Part Two
Spike stood in front of the television set, watching the evening news as it kept its continued march towards imitating a low-budget action film when hell's own Barbie doll stalked back in with Kenny in tow. Blood ran from a gash in Illyria's forearm deep enough to expose the white gleam of bone even as her face remained as bland and plastic-lovely as one of Dru's dolls. The blood fell softly down to the carpet, which drank it up like a live thing. Good thing they had not put down a deposit.
Yeah, and Lindsey was not looking so hot, either. He slumped quietly against the wall and watched Spike and Illyria with the bleary, dazed stare of someone who had finally had enough.
"Well, well," Spike said, watching the coils of bright crimson as they wound their way down Lindsey's arms. "Looks like you two had quite the party."
Illyria lowered her head to peer at the jagged wound splitting the skin of her forearm. She flicked away a gobbet of something that looked suspiciously like spittle and made a face, the first sign of discomfort that she had given since striding through the door, before she looked back up at Spike. There were some expressions which could be translated regardless of the species that they rested upon, and that of a pissed off bird was one of them. "I do not exist to fight your battles for you," she hissed at him, baring her teeth in a manner that would have sat equally well on a cat. She spun off towards the bedroom, throwing back over her shoulder, "Next time, I will allow it to die."
Spike stared after her. "She becomes more like a human woman every day." He flicked his gaze back towards Lindsey, who was still leaning against the wall and watching with an expression suggesting a videotape that had already recorded all that it could and was on the verge of overwriting all of the old information to take in the new. Like, say, the ABCs. Hell must have been going through quite the dry spell, if Los Angeles was new and different enough to elicit such a reaction. Lindsey shifted, leaving twin smears of crimson against the wall from his elbows. "Golly, don't you look like you're having the best time ever."
Lindsey lifted his eyes. "I don't know if you're aware of this," he said slowly, "but there's a goddamned dragon out there."
Spike patted down his jacket pockets until he found the cigarettes again. Times like these, he figured that the ones who didn't chain smoke were the freaks. "We call her Charlotte." The cigarettes were located with a triumphant flourish. Only a few left; he would either have to cut back or risk a fight to get more. Damn, and that was going to be such a strain upon his resources.
"Ah." Lindsey steadied himself with his arms, winced, and wobbled like a newborn calf when he tried to stand unaided. "She seems like a charming lady."
"Bit of a bitch, really, until you get to know her." Spike's lighter sputtered on the last few drops of butane before finally going out, and he swore. "And after you get to know her. Still, she does seem to have taken a shine to us."
Lindsey paused and visibly held his breath until his balance returned. "Angel and fire-breathing women. So glad that there's at least one thing I can count on to stay the same." He rubbed his hands over his face, raked them through his hair, and scowled. "Don't suppose you guys have a shower I could use?"
Spike made a face before he crammed both the smokes and the useless lighter back into his jacket. "Sure." He jerked his head in the direction that Illyria had disappeared in. "But you have to brave her to reach it."
Lindsey paled for a moment, and Spike could not control his grin. It was always nice to see his girl making an impression. "I'll risk it." He made his way off, trailing his fingers against the wall for balance. If it were not for the complete amorality and history of Machiavellian manipulations between them, Spike might almost, maybe feel sorry for him. He turned back to the merry visions of the world crawling itself into hell on the television screen.
The click of the door opening was slight, so faint that Spike would have missed it if he had been relying on human ears. He didn't turn away from the set. "Have yourself a good tantrum, did you?"
"Spike." Ah, now there was the warning note curling through Angel's voice that had been so lacking over the intervening months. Spike felt the corners of his lips turn up a shade. And all it took was the resurrection of a mortal enemy. They should start compiling a list. There was a scuffing noise as Angel began to come forward and then halted, presumably at the sight of the blood. "Charlotte?"
"Yep." A truck carrying hundreds of gallons of precious gasoline went up on the small screen, scattering civilians like leaves before a gale, and Spike winced. More precious fuel wasted, and supply companies willing to make the trip into the minefield that the western United States had devolved into were becoming fewer by the day. "Is it just me, or is she getting worse?"
