Author's Note: A really big thank you to angel-cordy; angelfan384; and LuckyThirteen who reviewed the last chapter. It means a lot that people aren't losing interest in the story. Please do keep on letting me know what you think - its a lot of work and one of the things keeping me writing is the feedback that I'm receiving.
This story seems to get longer the more I write - I was originally planning on around 20 chapters, but I think it's safe to assume that it'll be a little longer than that now...
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE FIRST SOLDIER DOWN
The sound of fighting broke out from outside the hotel's main doors. Despite the Slayers standing in their way and with military precision, several members of the Scourge marched through the doors and into the lobby. They came in waves, indifferent to the obstacles in their path, indifferent to the members of their army that fell in battle. They had one goal. One purpose. They focused only on it.
Grabbing up his sword, Angel charged. He cleaved the heads off two of the demons without breaking stride and ran his blade through the next one he encountered, before an iron-like fist knocked him backwards. Looking up, he saw Tiernan, the commander of the Scourge, glowering over him.
'We meet again half-breed.'
A well placed steel-toed boot sent Angel hurtling across the floor. Tiernan stepped forward, stake in hand, to finish the vampire off when another figure blocked his way.
'What is it with you bad guys and your witty turns of phrase?' Cordelia asked him in a scathing voice. 'We meet again…' Please. Can you say 'contrived'?'
Tiernan looked at her in disgust. A filthy human. And he thought he detected the stench of something else about her too.
'You're another half-breed,' he declared, spitting out the words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. 'Another part-demon.'
'Demon enough to kick your skanky, leathery ass,' she said, raising her Katana.
Behind her, Angel got to his feet. 'I know it's been a few years, and god knows I've offed a couple hundred demons in the meantime, but didn't I kill you?' he asked the demon.
Tiernan laughed. 'The half-breed is more idiotic than he looks. You merely broke my neck, vampire. Hardly sufficient to kill me.'
'Guess I'll just have to try harder then,' Angel retorted. 'Cordy, get behind me.'
She only glanced away for a second, but it was enough. Tiernan moved with frightening speed and dexterity, swinging the club in his hand. Angel's eyes were wide as he watched Cordelia fly across the room like a rag doll and land in a heap at the foot of the counter.
With a guttural scream of rage, Angel charged at the demon. The fight was short and bloody. Ducking beneath Tiernan's club, Angel drove his blade into the demon's foot. While his victim was still screaming, Angel grabbed Cordelia's fallen sword and decapitated the demon with it.
Ignoring the battle that was raging all around him, Angel ran to Cordy's crumpled body. As he raised her up off the ground and into his arms, he breathed a sigh of relief when she gave a small groan.
'Cordy?' he said, still worried about the extent of her injuries.
Someone yelling his name took his attention away from Cordy and back towards the battle. Except it wasn't a battle anymore. The Scourge was no longer attacking. However, they weren't retreating either. They were collectively smirking with satisfaction, gazing up at something on the upper landing of the lobby. Angel followed their gaze and to his horror saw what Faith had been yelling about.
'Is that the beacon?' Faith asked, now that she had his attention.
'Yeah,' Angel replied, getting to his feet. Inwardly, he kicked himself. The fight had been a decoy, a ruse to distract them while the Scourge got the beacon into the building.
He glanced back at the Scourge. They had fallen back to guard the doorways – the Slayers could fight their way out of the building in minutes, but not before the beacon detonated. There was only one thing to do.
'It's armed and ready to detonate,' Angel told Buffy and Faith. 'But there's a way to disconnect the power source. If I can get to it before…'
'No!' Buffy told him, horrified by the suggestion. 'You can't do that! It's suicide.'
Like an echo in his mind, he heard those same words spoken by Cordelia, over four years before. Glancing over his shoulder at Cordy, who was starting to come around, he looked back at the Slayers determinedly.
'If I don't, everyone here will die, Buffy!' he told her. 'Then Wolfram & Hart will have won. Our army disintegrated in one fell swoop. I can't let that happen.'
