Back to the hotel, now," he said without looking at his companions. He turned to lead the charge out of the chamber but whirled quickly, heaving his weapon in his hand directly at the woman. The sword stopped, still hanging in mid-air, just inches from Lilah's chest. She stood there with a smirk on her face.

"See what becoming a Senior Partner can do?"

Angel only hesitated in surprise for a second before he rushed up the stairs after Lorne, Lindsey and Gunn. He knew they were too late. Wolfram Hart had already ambushed the hotel and taken everyone who was there. Now, the quicker they got there, the quicker they could track whoever had taken them and kill them all.

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x

Cordelia opened her eyes slowly.

"Wes?" she asked. The room was dimly lit, only a few lanterns lighting the small room she was in. "Fred? Spike? Buffy? Anyone?" There were footsteps from behind her. Sitting up slightly, she turned to see what had made the noise. There was nothing there but dancing shadows. Closing her eyes, she turned back around and counted to ten to keep the panic at bay.

"It's alright, Cor. No priests with red-hot pokers, no poltergeists hanging you from ceiling fixtures, no demon children playing havoc with your hormones… those situations were bad and you got out of them. You can get out of this too…" she told herself. Another sound caused her eyes to snap open and she let out a shrill shriek as what caused it stepped closer.

"Conner…" she said, looking into the hate-filled eyes of the boy standing over her.

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x

A/N2: another evil grin