Well, the story's really starting to come together in my head - my fingers are just having a hard time keeping up... I won't be able to update until Monday night (14th March), as I'm out of town on a job, but hopefully this'll tide you over til then... If you like it, let me know...
An hour later, with Cordelia tucked safely in bed; Kathy turned the key to her own apartment and dumped her bag on the couch. Cordy had been so wiped out that she was asleep almost the second her head hit the pillow. For the second time that evening,Kathy worried about the effect the visions were having on her friend.
After lighting several candles and some incense, she poured herself a glass of wine and slumped down on the couch with a large leather-bound book in her lap. Research. Spell-learning. Her Grandmother had brought her up to be in a state of constant preparation, even if she didn't know what she was actually preparing for. What spare-time she had was usually spent bent over a book. That or in meditation, honing her magical skills.
She lost herself in the volume, unaware of time passing until a knock on her door brought her back to the present. Uncurling herself from the couch she walked to the door.
'Who is it?' She asked.
'Angel,' he announced through the door. Sliding free the dead bolt, she opened the door and let him in.
'Did you find her?' she asked, having a bad feeling about the situation.
'I was too late,' he told her. 'The girl was already dead.'
She had gotten to know Angel well in the month she had been in his life, and she could tell that what he had seen had unsettled him. The fact that he had failed to protect an innocent was a source of pain deep inside him, where she couldn't reach.
'What was it?' She gestured for him to sit, and he sat down at one end of the sofa. She sat on the other end, keeping a respectful distance.
'I don't know. It, whatever it was, was gone before I got there. Did a lot of damage though. The girl's throat was cut. And there were words carved into her skin.'
'What did they say?' Kathy wanted to know, feeling increasing disturbed.
Angel took out a piece of paper from his coat pocket and unfolded it for her to see. She took it and studied the quick but detailed sketches he had drawn before calling the police. The words on the girl's flesh were intricately drawn. And chillingly familiar.
'It looks like Latin,' Angel commented. 'But not any form I've ever seen.'
'Inquisitori,' she finally said in a hushed voice.
'The Inquisition?' Angel asked.
'There was a fanatical branch that had their own dialect, reserved solely for use during their Inquisitorial hearings. It was how they recorded their judgements. They were excommunicated from the Catholic Church, their teachings branded heresy and all records regarding them destroyed. Even the brutality of the medieval Church had its limits.'
'So what is a medieval abstraction of Latin doing carved into the flesh of a twenty-two year old girl in L.A?' Angel wanted to know.
Kathy shook her head in disgust. 'Looks like someone was passing judgement.'
'How do you know all this anyway? Are you channelling Wesley?'
'My Grandmother told me about them. The stories about La Inquisición de la más Pura Palabra were passed down among the Wise Women.'
'The Inquisition of the Purest Word,' Angel translated. 'That's what they called themselves?'
Kathy nodded.
'There was only one word I recognised,' Angel told her, pointing it out on the sketch. 'It was pretty small, but in the light of what these guys called themselves… The word Logos had been carved over her heart.'
'The Word of God,' Kathy said.
Wesley and Kathy were pouring over books in the foyer of the Hyperion Hotel when Cordelia looked up from her computer terminal and announced, 'I've found her.'
Melissa Simpson had been lovely in life, with long dark hair and blue eyes; studying for her Masters in Women's Studies part-time at UCLA. She also ran a small store.
'Blessed Be,' read Cordelia. 'A magic shop.'
Kathy leaned closer to the screen. 'Was she a practitioner or just a retailer?'
'Can't tell from this,' Cordy answered. 'Although, she did inherit the store from her mom.'
'Maybe that wasn't the only think she inherited,' Wesley suggested. 'Gunn and I should go over to her apartment and check it out.'
'So, you're thinking the motive for her murder was the fact that she was a witch?' Cordy wanted to know.
'Nothing Inquisitori liked better than killing a witch,' Kathy replied.
Cordy printed the details of the shop address off for Wesley. 'She lived in the apartment above her store,' she told him.
As Wesley hung the phone up after his call to Gunn, Angel walked in.
'Where are we?' he asked them.
'Our dead girl may have been a witch,' Cordy informed him. 'Wesley and Gunn are going to go check it out.'
'Makes sense,' Angel commented as he took a seat. 'Nothing the Inquisition loved more than killing a witch.'
Wesley and Cordelia exchanged a look, and Cordy barely contained a chuckle. Angel looked from one to the other, and final at Kathy, seeking an explanation.
'What did I say?'
Kathy smiled. 'Exactly the same thing I did not two minutes ago.'
'You'd better watch out, Kathy,' Cordy told her, trying not to giggle. 'The brooding might turn out to be hereditary too.'
Angel glared at the brunette.
Wesley cleared his throat. 'Moving swiftly on, Gunn is meeting me at Blessed Be to check out the girl's apartment. Kathy, I assume you'll continue your translation of the Latinate text?'
'Yes, I think I'm getting somewhere with it,' Kathy told him. 'I just don't quite know where. There's very little reference material regarding the language or the order who devised it.'
'Well, just do your best,' Angel told her.
Wesley picked up his jacket and made his way out the door. As Kathy resumed her reading, Cordy regarded Angel with ill-concealed disbelief.
'What?' he asked her.
'Just do your best?' she asked him, incredulous.
'Yeah. So?'
'If it were me you'd be all, 'Get it done, Cordy', 'Have you got anything yet, Cordy?'. Nepotism's a bitch.'
She flashed Kathy a cheeky grin and was rewarded with a smile in return. Angel shook his head, not understanding what was going on, and moved past them into his office.
'You just love to give him a hard time, don't you?' Kathy remarked.
'Always.'
With that, Cordy unfurled herself from her chair and went to the bathroom. Closing the door, she leaned against the door, resting her burning forehead against the cool wood. This brave front was sapping all the energy out of her.
Her headaches were lasting longer and becoming more painful with every vision. Refusing to let Angel or any of the others realise how much pain she was in was becoming a full-time job in itself. She was constantly cracking jokes, teasing Angel and Wesley, anything to appear like the old Cordelia. But she didn't know how much longer she could keep it up.
Reaching into her purse, she withdrew a small bottle of pills. Shaking four out, she washed them down with water from the faucet. She sat down on the toilet seat, overcome with yet another spasm of pain through her head, and fought off the nausea that came with it.
Not for the first time, she also fought off the thought that the visions just might be killing her.