As he moved towards the Beacon, he was faintly surprised that none of the Scourge moved to stop him.
'Angel!' Buffy called after him, tears welling in her throat. She tried to go after him, but Faith grabbed her arm.
'Let him go, B,' Faith told her. Buffy looked at her and was surprised to see that there were also tears in the normally tough-as-nails slayer's eyes. 'This is what he does…'
Cordy moaned and slowly sat up. She vaguely recalled facing off against a demon and then wham, everything went black. She focused her fuzzy eyes on Angel and smiled. He was okay. Then her smile froze in horror as she saw what he was walking towards.
Like an atomic chandelier, the beacon glowed on the landing about them. As she watched Angel, she knew exactly what he was going to do. It was the same thing he tried to do last time they faced the Scourge. Only this time, there was no brave, Irish part-demon to stop him. The memory was so fresh, so raw. It appeared before her eyes unbidden…
Doyle and Cordy climbed the iron rungs of a ladder and ran across the platform to meet Angel. Collectively, they turned to face the beacon, suspended above the centre of the cargo hold in which they were now trapped.
Doyle eyed the device warily. 'What does that thing do?' he asked Angel.
Angel's answer was undiluted and straight to the point. 'Its light kills anything with human blood.'
'Well, it's getting brighter and that doohickey…' the realization dawned on the Irishman. 'It's fully armed, isn't it?'
'Almost. If I pull the cable, I think I can still shut it off.'
Cordelia knew what he was implying. Doyle, however, remained momentarily clueless. 'How're you gonna do that without touching the light?'
'Angel, it's suicide,' Cordelia said, wide-eyed with fear.
'There's got to be another way,' Doyle insisted.
Angel looks at the Lister demons; men, women and children, clinging to each other below them in the hold. Then he turned to look at Cordy. 'It's all right,' he told her.
'No!' she told him forcefully, as if by her will she could make it so.
Doyle for his part said nothing for a moment, regarding Angel with a silent respect, weighing what he knew had to be done. Angel put his hand on his friend's shoulder, tears forming in his eyes. He had never been any good at 'goodbyes'.
Doyle placed his own hand on Angel's arm and gave him a half-smile. 'The good fight, yeah? You never know until you've been tested.'
The Irish half-demon recalled their earlier conversation, when Angel had confessed he had given up a life with Buffy in order to continue to fight evil in LA. At the time Doyle didn't understand how anyone could make that choice. But now…
'I get that now.'
Cordy hung her head, fighting off tears. She felt so helpless, unable to do or to say anything that would change their situation. Either a man she cared about was going to die, or they all would.
Giving his friend a last, grateful smile, Doyle hauled his fist back and punched Angel hard, knocking him backwards off the platform. It was a three story drop before Angel hit the metal bellow.
Before she could say a word, Doyle turned to Cordelia and swept her up into a passionate kiss, full of unfulfilled hope and promise. After a moment he reluctantly broke away from her. Cordelia said nothing, too stunned to utter a word.
'Too bad we'll never know…' he said, changing from his human visage to that of his Brachen demon-half, 'if this is a face you could learn to love.'
Still she could say nothing, as the full weight of what was happening dawned on her. Doyle was going to jump, and he wasn't going to let her or Angel stop him. She wanted to cry out to him, to tell him not to do it. But she was paralyzed, overloaded with some many emotions that none could assert themselves. All she could do was watch as Doyle, the man she almost could have loved, made his way to the edge of the platform.
Far bellow them, Angel turned over, groaning. Then he remembered how he got there.
'Doyle,' he said, picking himself up off the metal floor and looking back up to the platform above. 'Doyle! Doyle!' he kept calling his friend's name with mounting urgency as he ran to the ladder and began to climb.
Doyle measured the distance of the jump once more and sprang toward the deadly device, just as Angel reached the top most rung of the ladder.
'No!'
Grabbing hold of the metal frame that surrounded the Beacon, he hauled himself up and turned to give his friends one last smile. The beacon was gaining power, its sinister whirring getting louder by the second, so Doyle got to work, trying to grab the cables, all the time fighting against the searing pain of his flesh being melted from his body.