"Not just you." Spike could hear Angel's hand brushing against the plaster where Lindsey's blood was settling into the paint. "We'll have to try again, soon." That was almost animation there if Spike worked on listening for it. "Is Illyria hurt badly?" Still there. Wonders and miracles, and Spike began to wonder if composing that list might not be a good idea after all.
"For her?" Spike sighed and turned the television off before he turned around. "Not badly. She'll be right as rain and ready to start twirling entrails around her head again within a day. We'll just have to find some good entrails tonight to point her at."
Angel nodded, the distant look that had been nearly omnipresent lately settling over his face again. Spike told himself that it was none of his business and he really did not care, except that going through the motions didn't seem to be getting them very far in the universal sweepstakes lately. The distance receded again, just far enough for Angel to sound reluctant, disbelieving, and nearly disgusted in one neat package as he asked, "And Lindsey?" He gestured towards the crimson marks on the wall.
"Ruffled around the edges. I'm guessing that Illyria's mercies weren't all that more tender than Charlotte's." Spike sighed again, crossed his arms over his chest, and wished he had a spare lighter with him so that he would at least have a burst of extra nicotine energy to work with. In the other room, the sound of the shower starting up could be heard. "So, did your pet project in there say anything terribly shocking?"
Angel's lips lifted up, and Spike wished that he would stop it. That same smile, or a friend close enough to share its bed, had once sat with ease upon Angelus's face. They had enough young pups running about out there and trying to fill his shoes without having to contend with the gran pere of them all at the same time. "Anymore? Nothing surprises me." The smile deepened until it gleamed, bringing the hair rising on Spike's neck and a prickle of recognition to go spreading along his limbs. "But Lindsey can speak the truth without actually telling it."
Spike blinked. "Can he now?" This was not, he was coming to realize, a good night for running low on his distracting little addictions.
The smile faded by a shade or two, leaving a saner Angel behind. Spike was glad of it. "He can if you know him well enough." Angel turned away to gather weapons and Spike turned the television back on. He ignored the panicked edge in the newscaster's voice and instead focused on memorizing the locations that she read out in breathy gasps, his lips moving as he cast his eyes across the never-ending ticker tape that ran across the bottom of the screen. The electricity would be going out soon, and they would need to know where to hunt.
---
Lindsey's legs had promised to go out on him, made good on that threat, and then withdrawn it so many times over the past hour that he felt justified in ignoring their final, piteous pleas for mercy as he staggered into the space that he assumed was meant to be the apartment's bedroom. Aside from a stack of unused pallets similar to the one that Lindsey had been placed upon shoved into one corner, enough ancient weaponry to make Genghis Khan go greenly envious, and-thank whatever gods that had not yet screwed him over in whatever heavens they might rest-a door through which the gleam of chrome and porcelain could be seen, the room was abandoned of furniture. As tempted as he might have been to place Fred-thing within that category before his encounter with the lovely and vivacious Charlotte, the speed with which she had moved and the heat of the glare that she turned on him now made all such thoughts curl up and immediately begin scouting about for a place to hide.
"I do not require your assistance," she sniffed before returning to the bandages that she was awkwardly trying to wrap about the lacerated skin of her forearm. If the splatters of blood that she was leaving in wide arcs around herself every time she made an abrupt movement were anything to go by then Lindsey thought that he could argue with that, but he was strangely not finding himself in the mood to share and care and be an all around Class A kind of guy.
"Wasn't looking to offer it, Blue," he said, and continued on his way towards the bathroom.
"They believed that you were the key to all of this," Fred-thing said to his retreating back, drawing Lindsey to a halt faster than any physical restraint could have hoped to. He turned back far enough to see her face, written up as it was with equal parts disdain and curiosity. "To replacing the veneer upon their world." Fred-thing bared her teeth in what Lindsey supposed had been a smile in a past life. They were startlingly human and white. Lindsey thought that he preferred the blue. "And yet you are human, frail. I see little to be impressed with."
