Chapter Three

Vampire Visitors

Angel strolled into the hotel lobby feeling pretty pleased with himself after saving a little boy whose life was threatened by a vampire. The vampire had been dusted, the little boy had been safely led home, and Angel had suffered no more than a little scratch to his collarbone. All in all, with Gunn as his backup seeing as how Wesley was still recovering from his own injuries, the mission had gone pretty much according to plan. The plan, which Angel had come up with himself, was basically divided into three simple but effective steps: find the vampire, dust the vampire, and return the boy to his proper home. Simple but effective.

"Not bad, Angel, man," Gunn slapped his vampire boss on the back with a broad smile on his face. At the front desk in the lobby, Cordelia sifted through a closed case file while Fred and Wesley worked quietly in his office, pouring over several opened books. "At least this time we actually had the right street to work with and our client didn't almost die."

He glared pointedly at Cordy.

"Hey!" the brunette snapped, her eyes narrowing. "Who do you think you are? Anyone could have read the street name wrong! A's and P's can look alike… sometimes…"

"Yeah, and pigs fly," he retorted quickly. "You almost cost wonderchick upstairs her life."

"Hey!" she moved from behind the counter and jabbed a finger in Gunn's chest. "You're not the one who has the visions, are you? No. I do! So don't you go telling me whether pigs can fly or not, you… you—"

"Hey!" Angel yelled in a mild tone. "Children! Stop arguing for a few minutes and let's be quiet for a little bit… or at least mildly quiet."

"That'd be a miracle for supermama over here," Gunn jeered, flinging his entire body backwards onto the couch, nearly missing it but not quite.

"What's that supposed to mean, you… you… you…" she sputtered angrily, her eyes ablaze.

"Supermama can't even finish a sentence," the black man smirked with a shake of his head.

"Has anyone gone up and checked on Ella? You know see how she is?" Angel tried to divert the topic to the best of his ability. And it worked as well; both stopped their bickering momentarily and gave him their undivided attention, minus the sneers that Cordelia sent Gunn's direction when she thought he wasn't looking.

"Wonderchick?" Gunn asked with a shrug. "Keep on forgettin' that's her name. Yeah, Lorne went up a minute ago to check on her. You got to start payin' attention—"

"Ah! Peach blossom! Stop! Peach blossom!" they heard Lorne scream.

"What in the hell?" Gunn demanded, jumping to his feet. Wesley, with a book in and, and Fred, with a hand on Wesley's back, came out from hibernating in his office to investigate the commotion that was occurring. They all turned to see Lorne, Ella, and a flurry of white on the second floor landing. Lorne's arms were thrown up to protect his face from the onslaught as Ella battered him with a large pillow while her eyes were scrunched tightly closed. "Oh… okay… right…"

"Good God," Wesley's book fell to the floor along with the bottom of his jaw. "What in God's name is she doing?"

"Yeah!" Cordy hollered, punching the air with her fist. "You go girl! Beat that demon!"

"Cordelia," Angel touched her shoulder, a look of non-amusement on his solemn face. "That's Lorne."

"Oh…" the realization of who Lorne was suddenly seemed to dawn on her, slowly though. "Oh… oh… that's bad… that's real bad… real bad…"

"A little help, Angel-face, might be nice!" Lorne begged and pleaded, cowering away from the furious pillow attack.

"You're evil!" Ella cried out in a shrill voice. "You're a demon! A demon!"

"Not all demons are evil, Peach blossom!" Lorne attempted to reason with her, dodging a hard blow. In the extra moment that Angel decided to watch, Ella grabbed an axe that hung on the wall next to her after she dropped the pillow. Angel's eyes opened wide and he shot up the stairs two at a time. Her back was turned to him when he reached the top of the landing. As she raised the axe in the air to strike down Lorne, Angel grasped her arm with one hand while his other arm wrapped around her waist and lifted her feet clear off the ground.

In an awkward and very uncomfortable kind of waddle, he brought her back inside her own room. With ease, he pulled the axe from her tight grip and dropped her to the edge of the bed. She stared up at him wide-eyed with teardrops clinging to her lashes.

"Okay, rule number one," he told her sternly, shifting the axe from hand to hand. "No killing Lorne."

"But he's a demon!" she protested in a whimper.

"Not all demons are evil," Angel informed her. "And Lorne is not evil. He's a friend. Anyone in this hotel is a friend—"

Even as the words escaped his mouth, a feeling of dread spread over him because of the shattering of windows he heard from the hotel lobby. Cordelia could be heard screaming in surprise and Gunn was shouting obscenities. Angel darted out of the room at a speed that Ella amazingly seemed to match for she refused to leave his side. From the landing he could see that the lobby was overrun with at least a dozen or so vampires and one or two demons. In all, it was a motley and vicious group that had come to visit them.