'No!' Angel screamed again, tears of anguish and of guilt flooding his eyes.
In the pain caused by the light of the device, Doyle morphed back to his human face, all the while fighting with the power cables. As the device grew brighter and brighter, it seemed that all hope was lost. But with a final scream of agony, Doyle succeeded in his goal. The beacon gave one last flash of light and then grew dark. And Doyle was no more.
It was done. He was gone. Sobbing, Cordelia stared at the now dormant beacon, somehow hoping that she would see him there. The two remaining champions were broken, defeated. All they could do was hold each other and weep.
'NO!' Cordelia screamed with all her might, as Angel neared his goal. She couldn't let another man she cared about die at the hands of that weapon. She wouldn't. As she screamed, she felt energy pulsate off her, a heat that began deep within and emanated from her in waves.
Buffy and Faith looked back towards Cordy in time to see a beam of light explode out of her, filling the entire lobby with an unearthly glow. With the single mindedness of a shark looking for blood, it streaked towards the beacon.
Angel's hands were within inches of the device when Cordelia's power hit. Momentarily blind, Angel was flung backwards as the light consumed the beacon. With a deafening 'whoosh', it imploded, leaving nothing behind but the acrid smell of smoke in the air.
Stunned, Angel looked back in time to see Cordelia crumple to the floor unconscious.
When the Scourge realized their Beacon had failed for a second time, they didn't wait around. The Slayers managed to pick off a number of demons in the retreat, and Rondell's crew chased them for several blocks, taking out two truck loads in the process.
Considering the size and determination of the force that attacked them, the good guys seemed to be relatively unscathed. As Faith and Buffy surveyed the damage, they tried to fight back the realization that it could have been so much worse. If it had gone the other way they all would have been nothing more than scorch marks on the tiled floor of the lobby. As it was, there were a multitude of cuts and bruises, one or two fractures… but nothing life threatening.
That was until a Slayer above them screamed.
They had sent Sheila, one of their newest Slayers, up to the roof to check on the ten Slayers they had posted there. Buffy, Faith, Kennedy and several other Slayers ran up the stairs to see what had the new girl so distraught.
They found her curled in a ball, sobbing by the entrance door to the roof. As Kennedy and a few other girls bent to comfort her, Faith and Buffy stepped past her to check out the roof. There was no sign of the ten Slayers who had been standing watch.
All that remained were ten piles of ash.
'Her powers seem to be growing,' Giles said. 'They may be becoming too much for her…'
Angel wouldn't take his eyes off Cordelia's still form, lying atop his bed. She still hadn't stirred.
'Angel, she's packing some serious power,' Willow spoke now, her worried voice trying in vain to sooth him. 'I'm sure she'll be okay, but…'
'This has happened before,' Angel finally spoke, but not to them. Eyes still trained on the unconscious brunette, he moved towards her, speaking in the determined voice he reserved only for her, when she would put herself in danger or not look after herself properly. It was a stern voice, almost angry, as if annoyed that she would do anything to risk removing herself from his life. 'This has happened before Cordy. And you came back. Where are you?'
'Angel, I don't think this is the same thing,' Willow said uneasily. 'The coma she was in after Jasmine…'
'Not then,' Angel replied, a little impatiently. 'More than two years ago. Before she was made part-demon. She astral projected out of her body after a really bad vision. We didn't know what had happened to her… couldn't bring her out of it. But she came back on her own.'
That had them stumped.
'I'll… I'll start researching. See if we can find out exactly what happened,' Giles suggested. 'Perhaps Wesley's journals, his notes on the last time this happened, will provide something useful…'
Angel sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of Cordelia's hands in both of his. 'Come back to me, Cordy,' he said softly. 'Wake up. Please.'
To Be Continued...
Authors Note: 'The First Soldier Down' is how Cordy refers to Doyle in the 100th episode 'You're Welcome'.
For those of you desperate to know where Cordelia's vision in Chapter 11 was telling her to go - you'll have to wait until chapter 13... :-)