Lindsey split his lips into a smile every bit as vicious as Fred-thing's own. "Haven't you heard, babe?" She blinked, but apparently the endearment was human enough to pass over her head. "Don't believe everything that you're foretold." He went into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind him. It was cramped, worn but well-maintained all the same. Lindsey imagined that Angel and his merry band spent a lot of time here, showering off the results of that battles that they won and bandaging those of the ones that they did not. His hand was trembling as he slid the shower door open and reached in to turn on the tap, not so badly that Lindsey could not lie to himself and pretend that he did not notice.
Water poured down from the shower's head on command, bleary-opaque for the first several seconds but gloriously hot all the same. Lindsey did not think that there was another word in the English language or in any other capable of carrying with it such blind, fervent hope. Within moments he had stripped off his clothing and all but fallen beneath the spray. His hand groped blindly until he found the handle marked 'hot' and turned it up as high as it would go, until he was at the brink of scalding. For the first time since he had woken up, the gooseflesh retreated back into his skin. Lindsey opened his eyes long enough to see swirls of ash and soot disappearing down the drain before he sank into a sitting position, using the tile wall at his back as a brace and feeling the pinpricks of water pound his face with nearly enough force to hurt. He didn't move from that position until the water began to grow cold.
The lights buzzed once, twice, as Lindsey was stepping from the shower, and then they went out. Lindsey froze with his borrowed shirt in one hand, feeling beads of water trickling down the nape of his neck and the hard little knots of gooseflesh already beginning their triumphant return in a march down his back. The heat had been nice while it had lasted. "That can't be good." His words hung in the air for far longer than they had a right to in the cramped space of the bathroom. Lindsey dressed quickly and left. The darkness soothed eyes that had already seen more than their anticipated share of light and color for the day, and he only had to hesitate in the doorway and allow his eyes to adjust for a few seconds before he was able to safely navigate around the weaponry scattered about the room.
"Forget to pay the bill?" Lindsey asked as he walked back into the main room. The forms of Angel, Spike, and Fred-thing were moving about the room, felt almost as much as they were seen. He thought he could make out weapons being strapped to limbs.
Angel glanced up. "Power goes out at eight every evening," he said. "Doesn't come back on until six in the morning. Fuel rationing." There was a flat quality to his voice as he spoke, as if Lindsey was rummaging through computer files rather than conversing with a person. It was too dark for Lindsey to see how tightly Angel's fingers were wrapped around the handle of the sword that he carried, or for him to read the expression on Angel's face. He felt adrift in the absence of such cues and only wished that the world would stopping spinning long enough so that he could think.
"Hell of a world you got going here," Lindsey said, finding the pallet and sinking back down onto it. The gleam of teeth the he received in return managed to be equal parts alarming and reassuring. Lindsey shivered beneath the slow spike of fresh adrenaline and wondered how far away that glitter of teeth was from becoming fang.
"If it's too much of an adjustment I could always send you back." The sword sighed as Angel pulled it from the sheath by a few inches before allowing it to fall back.
"Easy there, fella. I might start getting the wrong ideas." Lindsey felt his lips curving into a smile and didn't need to see Angel's face to know that, for the moment at least, he and Angel were back to the status quo. He maintained the expression until Angel had taken his followers and left. As soon as the sound of the door shutting had ceased echoing it fell away, leaving behind a mask blank enough to have been carved from plaster.
---
It was almost as difficult to get into Los Angeles as it was to get out these days, making supply runs a fool's errand for all but the cunning and the suicidal, and passenger trips unthinkable. There were ways, though, if one was canny and knew how to take advantage of chances as they presented themselves. If one knew how to be persuasive.