"What I wouldn't do for a normal night," he grumbled mostly to himself. Gunn had already begun the fighting as Cordy ran around the lobby, carefully dodging evil creatures as she often called them, with a makeshift stake in her hand trying to rescue Gunn when she saw fit. Wesley and Fred took cover in his office, locking themselves in there seeing as how Fred was not great at fighting and Wes was still in recuperation from yesterday's accident. Lorne was nowhere to be seen but Angel thought he could sense him lingering nearby.

"Are they friends?" Ella asked tentatively.

"No. Feel free to kill them," Angel grunted while he broke the head off the axe, the blade falling to the floor. He thrust the wooden stake into her hands. "Protect yourself and stay up here. Try not to get into trouble, please."

She nodded shakily. Without another word, he launched himself over the rail of the landing and right into the heart of the battle.

Ella leaned over the railing, peering down closely at Angel. She loved watching the way he moved with an elegant grace despite the fact that he was fighting. It was like watching a professional dancer improvise a dance on spot with no music to dance to yet Angel seemed to dance with only danger being his only music. Already several spots of dust were piled on the floor where he had killed several vampires… well, killed in the sense that he dusted them out of existence.

His friend, the man she thought was named Gunn, fought with just as much vigor but maybe a bit less. He wielded a sword and a crossbow in both his hands and when they didn't work, he resorted to using his hands or lashing out with his feet. It was in its own way an awe-inspiring performance. And Angel's brunette female friend, although she was not perhaps the greatest fight-or even a fighter at all- she was handy in killing a vampire or two when she let them get close enough.

Without thinking, Ella broke her stake in two and slipped one half into the pocket of Angel's large black sweatpants that he had lent her.

In matters of minutes, the small group had dusted all the vampires and had killed one demon… that left only one demon to kill. And that demon was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe he ran away," Angel's brunette friend offered.

"I don't think so," Gunn turned around in a slow circle while Angel stared up at the ceiling.

"No…" Angel said faintly. "He's in here… somewhere…"

Ella felt the demon's presence before she saw him and managed to duck large fists before they broke through her skull.

"Angel, you're girlfriend's got company!" Gunn shouted and pointed to the second landing where a blond threw herself to the ground as large fists shattered the railing where she had just been standing. Angel stood planted to the ground, watching with interests as the young woman rolled to one side and jumped to her feet. "Girl's got skill, man."

And it seemed odd to Angel that she did, too.

Ella threw herself out of the path of another destructive blow. The fists were coming far too close to her; Angel felt concern for her but also thought that perhaps she could win on her own. And he thought she would after he watched her grab a second large axe from the wall. Perhaps he would have to remove antique weapons from the wall but he would think about that later.

As the demon took another wide swing, Ella brought the axe down in a slow arch and watched with wide eyes as the demon's arms disconnected from his body, falling to the ground with an ugly spat. The demon howled in pain and Ella almost appeared to be encouraged… until the thing ran straight for her with a loud roar. Closing her eyes tightly, she swung the axe quickly and the roaring stopped as she beheaded the creature.

"Damn," Gunn drawled. "Girl's got skill. Girl's got a lot of skill."

"Or a lot of dumb luck," Cordelia blinked her eyes. Ella dropped the weapon to the floor and stumbled back several unsteady steps. "And she's also got company!"
Angel dashed up the stairs the moment he saw another unwanted vampire grab Ella from behind, exposing her neck with pleasure.

"Don't move another step or I'll drain her dry," the vampire warned.

"Isn't that what you were going to do anyway?" Angel asked lightly despite the heaviness of the situation. As he spoke slowly, his eyebrows pushed forward and his eyes turned a feral gold. Long fangs grew in his mouth, which curled back in an unattractive smile after he saw the look of shock on the other vampire's face. "Wasn't what you were expecting?"

"You… you're a vampire…?" Ella looked repulsed.

"Don't talk!" the vampire that held her tight shouted in her ear. She made some sort of undistinguishable face and withdrew the stake from her pocket. In one swift moment, she lodged it in between the vampire's ribs. Moments later she felt wonderful release as the vampire turned to dust.

"Are you okay?" Angel asked quietly, his face sliding back to the angelic one she had been used to. Immediately she raised her stake toward him.

"You're one of them," she looked at him with terror in her eyes. "You're a vampire?"