Chapter 6

Angel looked around the caravan which was decorated in a similar fashion to the tent that he'd wandered into what seemed like yesterday. Except, of course, it wasn't yesterday, it was a hundred and fifty years ago. Give or take.

He went over the plan again. Russ had said that the vampire was bound to show up again, sooner or later and when he did Angel would take off and Russ, Cordy and Fred would keep him busy. Injure him a bit, well try anyway, and then they would go to Angel who had gone to a gypsy who would hopefully help them. The vampire, as expected would track them and turn up at one time or another and, hopefully, by then they would know how to kill it besides the sun. Cordy's UV torch wasn't strong enough to kill a vampire, only hurt him for a bit. And sunset was way off and they had to kill this guy before he killed them. So the most important thing was for him to follow them and for the gypsy to help them.

Angel had learned about the caravan a few weeks ago. It had been parked high on a grassy hill that had absolutely nothing else on it. They sure had chosen a beautiful spot. Angel hadn't done anything about it though because they weren't doing anything. And Angel would soon come to realise that there was only one gypsy left and she wasn't exactly in a great enough form to go around stealing stuff like gypsies usually did.

Angel was actually standing outside the caravan, not having been invited in yet. Not that it looked like there was anyone that could invite him in. He heard a soft laugh from the far dark corner of the caravan. It got louder until it sounded like a cackle more than a laugh.

Angel turned as he heard a car pull up behind him and the cackle seemed to stop. He saw Russ, Fred and Cordy jump out and he would've breathed a sigh of relief if he actually breathed.

"Finally, what took you so long?" Angel asked and Russ looked at him with a chastising expression on his face.

"What do you think?" Russ asked sarcastically and Cordy decided to join in on the sarcasm trip.

"You know, the invincible vampire was bound to slow us down." She said and Angel surrendered.

"Fine, fine. I'm sorry."

"Why are there gypsies in Los Angeles anyways?" Fred asked. Angel turned back to the caravan and peered inside again.

"Romanian communists drove them out." Angel said absentmindedly.

"Couldn't you just put a soul in him instead of us having to come here?" Angel asked over his shoulder to Russ.

"No, I don't have any energy. What I have to do to you is going to need it all and unless you're willing to give that up…" Angel looked at Cordy and said quickly,

"No."

"Okay then." Russ pushed through Angel to step into the caravan. He was closely followed by Fred and then Cordy came in. Cordy invited Angel in after stepping up the steps in her wobbly high heels that almost made it impossible for her. How she fought off the vampire earlier when Angel wasn't there was as obscure to Angel as the facts of life.

Russ approached the far dark corner of the caravan. An old woman leaned forward so that the light revealed some of her wrinkled face that looked like leather.

"What is it demon?" Her voice was soft and raspy, like the throaty growl of a dog.

"I'm only half demon." Russ said in what could be possibly classified as something vaguely whiny.

"I wasn't talking to you." The gypsy snapped at Russ and then her voice softened ever so slightly,

"I was talking to the demon behind you." She pointed to Angel and Angel looked as if he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"We're not here about the demon." Russ said.

"I know why you're here." The gypsy snapped at Russ. The gypsy then continued,

"And I can't help you."

"What? Why not?" The gypsy ignored Russ' question and said,

"Come closer demon." Angel obliged and stepped forward so that he was only a step away from the gypsy.

"My people thought you could never last. You proved them very wrong. Now you do the work of an angel. My people could never have foreseen this." Angel thought about what she said.

"Your people… your people were the ones who did this to me?"

"Yes, they were."

"You are of the Kalderash people?" To this the gypsy merely nodded her head slightly.

"Do you still speak the native tongue?"

"Da." (Yes)

.:. This speech in this next bit is all in Romanian, well it's meant to be .:.

"How could I forget the mother tongue?" The gypsy said with a trace of happiness in her tone.

"It is one of the romance languages after all." Angel answered with a smile.

"Of course. Because Romanian men are so romantic." Angel grinned at the gypsy's comeback.