The freighter that bumped up gently against the dock was almost too old to be on the water, so ancient that no one could consider it a great loss on the likely event that it did not come back. There were only a few hands on the deck, making it more than a ghost ship on technicality alone, and those that did move about kept a careful eye on the sky above them for things that flew and things that clawed. They paid little mind to the adolescent that slipped among them, heading below decks to the living quarters to collect her belongings and her companions. She had paid her way and that merited her the same consideration that would be given to a pricey piece of cargo, nothing more. The girl had whirled away into the shadows and was lost among them within seconds, forgotten almost as quickly, and when she reappeared with two boy in tow moments later the crew members reacted with a faint shock.
She missed planes more than she missed anything else, the girl decided as she stood at the head of the gangplank with her luggage in her hands. Cars, too, and television that wasn't all focused on twenty-four hour depictions of people being eviscerated, but planes were the big one. She remembered being small and taking plane trips with Alexei, Fideo, and Jonathan to wherever the safe house of the month happen to be located, the smooth, easy power of them, interrupted as they were by sobering little jolts when the plane hit a restless pocket of air. Those moments of turbulence especially, when the clean miracle of flight seemed poised to be thrown right back into impossibility and leave all of the passengers flailing for purchase in the air like Icarus. An had always believed in drawing such cautionary tales from everyday experiences. Jonathan had been fond of ruffling her hair, kissing her forehead, and telling her that she had been born out of her time. The new age of people dominating the planet could not seem to grasp the lesson even as history written on both the large and the small scale doubled and tripled on itself, one big cycle like the snake that ate its own tail, and each failure became more crippling than the last.
It had been nearly six months since An had last spoken to Jonathan. She missed him.
She missed planes, and she missed Jonathan and chocolate, and she missed romantic comedies and the juicy give of citrus fruit being scissored up between her teeth. An figured that she could fill up a legal pad with all of the things that she was already coming to miss (the legal pad itself might be on it) if she was willing to sit down and try, and this was why she threw the notion out of her mind with a physical shiver like a dog shaking water off of its back. When she no longer had a task to perform and the luxury of fantasy was returned to her, then she could indulge. For now, though, the job.
An strode slowly down the gangplank, pausing only to tip the lone young man who had helped her with her luggage and to ensure that he would not remember her when she had passed. Alexei had raced ahead and was already standing on the docks, hands braced into fists against his hips and foot tapping against the cement in a mockery of impatience as he stared up at her. "Yeah, let's pause to enjoy the scenery of a shipping yard!" he shouted up at her. "I'm sure it's the city finest, right here."
An drew in her breath sharply at the noise, darting her eyes about the rest of the dock for signs of dangerous movement. There was little that could pose a serious threat to them. That did not mean that there was nothing, and it would only take one lucky strike to end them before they had a chance to begin.
"He's happy," came the soothing voice at her ear, matching the tempo of the quiet pad of footsteps that she had heard coming up behind.
"He's being a moron," An replied, and did not need to turn her head to see that Fideo was wearing a slight smile.
"That, too."
An hurried down the gangplank, shifting her luggage in her hands and muttering words beneath her breath that no one save for Alexei and Fideo realized that she knew. "Will you shut up already?" she hissed at Alexei as soon as she dared. "Are you trying to let the entire city know that we're here?"
Alexei's smile slipped, turning a little sullen, a little hurt, and was not restored until An laid her hand upon his arm. "Sorry," he said. "Didn't pack my neon sign, had to improvise. We're not going to be going low-profile for long, anyway, so I don't understand what the fuss is."
"Enjoy anonymity while it lasts." An lifted her hand away from Alexei's forearm and gave him her suitcase as his penance, smiling sweetly when he made a face. "Besides, you big doofus, I was thinking of more immediate concerns. Law and order aren't much more than words in a dictionary here."
Alexei was pulling another face and just opening his mouth to fire something back at her when the sound of a car's engine cut through the inky darkness, all the more startling by having no other traffic sounds with which to blend. Alexei shut his mouth with an audible clicking sound. An could feel Fideo coming up protectively on her left while Alexei took two quick steps closer to her on her right, all thoughts of bickering forgotten. They were three, as they had been since before they could count their ages in double digits, and they were mighty, and they were ready. If trouble came, so help them, they were ready.