"You said before that I'd proved them wrong. Not that I'd proved you wrong."

"I've always went for the least likely of the people to triumph. And I was a teenager at the time you were given a soul. I decided to rebel against everyone else and go for you. Besides, you were so handsome. Still are. You haven't aged one day. It's like seeing into my past."

"Did you see the procedure?" The gypsy looked at him in a strange shyness that could only be possessed by a young person or someone reliving their young stage in life.

"Yes, I'd snuck away from one of my lessons and wandered into one of the tents that was banned from the young people. I saw the whole thing."

"Did you know the young woman who I…"

"The gypsy you killed?"

"Yes."

"She was a mean girl, everyone else loved her but I... She was so mean to me. You cannot imagine the terrible things she did to me. There's not much you remember from five years old but I remembered her doing something terrible to me… But this isn't the time or place for it."

"Can you help us defeat the demon?" Angel asked gently.

"Not in the way you want me to. Or should I say him." The gypsy gestured to Russ who understood everything they were saying.

"Which way?"

"I can offer you a piece of advice. This demon is not as undefeatable as you expect. You know that he cannot survive sunlight but then he cannot be staked. So the information you want is whether or not he has something that resists death by stake. A secret that baffles you and your friends."

"You know this secret." Angel didn't ask a question he said a statement. He usually didn't like gypsies but this one was special and funny. The fact that she shared a past with him only made it more of a complex puzzle and felt more and more like the Powers were guiding them without the use of Cordy's visions.

"Yes, the secret lies with the demon's heart. You simply assume that it is in the left side of the chest. But isn't it true that not all creature's hearts lie in the left side of their chest?"

.:. End of Romanian speech .:.

"That's it. That's it. His heart, it isn't in the left side of his chest." Russ said triumphantly.

"Wha?" Cordy came back from daydreaming. She and Fred obviously couldn't understand the Romanian passing between Angel and the gypsy so what was the use of pretending to understand?

"You mean he's a…" Fred started and Russ said,

"Yes, yes."

"Wow, well one vampire was bound to show up with that. Ah mean at one point or another. Ah know it's rare and all but…" A crash that rocked the caravan interrupted Fred and everyone looked around.

"He's quick." Angel said and everyone else silently agreed. Everyone except for the gypsy ran out of the cabin. They were confronted with an evil vampire with an evil grin on his face.

"Give me a stake." Russ said quietly to Angel and Angel looked at him with a weird look. He shrugged and said,

"I forgot my crossbow."

"You better not lose my stake." Angel said in a threatening voice. Russ gave him a look.

"Just give me the stake." Angel handed him the stake behind his back. Russ grabbed it and whispered to Angel,

"Keep him distracted." Angel didn't reply, he just charged at the vampire and they began the 'big fight'. It was pretty evenly matched and when Angel finally had him down he tried to stake him again by getting out another of his stakes and sticking it in the vamp's left chest. The vamp started to laugh at this and got up leaving the stake there.

"You can't kill me like that. Haven't you figured it out yet? Or are you really that slow?"

"See, that would be true. Except for the fact that I'm not on the receiving end of that stake you're about to die from." The vampire's features arranged themselves so that he had a completely clueless expression on his face.

"What are you…" Well that question would never be finished by that particular vampire because just before Angel's answer to his first question Russ had popped up from behind the vampire and after Angel finished talking and the vamp was halfway through his question Russ staked him in the right side of his chest. The vampire looked at Angel before he collapsed into a pile of dust.

Angel looked at the pile of dust before asking Russ,

"His heart was in the right side of his chest?" Russ nodded.

"Well that wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be."

"None of us did." Cordy agreed.

"Can we go back to the hotel now?" Everyone turned to Fred who was looking past them all at where the caravan was. Then everyone else turned to see what was so interesting to Fred about the caravan and turned to see… Nothing. The caravan had disappeared and there was no trace of it ever being there in the first place.

"Uh, yeah." Cordy answered Fred's question and everyone got back into the car. On the trip back everyone was left with their own thoughts about what exactly had happened.