If trouble was gunning for them on this night, however, then An had soon decided that it was about time someone pulled trouble aside and spoke to it about its lamentable taste in cars. A single beam of light cut through the black as the engine rumbled closer, bouncing wildly, and An had an irrational moment in which she thought of a manic-depressive Cyclops before she realized that one of the car's headlights was out. She disentangled her fingers from Fideo's with no memory of which one of them had reached for the other first as the supposed luxury creaked to a halt and a man stepped out. A battered, beige-colored Chevy for an equally battered, beige-colored owner, and An had to stifle her giggle as she realized that they might even have rolled off the assembly line at the same time. The man pushed back his tan fedora-which matched his tan windbreaker, naturally-and smiled, making An immediately feel bad for her moment of mirth at his expense. "You guys are those Readers?" he asked, still smiling. There was a slightly pained quality to his grin, as if he wanted to believe but still wasn't quite sure that it could be possible.
"In living color," Alexei said. An darted a sharp look at him, but his voice had been bleached of all humor. He was standing closer to the driver than any of them, so close that a good breeze could make their hands touch. "Pop the trunk and I'll toss these bags in."
"Sure, sure." Their driver hopped back into the car with an excited skip in his step that made An vaguely queasy just to watch the small hope that she could see being built up in it, more so by the fact that came from someone so much older than she. 'Do your job,' she told herself. 'Get it done, do it well, and then you never have to peek out from the woodwork again.' An old mantra, and one that didn't fit quite the way that it once had. The trunk creaked when it opened, and Alexei's back was stiff as he walked around to place both his and An's bags inside. A line appearing between his eyes, Fideo moved to do the same with his own, deliberately walking close enough to the driver so that their sleeves brushed against one another as the man moved to slam the trunk shut. An saw Fideo's lip curl, so suddenly and gone again so quickly that anyone who did not know him well would have missed it. He wasted no time in stepping away again. An's stomach clenched itself into a tight ball independent of her control. "God, I can't tell you how glad I am that you kids are here. You're going to be getting that a lot, and I…well…" He seized An's small hand in his meaty one, squeezed it firmly, and said, "Thank you."
An knew. It was everything that she could do not to be ill across her own shoes.
"I'm the same age as your daughter," An said. There was a roaring noise in her ears that made her own voice sound as if it was being delivered to her from down a long well.
Her driver looked surprised and maybe, if An squinted, even a bit anxious. "Yeah, I guess that you are, or close enough. Jenny had a birthday only a few days ago. Did you read that from me? Is that a part of your power?"
"Yes." An pulled her hand away from his and rubbed it against her jeans. She lifted her chin a few inches in defiance when she raised her eyes back to meet his. "Do you want to do to me that same things that you do to her?"
"I don't understand." He was a liar, oh, he was such a good liar, he had almost talked himself into believing it.
"Jenny found blood this morning. She's gone to talk to your wife-to her mother." An could not stop herself from spitting out the final word. "They're both crying now."
"You have no idea what you're talking about." He was barely able to speak above a whisper. "You shouldn't go around making accusations like that if you don't know what you're talking about."
An swiped at the dainty trickle of blood that had begun to run from one nostril, turned, and got into the backseat of the car without another word. Alexei and Fideo were already there, their faces set and stormy with a righteous anger that wanted nothing more than the chance to start throwing lightning bolts about. Fideo's hand was wrapped back around hers before the sound of the slamming door had even had a chance to begin echoing away. After a few more moments of standing alone by the trunk, their driver got in and started up the car. He was no longer tan, but a shade of gray that reminded An of old and unwashed linen. She thought that it suited him.
When word came around a few days later that the driver had hung himself, An was neither surprised nor remorseful. Ammunition was growing harder by the day to come by, and any shot wasted on him was one that wouldn't be spent by someone else in warding off an attack. An did not want to hurt anybody.
End Part Two